The synthetic drug known as ‘tranq dope’ was first picked up by drug authorities in Puerto Rico in the early 2000s. Xylazine, a horse tranquilliser, gives you a dangerously low heart rate. But it has a more nightmarish side effect too. If injected into the bloodstream it can ulcerate, meaning skin and muscle start rotting away. This leads to deep flesh wounds which then sometimes lead to limb amputations. Last year this “flesh-eating zombie drug” was designated an “emerging threat” to the US. It has been detected in every state in America.
And now it’s here in Britain. Our first fatality was last year but researchers have now discovered 10 more. There could be more still — until recently we weren’t keeping track of where the drug went. Neither, perhaps, were its users. Xylazine is very cheap, meaning it is cut with and substituted for other drugs, so many won’t know they are taking it. The first person to die of it was thought not to be a regular user as his body was found to be physically fit at his post-mortem. He had taken a cocktail of other drugs that contained the substance. Researchers have found the drug cut with opioids such as heroin or fentanyl, but have also detected it in cocaine, THC vapes and off-brand diazepam tablets bought online. It is everywhere.
This story is part of a pattern. As the new millennium dawned, a trend emerged: people had started making drugs from scratch. Some of these psychoactive substances only lasted a few months on the market, but some, like fentanyl — an opium substitute — have remained. The synthetic drugs boom has exposed people to dangerous and poorly understood products, sometimes without knowing they were taking them in the first place. It has also often baffled law enforcement, which has struggled to detect these drugs, and to slap them with the right punishment.
Britain likes to think it doesn’t have a problem but our drug-related deaths have risen every year for over a decade
Britain likes to think it doesn’t have a drug problem — America’s rolling crisis is a good foil. But for over a decade our drug-related deaths have risen every year. In 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics, they were 81.5 per cent higher than in 2012. It doesn’t often make the news, but quietly, the UK has been losing the war on drugs.
Part of this is explained by the generation that came of age in the 1990s and 2000s, when hard drugs such as heroine and cocaine became more widely available. This generation has aged, but not always stopped using. When you are older these habits are more likely to be fatal. Then, too, cocaine has become cheaper, and perhaps because of this, more people are taking it along with other drugs. That’s dangerous.
But synthetic drugs also play a part. Fentanyl, a huge problem in America, is now here. Nitazenes, which are some 50 times more powerful than heroin, have also flooded the UK market, often cut into other sorts of drugs. Until recently no one knew how many British drug deaths were caused by nitazenes, but in March National Crime Agency figures suggested they had been linked to 100 deaths since the summer. In November the Home Office designated 15 new class A drugs — all of them synthetic opioids.
The drug Spice, a synthetic cannabinoid, which is both strong and cheap, has been causing concern too: it is linked to heart attacks and strokes. In February the Evening Standard reported five children had been sent to hospital after smoking vapes containing spice — one was put into an induced coma.
But there is only so far new laws will go. Experts are clamouring for better tracking systems — how do we know we have a crisis if there is no reliable data? There is no national tracing system, for example, for overdose data — which could help track where the drug goes and how much damage it does. Information from post-mortems is slow. The Government says such a system is on its way, but progress has been slow.
And this is not the only way in which Britain is unprepared for a synthetic drugs crisis. Bringing in ever more punitive measures is easy. Enforcing these laws is hard, and neither do tough punishments tend to work. Drug treatment programmes have been decimated. Unlike the rest of Europe, Britain does not tend to have safe-consumption rooms, because its laws mean that running one could make you vulnerable to being charged with a crime. In the face of the evidence, Rishi Sunak has said that he does not believe they work.
Is Britain in the midst of a drugs crisis? If so, we need to find out.
