Dr. Eamon Keenan:

Synthetic opioids is a trend that we are seeing across Europe. From a geopolitical point of view, you have to be aware that since the Taliban banned the production of opium in Afghanistan, there has been a 95% reduction in heroin production from Afghanistan and that is what feeds Europe. What is happening now is that the stocks of heroin are reducing and we are seeing increased number of synthetic opioids being produced. These are being generally produced in the Far East, in China, and are coming into Europe. I am not aware of any production in Ireland of synthetic opioids.

A trend we are seeing across Europe is the increasing potency of drugs. MDMA tablets are getting stronger. Cocaine potency is increasing, but I suppose our big worry at the minute is the synthetic opioids because we have had now four incidents that the committee is aware of, where synthetic opioids have been a problem. We had the overdose cluster in Dublin in November and in Cork in December. We had a small cluster of overdoses associated with nitazenes in prisons in March. This weekend, and I am dealing with it now, we had yellow tablets being sold as counterfeit benzodiazepines. We have identified that they contained nitazene drugs.

We have had a number of cases where we are looking at the analysis around that. We have had a number of overdoses. That is not just in one area; it is around the country. That trend is a big worry and concern at the moment.