Forget About Fentanyl. This Shit Is Ten Times Stronger And Almost Untraceable
Criminal organizations modified the chemical structure of fentanyl to avoid detection, creating a monster opioid.
In early December the emergency service in Boulder County, California received a call asking for help on a 22-year-old boy that was unresponsive. It didn’t take much for the paramedics to learn the boy had overdosed. But then something was off. It seemed that he had only taken a few Xanax pills, not enough to have an overdose. They immediately tested for fentanyl but it came out negative. So they used more time and resources from a lab to learn what was behind that Xanax.
The kid had bought the counterfeit pills online, from a website that was selling all kinds of drugs: Xanax, Oxycontin, Cocaine, Heroine, Weed, whatever. Authorities believe the dealer was sourcing counterfeit pills from Mexico.
Before the lab results came back, authorities received another very similar case: a young male overdosed on a fake pill laced with something that was not fentanyl.
Both kids had unknowingly consumed a Nitazene, a substance 10 times more powerful than Fentanyl and which authorities are calling ‘Frankenstein’, since it is an ugly modification of Fentanyl.
Nitazenes were created in 1957 in a Swiss laboratory while chemists were looking for a stronger analgesic than morphine but, more importantly, without the addictive side effects of it, what doctors call a lower “danger profile”.
The substance did great as a powerful analgesic. The lab rats they used to test the new analgesic did perfectly well during a test where they put their tails on a burning pan and waited to see how long after the rats kept showing pain symptoms.
But the “danger profile” came back scaringly high: the side effects like how addictive Nitazenes were showed several times worse than morphine. They immediately dismissed the substance.
It is still unknown how the chemical profile to produce Nitazenes ended up in the illegal market. The thing with Nitazenes is that you only need the most basic chemistry education to learn how to manufacture them, according to Dr. Joe Schuarcz, director at McGill University for Science and Society.
“It seems that the samples that are being found on our streets today are coming from China. China has a large number of unregulated labs that would produce anything a customer wants,” Dr. Schuarcz said.
Nitazenes are a small variant of the same chemical structure as fentanyl, and by small other variations you can create dozens of new forms of Nitazenes, some more dangerous in terms of power, others more addictive.
In the case of most Nitazenes, an overdosing person would need at least two Naloxone doses to fight a deadly intoxication. With Fentanyl one single dose is needed.
Authorities in the U.S. have currently identified at least a dozen of these Natizanes already in the streets, posing a huge threat to society but also to authorities trying to reduce its impact.
The most common Nitazene compounds include Isotonitazene, Metonitazene, Etonitazene and Protonitazene.
After the two recent overdose cases in Colorado, authorities raised the alarms.
“The dynamic nature of illicit drug markets, with substances like Nitazenes being introduced, poses serious challenges for public health and law enforcement. The fact that Nitazenes have been around for decades but are only recently emerging in forensic toxicology testing highlights the constant evolution of synthetic drugs and the difficulties in keeping up with their ever-changing chemical structures. Many of these modifications are intentional by illicit drug suppliers to evade legal regulations and detection methods,” Boulder’s County Coroner said in a written statement.
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