Doctors and law enforcement are warning of a deadly surge in a so-called ‘Frankenstein’ opioid 40 times stronger than fentanyl that could wreak havoc across America.
Nitazenes, a class of synthetic drugs pouring in from China, are up to 2,000 times more potent than heroin, meaning that a tiny dose can kill.
Amid a global shortage in heroin, nitazenes are being mixed with that drug and others, including fentanyl and cocaine, increasing the risk of instant death for unsuspecting users.
The synthetic opioids are also readily available from unscrupulous dealers on overseas websites and social media platforms, in liquid, powder or pill form – sometimes disguised as common medications.
A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent warned: ‘One nitazene pill pressed to look like any prescription drug can and will likely kill, and getting access to it is as far away as your kid’s smartphone.’
A DEA agent holds a nitazene powder sample at the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania
Drug users, including these on the streets of San Francisco, are being warned about the so-called ‘Frankenstein’ opioids
Among the victims is Mateo Omeragic, a popular video game YouTuber known as ‘Mega Mateo’, who had 120,000 followers.
Omeragic, 22, also the co-founder of a clothing label, bought what he thought was a Xanax tablet on the street in Coventry Township, Ohio.
After having dinner with his family, he went to bed but was dead when his mother, Maria, found him in the morning.
‘I immediately started screaming for my daughter and then she came in. We were trying to move him over but he was already blue,’ she told 19 News.
An autopsy established that the pill had been laced with nitazene, a drug she had never heard of.
Among the victims is Mateo Omeragic, 22, a popular video game YouTuber known as ‘Mega Mateo’, who bought what he believed to be a Xanax tablet on the street.
After taking the pill, Omeragic went to bed – and never woke up. An autopsy found that it had been laced with nitazene
According to the DEA, there are 10 known types of nitazenes and they are all listed as Schedule I controlled substances, along with heroin and LSD.
In Omeragic’s case, the specific type was called protonitazene.
The group of drugs was first synthesized in the 1950s as an alternative to morphine, blocking pain signals to the brain.
However, they were up to thousands of times more potent than morphine so were never put on the market due to the high risk of overdose.
With no practical medical application, nitazenes were nicknamed ‘Frankenstein’ drugs and largely forgotten about, apart from an incident in Moscow in 1998 when 10 people died.
Criminal gangs in China have revived the formula, employing chemists to make the drugs in illicit laboratories before shipping them in parcels to the US, where they were first detected in 2019.
Later, traces were discovered in waste water in Washington state and Illinois.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded that Xi Jinping’s China stop gangs from sending opioids to America
Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi has been tasked with clamping down on opioids
The drugs can be ingested as pills, inhaled or injected.
According to the DEA, there have been at least 2,000 deaths linked to nitazenes across the U.S. since 2019.
But that is almost certainly an under-representation because many medical examiners do not test for nitazenes in suspected fentanyl or heroin overdoses.
Law enforcement agencies are trying to clamp down. Nitazenes have been found in more than 4,300 drug seizures in the U.S. so far.
Two weeks ago, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, Dr Debra Bogen, said nitazenes had been a contributing factor in 45 deaths in the state.
DEA agents in Houston, Texas, have reported a ‘dramatic increase’ there, with 15 confirmed deaths.
Anne Fundner, left, speaks as President Donald Trump holds a photo of her son, Weston Fundner, during a ceremony to sign the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act, in the East Room of the White House on July 16
When people overdose, naloxone can be used as a rescue drug, as it is for fentanyl, but multiple doses are needed because of the overwhelming potency of nitazenes.
Dr Gregory McDonald, chief forensic pathologist at the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, recently encountered his first nitazene-related death.
He described the opioid as a ‘fairly cheap, relatively easy drug to make and very, very potent’.
It is a ‘really bad combination for public health’ and the current death toll appeared to be the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
The nitazene surge follows the 2022 decision of the Taliban to ban poppy production in Afghanistan, the country that had supplied 90 percent of global heroin.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), production of opium subsequently fell 74 percent in 2023.
That led gangs in China to ramp up their production of nitazenes to fill the vacuum.
The agency warned: ‘Nitazenes – a group of synthetic opioids which can be even more potent than fentanyl – have recently emerged in several high-income countries, resulting in an increase in overdose deaths.’
Angela Me, head of research at UNODC, said: ‘The purity of heroin on the market is expected to decline. Heroin users may switch to other opioids.’
A man holds up a bag of fentanyl in the Tenderloin section of San Francisco, California
A heroin user illustrates how to draw heroin or fentanyl into a clean syringe
That shift could worsen the U.S. epidemic in opioid deaths, which had shown a reduction last year.
In 2024, there were 80,391 drug overdose deaths, compared with 110,037 in 2023, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. South Dakota and Nevada were the only states to record an increase.
Meanwhile, nitazenes have also hit Europe and Africa.
In the UK, the official number of annual nitazene-related deaths more than doubled to 333 last year.
Steve Rolles, a senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told the Daily Mail: ‘We already have the highest overdose rate in Europe. Nitazenes could make it way, way worse.
‘I am scared. There’s almost one person dying every day from nitazenes and most people haven’t even heard of it.’
Pouches of fentanyl displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration Northeast Regional Laboratory in New York
A recent report by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime found that 48 percent of recent drug deaths in Estonia and 28 percent in Latvia were attributable to nitazenes.
‘Nitazenes are potent and often deadly synthetic opioids that have spread rapidly across global retail drug markets,’ the report said, adding that nitazene-associated fatalities are ‘surging globally’.
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