What’s behind the rise in ‘fake heroin’?

DRUG LAWS? –

Dec. 1, 2023 – The number of deaths relating to use of synthetic opioids like nitazene, fentanyl, and xylazine are on the rise — here’s what you need to know. Nitazene is a synthetic opioid similar to fentanyl, a drug responsible for tens of thousands of drug deaths per year in the USA. Unlike natural opioids like heroin, which is derived from poppy seeds, synthetic opioids like nitazene are made in labs, using a range of different chemicals. They’re also known to be much more potent than natural opioids like morphine and heroin and therefore are much more likely to lead to overdose.

While there are no reliable figures yet, a national patient alert sent out in July claimed that nitazenes, which are around 100 times more potent than morphine, had been linked to a rise in overdoses and deaths in people who use drugs, primarily heroin, in England in the two months prior. In that time, some parts of the country had seen an “unusual increase” in opioid-related deaths, which usually sit at around 40 per week.