Gaza accuses US-Israel aid of lacing flour with Oxycodone pills: What are Opioid pills, how dangerous are they ?

Gaza’s Government Media Office (GMO) issued a press release on Friday (June 27) confirming the reports that narcotic tablets were found in the flour bags sent by the US-Israel Aid Centres. The office said, "Finding narcotic tablets inside flour bags coming from death traps 'US-Israel Aid Centres' is a heinous crime targeting the health of civilians and the fabric of society." "We express deep concern and condemnation over the discovery of 'Oxycodone tablets' inside the flour bags that reached citizens from the so-called 'US-Israel aid Centres', known as 'death traps'," the statement added. The office said that so far, four testimonies have been documented by the government from the citizens of the Gaza Strip who have found the Oxycodone pills in the aid packets.

"We hold the Israeli occupation fully responsible for this heinous crime to spread addiction and destroy the Palestinian social fabric from within, as part of a systematic policy that constitutes an extension of the crime of genocide carried out by the occupation against our Palestinian people. The Israeli occupation's use of drugs as a soft means in a dirty war against civilians, and the exploitation of the blockade to bring these materials into 'aid and aid', is a war crime and a serious violation of international humanitarian law," the statement said.

What is the drug?

Oxycodone is a drug that belongs to the opioid family, which is used primarily for the relief of severe pain in cancer patients. When all the painkillers fail, this drug is used. Now, the problem with Oxycodone is that it acts on certain specific receptors in the nervous system - which causes severe addiction, a decrease in heart rate, impaired awareness and consciousness. It also causes dangerous respiratory depression.

"Its side effects are numerous and can transform a person into something unrecognisable - a shell of who they were," a pharmacist, Omar Hamad, said on the social media platform X.

“Many citizens have found these drugs, and I saw them with my own eyes in the flour sacks. There is also a doctor named Khalil Abu Nada who wrote a full report on this issue,” Hamad said in his posts.

It was also reported that the Oxycodone pills were not just hidden in the flour bags, they were mixed with the flour. Apart from many prominent accounts on social media from the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian doctor named Khalil Mazen Abu Nada also talked about this on the social media platform Facebook. He described the acts as a “means to obliterate our societal awareness”.