03-07-2025
Scotland facing unprecedented rush of AI-designed super-strength synthetic drugs
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark - a drugs policy reformer - has told of inevitable rise of nitazenes, more than 100 times stronger than heroin.
Scotland is facing an unprecedented rush of AI-designed and super-strength synthetic drugs that could ramp up our appalling death rate even further.
The chilling warning was issued in Glasgow by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, now chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
Clark, who was visiting the UK's first legal drugs consumption room in the city, said drugs can now be produced on 3D printers, making detection and enforcement even harder for police forces, which are already failing spectacularly to break down supply chains.
And the dogged campaigner for drug policy reform said she has been briefed on the inevitability of a reshaping of drug supplies that will include more deadly fentanyl and nitazenes, which are many times stronger than heroin and already being sold on Scottish streets.
She believes that drug checking facilities are urgently needed and that greater moves should be made to educate drug users on the huge risk of death by dabbling with new substances.
Clark said: 'We've had up to date briefings at our Global Commission meeting in London with experts who are telling us that they think we're coming to the end of a plant based substance use pattern.
'The use is moving to synthetics, like fentanyl, which is far more potent than heroin. And nitazenes, which are more potent again.
'This raises the very real prospect that the drug death rate could accelerate again, even in Scotland.
'If you look at the drug death rate statistics, and you put the UK population in the rest of the European Union, the UK deaths are making up 40% I mean, this is incredible. It's absolutely extraordinary.
'But the picture could certainly get worse.'
Clark said the dawning of AI platforms like ChatGPT could bring a new realm of danger.
She said: 'If you ask GPT ask it to design you something, it will. AI is not just used by ordinary people, it can be a resource for criminals.'
And she said that the use of perfectrly legals chemicals in the creation of deadly drugs will make it impossible for police to get ahead of the gangs and smaller manufacturers who will target vulnerable communities.
She said: 'You can outlaw get heroin and cocaine and the rest of it, but the precursors of some of the synthetics are so widely used for multiple use, an interdiction policy has almost no meaning.
'A banning policy has no meaning because the compound will change tomorrow.
'So law enforcement has an impossible task.'
Clark said a massive public health response is the only way to combat the rise of the new drugs.
She said: 'I am aware that this facility in Glasgow has applied to the Home Office for a drug testing licence. We need these to be the norm across towns and cities in Scotland and other nations.
'I am aware that at The Thistle centre there has been 39 medical emergencies on the six months it has been operating and that tells us there is a need for drug testing.
'Users don't want to die. They want to know what they are taking and they want to know they are not taking stuff laced with fentanyl of nitazenes.'
Clark said New Zealand was the first nation in the world to legally allow all drug testing.
Warm tributes for tragic drugs crusader Peter Krykant
Glowing tributes were made to campaigner Peter Krykant, who launched hi sown mobile drugs van to force political action on Scotland's drug deaths.
Dad of two Krykant, 48, died suddenly last month after battling relapse for his own addiction.
He took the bold decision to defy UK law and run his own safe drug space for injecting addicts in Glasgow.
Operating from a converted former ambulance, Krykant drove from his home in Falkirk and dealt with users that include some clients of The Thistle today.
Helen Clark added: 'When I heard of Peter's death I was really shattered. I became aware of his efforts because I was chair of the Global Commission on Drugs Policy and I was noticing what was happening in Scotland.
'I was aware of his courage in getting out there in the van, being hassled by police.
'He was a pioneer and when came here two years ago, he was at our meetings.
'I loved meeting him, so I'm shattered by what's happened.'
Councillor Allan Casey, city convener for addictions, said: 'Peter Krykant was a trailblazer and although Glasgow City Council was determined to open this facility, Peter humanised the debate and won over many people along the way.
'His contribution cannot be ignored.'
She said: 'We do the festivals, street corners, wherever. Everyone's entitled to have the drugs tested. That's where Scotland and the UK needs to be.
'You need more of these kinds of facilities in other Scottish cities, with more research and effective antidotes to the new drugs coming onto the market.
'We already have Naloxone and it does quite well for the plant based substances, but we're getting into new territory with synthetics.
'There needs to be more research also on the substitution therapies because while methadone can work for opioids, it doesn't necessarily do it doesn't do it for the methamphetamine and othjer drugs.
'So it's really digging into what are going to be the ingredients of a really successful harm reduction approach, because the thought that you're going to stop people using drugs, human beings have always used drugs.
'Why do people have a drink at a party? What they have tobacco in the trenches of World War One that spread through society?
'As long as we have people who have a requirement to be transported out of their reality we will not be able to stop it, so we have to be prepared to help them.'
Scotland's new drug policy minister Maree Todd, a qualified mental health pharmacist, said the benefits of The Thistle were demonsrated when a wave of contaminated drugs hots Scottish streets earlier this year.
And she said that spreading word on contaminated os extremely dangerous drugs is crucial.
Todd said: 'Very profoundly unwell people here in this facility had their lives saved by the staff when contaminated drugs were used all over Scotland.
'We can be fairly confident that there was a life saving intervention. We were able to pick up that knowledge and feed it into the public health Radar system in Scotland and disseminate the word that there were contaminated drugs on the street, which made things safer for everyone.'
The Thistle, opened after years of controversial political and legal wrangling, claims to have helped more than 300 addicts in the past six months.
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Run by Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, it is regarded as a pilot that will lead to other centres - although UK PM Keir Starmer has failed to embrace the 'safer drugs' philosophy.
Scotland is the worst nation in Europe for drug deaths by a long way.
Deaths in Scotland rose risen by a third in the first three months of this year, 'devastating' figures revealed.
There were 308 such deaths over the period January to March, with this total up by 33% on the last three months of 2024.
There were 1,053 suspected drugs deaths in the 12 months to March 2025 – meaning there were 166 (14%) fewer such deaths than in the 12 months to March 2024, when the total was 1,219.
