Vehicles hiding drugs are driving 'in any town in the country'

Detective chief superintendent Séamus Boland said: 'We’re seizing almost on a weekly basis in our investigations regular vehicles driving around Dublin, driving around Limerick, driving around any town in the country.' Picture: Maxwell’s

Modified cars and vans stashing drugs or other contraband for organised crime are now "driving around any town in the country" and are being seized by gardaí almost weekly.

Many of these regular-looking vehicles have "specialised deep concealments", some with hydraulic entry points, head of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GNDOCB) Detective Chief Superintendent Séamus Boland said, and these vehicles can be evidence of someone facilitating organised crime.

“We’re seizing almost on a weekly basis in our investigations regular vehicles driving around Dublin, driving around Limerick, driving around any town in the country which have specialised deep concealments, some which are very difficult to access, some with hydraulic entry points as well which are all used to conceal," Mr Boland said.

“The possession of such a vehicle in itself can be deemed to be evidence of someone facilitating organised crime. That’s how organised crime gangs are adapting all the time and it’s up to us to stand up to that challenge.” 

Drugs are now often concealed in cavities in cars or in vehicles modified to smuggle contraband, a garda source in Cork said.

Certain areas of vehicles can be “the flavour of the month” for stashing drugs in which all operational police would be aware of, they said.

It could be anything from internally in the car or in the engine compartment or even underneath like in areas where the spare wheel is kept. Or in the doors and wings of cars. Every time we have a seizure and a new area is identified it’s communicated around [gardaí].

“It can be specially modified or stashed in an area like behind vents. They use cavities or hollow out areas and cover it in a panel. It can be concealed somewhere where no odours are coming out.".

More than €33m worth of drugs were seized at ports in the past week.

An X-ray scanner and detector dogs were important in uncovering these seizures which were “deep concealments” in freight Acting Director General of the Revenue Customs Service Ruth Kennedy said.

Meanwhile, 11 prisoners in Portlaoise Prison were hospitalised with suspected overdoses potentially linked to synthetic opioids like nitazenes.

European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) principal programme manager Michael Evans-Brown told the Irish Examiner that combatting the production and use of synthetic opioids like nitazenes was “a game of cat and mouse” between regulatory bodies and producers.

The EUDA operates an early warning system for new psychoactive substances (NPS) like nitazenes which may be highly dangerous but so new that they are not yet banned or controlled under legislation or regulations.

Nitazenes first appeared to the agency in 2019 and have steadily increased in number and availability in Europe since, with particular growth since 2022, Mr Evans-Brown said.

We've seen quite a noticeable increase in availability and incidents involving nitazenes including non-fatal and fatal poisonings in Europe.

 "The agency is currently monitoring 20 nitazenes which have appeared since 2019 and seven of those — so around 35% — were actually identified for the first time in 2023."

Nitazenes are mostly manufactured by chemical companies in China, and are then imported into Europe and sold on the darknet or surface web or by street dealers, he said.

“And these NPS, by their definition, are substances that are not controlled under international drug laws.

“So in most countries, these substances are not controlled [banned] so it wouldn't be illegal to produce them in a particular country unless they fall under other types of regulation.” 

And when one substance is banned or controlled, a slight chemical tweak can allow manufacturers to circumvent the ban anyway.

“In some cases, even before the control measures come in, producers already have a legal variant of the drug ready to sell or already being sold on the market," Mr Evans-Brown said.