Thousands of legal drugs seized for first time

In addition to traditional illegal drugs like heroin, cannabis and cocaine among others, gardaí and customs seized 15 different types of medicinal or prescription type drugs. The numbers of smuggling operations disrupted were small, but the quantity of tablets seized were high indicating their supply was for commercial gain.

The sale of legal highs on the black market is growing at an alarming rate. Already this year, customs have made 1,700 seizures of batches of medicinal drugs compared to 330 for all of last year.

Uncontrolled use of the drugs, while not as harmful as heroin or cocaine, can be lethal when mixed with alcohol or stronger narcotics.

Insomnia drugs, tablets to treat anxiety, anti-depressants and tranquillisers are some of the cocktail of substances heard about now in overdose cases at inquests.

Customs and gardaí are also seizing designer party pills which stimulate similar reactions to narcotics but are considered within the law.

In Britain, office workers are turning to medicinal highs in an attempt to pass drug tests at work, according to reports.

Merchants Quay Ireland, a leading drug addiction treatment centre, says the street selling of sedatives, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety pills and tranquillisers is rife. Many buyers are already hard drug users and use the medicinal pills to fix cravings or bring them down.

Experts warn of the easy access to benzodiazepines (benzos), a “chill out” drug, such as Diazepam, Flurazepam and Temazepam in other European countries.

“They are over-the-counter medicines in some other countries,” explained Merchants Quay director Tony Geoghegan.

Pills are then sold on for profit here but often with dire consequences.

“Most people we see would use other drugs with heroin and be dependent on these drugs also. In a lot of the drug overdose deaths in the toxicology analysis, benzos are usually in with alcohol and heroin,” said Mr Geoghegan.

But there may be another reason for increased seizures of prescription drugs.

Simply put, more of the general population are taking them, suggest the National Advisory Committee on Drugs.

“It could tell us something is ailing about Irish society that we need to keep getting these drugs as we get older,” said committee director Mairead Lyons.

Those getting hooked are from all walks of life, according to the Rutland Centre, a south Dublin addiction treatment service.

“People are from all sorts of backgrounds, from difficult ones right through to middle class,” said its head of treatment, Austin Prior.

“Instead of taking it in the prescribed way, they start to abuse it and take more than they should take and that creates more intolerance and that creates its own dependence,” he added.

Often, prescription drug addicts go to multiple doctors. “They get multiple prescriptions by going around from doctor to doctor,” said Mr Prior.

The centre, which charges €11,500 for five weeks’ residential treatment, says most of its medicinal drug addicted clients are female, some of whom have been hooked for 20 years.

“They are addicted, they create this huge dependency and then they physically need to detox. You’re talking about hospitalisation. So it’s very, very serious,” added the Rutland Centre chief.

Seizures of prescription drugs have been accompanied by discoveries of body-building steroids and other unusual drugs, like ketamine. Traditionally used as a horse tranquilliser, this drug is often taken alongside ecstasy. Alone it can produce strong hallucinations.

Customs and Garda operations have also scuppered imports of alternative ecstasy-type pills, called CPP. These tablets are increasingly available in Europe and are frequently experimented with in laboratories, to help dealers sidestep drug laws.

The Irish Medicines Board, charged with regulating medicines in Ireland, said increased prescription drug use was due to the proliferation of websites offering medicinal products.

Legal highs have been highlighted internationally, particularly with celebrities. Troubled singer Amy Winehouse was admitted to hospital in late 2007 after a reported overdose involving heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, alcohol and ketamine.

Strung-out musician Pete Doherty has also been caught with the horse tranquilliser drug.

Actor Heath Ledger, the star of the recent Batman film, died of an overdose of prescription drugs in January this year. Substances found in his Manhattan apartment included the sleeping drug Zopiclone and the sedative Diazepam.

But prescription drug abuse also occurs here.

Gerard Mulqueen, 15, from Southill, in Limerick, died on the side of a road close to his home after getting high. An inquest heard last year his death was caused by an interaction between butane gas and the sleeping pill Flurazepam.

In the North, a young man killed himself after taking what later became known as a lethal batch of ketamine pills. Dean Clarke, 16, from north Belfast hanged himself just a few days after taking the tablets.

Source: Irish Examiner, 21/07/2008