Drugs, Drug Gangs and Opioids, in Ireland, 2024

When a Dublin drug dealer was sent to jail in the 1980s, he warned 'we are not bad, be wary of those coming next'. So, it came to pass. Dublin, in 2024, is dominated by drugs, drug dealers and gun battles on the streets of Dublin. A drug cartel based in Dubai, UAE, is linked to a South American drug cartel with $1 billion income.

In North America, homeless addicts are poisoned by synthetic opioids, fentanyl and oxycodeine, with destitute men and women sleepwalking around the streets, devastated by addiction. Heroin is well established, synthetic opioids are new.

Emergency Response Unit, Ireland with Westland Lynx helicopter

Pain management dictated extensive use of opioids for pain management because addiction was expected to be rare, between 1990 and 1995 prescriptions were in the millions. In 1995, Purdue Pharma obtained FDA approval for Oxycontin ensuring by 2002 prescriptions increased to 6.5 million with 600,000 people dying from opioid overdoses. By 2020, the rate of opioid overdose deaths rose to 21 per 100,000 as witnessed on the streets of North America. These statistics are meaningless, in fact there could be 2 million opioid addicts, worldwide. These people are homeless. Opioid users sleep on the streets in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver, In Ottawa addicts sleeping on the streets die of exposure. In Canada, in 2022, there were 21 lives lost daily due to opioid related overdoses.

What is the situation in Ireland? During the last 6 months overdoses of nitazines, - manufactured in clandestine laboratories in the Far East - were reported in Dublin and Cork. Nitazines are thousands of times more powerful than morphine and ten times more powerful than fentanyl. November 2023, opioid overdoses were noticed among homeless people, marking the emergence of N-pyrrolidino protonitazine in Ireland. 60 heroin users in Dublin and 20 users in Cork were treated with Naxolone, an antidote for opioid overdose which crucially saved lives. Poppy cultivation has declined in Afghanistan ensuring a heroin shortage in Europe, implying these synthetic opioids will be a significant problem.

Poorer people renting low grade homes are being shunted on as rental prices increase, so, ending up homeless on the streets a market for drug dealers. A vicious cycle.

Source: Irish Times, May 11, 2024 and Sunday Independent May 12, 2024.