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Even Worse than Fentanyl

Nitazenes were developed in the nineteen fifties and sixties and were meant to be a substitute for morphine. But they were so powerful that the FDA didn’t approve them. Now they’re a schedule one drug and illegal just like heroin and LSD. Nitazines are made in the lab and are inexpensive to produce. They block pain signals in the brain by binding to opioid receptors in the brain, spinal cord, and other sites in the body. Depending on the chemical formulation, some nitazenes are 800 times more potent than morphine and 40 times more than even fentanyl! They come in liquids, pills, and powder form. And just as illegal street drugs can be laced with fentanyl, they can also contain nitazenes without…

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 Nitazenes: Understanding The Next Threat in the Opioid Crisis

As the opioid crisis continues to evolve, the emergence of nitazenes adds a new, potent threat to public health. These powerful synthetic opioids are now spreading globally as the public has been mostly fixated on fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, raising significant concern among law enforcement that this could be the long-expected fourth wave of the opioid crisis.

 Stronger Than Fentanyl: A Drug You’ve Never Heard of Is Killing Hundreds Every Year

Ultrapotent nitazenes, mostly from China, are easy to smuggle and mix into heroin, recreational drugs and gray-market pharmaceuticals

Articles of Interest

Nitazenes, the New Synthetic Opioids, Aren’t “More Deadly Than Fentanyl”

“Nitazenes” doesn’t refer to one specific substance, but to a group of substances that are chemically similar. The potency of different individual nitazenes, AKA nitazene analogs, varies quite a lot—the same way it does with fentanyl analogs. However, nitazenes tend to show up in extremely small quantities, piggybacking on fentanyl or some other drug that was ingested in larger quantities. They very rarely show up on their own.

Nitazenes: The New Opioids on the Block

For years, the primary villain in the opioid crisis has been street fentanyl, a synthetic opioid significantly more potent than traditional opioids like heroin and morphine. However, a new and even more dangerous class of synthetic opioids known as nitazenes is now emerging on the illicit drug market, posing an unprecedented threat to public health.

Deadly synthetic opioids 40 times stronger than fentanyl detected in Australian wastewater for first time

Researchers think detected nitazenes may have been directly disposed of in wastewater, rather than consumed.

Everything you need to know about nitazenes

The pool of people at risk of overdose from a new type of super-strength synthetic opioid is widening.

Isotonitazene, a synthetic opioid from an emerging family: The nitazenes

From 2019, in the United States and Europe, the synthetic opioid market has diversified with the appearance of the 2-benzylbenzimidazole family, commonly named “nitazenes”. In vitro studies show that these synthetic opioids have much higher affinities on μ-opioid receptors: 100 times more than morphine, and slightly higher than fentanyl for isotonitazene, increasing the risk of overdose.

New class of opioids that may be more potent than fentanyl emerges globally

Nitazenes, synthetic opioids, could create latest drug crisis as scientists rush to find how to detect them in drug supply.

Nitazenes are a powerful class of street drugs emerging across the US

Researchers have relatively little information on how the human body reacts to nitazenes because the drugs have never gone through clinical trials. But lab tests show certain nitazenes could be hundreds to thousands of times more potent than morphine and 10 to 40 times stronger than fentanyl.

Nitazenes: The ‘New Fentanyl’ Killing Drug Users in Europe

But up to now, Europe has largely managed to avoid this deadly wave of synthetic opioids and the death tolls they bring. Late last year, the UK saw a spike in overdose deaths attributed to nitazenes. Since then, the substance has been linked to an average of almost three deaths per week in the UK, according to the BBC.

Old Drugs and New Challenges: A Narrative Review of Nitazenes

Nitazenes are a group of compounds developed in the 1950s as opioid analgesics, but they were never approved to market. As such, they are not well known outside of academic research laboratories. A characteristic of nitazenes is their high potency (e.g., hundreds to thousands fold more potent than morphine and other opioids and tenfold more potent than fentanyl). In the past few years, several nitazenes, including “designer analogs,” have been detected in the illicit drug supply and have been implicated in overdose mortality, primarily due to their exceptionally high potency.

The Emergence of Nitazenes in the Americas

As they have emerged across the globe, illicit manufacturers have continuously synthesized new and chemically distinct types of nitazenes.v Today, at least 13 different types of nitazenes have been identified. The most prevalent nitazene is isonitazene (ISO)

What are Nitazenes? Everything You Need to Know

Nitazenes are illicit opioids that have been growing in popularity across the US. This synthetic drug is raising concerns amongst experts because little is known about it. While nitazenes are similar to fentanyl, they are much stronger and more research needs to be done to fully understand their effects. Nitazenes were first developed by researchers around 60 years ago. They were originally designed to be used as an alternative for morphine, but nitazenes were never released to the public because of their high potential for overdose.

‘There has never been a more dangerous time to take drugs’: the rising global threat of nitazenes and synthetic opioids

Given their potency, only a small amount of nitazene is required to produce a fatal dose. While some studies have concluded that nitazenes are even more potent than the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which causes many thousands of deaths in the US, the NCA judges it a “realistic possibility” that the potency of both substances are “broadly equivalent” – making them roughly 50 times more potent than heroin.

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Nitazenes are a group of synthetic opioids which have emerged in the UK drug supply. They can be taken on their own (sometimes unknowingly), and they have been found in heroin and other illicit drugs like oxycodone and benzodiazepines. If a drug contains nitazenes, there is an increased risk of harm, overdose and death.