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.”
Source: Cormac O'Keeffe, Irish Examiner, 20/09/14
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