Now, it seems, it’s Australia’s turn at the cemetery.
“Protonitazene is a novel synthetic opioid that can produce life-threatening toxic effects in very small amounts,” the Victoria Department of Health said in a statement.
It is, in fact, a monster drug—so strong and so deadly that, unlike fentanyl, it was considered too powerful to have any legitimate medical use and was listed as a Schedule 1 drug in the US, making it highly restricted and utterly illegal.
“We all relate to deaths caused by fentanyl. Protonitazene is three times more powerful than fentanyl.”
In April, police found four people—two men, a woman and a teenage boy—dead in Broadmeadows, a Melbourne suburb. Authorities say the four people thought they had purchased pure cocaine, but the white powder they had sniffed was, in fact, laced with protonitazene, a murderous drug of the class of various nitazenes, considered three times more potent than fentanyl and up to 100 times more potent than heroin.
“We’re seeing that in America … people are consuming cocaine and finding that it’s polluted with fentanyl,” said John Ryan, chief executive officer of Penington Institute, a public health research group. “The biggest risk in Australia is people who are already opioid dependent, buying what they think is an opioid, such as heroin, but actually getting it laced with nitazenes.”
To date, there have been 23 deaths attributed to nitazenes in Australia—two in 2021, five in 2022, nine in 2023 and seven in 2024.
“It is clear from the evidence provided to the Coroners Court of Victoria that [due to] the rapid growth in new novel substances, together with increasing potency and the broad array of substances subject to adulteration … the risk of another mass overdose event like the one in Broadmeadows continues to remain high,” Victoria Alcohol and Drug Association CEO Chris Christoforou said.
After 2021, when the Taliban cracked down on poppy production in Afghanistan, heroin and opium production plummeted. Drug dealers moved rapidly to fill the vacuum, ramping up distribution of synthetics like fentanyl and developing new “zenes,” which now account for up to 25 different varieties of lethal additives.
Cranking out drugs in a lab is much easier and cheaper than growing them on a poppy farm—there’s no worrying about the weather, about the harvest or about lengthy processing.
That’s why synthetics have been a drug dealer’s dream but, all too often, a drug addict’s nightmare.
The World Health Organization has said that much of the protonitazene on the market comes from China and can be easily obtained on the dark web.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the US overdose epidemic is claiming up to 220 lives per day, and drug overdoses outnumber traffic accidents as the primary cause of preventable deaths.
“There is major concern that this drug [protonitazene] is being mixed with other illicit drugs, particularly methamphetamine, and that people are being accidentally exposed to it,” South Australia’s Drug and Alcohol Services Acting State Director Dr. Victoria Cock said. “Even if used knowingly by a regular opioid user, there is a high chance of overdose and death.”
“Zenes” are among the most lethal synthetics currently being consumed—mostly unintentionally—by addicts. With every new additive drug dealers introduce, the substance seems to be stronger and deadlier than the one before, each new chemical bringing us one step closer to the grave.
“It’s here. It’s on our streets,” Bill Bodner, who formerly ran the DEA’s Los Angeles office, said of nitazenes. “Fentanyl, that’s the synthetic opioid that we all know of now. We all relate to deaths caused by fentanyl. Protonitazene is three times more powerful than fentanyl.”
Australia needs a new approach to battling their country’s invasion by fentanyl, methamphetamine and protonitazene.
How about the truth?
