We are Being Invaded by a New Deadly Opioid

 In 2013, emergency responders in the U.S. became aware of a powerful drug on the market that was gaining popularity over heroin. Because, from a user’s perspective, it was much better. It was fifty times stronger. Once it became widely available on the street, there was no stopping its popularity.

It’s called fentanyl, named by the chemists who first synthesized it in 1959. The name refers to its chemical components, phenyl and aniline (a basic building block in chemical dyes, plastics and pain killers). Its name indicates the second big advantage fentanyl had over heroin: this new drug was made in a lab, not manufactured from plants. Drug cartels could make a virtually unlimited supply. No more worrying about poppy crops needed in heroin production, grown on the other side of the world in countries like Afghanistan.

This made it much cheaper to produce fentanyl, as much as 99% less per dose. And because its potency was so much higher, cartels could charge more. The margins were ridiculous. And the new product sold like crazy.

The tragic part is how we know it was so popular.

By 2016, fentanyl surpassed heroin in overdose deaths nationwide. By 2022, fentanyl was the leading cause of overdose death in the U.S., surpassing heroin, oxycodone, and all other opioids combined.

So how potent is fentanyl?

If you picture a packet of sugar from a diner, that’s about a gram of sugar. That much heroin could kill a few people. Fentanyl is in another league. Just a few grains from that packet are enough to end someone’s life. Image a few sugar crystals mixed in a pill, how easy it would be to take one — and how badly you’d want the next one. If you lived long enough.

Back in 2013, if users thought they were taking heroin but it was laced with fentanyl, they’d be ingesting the equivalent of 25 doses of heroin in one sitting, and never know it.

EMT’s arriving at the scene of a typical fentanyl overdose found that the usual single hit of Narcan (medicine that blocks effects of opiods) didn’t revive the victim. It took up to eight doses to get someone breathing again. If it worked at all.

It was by far the deadliest drug on the street. Until now.

In 2020, Tennessee saw a cluster of ten overdoses that baffled investigators. The victims collapsed within minutes. Standard doses of Narcan barely made a dent, and sometimes had no effect at all. Toxicology showed only trace amounts of fentanyl—too little to explain the deaths. Something stronger was in play.

Initial toxicology reports showed small traces of fentanyl or heroin, but clearly not enough to kill. There was a stronger, undetected opiod in the mix. Knox County's Regional Forensic Center sent blood samples to the DEA for secondary testing. They found what everyone suspected: there was a new lab-created opioid in the mix. They found the presence of nitazenes.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Pittsburg Medical Center published a paper this month (Sept ‘25) in the journal Pain Medicine detailing how the highly potent synthetic opioid nitazene is rapidly emerging as the driver for a new national overdose crisis.

Like fentanyl, it was created in a lab as a synthetic pain reliever in the late 1950’s. But unlike fentanyl, nitazene was never approved for medical use in humans. It’s way too strong.

According to the Vanderbilt study, one variant of nitazene was 20 times as potent as fentany, and a staggering 100 times more potent than morphine. A tiny fraction of a milligram can be fatal. Fentanyl is already deadly in micrograms, but nitazenes take this to another level. Just a few micrograms — less than a grain of salt — can kill. Overdoses happen fast, killing before first responders have a chance to arrive. And nitazene is being mixed into common street heroin and conterfeit pills, turning ordinary looking drugs into lethal bombs.

The strange thing is, niatizine is often hidden, sold under fake names or disguised as OxyContin or Subutex. The makers and distributors are actively spreading the potent opioid into the population completely under the radar.

So who is behind this invasion?

DEA and European partners compared seized samples and found they were chemically consistent across batches. The uniformity pointed to a single manufacturer, or a group of coordinated labs. U.S. Customs began intercepting powders and precursor chemicals — the stuff needed to make niatizine — shipped in small parcels, many labeled as “research chemicals.” The packages consistently originated in China, often routed through transit hubs like Hong Kong or Singapore. Finally, darknet markets saw Chinese chemical suppliers advertising nitazene-class opioids as legal fentanyl alternatives after China made fentanyl illegal in 2019. These vendors explicitly marketed nitazenes as “new, unscheduled, stronger than fentanyl.”

Turns out, nitazenes are being manufactured in Chinese labs that pivoted from fentanyl once Beijing banned fentanyl-class compounds. The supply then enters the U.S. through international mail and freight, often sold wholesale to domestic traffickers who press it into fake oxycodone or mixed it into heroin.

China has found a way to invade U.S. shores without firing a shot.