Police issued an urgent warning after two people died and 10 were hospitalized in one area. They had taken drugs containing a deadly synthetic opioid said to be ‘500 times more powerful than heroin’
An urgent warning has been issued after a drug ‘500 times more powerful than heroin’ caused two deaths and saw 10 people rushed to hospital in just a few days.
Police in Devon urged people not to take any illicit substances over the weekend after a “bad batch” of heroin laced with the synthetic drug nitazene was linked to two deaths. Ten people in total needed treatment, and two remained in hospital late on Sunday.
North and West Devon Police said on Friday: “There is a bad patch of believed Heroin going around North Devon. It is making people very ill. We have declared a Major Incident. Please check on any known drug users. Do not take any controlled substances.”
On Saturday, a council-supported drugs safety group in Bristol warned that adulterated drugs containing the substance had been found in the city. Nitazenes – which were added to the controlled substances list by the UK government in March – has also recently been found in a number of other street drugs, such as cocaine and ketamine.
Nitazenes explained
Nitazenes are synthetic opioids developed by the pharmaceutical industry in the 1950s, but they were never approved for us as medicines.
Some are hundreds of times more potent than heroin and, like opioids, can cause respiratory depression. In the UK, they have been detected in street drugs, meaning users are taking them unwittingly.
Nitazenes can be manufactured cheaply and quickly, without relying on factors like poppy harvests, making them an attractive proposition for those producing street drugs.
The Loop charity said in a Facebook post on Saturday: “Nitazenes, dangerous synthetic opioids, have been tested in Bristol in multiple samples of heroin from different sources. Please share this urgent drug alert to people who use drugs, organizations and services locally and nationwide . Heroin tested today contains potentially fatal doses of nitazenes.”
Fellow charity Bristol Drugs Project also shared an urgent warning, urging drug users to get in touch for advice on naloxone, a drug used to counter the effects of an overdose of heroin or other opioid drug. They said: “If you’re Bristol based, get in touch with us for naloxone, OST (opioid substitution treatment) or advice around your drug use.”
A group of 15 synthetic opioids were brought under the “strictest controls” by the UK Government only last month, in a bid to prevent deaths from taking the drugs. They are now categorized as class A drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The National Crime Agency reported 54 deaths in the last six months of 2023 where nitazenes were detected in post-mortems. As Nitazene tests are not routinely done following a drug death, it does not routinely appear in toxicology reports, which tend to represent it as an opioid death or a death caused by a cocktail of drugs.
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