VIDEO: Nitazenes – The dangerous street drug which is up to 1000 times stronger than morphine

BEC: There's quite a lot of public housing in this area, low income, a lot of unemployment. 

ELISE WORTHINGTON, REPORTER:  It’s dusk in Sydney’s Western suburbs. The NSW Users and AIDs Association make regular deliveries of clean syringes in the area.

BEC: Because you've got some people that, you know, take ice and opioids, and then you've got some that just take just opioid-based products. So, it really depends, you know, on the person.

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Bec has seen a lot over her years in the job but in late March, dozens of her clients began getting sick.

BEC: Okay, we're at Kingswood which is near Penrith in New South Wales, and over the Easter long weekend, we had an overdose cluster of approximately 23 overdoses but I think the actual number of overdoses was a lot more. 

It's very shocking. We wouldn't expect that many overdoses, definitely not. 

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Bec was one of the first to raise the alarm about a dangerous new substance in circulation.

How were people taking it, and what were they intending to take?

BEC: Well, they were intending to take heroin, I guess. That was, you know, that's my understanding. So, what they were telling me was it happened very quickly, that people were going down very quick. 

It was, it was upsetting and not just that, but they're very reluctant to call for help. 

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Testing later revealed the group had overdosed on a novel type of synthetic opioid called nitazenes.

Some nitazenes can be up to 1000 times stronger than morphine and many times stronger than fentanyl.

PROF. NADINE EZARD, ST VINCENT’S HOSPITAL:  Nitazenes are appearing in all sorts of drugs, including MDMA and cocaine, non-opiate type drugs and we don't know, we can't answer the question about why they're ending up in those in those other drugs.

Anything overnight, any issues?

NURSE: There was a code black downstairs that had to be transferred here for safety but no other issues.

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Prof Nadine Ezard and the team at St Vincents Hospital in Sydney is monitoring the emergence of nitazenes.

NADINE EZARD:  Nitazenes were first developed in the laboratory when they were looking for opioids in about the '50s, but they were too potent, so they were abandoned at the time but they're still not being used pharmaceutically anywhere. They're not used clinically anywhere, but they are starting to appear in the illicit market. 

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Earlier this year the new drug brought a music festival in Sydney to a standstill. 

MUSIC FESTIVAL ANNOUNCEMENT:  We have a quick announcement. We have been advised there is a substance in the form of a red or a pink pill that has been flagged by medical specialists as having serious adverse effects.

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Two people had an opioid overdose after taking what they thought was MDMA.

MOLLY JOHNS, NSW AMBULANCE:  So, what we're finding is nitazene are showing up in various different drugs at the moment and the people who are regular drug users are finding that they're taking the normal amount that they normally would, however, they're now ending up with a life-threatening overdose.

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Paramedics say they are seeing an increase in calls for opioid overdoses and are finding it is harder to revive some patients.

MOLLY JOHNS:  We will give one dose intramuscularly, and then if required will give a second dose, third, fourth dose until the patient's awake. 

Last week I worked four days in the Penrith area, and I saw multiple overdose jobs come in, people unconscious. We are looking at about maybe five, six, seven in that space of four days. 

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  And is that more unusual?

MOLLY JOHNS:  Yeah, that would be a spike in calls.

CLARE BEECH, SENIOR ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER:  It's incredibly important, particularly for these drugs, which are very strong, that as soon as you notice someone becoming unwell, unrousable, shallow breathing, call Triple-000 and paramedics will arrive promptly to assist.

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Nitazenes have now been found in every state and territory around the country including in fake pharmaceutical drugs in Queensland and through the ACT’s pill testing services. 

This week the Victorian Government warned nitazenes were being sold as cocaine and causing serious harm. There’s been at least 16 deaths in that state alone. 

Australians have some of the highest rates of drug consumption in the world and rely heavily on international suppliers.

The world's largest producer of opiates was Afghanistan until the Taliban introduced an opium poppy cultivation ban in 2022. 

CMD PAULA HUDSON, AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE:  Particularly in Afghanistan, that the crackdown there on opium production has caused organized crime across the globe to look to alternative opioid substances. 

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  The AFP says nitazenes are being manufactured in labs in China and India, imported through the post and cut into a range of substances being sold to unsuspecting users.

PAULA HUDSON:  Criminal organizations stop at nothing to reap benefits and make money out of the misery of people and communities. They are seeing nitazenes purely as a cheap alternative so that's purely money making - reckless and dangerous to people's health.

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  Many of the drugs seized at the border end up here at the AFPs forensic labs for testing.

Crime scene investigators now wear special breathing apparatus during examinations to protect them from inhaling synthetic opioids.

LAB WORKER: If you could take the inner clip seal bag out and tell me the number of tablets and then you can go ahead and take a sample.

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  How many nitazene seizures have you examined?

LAB WORKER: I think I've been involved with about three of them, but our team have been involved with a lot more than that as well.

They said the chances of us having to examine them might increase.

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  So far the AFP have made three arrests over nitazene importations.

PAULA HUDSON:  Last year, there was a there was a big spike. One seizure was 50 grams. That might not sound much, but with a two-milligram lethal dose, that's 25,000 potential lethal doses. 

LAB WORKER: So just a reminder about how naloxone works. 

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  AFP staff are also trained to administer naloxone, a drug that reverses the impacts of opioid overdose.

LAB WORKER: You just open this package, and the person is most likely lying at the ground, you just administer it through one of their nostrils. We will just pop that at the back of the lab away from where we are actually conducting the examination. 

ELISE WORTHINGTON:  User organisations are working to get more naloxone into the community.

USER ORGANISATION WORKER:  And you just put one of these alerts in, the nitazene ones?

NADINE EZARD:  Even if you're thinking you just only ever going to do a pill or a couple of lines of cocaine, you really need to be aware that this might be coming at you in the future.

BEC: Go and get yourself trained up in naloxone and stock it because you just never know. The thing is, you could take a pill, and you have no idea what's in that pill and without having access to testing, which is what this country really needs, we've got no way of knowing because ultimately, it's the difference between saving a life and dying.