Criminal gangs are selling fake Valium online at a fraction of the cost of genuine tablets, leading people to take potentially lethal doses of illicitly-produced drugs, according to a leading addiction treatment service.

Taking advantage of a gap in the market left by GPs reluctant to prescribe Valium, illegal laboratories are “churning out” blister strips of tablets that could prove fatal, warned David Bremner, medical director at Turning Point. “We have noticed an increase in people using Valium that they have acquired through various means and methods,” Bremner said. “It’s become slightly normalised. People discuss it on Mumsnet. The danger is of course that people are buying unknown concentrations and possibly even unknown drugs.”

Many of the tablets are bought online, where 10,000 tablets can be bought for £800, or 8p a pill, Bremner said: “That’s very, very cheap, considering a tablet on the street is selling for £1.”

Valium is the brand name for diazepam, part of the benzodiazepine family of drugs that act like a sedative and are prescribed to treat anxiety, alcohol withdrawal, muscle spasms and some seizures. Some of the fake tablets contain alternatives to diazepam, such as Etizolam, which, while producing similar effects, can be lethal if mixed with heroin or methadone.

Fake Valium pills were linked to a 43% rise in the number of people in Glasgow who died of drugs overdoses between January and October last year. Several other Scottish cities have experienced similar problems amid claims that the drugs are becoming “cheaper than chips”.

But Bremner said the problem was moving south. Turning Point works in more than 300 locations across England. “The illegal laboratories churning out benzodiazepine are failing to ensure adequate consistency,” he said, drawing comparisons with the fentanyl and carfentanil markets where strengths of different batches from the same laboratories can vary wildly.

“I have seen patients who have purchased medication on the internet that they have used for a host of reasons, and they have inadvertently taken a lethal dose. Their actual tablet count wasn’t high, but the concentration in what they took can sometimes be incredibly high.” Many people who buy fake Valium consume it alone, so are extremely vulnerable if there is an adverse reaction. The drug is often used by those seeking to self-medicate for alcohol addiction or mental-health problems. As support services have been pared back, the number seeking Valium online has increased significantly, Bremner suggested.

It is also popular with users of cocaine and GHB – sometimes known as liquid ecstasy – who take the tablets to help with their comedown.

“These cocktails tend towards the lethal end of drug-taking,” Bremner said. “We are seeing a lot more people who are dying because their drug poisoning is a combination of multiple substances, and quite often benzodiazepines are part of that.”

In 2017 there were 3,756 deaths in England and Wales due to drug poisonings – the highest since records began. But the true extent to which fake Valium or other forms of benzodiazepines contributed to the deaths is difficult to gauge. This is because deaths from drug poisoning are attributed to only one substance, Bremner said, which means the presence of other drugs in the body is ignored when the death is recorded.

“I’ve had many patients who have died of poisoning but, because you’ve been prescribing methadone, the death is attributed to methadone toxicity when very often there was also cocaine, benzodiazepine and alcohol on board.”

8p

The cost of an illicit Valium tablet online – compared with a street value of £1 each

43%

The rise in the number of people in Glasgow who died from an overdose between January and October 2018

3,756

The number of deaths due to drug poisonings in England and Wales in 2017 – the highest on record