A New Type of Opioid Is Killing People in the US, Europe, and Australia
United States and Europe authorities are fighting a new enemy in the war on opioids. Nitazenes are a class of synthetic drugs 40 times more potent than fentanyl that have caused hundreds of confirmed deaths in Europe and the United States since appearing on law enforcement radar in 2019. However, this figure is likely an underestimate.
Nitazenes were first synthesized in the 1950s by CIBA Aktiengesellschaft, an Austrian chemical company, which created several chemically related molecules with varying levels of analgesic potency. However, their use as a painkiller never took off. In addition to being highly addictive, nitazenes can cause respiratory depression, a dangerous condition in which breathing becomes too shallow to replenish oxygen in the blood. These drugs therefore remained virtually unknown for decades until their appearance on the illegal market.
It’s hard to say exactly when nitazenes began being sold as illicit drugs (identifying them requires specific tests that aren’t routinely done), but law enforcement began taking notice of them about six years ago. A shipment of one type of these synthesized molecules – isotonitazene – was intercepted in the US Midwest in 2019, and deaths began to be reported in the US and Europe in the following years.
Drug manufacturers and traffickers were likely attracted to nitazenes because of their potency and because they have effects similar to those of more well-known drugs like heroin. This makes them useful substances to traffickers because they can use them to reduce other opioids to move their drugs further, increasing the volume they can sell. This poses serious risks for users, who are often unaware of what they are actually taking, increasing the risk of overdose.
The other interesting feature of nitazenes was that they had been forgotten by the authorities: a drug that receives less attention, as well as an unclear legal status, is easier to market. Illegal laboratories reportedly began synthesizing nitazenes using historical chemical formulas found in pharmacology textbooks and developing new formulas.
In the United States, nitazenes are now widespread throughout most of the country and are manufactured in Mexico or domestically in illegal laboratories supplied with raw materials by Asian dealers. Synthetic opioids are the most problematic drug in the United States – accounting for about 70% of the 105,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2023 – and among them, fentanyl is the most prevalent. But nitazenes, while still a minority drug, are quickly becoming more common.
Europe, meanwhile, has always been a market dominated by heroin, almost all of which comes from Afghanistan. However, when the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, they banned opium poppy cultivation, cutting off the supply of the raw material used to create heroin for Europe. As opium supplies run out, there may be a shortage of heroin on the European market, which synthetic opioids could fill.
