What To Know About Nitazenes?

VIDEO – IT AIN’T GOOD –

Dec. 23, 2023 – The coroner told CBS News that while Denver has seen a decrease in fentanyl overdoses, use of nitazenes has emerged — which “raises new concerns.” Nitazenes were first developed in the 1950s and early 1960s, said Claire Zagorski, a chemist, paramedic and translational scientist in Austin, Texas. At the time, they weren’t illicit drugs, but were intended to be sold commercially. That never happened…In recent years, those original formulations have been used as a backbone by illicit drug manufacturers to make new synthetic opioids amid a crackdown on substances like fentanyl.

“When you have a backbone of one drug to start with, there is almost limitless ways to modify it,” Zagorski said. Modifications are made by adding substances to that backbone in a laboratory setting.

The illicit use of nitazenes remains rare, according to Dr. Wilson M. Compton, the deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. However, testing for nitazenes is not conducted in every overdose death, Compton said, so “we don’t actually know the complete universe of how many deaths are due to these potentially very toxic compounds.”