Covid has also affected drug use. Less heroin, cocaine and hashish, derived from raw materials that are difficult to transport in times of movement restrictions for people and goods, and a surge in new synthetic opioids and benzodiazepines, mainly purchased online. To say this are the data of the National Center for Addiction and Doping of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità presented at the 54th Congress of SIBioC (Italian Society of Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine), which closes today. “We wanted to understand if there were any changes in the use of drugs in Italy starting from the seizures carried out by the Police and Guardia di Finanza in the period of the pandemic – he explains Simona Pichini of the ISS – we have thus discovered over 200 new psychoactive substances after a maxi seizure which took place last year in Sardinia ”.
“Rape Drug” increased by 5x
The most striking fact – according to experts – is the 500% increase in the use of gamma butyrolactone (GBL), the precursor of GHB, the so-called ‘rape drug’: “It is a solvent used in tanneries and in many industrial processes – continues Pichini – an odorless and colorless liquid that immediately transforms into GHB when it is taken. Easy to obtain, low cost, GBL is increasingly consumed for recreational purposes. As well as the new ecstasy, MDMA, enhanced by 3-4 times compared to the one that has already been circulating in Europe for decades ”.
Boom of “homemade” synthetic drugs
Other data have also emerged, such as the one concerning the spread of ‘synthetic cathinones’. “They are powders that mimic the effects of cocaine”, explains the Director of Early Warning on New Psychoactive Substances of the ISS, Roberta Pacifici: “Products in home laboratories, called Kitchen Laboratories, especially in Scandinavia and England, are cheap and do not require commuting by sea or air of raw materials. Cocaine is expensive, to get a kilo of white powder you need 75 liters of gasoline, including generators and alkaloid extraction. Cathinones, on the other hand, are produced at home ”.
The effects of these synthetic drugs are even more devastating than the ‘traditional’ ones. “This is an ever-expanding problem, which requires updating and research also by us biochemists and laboratory doctors”, says the president of SIBioC Tommaso Trenti: “Also in the field of new substances of abuse the important role of laboratory diagnostics is highlighted and for this reason we wanted to dedicate a session of our annual congress to this topic. In the samples analyzed during and after the lockdown period, an increase in the use of narcotic, analgesic and tranquilizing drugs, new benzodiazepines and opioids is detected ”. The phenomenon of the consumption of synthetic opioids has been known for some time: in the United States since 2015 there has been a real epidemic of substances such as fentanyl, which then landed in Europe in 2019 and has been progressing since then, the experts conclude. The American case is told in the winning docufilm of Venice 2022 “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”.