Photo: CTV News

Trey Helten

Workers at a Downtown Eastside Vancouver overdose prevention site say a bad batch of drugs resulted in no less than 18 ODs in just one morning.

Trey Helten, a manager with the Overdose Prevention Society says there were 18 overdoses by noon on Friday.

"That's how our day started – it was like a war zone – and it didn't let up until three o'clock in the afternoon," he told CTV News.

The bad drugs are a mix of low-grade benzodiazepine and fentanyl, leaving people in a coma-like state before they can be revived.

Helten said even the overdose-reversal drug naloxone often fails to revive users.

Last year, 1,541 people died of illicit drug toxicity in B.C.

– with files from CTV Vancouver