What is ‘blue magic’? Advocate explains dangers around drug Nathan Millard allegedly overdosed and died from

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Baton Rouge police detailed new information about the circumstances surrounding the death of Nathan Millard.

According to BRPD spokesperson L’Jean McKneely, Millard allegedly overdosed on a drug called “blue magic”.

“It was blue magic, but it had some form of fentanyl in it. So, we believe the fentanyl was administered or the partaking in the drug activity. There is some mention of possibly giving some Narcan,” said McKneely.

Questions around the drug left some people wondering what is “blue magic” and others asking how dangerous is it?

Popularized in the 1970′s and 80′s, blue magic is considered one of the purest forms of heroin, and when mixed with a chemical, it turns into a shade of blue.

According to one advocate, blue magic is not something they have seen much of in Baton Rouge.

“When we say blue magic, I go back to the 70s. That was something that was in songs and people talked about it a lot. It’s the most purest heroin that you can probably buy,” said Tonja Myles, an addiction and substance abuse counselor.

Despite the drug not being on their radar, Myles says the people she works with are always watching for what could be the next big problem.”We’re always asking people when we’re on the street, what’s your DOC (drug of choice)? Tell us what’s going on, tell us what you’re seeing,” Myles said.

Myles says advocates and law enforcement have to stay proactive by studying drug trends, gathering data, and finding out ways to get the right help to people before it’s too late.

“When we’re in meetings, we take that information and disseminate it back to others to let them know what we’re hearing, what we’re seeing, and this is the trend in other places, we might need to talk about how this might look for us, ways to prevent it, or some of these things we know we can’t prevent but how can we get more awareness to folks out there that are using,” Myles said.

Myles says this method is key to preventing a lot of the overdoses and deaths we see in our area.

”We’re trying to be as proactive as possible as we can to save as many lives as we can,” Myles said.

WAFB reached out to the State Crime Lab to get more data about blue magic to see if there are any other recent cases on record involving the drug. We are still waiting to get that information.

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