Nitazenes: gangs are now getting people high on chemical weapons smuggled from China

I'm seeing articles that nitazenes smuggled from China are now turning up as a street drug. 1 2

Nitazenes are as potent as fentanyl - notably etonitazene is 10x more potent than fentanyl. People dying of the drug averaged 2.2 nanograms/mL = 2.2 micrograms per liter in the blood, suggesting a lethal dose in micrograms. By comparison, VX gas may take up to a milligram to kill someone, though there are some more potent nerve gases.

Note that nitazenes are not new - look it up in Wikipedia, and you'll find that the drug was synthesized and studied in the 1950s. It just has a somewhat uncertain safety profile - the stuff is extra dangerous to play with, even for powerful opiates, so the risk/benefit analysis never favored it.

Until now. Powerful scanners, and border walls, and electronic noses to back up the dogs .... it all pushes for stuff that is smaller and easier to smuggle.

Just so, the final (?) triumph of the War on Drugs: opiate addicts are now actually buying pharmacologically relevant quantities of chemical weapon from street gangs. Gangs who, one day, will realize that the stuff they are selling has far more useful applications.

We've sure come a long way from opium and poppy tea! Everybody give themselves a pat on the back.

I stopped wondering how this works when I heard about krokodil.

Luce said:

I stopped wondering how this works when I heard about krokodil.

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Krokodil is 10x more potent than morphine, and certainly could kill someone forcibly injected with it. But something 1500x more potent than morphine - 150x more potent than krokodil - can be used as a far more versatile weapon. There's a big difference between pouring a packet of powder in someone's drink, and flicking a speck of dust as you pass by his plate.

This substance is one of many potential candidates for the agent used in the Moscow theater hostage crisis, though sources suggest something else was used. While I disagree with most people in that I think the Russian federal agents tried their best in a situation where everyone could easily have died, the standoff illustrated how easy it is to kill a large number of people with synthetic opiates... even when you don't want to.

Calling it a 'chemical weapon' maybe be a stretch.
As you point out ti is easier to smuggle, more potent so less is needed, and I would bet it is less expensive to produce, i.e. a margin for greater mark up and profit.
The danger is that it is also being used to cut heroin or cocaine with so the addict uses their 'usual' amount for their heroin or cocaine fix and end up ODing and dying.
Plus, as with fentanyl, unknowing exposure to it by law enforcement puts their lives in danger.

KingLeo said:

Calling it a 'chemical weapon' maybe be a stretch.

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It's more deadly than VX. If the gangs aren't using it to kill people yet, or threaten to if they're not paid, that's an oversight they'll kick themselves for later. Using this stuff on addicts is a wasted opportunity.

I think the main way fentanyl and other potent opioids are killing is that you can't evenly mix powders. It's not like with a liquid solution where entropy does the work. The grains might never separate. For all I know, some powder grains might stick to one another better than they stick to baby laxative. There's not a lot of science in that field, not published science anyway.

We could avoid all of this by legalizing the open sale at any drugstore of ordinary opium to registered addicts for little more than the price of sugar. And there would be basically no downside - they are using anyway, but now there's so much uncertainty. And disease, which spreads beyond the addicts.

bythoughts said:

It's more deadly than VX. If the gangs aren't using it to kill people yet, or threaten to if they're not paid, that's an oversight they'll kick themselves for later. Using this stuff on addicts is a wasted opportunity.

I think the main way fentanyl and other potent opioids are killing is that you can't evenly mix powders. It's not like with a liquid solution where entropy does the work. The grains might never separate. For all I know, some powder grains might stick to one another better than they stick to baby laxative. There's not a lot of science in that field, not published science anyway.

We could avoid all of this by legalizing the open sale at any drugstore of ordinary opium to registered addicts for little more than the price of sugar. And there would be basically no downside - they are using anyway, but now there's so much uncertainty. And disease, which spreads beyond the addicts.

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I get your point but I doubt if a junkie on the verge of withdrawal looks that closely at the grains of the heroin they just bought.
They just need to high.
And if a dealer can cut their heroin with cheap fentanyl or nitazenes they will.