A dangerous class of synthetic opioids has been gaining ground in the United States, threatening a new wave of fatal overdoses.
Estimated to be 10 to 20 times more potent than fentanyl, nitazenes are turning up more and more in the illicit drug trade. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reported in January that 20 different nitazene compounds had been identified on the street, and over 4,300 nitazene-related cases had been logged since 2019.
Like fentanyl, nitazenes are synthetic and thus can be easily tampered with.
“When you have a backbone of one drug to start with, there [are] almost limitless ways to modify it,” Claire Zagorski, an Austin-based chemist, paramedic, and translational scientist, told CBS News.
A very small amount of such novel opioids is enough to cause a fatal overdose, and several doses of naloxone — a drug that reverses overdoses — may be required to reverse their effects, studies have suggested.
“People have to keep in mind, with all the synthetic drugs out there, and the way they’re being mixed together, you never know what you’re actually buying,” said Maura Gaffney, a DEA intelligence analyst, in a news release from the agency in 2022 warning about nitazenes.
Nitazenes, first developed in the 1950s, were never approved for medical use. However, illicit drug manufacturers have purportedly been using the dark web to traffick these substances and their precursor chemicals. The DEA reported in October that it had indicted eight Chinese entities and individuals for allegedly importing fentanyl precursors, nitazenes, and more into the country.
American deaths caused by synthetic opioids spiked between 2010 and 2021, growing from 21,089 to 80,411 reported cases, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. While most of these deaths are attributed to fentanyl — which kills an estimated five Texans each day — some nitazene-related deaths may not be accounted for due to toxicity panels not always testing for the substances.
“We don’t actually know the complete universe of how many deaths are due to these potentially very toxic compounds,” remarked Dr. Wilson M. Compton, the deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, according to CBS News.