Pricey Viagra leaves students hard-up SEX PILL DEALERS TARGET DRUNKEN TEENS
DRUG dealers are targeting frisky “freshers” students with Viagra.
Gangs buy the bedroom boosting tablets on the cheap and sell them on at pumped-up prices.
And street sellers have made partymad lads their top target.
We spoke to one dealer in Salford, Lancs, who said he had been hanging around student bars looking for potential buyers.
He showed us a batch of 200 100mg Viagras – part of a huge shipment from Europe.
The dealer said: “I get these for less than a pound a pill and usually sell them for a fiver a go. But to students who don’t really know the prices they go for a tenner.
“All you need is a group of p **** d students out for a bit of skirt and you’ve got your market.
“Freshers week, when all these youngsters are away from home for the first time sh ****** anything in sight, is a time when we make a killing.
“There’s a few of us working across bars in Manchester and Liverpool.
“They’re all out on the p*** so we will just sell them inside or outside the bars.
“What we’re trying to do is recruit some students who’ll sell them on campus, and there’s a few irons in the fire on that score.
“They can make some really good money.”
He said students tend to already be high on other drugs such as cocaine or ecstasy when they buy Viagra. He added: “A lot of them want to be able to get it up but are too off their heads. They get a Viagra to help them along.” But doctors are warning they risk ending up in a hospital bed by taking the Viagra cocktail. It could leave some randy revellers with scarring to their penis and even battling impotence in the future. Dr Geoff Hackett, former chief of the British Society of Sexual Medicine, said: “The risk as a result of Viagra alone is almost non-existent. “But as the drugs become cheaper, there is a chance people are more likely to exceed the recommended dose.”
Viagra manufacturer Pfizer warns that the drug should not be taken unless recommended by a doctor. University chiefs are already worried about drug use among students.
Joana Burns, a 22-year-old Sheffield Hallam student, inset, died in June after taking ecstasy during a night out at a popular bar.
Simon Finney, strategic commissioning manager at the university, said: “We need to look at whether we’re giving out the right messages to the right people, and whether that’s being done often enough.”
The Daily Star Sunday revealed in March that some randy revellers were taking the drug “Sextasy” – a potent mix of ecstasy and Viagra.
It was invented to counter the passionkilling effects of MDMA – the chemical name for ecstasy.
The blue tablets were being made in Holland and Germany then smuggled here in bulk.
Pills were being sold on the black market and then online for as little as £3 each.