Deadly synthetic opioids up to 40 times more powerful than fentanyl have been detected in Australian wastewater for the first time, new research has found.
An international survey, led by the University of Queensland’s Dr Richard Bade and published in the scientific journal Addiction on Wednesday, detected two variants of nitazene in an Australian treatment plant.
Developed in the late 1950s as a morphine alternative but never marketed because of toxicity concerns and their high potential to lead to overdose, the paper dates nitazenes’ emergence on the illicit drug market to the late 2010s and claims they are now one of the fastest growing groups of new psychoactive substances in the world.
The global study conducted during a week of wastewater testing over the New Year periods of 2022-23 and 2023-24 found two nitazene variants – protonitazene and etonitazepyne – at four separate treatment plants in the US and one in Australia.
“Protonitazene is about three times as strong as fentanyl, which has driven an overdose crisis in North America in the last decade, while etonitazepyne is 40 times more powerful,” Bade said.
Due to confidentiality agreements, Bade could not say which Australian wastewater treatment plant returned findings of the synthetic opioids. But it is unlikely nitazene consumption is confined to the locations at which it was detected in this study.
The first nitazene variant to appear on the illicit drug market in 2019, isotonitazene, quickly came to dominate the market of new synthetic opioids (NSO) – contributing to hundreds of fatalities in the US. Since then, their “ease of transportation, higher potency, and lower costs for distributors” have seen the opioids rapidly expand to global drug markets.
Fatal overdoses have since been reported globally including in Australia, Europe, New Zealand and the US.
Consumption of nitazenes is often unwitting, with the NSOs illegally sold as or mixed into drugs including methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin, ketamine, oxycodone, synthetic cannabinoids, MDMA, GHB and counterfeit pharmaceuticals, as well as in vaping devices.
Last July, police confirmed synthetic opioids were detected in four people found dead in a Melbourne home.
That came just days after the Victorian health department issued a warning for cocaine laced with the NSO protonitazene, which it said was 100 times more potent than heroin and had been linked to a string of incidents where people had bought the powder thinking it was cocaine, which resulted in “serious harm”.
Australian Border Force issued a warning last December that the agency had detected 46 imports of nitazenes at the Australian border between January 2023 and September 2024.
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission regards nitazenes as a greater threat to Australia than fentanyl – “due to its significant potency” – assessing that “even the smallest amount can cause an overdose and a milligram of some nitazenes can be fatal”.
The ACIC has said the trafficking of nitazenes is linked to, but not dominated by, serious and organised crime groups, with the AFP saying the drugs were primarily imported via international mail.
“[S]upply of these lethal products is also being carried out by motivated individuals and members of drug-using networks,” it said in a September press release.
Bade said his Australian results did not correlate with any other data sources and that the researchers “were leaning more towards” the theory that the nitazenes were directly disposed of in the wastewater, rather than consumed.
“We are leaning more towards direct disposal, but it still meant nitazenes were in Australia,’’ Bade said.
The researchers said their work showed “the promise” of wastewater-based nitazene surveillance as “a form of both drug early warning and ongoing monitoring of trends in use”.
“So that people are warned in advance of new nitazenes or even new drugs that are out,” Bade said.
“If you are able to say that, in this area nitazenes have been detected, then people can be like ‘ooh, I’ve purchased something there as well’”.
“Then they can be a bit more careful.”
