Analysis: illegal drug industry adopting pharmaceutical techniques to create ever stronger products.
The admission to hospital of two women in the northeast, seemingly as a result of the consumption of a contaminated illegal drug product, is only the latest in a long line of such incidents in recent years.
Last October, two men died in Kinsale, Co Cork, after taking heroin, while another six suffered ill effects. The same drug was blamed for six deaths among drug addicts in Dublin in 2006, while two men died a year later in Waterford after taking contaminated cocaine at a party.
These are only headline incidents which demonstrate how dangerous the business of taking drugs that are grown, manufactured, distributed and/or processed on the black market can be.
In reality, though, while the incidents are lumped together in the public mind, the causes of the deaths may vary from case to case. In some instances, fatalities occur because the illicit drug has been laced with a lethal contaminant, as has happened in some countries when heroin was cut with strychnine, for example.
In other cases, potency may be the problem. This is increasingly the case as the illegal drug industry adopts the techniques of the farming and pharmaceutical industries to grow or create ever stronger products.
Source: Paul Cullen, Irish Times, 31/05/13
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