A mother has revealed her heart-wrenching loss after her son allegedly died from smoking a vape which she claims was laced with an opioid few people have ever heard of.
Freddy Ireland-Rose, 30, died last September following an accidental overdose of nitazenes, a drug thought to be around 20 times more powerful than fentanyl.
He had been using a cannabis vape in a bid to withdraw from opiates and had been buying the liquid refills on the internet, an inquest in front of the Inner North London assistant coroner Sarah Bourke previously heard.
After being found unresponsive at home with the device in his hand, paramedics succeeded in rescuscitating him but he did not regain consciousness and died in hospital a few days later.
Now Ireland-Rose’s mother has spoken out about her ‘unimaginable’ loss following the death of her son, as well as the potential reasons for his overdose, in an interview with the BBC.
She revealed he had been using the same vape for two or three weeks and had been receiving Jiffy bags from Amsterdam among other places.
The mother said: ‘I don’t think for one minute, and neither do any of his friends, that he took this intentionally. So, we can only assume it was in another illicit drug that he was taking, another opioid, or that it was the vape.
‘And my question at the inquest was, is it possible that this contaminated the vapes and they came back with the answer, yes it was possible.
‘I know that friends of his, with whom I’m in contact, they hadn’t heard of nitazenes, which is very worrying. The pharmacist at the London hospital, when I went back and talked with him, he’d never heard of them.’
She suggested that the nitazenes had either entered her son’s system by these means or through pills.
Government research has revealed that 179 deaths were confirmed to have involved at least one nitazene between June 2023 and May 2024.
In a Prevention of Future Deaths Report, Ms Bourke previously warned about cannabis vapes being contaminated by nitazenes, normally used as a synthetic pain reliever.
She added that the risk of overdose was ‘significant’ because the amount ingested through inhalation could ‘vary enormously’.
The danger was greater given the lack of access to the antidote naloxone.
Ms Bourke pointed out that nitazenes have entered into the UK heroin supply, but there was no evidence to suggest Ireland-Rose had taken street heroin before his overdose.
Nitazenes were first created in the 1950s as opioid painkillers but were never approved for medical use. For 70 years, their existence was forgotten.
Then, after Britain and America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan – and the Taliban’s subsequent narcotics ban – they re-emerged as a way to strengthen low-purity heroin in case opium supplies dwindled.
Experts are united in their fear of the rising risk of nitazenes. Yet, while heroin users are still vulnerable, young people buying traditionally legal drugs such as Valium and Xanax as coping mechanisms are also at risk.
In fact, analysis of data from the UK’s only drug testing facility Wedinos has revealed that two-thirds of samples that contained nitazenes were supposed to be legal medications that could be purchased legally.
Two-thirds of that total were bought by people intending to buy Valium (diazepam).
So far, the number of nitazene-related deaths only stands at 458 in the last two years, up to April 13.
However, there was a 166 per cent increase from 2023 (125 deaths) to 2024 (333 deaths) – more than double in a single year, and even that total is expected to rise once toxicology and forensic testing improves and is finalised.
Steve Rolles, a senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told : ‘The number of deaths is rising at an alarming rate. It’s the tip of the iceberg.
‘What has happened in the US should be a warning to policymakers in the UK. We could be heading to a US-style overdose crisis. We are talking thousands or tens of thousands dying.
‘All the indications are that is what is happening. I’m very wary of scaremongering about drugs but I’m deeply worried about the potential carnage opioids could do in the UK.
‘We already have the highest overdose rate in Europe. Nitazenes could make it way, way worse.
‘This is a very serious public health emergency that’s not being taken seriously enough.’
He added: ‘I am scared. There’s almost one person dying every day from nitazenes and most people haven’t even heard of it.
‘If it was anything else, there would be national panic. The government hasn’t grasped the urgency of this.’
Rolles is starting to see heroin mixed with nitazenes on the streets of Britain.
He said: ‘It does seem it’s getting more [prevalent] as the heroin supply dries up.’