The UN drugs agency on Wednesday sounded the alarm on a group of potent synthetic opioids, as it warned that the drop in Afghanistan’s opium production may boost synthetic drug use.
“Nitazenes –- a group of synthetic opioids which can be even more potent than fentanyl -– have recently emerged in several high-income countries, resulting in an increase in overdose deaths,” the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a press release.
Its annual report noted that the drug had been found in Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Britain and the United States.
Other organisations, including the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), have likewise warned of the emergence of nitazenes.
Global opium production fell by 74 percent in 2023, the UNODC noted, after the Taliban banned it in Afghanistan, its top producer.
“The purity of heroin on the market is expected to decline,” UNODC noted, warning that “heroin users may switch to other opioids” with those posing “significant risks to health”.
UNODC chief researcher Angela Me noted that currently there was no shortage of heroin yet, but in the case of some overdose deaths, nitazenes — which originate mostly in China — were thought to have been mixed into heroin.
