Move Over Fentanyl: Nitazenes Next Wave in Opioid Epidemic

In 2021 the U.S. lost a historic 100,000 citizens to drug overdose, largely due to illicit fentanyl and its analogues adulterating the drug supply.  As we struggle to combat this problem with tools like fentanyl test strips and other imperfect stop-gap measures, suddenly bad news arrives:  There's a new family of super-potent synthetic opioids on the black market that are even more powerful than fentanyl.  

Introducing the nitazenes, also known as benzimidazole opioids.  

But this bad news is totally predictable to anyone who's been paying attention for the last 80 years.  When the law cracks down on one drug, another pops up in its place immediately and that new drug is almost always more powerful & less safe than the one that was banned.  That's certainly the case here.  

The nitazene family (isotonitazene, fluonitazene, bronitazene, etc) are fully synthetic and can be up to 20 times more potent than fentanyl.  (For reference, fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100x stronger than morphine).  There are currently no commercially available test strips to allow drug users to test for the presence of these substances, and attempts to revive patients who have overdosed on them with naloxone--the gold standard in opioid overdose--often fail due to their potency.  They've turned up in Florida, Iowa, California, Louisiana, New Jersey and several other states and have been responsible for at least 250 overdose deaths so far.  I personally had one online dealer try to sell me "iso" before I realized what was going on.  

As much as I emphasize the importance of avoiding hyperbole when talking about drugs of any kind, it becomes more difficult when these hyper-potent drugs are unleashed by the black market.  What might be safe in a lab or in a carefully measured pharmaceutical dose becomes deadly when distributed unevenly in a pressed pill or powder of unknown potency or taken without the user's knowledge.  And that's exactly what's happening here.  Thus, these substances are more akin to a biowarfare agent or poison than a drug... at least the way they're currently being used.  

 Isotonitazene

As dangerous as black market fentanyl is, nitazenes are worse.  Heroin was bad enough.  The OxyContin epidemic was bad too but as we see now, things can always get worse.  Every time new laws are passed making it more difficult to obtain a drug like prescription pain pills, opioid users--be they chronic pain patients or legit addicts--are driven to more extreme corners of the black market.  And the criminals controlling it always opt for the most potent, cheapest & easiest option to satisfy the demand.  Why wouldn't they?  The risk inherent in producing, packaging, smuggling and delivering illegal drugs necessitates cutting your risks where you can.  Heroin was once the opioid du jour on the black market until they discovered fentanyl which was more potent and could be made in a lab with no need to grow & harvest fields of poppies to make a small amount of heroin.  But the rise of anti-fentanyl laws has made it a more risky choice, hence the advent of the new Frankenstein drugs:  nitazenes.  Whatever comes next I don't want to see.  

It doesn't have to be this way.  We could stop this cycle of death right now by changing our drug laws and giving control of the drug supply to government-designated entities that dispense pure opioids to adults over 18 or 21.  Instead, we're seeing drug laws trend the other direction, prosecuting dealers for murder when users overdose on fentanyl.  This is exactly why new monster drugs like the nitazenes are coming into existence.  

How many more young, vital Americans are we going to sacrifice to this man-made pandemic before we stop this madness?  We have Democrats controlling all 3 branches of government--supposedly the "liberal" party--yet our draconian drug laws around the use and dealing of drugs remain the same.  If we don't start instituting radically different approaches like Switzerland and Vancouver, which have legal heroin substitution programs and Dilaudid vending machines for addicts, we're in big trouble.  We already are but it's about to get incalculably, indescribably worse.  

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it's time to start calling a spade a spade:  This is nothing short of genocide.  These deaths of despair in the midst of historic economic lows, an unprecedented pandemic & the threat of nuclear war while the government sits on its hands are an outrage.  This is not the fault of "the cartels" or the dealers and we can't prosecute our way out of it.  Throwing addicts in treatment or jail against their will is not the answer.  These deadly black market analogues will only get more deadly with every wave of new drug bans.  They are killing us and they know it.  All the data is there but they have to keep the game of deadly Whack-A-Mole going to justify the existence of the DEA & other 3-letter agencies.  This overdose and addiction pandemic started with the pharmaceutical companies' overprescribing and now it's being continued due to our own laws.  We must legalize all drugs to stop it.  Failure to do so is to declare war on American citizens.  Do not blame the drugs--blame drug prohibition.  Every fentanyl or nitazene overdose is a prohibition death.  Failure to report it as such is disinformation.  

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