As Dutch doctors become increasingly cautious about prescribing addictive opioids, the illegal trade in powerful painkillers like oxycodone and fentanyl has increased, according to the Dutch Association of Anesthesiologists (NVA). The association wants to quickly map the size of the opioid black market. Telegraph.
“We’ve seen a lot of trouble with our patients,” said Frank Will, an anesthesiologist and pain expert and spokesman for the NVA. The first Dutch recently passed away after taking fake oxycodone tablets containing the form of nitazen. This is up to 100 times more opioid than morphine. The other two suffered from serious addiction. Last March, police discovered a large batch of Nitazen in the Netherlands. This is the first time a deadly drug was discovered in the country.
Most opioid users in the Netherlands get painkillers through a doctor’s prescription. However, at one point, at least 90,000 people have illegally purchased painkillers, according to the Trimbos Institute’s drug monitor. It’s essential to know how big the black market has become in the Netherlands, Will said. He said that if we knew it, we could prepare better.
According to Will, three groups of people buy illegally resistant painkillers. They are people who prescribed opioids after surgery but have continued to use them, people with mental health issues, and chronic pain patients who do everything they can for a while. The final group is the largest, consisting of about 1 million people from the Netherlands. “And because of the ageing, it just grows.”
Daan van Der Grouwe, a drug researcher at the Trimbos Institute, is also concerned. “We want to investigate which painkillers to buy without a prescription, why do they do it, and where people buy,” he said. “Only when we know that, we can develop a policy that prevents people from purchasing these types of drugs as much as possible on the black market in the future.”
