POLICE HUNT CRIMINAL GANGS MAKING MONKEY DUST INSIDE A LAB
Are ingredients for drug being legally imported?
POLICE are hunting a Breaking Bad-style gang making ‘mind-altering’ monkey dust in a city ‘drugs laboratory’.
North Staffordshire has been in the grip of an ‘epidemic’, with police called to 950 incidents connected to the drug in just three months.
But the drug, which sells for just £2 a hit, is now spreading to Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, the Thames Valley and Gloucestershire.
It is believed a gang based in the Potteries has set up an operation to legally import the ingredients and then turn them into the drug.
Now detectives at Staffordshire Police are trying to crack the network.
However, according to the Sunday Times, covert surveillance and informants have been unable to find gang members ‘beyond street dealing level’.
Assistant chief constable Jason Harwin, the national police leader on drugs, said: “This suggests they are either getting it into the UK via a means we don’t yet know about, or criminal gangs are learning how to make these drugs from scratch.”
Dr Oliver Sutcliffe of Manchester Metropolitan University, who tests drugs for the police, said: “It is not simply a case of mixing two chemicals together. It would need a laboratory.”
Monkey dust – also known as MDPHP, zombie dust or cannibal dust – gives users the sense that they are ‘the Hulk’ with high energy levels, super-strength, and an inability to feel pain.
It can also induce hypothermia by producing high body temperatures, with aggression and paranoid delusions common side effects.
There have even been reports of users climbing buildings and trees, running into traffic and attacking people who have approached them while under the influence.
In one shocking incident last September, a man high on monkey dust in a petrol station on Waterloo Road, Cobridge, was found trying to put out a lit cigarette with a petrol pump.
Pete Burkinshaw, alcohol and drug treatment and recovery leader at Public Health England, said: “Drugs like these can cause immediate side effects, like heart problems, as well as longterm damage, such as psychosis and addiction.”
Staffordshire Police has been pursuing a ‘partnership approach’ and carrying out raids.
Chief Superintendent Jeff Moore, head of neighbourhood policing and partnerships, said: “The drug is highly addictive and highly unpredictable, meaning emergency services can often struggle to provide the appropriate treatment to those under the influence.
“Every user acts differently, displaying behaviour that is volatile and dangerous to both the user and emergency services personnel responding.
“By starting this very public conversation, we hope to work with partners to create a joined-up approach that will hopefully lower the number of people using the drug and tackle the production and supply of the drug.”