The Irish Prison Service has issued an urgent drug alert to all prisons due to an analysis conducted by the HSE National Drug Treatment Centre Laboratory which confirmed the presence of a nitazene-type drug in prisons.
Nitazine is associated with overdoses and can be fatal. It was detected in the wider public in June.
HSE National Clinical Lead of Addiction Services Professor Eamon Keenan said they are dangerous tablets that are being widely circulated.
The tablets often come in blister packs and are often yellow in colour. People could easily mistake them for benzodiazepines.
However, the nitazine tablets do not contain benzodiazepine and are unsafe to use. Nitazine is are synthetic opioid.
The protonitazene tablet has been appearing across the country since June.
According to the HSE National Drug Treatment Centre Laboratory, they have been getting reports of overdoses due to nitazine in Limerick, Dublin and the south east of the country.
In November, the HSE issued a warning to heroin users after more than 20 overdoses were recorded in Dublin in one 24-hour period.
The overdoses mainly impacted homeless people and the drug was appearing in powder form.
However, the drug is appearing in tablet form and Prof Keenan said that opens the drug up to a "broader market".
"That's the big worry," Prof Keenan said.
"People could easily think they are taking a benzodiazepine when they're not," he said.
People who do not have a high heroin tolerance are likely to overdose on nitazine.
"Tablets being sold incorrectly are a large health risk," Prof Keenan said.
The Irish Prison Service sent a tablet to the HSE lab after they had an overdose. The lab found it was the same type as the one they had begun to see in Ireland since June.
It comes as global opium production has been in decline since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan used to produce more than 80% of the world’s opium but their production has decreased by 95% in the past year, according to a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Although there were stockpiles, the shortage of opium has led to a shortage of heroin and although other countries could increase their production of opium in the future, right now synthetic opioids produced elsewhere in Asia are making their way to Ireland and other European countries.
Prof Keenan said he is worried that synthetic opioids such as nitazene could replace heroin in Ireland because the drugs are more potent than heroin and there is a greater likelihood of overdose and death from taking them.
