Killer Designer Drugs Have Arrived in Ireland: State of the Nation Report

The dangers posed by the new wave of designer drugs were tragically highlighted last month when 16-year-old Michael Cornacchia, from the Deerpark area of Cork, died after taking what he thought was cocaine. It was in fact a synthetic heroin-mimicking opiate called U-47,700. Fearing that there would be more fatalities, the HSE issued a warning. “All drug users are advised,” they stated, “that there is no guarantee that the drug you think you are buying and consuming is in fact the drug you are sold. We are aware that substances sold as cocaine may in fact contain other substances such as synthetic opioids. There is no way of telling what is in a powder or pill just by looking at it. It may look like the drug you want to purchase but it may well be something else.” Commonly known as U4, the opiate has been available as a research chemical since the 1970s, but only entered the recreational drug food chain in Europe in 2014.

Mainly manufactured in China, where the authorities turn a pretty much blind eye to anything that brings in foreign hard currency, it was among the combination of drugs that killed Prince and retails online for upwards of €30 a gram.

The singer was one of almost 100 Americans who were last year found to have U4 in their system when they died. There have also been four related deaths recently in Finland, and one apiece in the UK, Sweden and Belgium. “The street cocaine sold in Ireland – if that’s what in fact it is – is almost always of very low purity,” proffers Dublin-based addiction specialist Dr. Garrett McGovern. “Wanting to increase their profits, dealers bulk it up with other substances that are cheap, readily available and often non-psychoactive. It would therefore seem strange to me that they’d adulterate it with something that has to be brought in from abroad, might be intercepted by customs and costs roughly the same as cocaine. Also, whereas cocaine is a stimulant, U4 is a very strong sedative.”

Hot Press has on many occasions debunked lurid tabloid “killer drug” stories, but this time round the HSE’s concern is fully justified. “If you take U4, which is between five and ten times stronger than heroin, thinking it’s the cocaine commonly sold here, the potential for overdose is massive,” Dr. McGovern confirms. “Recreational users don’t have a high tolerance to drugs. If you get the emergency services there in time and give them treatment they’ve a chance, but if you don’t there’s a very high likelihood of them dying. Even if it doesn’t prove fatal, the side effects can be extreme.”

These include nausea, vomiting, constipation, respiratory depression, rectal bleeding and severe nerve damage. A fatal dose, suggests the respected Erowid.org peer-to-peer website, could be as little as 25g. “I sniffed 5mg and started to nod off within 15 minutes,” reports 18-year-male poster The Poobaman. “There is a very compulsive urge to redose, so I would set limits for yourself before doing this one.” That Irish people are increasingly buying pills, powders and liquids online is borne out by the value of drug seizures at An Post sorting centres increasing from €72,890 in 2010 to over €1.5 million in 2016. If we accept the United Nations rate of only 10% of illegal drugs being seized, at least €15m worth of illicit chemicals will be popping into Irish letterboxes between now and Christmas.

Short of giving every postman his or her personal sniffer dog, the upward trend is likely to continue.

Over the past five years, deaths in Ireland have also been linked to another opiate, fentanyl, the synthetic hallucinogen, 251-NBOMe, and the amphetamine-like PMMA.

“We’re not going to police our way out of this,” notes Garrett McGovern. “The futility of prohibition is that as soon as you ban one drug, a dozen more come along with a slightly different chemical composition. Whatever about the morality of what they do, the people in these labs are very clever and know how to circumnavigate the law.”

Dr. McGovern has yet to see any evidence of 4U being used here by people with heroin addiction issues.

“The public sector clients I work with don’t seem to have any particular interest in synthetic opium,” he expands. “For them the internet isn’t the potential source of drugs it is for recreational users. A lot of them don’t have credit cards and deal in cash. The drug they’re getting on the street is still heroin, although that’s not to say that U4 won’t become a factor with them in the future.” U-47,700 currently falls between two legal stools in Ireland. Supplying the opiate is an offence under the Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Act 2010, but it’s not yet controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act, which makes prosecution tricky.

“Banning something doesn’t mean that it goes away, as we found out in 2010 when the legal highs banned by Mary Harney went straight onto the illegal market,” Dr. Garrett McGovern concludes. “What’s required in Ireland is a complete rethink of drug policy.”