Drug contains ‘highly toxic’ chemicals

Emergency departments in Cork city have been confronted with a number of drug-related cases involving new, and highly dangerous, chemicals.

Dr Chris Luke, consultant in emergency medicine at Cork University Hospital and Mercy University Hospital, believes the cases may include a drug called MDPV which has been increasingly evident in Dublin’s inner city.

European Union drug experts have expressed alarm at the dizzying number of new chemicals, including MDPV which they describe as “highly toxic”.

They detected 81 new psychoactive substances in 2013, compared to 73 in 2012 and 49 in 2011.

The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction said 650 websites were selling such substances into Europe, compared with just 170 in 2010.

Roumen Sedefov, head of the agency’s new drugs section, told the Irish Examiner that users did not know what they were taking: “There is little knowledge about new drugs,” he said, in May. “Some of them are potentially very dangerous in terms of toxicity. There is no history of human use for many of them, no clinical studies and limited pharmacology.”

He said there was particular concern about four new substances they had analysed: 251-NBOMe (which mimics LSD); AH-7921 (mimics heroin); MDPV (mimics cocaine); and methoxetamine (mimics ketamine).

Between them, they are associated in 135 deaths in Europe. Some are active at very low doses and the margin between recreational use and overdose is “very minimal”, said Mr Sedefov.

Dr Luke told Today with Sean O’Rourke they believed they have come across MDPV in patients at the two emergency departments. “The problem is there are now 280 of these legal highs available throughout Europe,” he said.

“We had a case last week, a mature man in his 40s presented by ambulance in a stage of severe agitation very, very ill with a recently opened postal packet, with white powders and sachets and pills which were effectively unidentifiable, but had made him very, very ill.”

Dr Luke said the story was the same across the country and in the UK.

“Online and mail-ordered drug taking is a huge issue. It’s as simple as this, wherever the postal service reaches now, you’re going to have online drugs sales.”

He said the substances were “extraordinarily toxic” and added: “In addition, the drug seems to make people extremely agitated, very delirious. It causes problems like self harm, people completely out of their heads, often very, very violently agitated. They often need several security in hospital to restrain them.”