The growing crisis of synthetic drugs in the UK

Experts say the death rate from drugs is just the tip of the iceberg of a crisis that is likely to soon surpass the widespread crisis in the US.

According to the Daily Mail, former and current British officials and drug experts have warned that the UK is on the verge of a dangerous drugs crisis. The synthetic drug nitazene, which is flooding into the UK, is up to 2,000 times more dangerous than heroin.

The drug, which was first developed in the 1950s as a painkiller, never gained approval for medical use and was eventually forgotten over the past seven decades.

More than 70 types of nitazene have been identified worldwide; at least 14 specific types of nitazene have been banned in the UK; Fentanyl and nitazene are very similar and are both synthetic drugs.

Nitazenes come in different forms; in most cases, drug dealers sell nitazene as pure pills; in some cases, they are mixed with illegal drugs such as heroin or Valium and Xanax.

The US and UK withdrawal from Afghanistan has brought nitazene into the UK as a substitute for opium and its derivatives.

“One of my areas of expertise is the UK and US counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 era,” said the expert on international drug trade who previously worked for the UK’s Drug Enforcement Administration in Afghanistan.

“Because the wider UK population has never had the same reliance on legal opioids for pain relief, heroin users in the country are more likely to be in drug treatment and harm reduction programs than their American counterparts,” he said. In the short term, criminal gangs will continue to introduce nitazene into the UK market.

UK experts are unanimous in their fears of an increasing risk from nitazene.

A review of data from the UK’s only drug testing center found that two-thirds of synthetic drug samples containing nitazene were legal drugs that could be bought legally.

The number of deaths from nitazene in the UK has reached 458 in the past two years, a 166% increase from 125 in 2023 to 333 in 2024.

A senior policy analyst at the UK Medicines Policy Foundation said: “The number of deaths is rising at an alarming rate; this is the tip of the iceberg; what has happened in the US should be a wake-up call for policymakers in the UK; We could be heading towards an American-style overdose crisis; we are talking about thousands or tens of thousands of deaths.

He stressed: “This is a very serious public health emergency that is not being taken seriously enough; I am concerned that we are recording one death from nitazene every day.”

Tens of thousands of British citizens are now at risk from the highly potent drug called nitazene; the synthetic drug has already left many Britons stranded and helpless on the streets.

Videos circulating online show how drugs, including opiates and synthetic cannabinoids, have turned Britons into “zombies.”

The growing problem of nitazene in the UK is threatening young people who are buying the pills online to deal with stress, anxiety and chronic pain.

It is still unclear how nitazene is entering the UK.