How deadly super-drug leaving trail of bodies & rotten limbs across US could soon flood UK streets – thanks to Taliban
THE body of skateboard-mad Robert Fraser was found in his bed with two white lines of powder untouched on a book cover beside him.
As her voice breaks with emotion, the teen’s mum Michelle, 54, says: “He might have licked his fingers preparing the drug.
“Whatever he had taken was so strong that a few tiny granules was enough to kill him.”
When toxicology results showed her 18-year-old boy died of a fentanyl overdose, she had to Google the deadly substance as she had never heard of it.
Reliving the nightmare, Michelle, of Deal, Kent, said: “When I saw the havoc the drug had caused in the US and Canada, my blood ran cold.
“Robert was one of the first confirmed fentanyl deaths in the UK. I was petrified this awful drug could leave thousands of other mothers mourning children in this country.”
Primary school supervisor Michelle successfully campaigned for tougher sentences for fentanyl dealers after losing Robert, who was buying cannabis with pals when he was offered the potent drug by a dealer unaware of its strength.
She said: “It terrifies me that other families might now be facing the same heartbreak we’ve been through.”
Seven years on from Robert’s death, a consequence of events 4,700 miles away in Afghanistan could lead to a glut of synthetic opioids similar to fentanyl flooding Britain’s streets.
Riddled with corruption
A Taliban fatwa has banned opium poppy cultivation, meaning its derivative — heroin — is soaring in price as it becomes scarcer.
Drug lords are switching to powerful man-made opioids to fill the gap in the market.
Combined with trafficking routes being disrupted by the war in Ukraine, and tighter border controls across the globe, more potent synthetic drugs that are less bulky and easier to smuggle are on the rise.
Already, the grim ramifications are being felt on our streets.
On July 26, the Government issued a National Patient Safety Alert warning of a spike in overdoses, primarily in heroin users, over the previous eight weeks “in many parts of the country”.
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities revealed testing in some cases had identified synthetic opioids called , which have already led to deaths in the US.
There have been clusters of fatalities in Bristol, Basildon, Coventry and the West Midlands, with nitazenes also in Glasgow.
Dr Justin Varney, director of public health for Birmingham City Council, said: “Fentanyl is ten times the strength of heroin, nitazenes are ten times the strength of fentanyl. That’s why people are overdosing.”
The Sun told this month how five inmates at HMP The Mount in Hertfordshire had died after taking the drug spice that was laced with fentanyl.
Movements in the global market have made space for drugs such as nitazenes.
Dr Varney said: “The national opium supply chain is disrupted, particularly by the action in Afghanistan, as well as the global war on drugs. It means the drug market is turning to synthetic opioids.”
The aftershocks of the disrupted trade felt in Birmingham come after Afghanistan’s mullahs began their own war on drugs.
In the fertile Helmand Valley, where British troops fought some of their fiercest battles with the Taliban, the vast poppy fields that once carpeted the area are gone.
A key aim of coalition forces was to eradicate poppies, from which opium, the main part of heroin, is taken.
Some 95 per cent of Britain and Europe’s street heroin originates in Afghanistan.
The UK tried to sway farmers in Helmand, Afghanistan’s poppy heartland, to grow wheat.
Reporting from Helmand in 2008, I witnessed a record seizure of 17.5 tonnes of opium poppy seeds, enough for 30 tonnes of pure heroin, in a British-led operation.
Yet the huge profits from opium production were funding the Taliban’s insurgency in a land riddled with corruption. Poppy farmers continued to have record harvests.
Then, in 2021, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.
In April 2022, its supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada banned poppy cultivation, with those disobeying facing punishment under Sharia Law.
Satellite images show poppy fields in Helmand province down 99 per cent from 129,000 hectares in 2022 to fewer than 1,000 hectares.
While heroin drug lords may switch production to the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, or conflict-plagued Myanmar, many believe the UK could now face a US-style synthetic opioid onslaught.
Ex-UK deputy drugs tsar Mike Trace, 62, told The Sun: “The biggest fear is that the dealers and traffickers decide, ‘We have a heroin drought in Afghanistan, let’s switch to synthetics’. To be honest, it would make massive business sense.
“With synthetics, there’s less risk, it’s cheaper and, because it’s stronger, you get more people hooked easier.”
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities has warned that local councils “should prepare for potent opioids appearing in their area”, citing the US fentanyl epidemic.
Earlier this year, I witnessed the opioid carnage first-hand on the streets of San Francisco.
In makeshift pavement campsites, thousands openly shot up fentanyl as families passed by. Many users were in wheelchairs, having lost gan-grenous limbs to needles.
Backstreet labs
Activist JJ Smith, 53, was my guide as we walked through the open-air drugs market of his native Tenderloin district.
JJ, who lost his own brother, Rodney, to an opioid overdose, explained: “Fentanyl turns people into zombie-like states.
“I see ODs day in, day out, and about five deaths a week.”
Many users fund their habit by shoplifting.
Nearby grocery store owner Gilles Desaulniers, 71, told me that while confronting thieves, he had been “knocked out, held up at gunpoint, pepper sprayed, bitten twice and clawed in the face”.
Downtown tourist areas of Seattle, in Washington State, and Portland, Oregon, are also blighted by brazen fentanyl dealing.
Around 70,000 people in the US died of drug overdoses that involved fentanyl in 2021, almost a four-fold increase over five years.
The worst-affected state that year was West Virginia, then Tennessee.
Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for young adults in the US. And Mexican narco cartels have built a stream-lined smuggling operation to meet demand.
Unlike heroin, no vast poppy fields are needed to produce synthetic opioids.
Instead, chemicals sourced in China and India — which can often be used for legal purposes — are mixed in backstreet labs.
One lorry load of five tonnes of fentanyl could supply the whole of the US for a year, researchers say.
In small consignments, the drug is often able to pass through the US’s southern border undetected.
Peter Reuter, public policy professor at the University of Maryland, said: “It’s not a needle in a haystack, it’s the hole in the needle in the haystack.”
Drug expert Ian Hamilton, an Associate Professor from the University of York, told me: “Europe is vulnerable to synthetic opioids in the same way the US has been.
“It’s a very efficient group of drugs to move around. There’s an endless supply without relying on the seasons and weather like plant-based drugs.”
The full effects of the Taliban poppy ban have yet to be experienced. Opium farmers and dealers stockpile the drug against price fluctuations.
It takes around 18 months for Afghan opium to arrive in Britain as heroin, so the consequences might not be felt until next year.
Mr Trace warned: “We are likely to have a major problem with synthetic opioids soon, and Government needs to make contingency planning now.”
A Government spokesman said the administration was committed “to combating the trade and use of illegal drugs”.
Of the recent spike in opioid deaths, they added: “We’re working with partners to monitor this situation closely, detect and break supply chains, warn people who might be at risk and save lives.”
National Crime Agency deputy director Charles Yates said lines of inquiry were being “prioritised” to stem nitazenes supply to and in the UK.
PAIN PILL TURNED KILLER
FENTANYL was invented in 1959 by Dr Paul Janssen, a Belgian chemist working on new forms of painkillers.
Up to 100 times more powerful than morphine, it was first used in hospitals as an anaesthetic for surgery.
In the 1990s, a patch form was developed – allowing for continuous, long-term pain relief – alongside tablets, sprays and lollipop-like lozenges.
By the start of the 21st century, the opioid in all its forms was being prescribed to thousands suffering from cancer pain, back injuries and nerve damage.
But reports emerged that some doctors were inappropriately dishing out the patch, which was being abused by addicted patients.
Illegally manufactured fentanyl was also on the rise, with Mexican cartels trafficking it into the US.
Since 2014, more than 325,000 Americans have died from synthetic opioids – mostly fentanyl – including singer Prince and rapper Coolio.
By 2016 the National Crime Agency said fentanyl had emerged as a street drug in the UK.