HSE prepares for arrival of killer synthetic drugs following Taliban opium crop crackdown
Supply' Accounts Heroin This The Report A Week Highlights Emerging Nitazenes Of Uk’s 'contaminating
The HSE is ramping up preparations and testing services in the event that possible shortages of heroin in Dublin could be filled by more powerful synthetic versions of the drug.
A crackdown by the extremist Taliban regime in Afghanistan on the opium crop, from which heroin is made, is being blamed in the UK for a gap in the market, which drug agencies say is being filled by synthetic opiates.
British organisation Cranstoun published a report this week highlighting “emerging accounts of nitazenes — a potent opioid similar to fentanyl — contaminating the UK’s heroin supply”.
Fentanyl was detected in Ireland in 2016 and 2017, but is most known in the US for its role in a devastating opiate epidemic that claimed 70,000 lives in 2022 alone.
Cranstoun said the emergence of nitazenes was the “one of the first major outbreaks of these types of drugs entering the mainstream UK market”.
The charity said nitazenes can be between 30 and 500 times more potent than heroin and pose a serious risk of overdose, even in very small quantities.
HSE addiction services have been following developments in the UK, not least because 95-97% of all heroin to Europe comes from Afghanistan.
“We are aware there could be a change in the market,” said HSE addiction lead Professor Eamon Keenan.
“We are involved in preparatory work around drug monitoring, education, drug checking, syringe analysis, wastewater, emergency departments, and hair analysis. We are putting all of these monitoring systems in place.”
In addition, the HSE is increasing the provision of naloxone, an antidote to opiates.
Prof Keenan said the coming month is the third time Ireland will have taken part in a syringe analysis, along with other European states.
Health technicians will be able to analyse the residues in used syringes discarded in needle exchanges.
In addition, for the first time, Ireland will join a long-running wastewater examination study, which will allow the HSE, with the assistance of UCD technicians, to see what drug residues are in wastewater.
Prof Keenan said that they were also working with emergency departments in terms of drug-related presentations, and these will start in inner city Dublin, but with the potential to expand.
The HSE addiction lead attended the launch on Thursday of a new pilot where opiate-using patients attending the ED in St James’s Hospital will be given a free take-home naloxone kit.
The event marked International Overdose Awareness Day 2023.
At the launch, drugs strategy minister Hildegarde Naughton said the Nalox-Home initiative was a “practical, appropriate, and lifesaving response to drug use overdose”.
The HSE said Ireland had 409 poisoning deaths in 2020, which was a “concerning trend that has been on the rise since 2016”, adding that the deaths were preventable.
The developments come as the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs gathers again this weekend to hear of alternative legal approaches to drug possession and supply and related perspectives of gardaí, academics, advocates, and voluntary groups.