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British agency raises alarm over street drug deadlier than heroin
Sopuruchi Onwuka
A drug support charity in northwest England has raised fresh concerns over the spread of powerful synthetic opioids now appearing in the UK’s street drug supply.
The Well, a recovery service based in Cumbria, says it is seeing a sharp rise in the presence of nitazenes, a group of lab-made opioids that can be many times stronger than heroin. According to figures obtained by the BBC, nitazenes have been linked to hundreds of deaths across the UK. In Cumbria alone, three nitazene-related deaths have been recorded in the past three years.
Ian Treasure, director of The Well, told BBC Radio Cumbria that the drugs are particularly dangerous because of their extreme potency. Even tiny amounts can trigger overdose, especially when users are unaware they are taking them.
One of the biggest risks, he said, is that many people do not knowingly seek out nitazenes. Instead, the substances are often mixed into street heroin or other drugs as cheap substitutes. Because heroin purity varies widely and is frequently cut with other substances, users have no reliable way of knowing what they are buying.
“What we’re seeing is about a third of the people in structured treatment in Cumbria are addicted to opiates, and about a quarter of the people in The Well are in there for opiates alone,” Treasure said. The charity now operates an alert system to warn staff and service users when particularly dangerous supplies, known as “hot batches,” are circulating locally.
The broader trend is troubling. The Global Commission on Drugs Policy reports that nitazene-related deaths are spreading across the UK faster than in other parts of Europe and Canada. The National Crime Agency believes the drugs are often smuggled into the country in small quantities through the postal system, making them harder to detect.
The UK government has said it will continue strengthening surveillance and early warning systems to identify emerging synthetic drugs and alert communities more quickly.
For frontline services like The Well, the immediate focus is harm reduction. Treasure said the key challenge is ensuring people who use heroin understand the risks and know how to reduce the chances of a fatal overdose in an increasingly unpredictable drug market.
