November 2022 saw officers from the Greater Manchester Police force their way into a property on Rugby Street in Cheetham Hill.
Inside, they found £2million worth of prescription drugs, which was later confirmed as the largest single seizure of prescription medication that the UK had ever seen.
The area around Bury New Road and Strangeways had been known for years as a hub for black market goods, but the scale of what was recovered at the property on Rugby Street allowed local services to put a number on what they had been warning about for a long time.
If you ever hear of a drug seizure with a street value as high as this one, without reading, you’d assume the drugs in question were cocaine or heroin.
But in fact, the drugs seized here were benzodiazepines, ones that look identical to what a pharmacy would dispense.
The Rugby Street raid raised two questions: What is driving the demand for benzos and who is taking them?
What are benzodiazepines?
Before we continue, it’s certainly worth explaining what these drugs actually are, because if you’ve never come into contact with them, you’d be forgiven for not knowing what they are.
Benzodiazepines are a class of prescription sedatives that are used to treat a number of conditions, including anxiety and even seizures.
You’ll probably be more familiar with their brand names, with the UK’s most common type of benzo being Valium (diazepam).
You might also be familiar with the name Xanax (alprazolam), which is a popular brand name in the US.
Both of these drugs are benzodiazepines, but both have different mechanisms, with recognised forms across the globe.
So, why are there so many, and why are they so popular? Benzos are prescribed because of how fast they can calm the nervous system down and provide feelings of relaxation.
For those struggling with symptoms of anxiety, they can feel like a lifesaver in the midst of a panic attack.
When you take a benzo, it will boost the effect of a brain chemical called GABA, which enables the brain to relax.
The problem with benzodiazepines though, is that the body can adjust to them fast. Within weeks of regular use, the same dose produces less of an effect, which means
a person needs more to feel the same benefit. This is known as tolerance, and when someone stops taking them abruptly the nervous system can react severely.
This is what makes benzodiazepines different from many other substances in that withdrawal itself carries a medical risk, including the possibility of seizures.
When a GP reduces or stops a prescription, some patients are able to manage the transition with medical support, but in some cases, the person may find it too difficult to adjust without benzos.
This is exactly where the problems can start as the person struggling may turn to the street market, where what they buy is both expensive and unregulated.
The Manchester picture
A report from the GM TRENDS Programme placed benzodiazepines among the top three substances that are showing the biggest increase in use across Greater Manchester.
The report draws on responses from:
● 236 professionals working across the region
● 386 young people in contact with treatment or family services
● 173 people who actively use drugs.
This was then supplemented by 80 in-depth professional interviews and 54 interviews with people who use drugs.
In total, 44 substances were covered and this provides one of the most detailed local pictures of drug trends available anywhere in England.
In basic terms, this is a programme with its finger on the pulse of the Manchester drug scene.
One finding that professionals highlighted was the variable content of the prescription tablets seized from the Bury New Road area.
A tablet might be stamped with “Diazepam 10mg”, but in reality, the actual milligram of diazepam isn’t anywhere near what it states. Or perhaps a lot more. Or maybe it’s not even diazepam in any way, shape or form.
That’s the worry with black market drugs in general – you’re taking a gamble with every pill you take.
So, let’s imagine someone who has built up a tolerance through a benzo prescription, turned to the streets for the next dose, and picks up something that they assume is a benzodiazepine, but it isn’t.
The risk of an overdose on a substance they have no experience with skyrockets.
But it’s not only Manchester that has this problem, it’s also a nationwide issue. One peer-reviewed study identified 14,837 deaths with benzodiazepine detection across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In fact, benzo-related deaths rose by over 200% between 2010 and 2020. In 99.3% of those cases, other substances were also detected, which indicates the damage of mixing benzodiazepines with other drugs.
Operation Vulcan
The Rugby Street seizure was the opening act of Operation Vulcan, which was a two year multi-agency initiative led by Greater Manchester Police.
The aim was to target illicit trade operating out of Cheetham Hill and Strangeways. The operation produced a sustained programme of raids, seizures, arrests and eventual prosecution across the area.
In April 2025, Operation Vulcan officers posed as drug users in Piccadilly Gardens to target street level dealers and operations have now expanded into Oldham and other parts of the region.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Operation Vulcan disrupted the supply of benzodiazepines, but disrupting supply without addressing demand creates a gap that new sellers fill.
The professionals surveyed in the GM TRENDS report were clear that rising benzodiazepine use is a demand-side problem as much as a supply-side one, and policing alone cannot resolve it.
How does a benzodiazepine dependency begin?
If you’re reading this, thinking, “Why in the world have I never heard of this problem before?”, you’re not alone.
One of the reasons benzodiazepine addiction is poorly understood by the public is that it doesn’t start the way people imagine a drug addiction to begin.
It isn’t a dramatic entry into addiction like there is with other drugs, and instead, a benzo addiction is something that seeps in slowly.
It’s also primarily taken because it’s been prescribed for a genuine medical reason to address a genuine issue within the person’s life.
People, on the whole, trust doctors and the drugs that are prescribed. Not many would even fathom becoming addicted to the very thing that’s helping them reclaim their life.
But unfortunately, addiction to benzos can happen and by the time the prescription is reviewed or withdrawn, there may be a physical dependence that has already started to develop.
The problem with benzo withdrawal
What separates benzodiazepine withdrawal from most other substances is that stopping abruptly can be medically dangerous.
Experts advise that unsupervised benzo withdrawal can cause seizures and clinical guidance consistently recommends a gradual, medically managed taper rather than abrupt cessation.
For anyone in that position, specialist benzodiazepine rehab programmes offer medically supervised detox followed by structured recovery support.
Benzodiazepine detox carried out in a clinical setting allows the dose to be reduced gradually, with withdrawal symptoms monitored and managed throughout.
The structured rehabilitation that follows addresses the psychological dependency, the anxiety or insomnia that prompted the original prescription, and the patterns that developed around the drug’s use.
Without that second stage, the risk of returning to use remains high.
What happens next?
Greater Manchester’s benzodiazepine problem is not going to be resolved by enforcement alone, and the professionals working closest to the issue know it.
The GM TRENDS report’s value lies in making the scale and nature of the problem visible at a local level, which gives services a basis for targeted intervention.
What needs watching is whether harm-reduction messaging reaches the people most at risk, particularly young people encountering illicit benzodiazepines for the first time without understanding how tolerance and dependence develop.
Operation Vulcan’s longer-term impact on the street market around Cheetham Hill remains an open question, and the wider debate about NHS prescribing culture.
Is enough being done at the point of prescription to prevent the kind of dependency that pushes people toward the street market?
For anyone affected by benzodiazepine use, support is available through your GP, local drug and alcohol services.
References
1. GM Police. (2024, June 5). Operation Vulcan secure charges in connection with record breaking prescription drug seizure in Cheetham Hill. https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2024/june/operation-vulcan-secure-charges-in-connection-with-record-breaking-prescription-drug-seizure-in-cheetham-hill/
2. Manchester Metropolitan University. (2023, September 14). Emerging trends for substance use in Greater Manchester highlighted in new report. Manchester Metropolitan University. https://www.mmu.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/story/emerging-trends-substance-use-greater-manchester-highlighted-new-report
3. Rock, K. L., Frinculescu, A., Shine, T., Kalk, N. J., & Copeland, C. S. (2024). Impact of “street” benzodiazepines on drug‐related deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Drug and Alcohol Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/dar.13979
Feature image: Julie Mariotti
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