Nitazenes: The new synthetic opioids stronger than heroin that are being cut into drugs
Charlotte, not her real name, wanders back and forth with her empty coffee cup held out towards the tide of commuters coming through the barriers.
Rush hour at Whitechapel underground station is the best time of day for the small, frail, 23-year-old to earn enough change to pay for her next hit.
She’s agitated, but for the briefest moment agrees to talk. I ask if any symptoms from her drug use have changed recently. “I’ve got holes in my legs,” she says. “There’s no skin, just holes. It’s painful.”
Synthetic opioids seized by officers. Pic: Met Police
Her legs are bandaged. She says the strange bores in her flesh have only appeared in the last few months and is unsure why.
But drug charity workers are convinced this is a symptom of a terrifying evolution in the drug market – a growing prevalence of dangerous synthetic opioids being cut into drugs like heroin.
The deadliest, nitazenes, are the newest killer on the streets.
“I’m seeing people coughing up blood. I’m seeing people dying,” says crack cocaine user Rory, who we meet in Aldgate in East London.
“Any drug you are buying off the street you’re taking a risk. These people are in it for the money and the purer it is, the less they make – so they are putting other stuff in it.”
Crack cocaine user Rory
The opioid fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and is the primary drug in North America, where synthetic opioids are estimated to have caused 75,000 deaths in the US last year.
Nitazenes have similar properties to fentanyl, but can be up to 300 times stronger than heroin. Only this week, several have been classified as Class A drugs.
First detected in the UK from a sample of white powder found in the back of a taxi in Wakefield in April 2021, nitazenes have since been found in heroin, cannabis, cocaine, in a vape and most prevalently in black market pills sold as the anti-anxiety drug diazepam.
‘Substantial risk of overdose, hospitalisation, and death’
In October, a police raid on a “sophisticated factory” in Waltham Forest recovered approximately 150,000 nitazene tablets, the largest-ever recovered stash of synthetic opioids. Eleven people were arrested.
Detective Superintendent Helen Rance, who is leading the investigation, said: “Synthetic opioids have been detected in batches of heroin found in London and across the UK; they substantially raise the risk of incredibly serious harm to the user and are believed to be linked to a number of deaths.”
Recently, the opioid is thought to have been cut into a batch of drugs in Dublin, causing 57 people to overdose within a few days.
Professor Eamon Keenan, from the Health Safety Executive, said: “These pose a substantial risk of overdose, hospitalisation, and death.”
Meg Jones, director of social justice charity Cranstoun, said: “We are seeing nitazenes pop up in pockets all over the UK and it is incredibly concerning.”
She added: “There are an increasing number of synthetic opioids being detected in drugs that people thought were very different. We need to see government action quickly on this, because we are sleepwalking into what I would deem to be a public health crisis, and we are not prepared for it in the UK at all.”
Action means more testing and provision of drugs that can counter the effects of opioid overdose.
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Taliban crackdown means drugs produced in UK are more deadly
Outreach worker Abdirahim Hassan, founder of East London community group Coffee Afrik, agrees. He showed me a video of a young woman who appears to have overdosed. She is slumped unconscious on the pavement in Whitechapel.
Outreach worker Abdirahim Hassan
Her body is in the prayer position, her torso flat over her knees, her face pressed against the ground. “She’s just frozen. Her eyes are closed, and people are just walking past,” said Abdirahim. “She’s a young woman, maybe 24, somebody’s daughter.”
Abdirahim said a crackdown on heroin production by the Taliban has successfully stemmed the flow of heroin from Afghanistan which had previously provided 95% of the UK heroin market. That’s led to a boom in the easier to produce, more deadly synthetics.
“What it means is there’s a much higher risk of overdose and death,” he said. “But it’s a cheaper product and more potent so people are in greater crisis and there is not enough testing.”
Birmingham also saw a spike in the detection of nitazenes. Sky News was given access to a unique project in West Midlands police cells, run by the charity Cranstoun.
Steve Whitby is a drug and alcohol worker who visits suspects in their cells. The idea is that drug rehabilitation services reach out to offer support to addicts while they are in police custody.
Drug and alcohol worker Steve Whitby is interviewed by Farrell
On one cell visit, Steve warns an addict, who is also a suspected shoplifter, about the dangers of nitazenes. He told him: “So these are synthetic drugs that dealers are putting into heroin – but it’s causing lots of people to die from overdose.”
He told the man he shouldn’t take drugs alone and that he will leave a kit with his belongings which includes two syringes of naloxone, an antidote of opioid overdose. He explained the man will have to teach whoever is with him how to use it.
Naxolone is a treatment for people who have overdosed
This pilot in Birmingham is believed to be the first time naloxone has been given to addicts in custody, and the charity said this needs to become a national provision.
The Cranstoun programme in police custody suites is funded by the West Midlands police and crime commissioner.
“In essence, this saves more lives than any other intervention,” said Steve as he demonstrated how to inject the clear liquid into the side of the thigh.
He said sometimes it’s dispensed to the children of addicts so they can save their parents lives if they overdose.
As such a newcomer to the UK market and often concealed as something else, there is little data about the prevalence of nitazenes.
Pic: Met Police
The opioid is even more dangerous for those who have never taken it before
However, Wedinos, a service based in Wales where people can send in their drugs anonymously, to get them tested for what they contain, has started to increasingly detect it in other illicit drugs.
They only found nitazenes five times in 2021, but have discovered it 57 times so far this year. It was in what users thought was cannabis in Manchester and cannabis vape liquid in Portsmouth.
They’ve been found most often in what users thought were the black market versions of the anti-anxiety drug diazepam, and pain medication oxycodone, 21 times each.
They are even more dangerous to people who don’t already use opioids, and therefore have no tolerance.
The reported side effects include hallucinations, irregular heartbeat, chest pains, nosebleeds, vomiting, memory loss, aggression, and overdose.
Back on the streets of Whitechapel, another heroin addict, called Rebel, sits waiting for her methadone script outside a drug rehabilitation centre.
Drug user Rebel
She said heroin has changed. She hates the synthetics, describing them as a waste of money and said they don’t work, but she agrees that not knowing what she’s using makes life more dangerous. Health workers have run urine tests and warned her of other substances cut into her drugs.
“They text me and tell me something is cut in it – it’s really bad.” Rebel becomes emotional talking about the impact of her addiction. “I’m 60 now. I don’t want to die a junkie,” she said.
This week, 15 new synthetic opioids were categorised as Class A drugs by the government, but that doesn’t make them any easier for drug users to detect.
A dangerous market has become more deadly. Users like Rebel are rolling the dice every day.
UK
Budget 2025: Three things Rachel Reeves’s speech boils down to – and two tricks the chancellor will fall back on
This is going to be a big budget – not to mention a complex budget.
It could, depending on how it lands, determine the fate of this government. And it’s hard to think of many other budgets that have been preceded by quite so much speculation, briefing, and rumour.
All of which is to say, you could be forgiven for feeling rather overwhelmed.
But in practice, what’s happening this week can really be boiled down to three things.
1. Not enough growth
The first is that the economy is not growing as fast as many people had hoped. Or, to put it another way, Britain’s productivity growth is much weaker than it once used to be.
The upshot of that is that there’s less money flowing into the exchequer in the form of tax revenues.
2. Not enough cuts
The second factor is that last year and this, the chancellor promised to make certain cuts to welfare – cuts that would have saved the government billions of pounds of spending a year.
But it has failed to implement those cuts. Put those extra billions together with the shortfall from that weaker productivity, and it’s pretty clear there is a looming hole in the public finances.
3. Not enough levers
The third thing to bear in mind is that Rachel Reeves has pledged to tie her hands in the way she responds to this fiscal hole.
She has fiscal rules that mean she can’t ignore it. She has a manifesto pledge which means she is somewhat limited in the levers she can pull to fill it.
Put it all together, and it adds up to a momentous headache for the chancellor. She needs to raise quite a lot of money and all the “easy” ways of doing it (like raising income tax rates or VAT) seem to be off the table.
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The Budget Explained – in 60 seconds
So… what will she do?
Quite how she responds remains to be seen – as does the precise size of the fiscal hole. But if the rumours in Westminster are to be believed, she will fall back upon two tricks most of her predecessors have tried at various points.
First, she will deploy “fiscal drag” to squeeze extra income tax and national insurance payments out of families for the coming five years.
What this means in practice is that even though the headline rate of income tax might not go up, the amount of income we end up being taxed on will grow ever higher in the coming years.
Second, the chancellor is expected to squeeze government spending in the distant years for which she doesn’t yet need to provide detailed plans.
Together, these measures may raise somewhere in the region of £10bn. But Reeves’s big problem is that in practice she needs to raise two or three times this amount. So, how will she do that?
Most likely is that she implements a grab-bag of other tax measures: more expensive council tax for high value properties; new CGT rules; new gambling taxes and more.
No return to austerity, but an Osborne-like predicament…
If this summons up a particular memory from history, it’s precisely the same problem George Osborne faced back in 2012. He wanted to raise quite a lot of money but due to agreements with his coalition partners, he was limited in how many big taxes he could raise.
The resulting budget was, at the time at least, the single most complex budget in history. Consider: in the years between 1970 and 2010 the average UK budget contained 14 tax measures. Osborne’s 2012 budget contained a whopping 61 of them.
And not long after he delivered it, the budget started to unravel. You probably recall the pasty tax, and maybe the granny tax and the charity tax. Essentially, he was forced into a series of embarrassing U-turns. If there was a lesson, it was that trying to wodge so many money-raising measures into a single fiscal event was an accident waiting to happen.
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Can the budget fix economic woes?
Except that… here’s the interesting thing. In the following years, the complexity of budgets didn’t fall – it rose. Osborne broke his own complexity record the next year with the 2013 budget (73 tax measures), and then again in 2016 (86 measures). By 2020 the budget contained a staggering 103 measures. And Reeves’s own first budget, last autumn, very nearly broke this record with 94 measures.
In short, budgets have become more and more complex, chock-full of even more (often microscopic) tax measures.
Read more from Sky News:
What tax measures are expected in budget?
The political jeopardy facing Rachel Reeves in budget
In part, this is a consequence of the fact that, long ago, chancellors seem to have agreed that it would be political suicide to raise the basic rate of income tax or VAT. The consequence is that they have been forced to resort to ever smaller and fiddlier measures to make their numbers add up.
The question is whether this pattern continues this week. Do we end up with yet another astoundingly complex budget? Will that slew of measures backfire as they did for Osborne in 2012? And, more to the point, will they actually benefit the UK economy?
Reports of a “board-level orchestrated coup” at the BBC are “complete nonsense”, non-executive director Sir Robbie Gibb has told MPs.
Sir Robbie, whose position on the BBC board has been challenged by critics in recent weeks, was among senior leaders, including the broadcaster’s chair, Samir Shah, to face questions from the Culture, Media and Sport committee about the current crisis.
The hearing took place in the wake of the fallout over the edit of a speech by US President Donald Trump, which prompted the resignation of the corporation’s director-general and the chief executive of BBC News, and the threat of a lawsuit from the US president.
Former BBC editorial adviser Michael Prescott wrote the memo that was leaked. Pic: PA
Former editorial adviser Michael Prescott, whose leaked memo sparked the recent chain of events, also answered questions from MPs – telling the hearing he felt he kept seeing “incipient problems” that were not being tackled.
He also said Mr Trump’s reputation had “probably not” been tarnished by the Panorama edit.
During his own questioning, Sir Robbie addressed concerns of potential political bias – he left BBC News in 2017 to become then prime minister Theresa May’s director of communications, a post he held until 2019, and was appointed to the BBC board in 2021 by Boris Johnson.
BBC board member Sir Robbie Gibb appearing before the Culture, Media and Sport committee. Pic: PA
“I know it’s hard to marry the fact that I spent two years as director of communications for the government… and my genuine passion for impartiality,” he said.
“I want to hear the full range of views… I don’t want the BBC to be partisan or favour any particular way.”
Asked about reports and speculation that there has been a “board-level orchestrated coup”, Sir Robbie responded: “It’s up there as one of the most ridiculous charges… People had to find some angle.
“It’s complete nonsense. It’s also deeply offensive to fellow board members… people of great standing in different fields.”
He said his political work has been “weaponised” – and that it was hard as a non-executive member of the BBC to respond to criticism.
‘We should have made the decision earlier’
BBC chair Samir Shah also answered questions. Pic: PA
Mr Shah admitted the BBC was too slow in responding to the issue of the Panorama edit of Mr Trump, which had been flagged long before the leaked memo.
“Looking back, I think we should have made the decision earlier,” he said. “I think in May, as it happens.
“I think there is an issue about how quickly we respond, the speed of our response. Why do we not do it quickly enough? Why do we take so much time? And this was another illustration of that.”
Following reports of the leaked memo, it took nearly a week for the BBC to issue an apology.
Mr Shah told the committee he did not think Mr Davie needed to resign over the issue and that he “spent a great deal of time” trying to stop him from doing so.
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Tim Davie is stepping down as BBC director-general
Asked about his own position, Mr Shah said his job now is to “steady the ship”, and that he is not someone “who walks away from a problem”.
A job advert for the BBC director-general role has since gone live on the corporation’s careers website.
Mr Shah told the hearing his view is that the role is “too big” for one person and that he is “inclined” to restructure roles at the top.
He says he believes there should also be a deputy director-general who is “laser-focused on journalism”, which is “the most important thing and our greatest vulnerability”.
Earlier in the hearing, Mr Prescott gave evidence alongside another former BBC editorial adviser, Caroline Daniel.
He told the CMS committee that there are “issues of denial” at the BBC and said “the management did not accept there was a problem” with the Panorama episode.
Mr Prescott’s memo highlighted concerns about the way clips of Mr Trump’s speech on January 6 2021 were spliced together so it appeared he had told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell”.
‘I can’t think of anything I agree with Trump on’
Mr Trump has said he is going to pursue a lawsuit of between $1bn and $5bn against the broadcaster, despite receiving an official public apology.
Asked if the documentary had harmed Mr Trump’s image, Mr Prescott responded: “I should probably restrain myself a little bit, given that there is a potential legal action.
“All I could say is, I can’t think of anything I agree with Donald Trump on.”
He was later pushed on the subject, and asked again if he agreed that the programme tarnished the president’s reputation, to which he then replied: “Probably not.”
Read more:
Experts on why Trump might struggle to win lawsuit
Why are people calling for Sir Robbie Gibb to go?
Mr Prescott, a former journalist, also told the committee he did not know how his memo was leaked to the Daily Telegraph.
“At the most fundamental level, I wrote that memo, let me be clear, because I am a strong supporter of the BBC.
“The BBC employs talented professionals across all of its factual and non-factual programmes, and most people in this country, certainly myself included, might go as far as to say that they love the BBC.
He said he “never envisaged” the fallout that would occur. “I was hoping the concerns I had could, and would, be addressed privately in the first instance.”
Asked if he thinks the BBC is institutionally biased, he said: “No, I don’t.”
He said that “tonnes” of the BBC’s work is “world class” – but added that there is “real work that needs to be done” to deal with problems.
Mr Davie, he said, did a “first-rate job” as director-general but had a “blind spot” toward editorial failings.
A teenage boy is in a life-threatening condition after being shot in Sheffield.
Police said the 16-year-old was taken to hospital after suffering a gunshot wound on Monday evening.
The incident happened shortly before 5.20pm in London Road.
Officers will remain in the area overnight as they carry out “extensive enquiries to identify those responsible”, with increased patrols in the coming days, said a statement from South Yorkshire Police.
London Road is partly closed, and traffic disruption is expected to continue today.
Meanwhile, the boy’s family are with him in hospital.
London Road is closed from the junction at Sitwell Place to the junction at Crowther Place
‘Terrible incident’
Detective Chief Inspector Emma Knight, the senior investigating officer, said it was a “terrible incident”.
“I want to assure residents that a dedicated team of officers and staff are working tirelessly to understand the circumstances that led to this attack and to trace those responsible,” she added.
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“We need you to work with us and provide any information you have,” the officer told the public.
“This is not acceptable on our streets, so we must work together to stop it.
“If you see officers in the area and have information or concerns, please do speak to them.”
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