Argentinians urged to throw out cocaine after tainted batches kill at least 20

Authorities in Argentina are advising drug consumers to throw away any cocaine they may have purchased in the last two days after at least 20 people died after ingesting adulterated cocaine in the Greater Buenos Aires area.

Eighty-four others are are currently under intensive care, of which 20 have been intubated, but authorities fear the death toll could increase as further victims are found to have died alone at home.

Dozens of the victims were saved after they were intubated in intensive care units usually reserved for Covid patients, Buenos Aires province health minister Nicolás Kreplak said on Thursday.

The tainted cocaine causes lethal cardiac and respiratory arrest in less than an hour, prompting authorities to issue an epidemiological alert warning the public not to consume any cocaine they may have purchased in the last two days.

Many victims have been taken ill almost immediately and died in their homes. Harrowing scenes of convulsing victims arriving at hospitals in private cars and being carried inside by relatives have been shown on television news and shared on social media.

Most of the victims seemed to be male and between the ages of 30 and 50, according to early reports.

Early speculation pointed to a turf war in which the cocaine could have been spiked by rival drug gangs trying to squeeze competitors out of the market. But that hypothesis is now giving way to the view that the tainted cocaine was cut with a poorly manufactured opioid.

In the operation, police seized 15,000 packages of cocaine in magenta polythene wrappers, similar to those which survivors of the tainted drugs had purchased.

Officials said the victims had purchased the cocaine at drug dens in Puerta 8, a low-income district in the Greater Buenos Aires area.

Cocaine consumption is high in Greater Buenos Aires, where 200,000 individual doses are sold each day among a population of about 15 million people, according to media reports.

The illegal drug business accounted for $1.1bn in sales in Argentina during 2017, according to the most recent studies, the daily Infobae reported Thursday.