A man has died and eight others have been taken to hospital after an “unusually strong batch” of heroin circulated across north Devon, police have said. Four people were arrested on suspicion of being involved in the supply of a controlled substance. Devon and Cornwall police said eight people were treated in hospital after they believed they had used some of the same batch across Westward Ho!, Bideford and Barnstaple. Emergency service partners declared a major incident on Friday evening after police became aware at about 5pm that the batch was circulating in the area. The alert was withdrawn on Saturday morning, with police saying the issue was believed to have been “contained”. The north and west Devon local police area commander, Supt Toby Davies, said: “As soon as we were made aware of the issue this substance was likely to cause on Friday evening, we did everything possible with partners to reach out to the drug-using community to warn them of the potential danger they were facing. “We continue to work with health partners to warn those who may be substance users to exercise extreme caution. However, we would reassure the community we believe this is now contained. “If anyone fears they are in danger or are in the company of someone suffering a medical episode, we would ask they contact 999 to seek appropriate medical help.” André Gomes, the communications lead at Release, the UK’s national centre of expertise on drugs and drug law, said: “We’ve been concerned with the increasing number of reports on dangerous batches of heroin. We are failing to acknowledge the changing landscape of drug supply in the UK and Europe, and unless we treat it like the public health crisis it is, scale up harm reduction responses and recognise that criminalising people who use drugs deters them from emergency and support services, more deaths are inevitable.” Gomes called for decriminalisation “to ensure that we have the resources, tools and political support to keep people safe and prevent further tragedies”. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show there were 4,907 deaths related to drug poisoning registered in England and Wales in 2022, the latest year for which statistics are available – the highest number since records began in 1993. Opiates were involved in just under half (46.1%) of drug-poisoning deaths registered that year, rising to 61.7% when deaths that had no drug type recorded on the death certificate were excluded. Synthetic opioids have become an increasing cause of concern in the UK. National Crime Agency figures released to the Guardian in January showed 65 people had died from taking drugs contaminated with nitazenes – a deadly synthetic opioid – in the previous six months. Nitazenes are up to 100 times more powerful than heroin.