Synthetic opioids previously linked to UK deaths are being advertised for sale on social media | opioids

A deadly synthetic opioid linked to more than two deaths a week in the UK was advertised for sale in thousands of posts on social media, an investigation has found.

The supplier secretly boasted to a BBC journalist posing as a dealer how easy it was to use social media to promote Nitagen, a group of illegal drugs many times more powerful than heroin.

The investigation found that nearly 3,000 posts on the music sharing site SoundCloud featured audio clips of drug advertisements and included the vendor's contact information in the track title.

They also found advertisements for drugs in 700 of X's posts, including some that had been on the site for 18 months.

Speaking on the New Drug Threat program, which will be broadcast on BBC One on Monday, one supplier said: [SoundCloud] It's a music platform, but you can create ads. Another vendor argued that it was better to use X to promote drugs because its ads were less likely to be blocked on the platform.

Reporters contacted 35 vendors, including 14 that advertised on SoundCloud and 6 that advertised on X. Of the 35 companies contacted, 30 were willing to send them to the UK, but the reporters did not actually purchase the drugs.

Figures released to the Guardian by the National Crime Agency this year show that 65 people have died from taking Nitagen more than twice a week in the past six months.

Users often unknowingly take substances that dealers have hidden among other illegal substances. One of the first victims in the UK was Dylan Rocha, a 21-year-old musician from Southampton, who died in July 2021 after unknowingly taking heroin containing nitazene.

Rocha's mother Claire described the findings as shocking. She asked: How was that allowed? How many people died because of that ad?

Professor Vicki Nash, Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, told the programme: “Finding hundreds and thousands of ads on this scale is a terrible thing, potentially posing a very serious risk to human life.

Mike Trace, a former government drug kingpin, said: In terms of drug-related deaths, the emergence of Nitagen is probably the biggest new challenge and new fear we have.

We are currently experiencing an overdose crisis with approximately 5,000 drug-related deaths each year in England and Wales. A large-scale introduction of Nitagen into this market could double or triple the mortality rate.

After receiving a warning about the ads, SoundCloud removed nearly 3,000 posts. The company and other social media platforms are being targeted by bad actors and have pledged to do everything they can to address this global pandemic.

X also deleted hundreds of posts when contacted by reporters, but did not respond to requests for comment.

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/22/synthetic-opioids-nitazenes-advertised-for-sale-on-social-media-uk-deaths The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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