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File on 4: A Deadly Prescription

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30/01/2018

A Deadly Prescription

BBC Radio 4 - File on 4, A Deadly Prescription

As deaths involving prescription drugs increase, who is supplying demand on the streets?

With deaths involving prescription drugs on the rise, Allan Urry investigates who is supplying demand on the streets with organised crime, wholesalers and pharmacists in the frame.

There were a record 3,744 drug related deaths in England and Wales last year. While many were linked to street drugs such as heroin, a growing number also involve prescription medicines such as benzodiazepines and Fentanyl. 
Fentanyl addiction has swept across North America where the drug and other synthetic opioids have been blamed for thousands of deaths. It hit the headlines here when it was linked to a spike in fatalities in certain parts of the UK after being mixed with heroin.
Allan Urry travels to Stockton on Tees where ten deaths have been linked to Fentanyl and its derivatives. He meets users and their families and the medical professionals and police dealing with the problem. 
But while Fentanyl is currently in the spotlight, it is tranquilisers and other sedatives often used by heroin users to dull withdrawal symptoms which are contributing to many more deaths. Nowhere is the problem more acute than in Scotland where benzodiazepines contributed to nearly half of all drug deaths.
Many of the pills known as "street valium" or "blues" are made in back street laboratories run by organised crime gangs. Users gamble with their lives as the ingredients and strength of the tablets are often unknown.
But File on 4 has discovered that organised crime gangs have also become involved in diverting significant numbers of highly addictive medicines from the legitimate supply chain onto the black market.
Regulators say there is an extensive network of criminality involving businesses such as wholesale dealers and registered pharmacies. Some in the pharmaceutical industry such as drug manufacturers are repeating calls for supply chain regulation to be reviewed to ensure medicines reach their intended target.

Reporter: Allan Urry
Producer: Paul Grant 
Editor: Gail Champion.

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