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. Following the Taliban crackdown, criminal enterprises are turning to deadly alternatives that has led to a boom in the easier-to-produce, cheap, but more deadly synthetics within in UK.

On the backdrop of this development, at least 54 deaths in the UK have been reported in the last six months due to super-strength street drug overdoses, which have stirred the nation. The drug under discussion is nitazenes which is reported to be far more powerful than heroin. Having similar properties to fentanyl, nitazenes can be up to 300 times stronger than heroin. They practically have no medical use and have a high risk of abuse.

Nitazenes were initially developed in the 1950s by the pharmaceutical research laboratories of a Swiss chemical company. 2-Benzyl Benzimidazole opioids, commonly known as nitazines, were developed in the 1950s as painkillers, but they were never approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for medical use........

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