People buying opioids and sedatives online face deadly fakes, expert warns

People trying to buy illicit synthetic opioids and sedatives online to treat pain, anxiety and insomnia increasingly risk taking a different drug that has caused dozens of deaths among heroin users, a leading expert has warned.

Nitazenes – synthetic and extremely powerful drugs implicated in fatalities of chronic powdered heroin users in Birmingham, Bristol and London in recent months – have been detected in illicit supplies of tablets being sold as diazepam and codeine that appeal to a wider market.

New figures released to the Guardian by the National Crime Agency reveal 65 people have died from taking nitazenes in the past six months – more than two a week, while detections in drug supplies have increased more than fivefold in the last two years.

“[Nitazenes] are being mixed into heroin but it is also in fake diazepam, fake codeine and the person buying the tablets online is a very different kind of user to a heroin user,” Dr Caroline Copeland, the director of the National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths said. “It means the risk is much wider.”

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Source: The Guardian, 17 January 2024