The nice folks at the Vatican and at the UN will disagree. But then again they don’t care about some poor, weak slob dying in a gutter from an overdose.
Posted on 02/17/2024 5:25:26 PM PST by Red Badger
Two deaths in Boulder County, Colorado, in 2023 are the latest in the U.S. to be blamed on the powerful class of synthetic opioids called nitazenes. Most health systems cannot detect nitazenes, so the exact number of overdoses is unknown, but they’re implicated in more than 200 deaths in Europe and North America since 2019, including 11 in Colorado since 2021. One of the two Boulder County deaths is linked to a new formulation called N-Desethyl etonitazene, which was identified by a national laboratory, and is thought to be the first related death.
The Conversation interviewed Dr. Christopher Holstege, professor of emergency medicine and pediatrics at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and director of the Blue Ridge Poison Center, where opioid overdoses are increasing. He explains why nitazenes are so potent and deadly.
What are nitazenes?
Nitazenes are a class of synthetic opioids that contains more than 20 unique compounds, including isotonitazene, which was first identified in 2019 and is known on the streets as ISO. It also includes protonitazene, metonitazene and etonitazene.
Nitazenes are psychoactive substances, or “designer drugs,” that aren’t controlled by any laws or conventions but pose significant health risk to the public. These substances have recently surfaced as illegal street drugs.
Researchers have relatively little information on how the human body reacts to nitazenes because the drugs have never gone through clinical trials. But lab tests show certain nitazenes could be hundreds to thousands of times more potent than morphine and 10 to 40 times stronger than fentanyl.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has classified many formulations of nitazenes as Schedule 1 drugs under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning they have no medical use and have a high risk of abuse.
When were nitazenes first developed?
Nitazenes were initially developed in the 1950s by the pharmaceutical research laboratories of the Swiss chemical company CIBA Aktiengesellschaft. It synthesized numerous substances in the drug class to be used as painkillers.
However, nitazenes were never approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for medical use in humans. They were nearly forgotten outside of specialized research circles until they reemerged as street drugs in 2019. As law enforcement has cracked down on other drugs such as fentanyl, illegal labs have used historical pharmacology research to formulate analogs of nitazenes as street drugs.
Since 2019, at least six formulas have come from the original patent, but others, like the one detected in Boulder, are brand new. Specialized lab testing is required to identify nitazenes in toxicology samples, and fentanyl test strips can’t detect nitazene analogs.
But since first being detected, nitazenes have been blamed for 200 drug-related overdose deaths in Europe and the United States. Although nitazenes are now identified as illegal street drugs in numerous countries, many medical providers aren’t even aware they exist.
What types of nitazenes are showing up on the streets?
Nitazene first appeared in 2019 in the Midwest as a white powdery substance similar to cocaine. It later appeared on the streets of Washington, D.C., as yellow, brown and white powders. Since 2022, the DEA has found other types of nitazenes in both powder and blue tablet forms.
Nitazenes are also mixed with other street drugs such as heroin and fentanyl and with fake oxycodone pills, without users knowing it.
The Justice Department has indicted several companies in China, alleging that they ship the raw chemicals to make nitazenes to Mexico and the U.S., where they get mixed by cartels and traffickers, then distributed on the streets.
What are signs of a nitazene overdose?
The toxic effects of nitazene resemble those associated with other classic opioids such as morphine and fentanyl and include small pupils and slowing of the respiratory and central nervous systems, which can lead to death.
Because of the potency of the nitazenes, symptoms can develop rapidly after someone is exposed, killing them before they can get medical care.
Does naloxone counteract the effects of overdose?
Naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, is reportedly effective in reversing overdoses due to nitazene, but larger and multiple doses might be required.
More asymmetric warfare from the Chicoms
Drugs were developed here, found not to be useful and never marketed due to respiratory issues — too easy to overdose
Patents are public domain now.
Easy to make in China or Mexico.
“ Since 2019, there has been an emergence of nitazene compounds on the illicit drug market, which have been positively identified in numerous cases of fatal overdose events. In August 2020, isotonitazene was placed in schedule I of the CSA (85 FR 51342). Subsequently, seven additional benzimidazole-opioids [3]
have been placed in schedule I of the CSA (87 FR 21556).
Recently, two additional benzimidazole-opioids have emerged on the illicit drug market. Law enforcement officers have encountered
-desethyl isotonitazene and
-piperidinyl etonitazene
in several solid forms (e.g.,
powder and tablets). These substances are not approved pharmaceutical products and are not approved for medical use anywhere in the world.
“too easy to overdose”
OOOO boy that’s the one I want ...
I know I’ll get my moneys worth if’s dropping other folks.
dawg I can handle my shwag
Let’s party like it’s 1347 .....
The nice folks at the Vatican and at the UN will disagree. But then again they don’t care about some poor, weak slob dying in a gutter from an overdose.
Just Say NO!
The first thing Mao did when he took over China was "dispose" of all drug addicts. Don't know why all of our current Socialists are unaware of this little tidbit.
Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam said he would supply US Troops in South Vietnam with the finest heroin in the world..............
You’re right. At this point, Singapore’s hard-line approach is the last, best hope.
The decriminalization of drugs that’s happened in the U.S., de jure with overt legalization of weed and some other drugs, and de facto with Soros-backed prosecutors who won’t enforce the drug laws we’ve got, has been a disaster. And the problem is getting worse, as a culture of “getting high” takes root in a much larger segment of the population than has ever existed in the past.
I was talking recently to a parent of 7-year-old at a ritzy private school in San Francisco. She was saying that it’s not uncommon now in her world to take her kid to a 1st or 2nd-grade birthday party ... where there’s a side party happening in another room of the house where millennial parents are smoking weed, ingesting psychedelic mushrooms or micro-dosing LSD. What a world. And if the parents are all druggies, how are *their* kids going to grow up? There’s going to be a new generation of kids like Robert Downey Jr... raised in a drug-using household who went on to severe addiction.
Darwin calling....
Here’s an idea.
Don’t do drugs and you are far, far, far less likely to die from overdose.
And yes, I do recognize the potential for it to be used as a poison for a mass casualty event.
However, not taking drugs and deliberately choosing to put it into your system is a big factor.
All part of the planned destruction of America.
I had a squirrel monkey back in the late 60s, and I used the name CIBA as the basis to name my monkey only I changed it to Tiba, as it had an African flair to it as far as I was concerned. I'm not sure I even realized it was a chemical company's name I was using to create the monkey's name. He was a great little man. I would let him out to roam the back yard and climb the trees, and when he was ready to come in he would come knock on the backdoor. Funny the things that you remember so clearly from way back in the past, but forget things from recent events.
Anyway, my poor mother was deathly afraid of it, because of his long tail which reminded her of a rat which she was also deathly afraid of because of something that happened in her youth involving rats.
I came home one day, and my mom was running out of the kitchen down the hall, into the dining room, and back into the kitchen, with the chihuahua hot on her heels. I asked what are you doing and she said your monkey is after me. I laughed and said the monkey it sitting atop the curtains watching you and chipper running in circles screaming.
Even my mother had to break into laughter when she realized it wasn't the monkey chasing her.
Never could understand why neither the dog's or the cat's tail didn't bother her.
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