By Open Door Correspondent "Bernie".
Just under a year ago, in May 2017, about 20 teenagers in Salisbury, Wiltshire, needed medical treatment after taking Xanax. (1)
Xanax? That was my reaction too, I’d simply not heard of it until very recently. When prescribed by health professionals, Xanax is used to treat anxiety disorders and panic attacks. It works by slowing down brain activity, and in patients with anxiety disorders and symptoms of panic attacks it does this by reducing “excitability” in the brain. (2)
But what happens when Xanax is used by those for whom it hasn’t been prescribed? With no brain excitability to reduce, it slows down normal brain activity so that the user feels an advanced state of relaxation, and in some users even euphoria. But as with any drug, the effects don’t stop there. Cardiac and respiratory problems are top of the list of possible side-effects, and it can lead to problems with concentration as well as slowing the heart rate of users down to dangerous levels. It is also highly addictive, coming in at twenty times the strength of Valium. (3)
Although data on the use of Xanax is limited because of its recent arrival in the UK, one thing that is apparent is that it is very popular with teenagers. Harry Shapiro, the founder and Director of Drugwise (4) said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph shortly after the teenagers in Wiltshire were taken ill that “it seems to be a bit of a thing at the moment. I think it may have spread to the UK through the influence of American rappers on YouTube”.
Indeed, in November 2017 the American rapper Lil Peep was found dead after overdosing on a combination of Xanax and Fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller. (5)
So what makes it so attractive to young people? Well firstly, it’s cheap, costing as little as £1 a tablet. Secondly, it’s very easily available, even without a prescription. A quick search on the internet will reveal multiple points of purchase, and the UK is the second largest market for untraceable online sales of Xanax, representing 22% of the global market. Only the USA has a larger percentage share.
This is clearly a problem which has slipped in under the radar, and Dr Adrian Harrop, an A&E Doctor in Scarborough speaking to The Guardian (6), described an “emerging crisis in Xanax misuse”. He went on to say that “It’s already an acknowledged crisis situation in the US and Scotland and before long we may see increasing deaths in England unless we address it.”
There has been a huge rise in the number of admissions linked to the drug at the hospital where he works, with Dr Harrop adding that “increasing numbers of young people are overdosing on Xanax, having obtained it from the internet.”
Although there are anecdotal figures for Xanax misuse in Wales, no firm figures are available. A search of the record of debates at the Welsh Assembly website for details of plenary or committee meetings discussing Xanax returned no results.
Bambos Charalambous, the Labour MP for Enfield, raised the issue in a debate in the House of Commons in January this year (7), and received cross-party support for doing so. But it is clear that the UK Government, and the devolved Assemblies, have much work to do yet to firstly ascertain the true scale of the problem, and then create a strategy to deal with it.
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