\u2018Unnoticed, catastrophic\u2019
\n WARSAW
\nEastern Europe, once seen as immune to the opioid crisis wreaking havoc across North America, has been ramping up its fight against the rise of the dangerous, synthetic drugs. There have been dozens of deaths and many more arrests in Poland this year linked to synthetic drugs, including mephedrone — an alternative to cocaine — as well as fentanyl and nitazenes.
\nPoland\u2019s Central Investigation Bureau of Police has dismantled 33 illegal synthetic drug \u201cfactories\u201d this year, according to its spokesman Krzysztof Wrzesniowski. Two of them were exclusively producing mephedrone, used to replace cocaine at a cheaper cost.
\nAside from causing problems in Poland, media reports found that such laboratories were also found to be exporting drugs throughout the European Union, including to the neighbouring Czech Republic and Slovakia.
\n\u201cIt is a constant race between criminals who produce these substances… and laboratories and the sanitary inspection,\u201d Poland\u2019s Chief Sanitary Inspector Pawel Grzesiowski said. \u201cThey are constantly looking for new substances, new varieties.\u201d – \u2018Crooked drug business\u2019 –
\nZuromin, a town of about 9,000 people two hours north of Warsaw, has been named the region\u2019s unofficial fentanyl capital.For some, it is reminiscent of small towns in the United States which were the first to fall victim to the country\u2019s opioid epidemic.
\nIn June, local police seized a total of 300 patches of the drug, capable of intoxicating 4,800 people, and arrested four people suspected of involvement in the illegal fentanyl trade.
\nBut for the town\u2019s residents, this is not a new problem. \u201cFrom the beginning, the problem seemed to me to be marginalised, unnoticed, catastrophic,\u201d Adam Ejnik, a teacher and journalist from Zuromin, told media.
\nAs early as 2015, Zuromin\u2019s inhabitants appealed for help in an open letter published in the local newspaper.
\n\u201cNo city in Poland has such statistics,\u201d the letter read. In response to growing concern, Poland\u2019s health ministry introduced a system for monitoring opioid prescriptions, building upon an existing policy to limit the amount of prescriptions by individual doctors.
\nWidespread fears prompted Prime Minister Donald Tusk to call a meeting with the attorney general, health minister and police chiefs.
\n\u201cNo one who is involved in this crooked drug business in Poland will remain safe,\u201d Tusk said in a statement on X. Until recently, fentanyl constituted \u201ca rather small problem for Europe\u201d, with one notable exception, Thomas Pietschmann, a senior research official at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told media.
\n\u201cFor a long time… Estonia was really the outlier in this story.\u201dIssues with fentanyl in the Baltic country first began in 2001, owing to Taliban bans on heroin. \u201cIn Estonia, instead of the heroin, people switched to fentanyl,\u201d Pietschmann said, adding that the drugs initially came from neighbouring Russia.
\nSince then, the use of synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, \u201cis on the rise\u201d in fellow Baltic state Lithuania, a spokesperson for the Lithuanian health ministry, Julijanas Galisanskis, told media.
\nPietschmann, one of the main authors of the World Drug Report 2024, warned that the 95 percent reduction in Afghan opium production would \u201cbe felt on the market\u201d and people will likely \u201cswitch to other opiates\u201d.
\n\u201cThe most problematic ones will be the fentanyls or the nitazenes.\u201d Nitazenes — \u201csynthetic opioids which can be even more potent than fentanyl,\u201d according to the UN — have also emerged in high-income countries, including Latvia, Estonia and France.
\nNitazenes are \u201cone of the main problems\u201d on the drug market in Estonia, said Mikk Oja, a senior specialist at the country\u2019s National Institute for Health Development.\u201dThe heroin shortage could bring a spike in synthetic opioids in other countries too, and with it likely a serious spike in overdose deaths,\u201d Oja added. Experts warn that the potency of fentanyl, which is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, poses additional risks.
\n\u201cThe advantage of fentanyl as a highly efficient drug for cartels is obvious — you don\u2019t have to transport dozens of tons, you can only transport dozens of kilos,\u201d the Czech government\u2019s director for anti-drug policy, Jindrich Voboril, told media.
\n\u201cWe have to be careful, because the problem may emerge quite fast.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2018Unnoticed, catastrophic\u2019 WARSAW Eastern Europe, once seen as immune to the opioid crisis wreaking havoc across North America, has been ramping up its fight against the rise of the dangerous, synthetic drugs. There have been dozens of deaths and many more arrests in Poland this year linked to synthetic drugs, including mephedrone — an alternative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-419145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n