USA and Europe authorities are fighting a up-to-date enemy in the war on opioids. Nitazens are a class of synthetic drugs 40 times more potent than fentanyl that have caused hundreds of confirmed deaths worldwide. Europe and US since appearing on law enforcement’s radar in 2019. However, this number is likely to be a significant underestimate.
The Nitazens were first synthesized in the 1950s by CIBA Aktiengesellschaft, an Austrian chemical company that has created several chemically related molecules with varying levels of pain-relieving potency. However, their apply as painkillers never gained popularity. Nitazenes are not only highly addictive, but can cause respiratory depression – a threatening condition in which breathing becomes too shallow to replenish oxygen in the blood. Therefore, for decades, these drugs went largely unheard of until they appeared on the illicit market.
It’s demanding to say exactly when nitazens began being widely sold as street drugs – identifying them requires special tests that aren’t routinely performed – but law enforcement began noticing them about six years ago. Delivery of one type of synthesized molecules – isotonitazene – occurred captured in the US Midwest in 2019 and deaths in the following years, cases of this phenomenon began to be reported both in the USA and in Europe.
Drug manufacturers and traffickers have likely become interested in nitazens because of their potency and similar effects to better-known drugs such as heroin. This makes them useful substances for dealers because they can apply them to curb other opioids so that their drugs can continue to work, thus increasing the volume they can sell. This poses a grave risk to users, who are often unaware of what they are actually taking, increasing the risk of overdose.
Another attractive feature of nitazens was that the authorities forgot about them: a drug that receives less attention and has an undefined legal status is easier to trade. It is believed that illegal laboratories began synthesizing nitazenes using historical chemical formulas found in pharmacology textbooks, as well as developing up-to-date formulations.
In the US, nitazens are now widespread throughout most of the country and are produced in Mexico or domestically in illegal laboratories supplied with raw materials by Asian dealers. Synthetic opioids are the most problematic drug in the US about 70 percent of the 105,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2023, of which fentanyl is the most prevalent. However, nitazens, while still a minority drug, are rapidly becoming more common.
Europe, for its part, has always been a heroin-dominated market, and almost all of that heroin came from Afghanistan. However, when the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, they banned the cultivation of opium poppies, thus cutting off the source of the raw material used to produce heroin destined for Europe. As opium supplies deplete, it is possible that: heroin deficiency on the European market that could be filled by synthetic opioids.