The opioid crisis in America is possibly the most under-reported catastrophe of all time. There’s more outrage over the content of a film written half a century ago than there is a synthetic drug that helped contribute to the staggering number of 110,236 people in the U.S. who died of an opioid overdose last year. That’s equivalent to the population of Lansing, Michigan, Odessa, Texas, and Peoria, Illinois.
Fentanyl is a massive part of the problem because of how lethal a tiny dosage of it is. It is 50 times more potent than heroin. And now, the FDA is warning of another synthetic opioid that was first developed in the 1950s that is raring its ugly head. And it’s 40 times more powerful than fentanyl.
It’s called Nitazine and goes by the nickname of “Frankenstein,” and it is one scary drug. It comes in powder, pill, and liquid form and is often laced into substances, according to GoodRx Health. The supply of this killer drug is rising, and it’s finding its way onto the streets. Which means natazine-related deaths are increasing.
Here’s what a chemistry professor named Dr. Joe Schwarcz told Newsnation.
“With the opioid crisis, drug dealers are looking to meet the needs of the market, and because it is getting harder and harder to get their hands on fentanyl and oxycodone, they are looking for substitutes.”
The professor told Newsnation that it would take up to four doses of the opioid reversal drug naloxone to save someone who overdosed on Nitazine.
People in the know say that the drugs showing up in America are coming from the usual suspect; China.
Here’s another quote from Schwartz.
“China has a large number of unregulated labs that will produce anything that the customer wants. It seems that they have latched on to this and they are making; they’re synthesizing the nitazine, which incidentally is a family of compounds of several different ones. They are selling it to drug dealers in North America.”
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