This is the Guardian.

It was a slightly extraordinary scene actually in the coroner's court which is sort of around the back of

the court building sort of slightly unloved place in the center of Birmingham.

That's the Guardian's Social Affairs Correspondent Robert Booth. He recently spent time in the Midlands after receiving

alarming news about a dangerous drug making its way into the illegal drug

supply. I went to Birmingham because I'd been alerted to the problem

with Nittesines causing fatalities among drug users and Birmingham seemed to be a

hot spot. Nittesines are a class of synthetic opioids that are becoming increasingly present in the UK.

In Birmingham, coroners had begun to notice it cropping up in the toxicology reports of heroin users who had died.

There was a spate of deaths around 30 deaths in June July in Birmingham.

So I went to try and find out really who these people were

and the circumstances of their deaths.

At the coroner's court, Robert sat alone in a large room, hearing the stories of people who had died in incidents related to Nittizines, including Clive Cooper, who was 38 and 42-year-old Maria Green.

Both Clive and Maria had died in the same hostel on the same night in different rooms, long-term drug users with problems, but they got caught up in what

seemed to be a kind of bad batch of what they thought was heroin.

It wasn't just them who died in that few days in that area.

There were other people up the road as well.

It felt like something had gone on with the supply that day

and that there were nitizines in the drugs that they didn't know about.

The names kept coming.

There was seven cases over a two day period.

There was a man called Stephen Harrup, who was 36. The ages are quite interesting here. People in the

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