A "massive" black market has developed in painkillers, anti-depressants and Valium-derivative drugs, according to gardaí in Dublin.
One Garda source in Kilmainham said the market was "absolutely massive" with addicts describing the Dublin on-street market in painkillers and sedatives as "totally huge".
Addicts say they are buying the pills at between €1 and €2 each, depending on their strength, in deals of up to 40 tablets a time.
"Peter", a 22-year-old former heroin addict from Drimnagh, told The Irish Times yesterday that he took about 40 dalmane sedatives (30mg) at €2 each (they retail at between 40c-50c each) a day with 60ml of methadone every morning "to get a bit high".
Peter said he knew heroin-users who emptied the capsules or crushed the tablets and then dissolved the powder in a little water, before mixing it with "cooked" heroin and injecting it.
Although there has been a long-established black market in Valium tablets among Dublin's heroin-user population, a strong market has emerged for the sedative dalmane, the anti-depressant Xanax, painkiller codeine and a other Valium derivatives such as diazepam and Ativan.
A spokesman for Store Street gardaí said the biggest gathering points were along Customs House Quay and around Tara Street railway station. He stressed the problem was nothing like as big as the heroin and cocaine problems in the city, but 100 to 150 people in his area gathered daily to buy prescription drugs.
One of the routes on to the market is via GPs willing to over-prescribe, but the scale of the drugs available suggests main dealers can obtain some prescription drugs in bulk.
In a recent seizure in a house in Palmerstown, gardaí recovered 3,630 dalmane tablets and 2,500 diazepam tablets. "We can't charge a person we suspect of dealing," the Garda spokesman said, "even if we stop them with the drugs, because if they have a prescription on them they have every right to hold them."
Yesterday about 30 people were gathered on Customs House Quay. "If we actually see transactions taking place we can arrest them under section 15," one garda said, "but of course as soon as they see us coming, the drugs end up in there," pointing at the river below. "There are probably as many drugs floating down the Liffey as for sale most days."
