Nitazenes: Dire warning about fentanyl-like zombie drug which has already claimed 20 lives in Australia

Health experts and advocates have issued an urgent warning about a dangerous and illegal drug, amid fears Australian deaths will skyrocket.

Pills sold as MDMA have been discovered to contain nitazenes, a dangerous and highly potent drug manufactured in illegal Chinese laboratories.

The synthetic, super-strength opioid is similar to fentanyl, which has already devastated parts of the US.

But nitasenes are more dangerous than fentanyl and a thousand times stronger than morphine, making users much more likely to overdose.

With 20 deaths and dozens of overdoses already reported in Australia, health authorities and experts, including Dr Marianne Jauncey, are now on high alert.

“Honestly, it’s terrifying,” she said 60 minutes.

‘If nitasenes enter Australia’s illicit drug supply, deaths will skyrocket.’

Ms Jauncey runs the safe injection room in Sydney’s Kings Cross and warned everyone she needed to carry naloxone, a drug that reverses a nitasene overdose.

“It will save your life if you overdose on opiates,” she said.

“This should be readily available in glove compartments and kitchen cupboards across the country.”

Ms Jauncey warned that any type of substance, from MDMA to cocaine, counterfeit painkillers and even vapes, could be laced with nitasenes.

She said not knowing what substances are contaminated is another reason why people should be able to test their medications before taking them.

“It certainly makes sense to put information and power in people’s hands, to give them information about what they use,” she said.

‘[It’s] actually more than frustrating when lives are at stake.’

Law reform campaigner Caitlyn Dooley knew something was seriously wrong when she noticed revelers becoming unwell at a rave in January.

Ms Dooley, from drug harm reduction program DanceWize, said her first encounter with the drug was when her team were called after reports of a drug overdose at an event.

She said she realized that small pressed pills with the Red Bull logo were being sold as MDMA, but were so dangerous there was no way they could be taken safely.

“People had taken a substance that was a pressed pill that was sold as MDMA, but which resulted in people having an extreme overdose of opioids,” she told the programme.

“It was just nitazines and it was sold to kids as MDMA, so it was just poison.”

Fortunately, no revelers died that night thanks to a group of quick-thinking volunteers who administered naloxone to several people who had taken nitasenes.

“It would be twenty minutes before they would go back down,” Mrs. Dooley recalled.

‘So all these people had to be taken to hospital. They all required intravenous naloxone to survive.”

The increasing rise of nitasenes has revived the debate over pill testing.

Advocates have renewed calls for federal and state governments to address the problem before it’s too late.

“How come we say we can only test after the event?” Doctor Jauncey asked.

‘It certainly makes sense to put information and power in the hands of people, to give them information about what they use.’

Claire Rocha’s son Dylan died after taking heroin contaminated with nitasenes in England three years ago.

He was one of the first people in Britain to die from nitasenes.

His grief-stricken mother still thinks about the moment she found out he had died.

She revealed she went upstairs and found her 21-year-old unconscious on the bed and turning blue.

“The paramedic came out and said, ‘I’m really sorry. We did everything we could. Dylan actually passed away,” Ms. Rocha recalled.

“He has made some very questionable decisions and choices. But at the end of the day, what he took, he thought it was safe to take, he had taken that amount before, he thought he would be fine.

‘And he wasn’t.

‘He was eventually killed by a silent killer that neither of us knew about… he would never have known it was there.

‘The smallest amount can be fatal.’