Every morning Elodie Berland and Jon Glackin walk around Keir Starmer’s constituency offering hot drinks and a meal to rough sleepers.
As volunteers for the charity Streets Kitchen, they are hardened to the sights they encounter and the stories they hear every morning.
But the volunteers and those they help have been living on edge for the past few months.
This is due to the growing presence of a new fatal drug called cychlorphine; a substance 200 times stronger than heroin that’s mixed into other hard drugs and counterfeit pharmaceuticals.
‘More often than not, we are now wondering which friend we have lost after hearing another tale that someone has overdosed,’ Elodie said.
Metropolitan Police confirmed three people died within just one month in Camden after taking the drug: A man in his 50s on October 30, a woman in her 40s on November 14 and a man in his 40s on November 23.
Metro can exclusively reveal officers have made huge busts and arrested and charged 11 people in connection with distributing synthetic opioids such as cychlorphine.
In reality, the number of those who have died taking cychlorphine is much larger.
‘No one knows they are buying it’
Around13 people are estimated to have died taking cychlorphine in London over the last year, according to charity Change Grow Live (CGL).
An inquest report revealed Oscar Brown died in March after taking the drug – with an additional 10 people taken to hospital that day due to a dangerous street supply.
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Worryingly, buyers aren’t asking for a hit of cychlorphine. As white powder, sellers are using it bulk up their supplies, creating lethal concoctions.
The labs where the drugs are made – most likely in India or China – are hardly health and safety compliant, with cross-contamination also highly possible.
Vicki Markiewicz, executive director at CGL, said: ‘So far we have mostly seen it mixed in with heroin or into fake pharmaceutical drugs like oxycodone.
‘But we have seen instances where it has been mixed into cocaine.’
There were 15 non-fatal overdoses recorded in Yorkshire and Humber in last year, with cychlorphine suspected to have been mixed into a bad batch of party drugs.
What is cychlorphine?
The chemical structure of cychlorphine is only slightly tweaked from nitazines and other synthetic opioids.
As the Taliban banned opioid production in Afghanistan, there has been a stark impact of availability in the UK and the rest of the West.
Now drug gangs are finding alternative ways to boost their supplies, which includes mixing cychlorphine into other substances.
Vicki Markiewicz, executive director at Change Grow Live, said she suspects the substance is made in China and India after the countries banned the production of nitazines.
She said: ‘Criminal gangs slightly alter the compound to no longer make it nitazines, but something else which is now covered by the ban.’
It is easy to smuggle in to the UK as it does not smell, meaning sniffer dogs do not pick it up at checkpoints.
‘It is so new that coroners have not caught up yet’
Although CGL has put the number of deaths in London at 13, it is likely that the total is even higher.
Cychlorphine only became known to be on the capital’s streets last year, and even now, there aren’t automatic tests for the substance in postmortems.
Vicki said: ‘Hospitals and coroners are finding out about this stuff late.
‘They don’t routinely check for synthetic opioids and then they just assume it’s heroin.’
It is also possible cychlorphoine breaks down in the body after death like nitazines do, meaning they won’t show up in postmortem examinations.
Vicki said: ‘The information that is out there on cychlorphine is limited, we really do not know much about it yet.’
Major raids
Metro can exclusively reveal the Metropolitan Police has charged 11 people with conspiring to supply Class A drugs linked to cychlorphine in the Camden area.
They are: Jack Sinnott, 27, Hendrick Bungisa, 29, Kai Warren, 25, Georgie Murtagh, James Dennison, 38, Harry Delaney, 18, Youcef Bali, 18, and Heinos Michael, 19.
One 16 and one 17-year-old have also been charged but cannot be named due to their age.
The Metropolitan Police said: ‘After a painstaking investigation to build a strong evidence case, local officers teamed up with specialist units, including dog handlers to execute 14 warrants in the Camden area on properties linked to the drugs trade on Wednesday, 10 December.
‘Eleven suspects have been arrested, charged and remanded in custody for conspiring to supply Class A drugs.
‘In addition to the arrests, officers seized a significant amount of Class A and B drugs, 36 bottles of Codeine, over £20,000 in cash and £11,000 in gold bullion, and multiple weapons, including a sawn-off shotgun.’
‘People need to be aware of the risks’
Jon and Elodie are continuing to help and warn those most at risk.
Elodie said: ‘Information about the drug should have been shared months ago, and now we are dealing with people who have overdosed themselves or have lost a loved one.
‘All of these people are incredibly vulnerable and most likely homeless.’
They added that due to the high level of addiction and homelessness in Camden , the area is seen as a ‘testing ground’ for new drugs.
Jon said: ‘What we are seeing is not new. Substances are being brought in without knowing what the risks are to exploit vulnerable people and line the pockets of drug gangs.’
CGL said it is steadfast in its commitment to encourage drug users to carry naloxone, which is a life-saving medication used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
Vicki said: ‘Anyone can end up accidentally taking this drug. Because it is being mixed into everything else it does not need to be bought on the dark web, it can just be bought on Snapchat.
‘The reality of the situation is it is just like any other drug.’
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