Since the year 2000, Communist China has become the illicit drug capital of the world. Safely beyond the reach of any law-enforcement agency, its government-controlled labs dump deadly drugs on the world, reaping huge profits. A variety of drug-fueled gangs then import the substances into the United States and Europe. Its roll-out of a powerful new product, nitazene, has public health officials on both sides of the Atlantic scrambling for an effective treatment. It will not be an easy task.
Fentanyl Gives Way to Nitazenes
This little narrative may sound familiar. Only a few years ago, Americans first learned about fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that some experts say is at least fifty times more potent than heroin. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), “one gram of fentanyl, equivalent in size to a sugar packet, has the potential to kill up to 500 people.” Dealers usually sell it by disguising it as another, less potent drug, like OxyContin, that may be more familiar to purchasers. Many fentanyl deaths take place because users don’t know what they are taking.
In 2024, there was, at long last, some good news on the fentanyl front. According to the DEA, overdose deaths were down 14.5 percent over the year from June 2023 to June 2024. The number was still far from acceptable, but any improvement is welcome. The treatment that receives most of the credit for the decrease is naloxone. A vast public relations campaign is underway to persuade students to carry naloxone inhalants, just in case they are around someone suffering a fentanyl overdose. The American Medical Association (AMA) recommends that school nurses’ offices keep a supply on hand.
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However, China’s new product may soon make the concern over fentanyl look nostalgic. The Wall Street Journal reports that nitazenes are “up to five times the strength of fentanyl.” According to the New York Post, the actual figure may be as high as forty-three times more lethal. This divergence testifies to the unknown nature of nitazenes. No one knows for sure how strong they are. Since they are illegal worldwide, there are no standards of purity or strength.
A Drug Without Value
According to the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, “there has never been a more dangerous time to take drugs.”
Most abused drugs do have legitimate medical uses. One reason that nitazenes are so little-known is that they were never prescribed for any medical condition. According to Renew Health, an “addiction recovery service,” they were first developed by the Swiss pharmaceutical company, CIBA AG, for use as a painkiller in the early fifties. Clinical trials in 1958 revealed “unacceptable side effects” that caused the company to abandon any plans to put them into production. Since they were never used therapeutically, neither the company nor any government agency ever compiled reliable figures on their strength.
How the Chinese labs happened upon them is anyone’s guess. However, their explosion onto a market that was just beginning to deal effectively with fentanyl is unlikely to be a coincidence.
International Deception
No one doubts that the real aggressors are the Chinese. There is only one reason to re-create a drug without any medical value. Using foreign drug gangs as their importers and distributors is only one aspect of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s craven indifference to the value of human life.
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However, the CCP and the drug gangs are not the only criminals in this scenario.
Unfortunately, the newspapers like to amplify the stories of “innocent” young people who died while consuming an illegal drug of whose actual content they were unaware. Painting drug abusers as faultless in their deaths may sell newspapers, but it sends out the wrong message. Illegal drug use is always dangerous, always unwise and always harmful to the individual users, their families and their communities. Painting them as sympathetic sends out exactly the wrong message, one which ensures that drug use will continue.
Liberals often tout their desire to find “the root causes” of problems related to illegal immigration and poverty. This pointless search serves to deflect from the individuals actually committing those crimes. However, there is a reluctance to apply the same standards to illegal drug use. Sometimes, it seems that no one is interested in asking the fundamental question—why do so many Americans and Europeans use illicit drugs in the first place?
That reluctance begs a second question. What is it that the left does not want the general population to know about drug use?
It is long past time to ask that question and to persevere until an answer or answers are found.
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