Nitazenes, which are 500 times stronger than heroin, are being cut into party drugs and counterfeit prescription medication, experts warn.
The synthetic street drug has already taken 17 lives in Victoria, including Jetson Gordon, 18, who took what he thought was a pill to help him sleep in 2022.
The apprentice carpenter had ordered oxycodone online without realising it had been cut with a nitazene, which is 43 times more powerful than fentanyl.
“It’s been a living hell, you lose your son… it’s so preventable, just unfathomable,” his grieving father John told 9News.
“I don’t want this to happen to anyone else or any other family go through what we have had to go through.”
Penington Institute chief executive John Ryan warned nitazenes were actively killing unknowing Australians.
“They’re the Frankenstein of opiods, they’re made in the lab and they’re now out in the community actually killing people,” he said.
“We are really failing to face up to this problem and I think inaction is a real risk that we will end up sleep walking into an overdose catastrophy.”
9News was given access to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine’s (VIFM) testing lab ahead of what is expected to be a deadly wave of nitazenes out on the streets.
Jennifer Shumann, Head of the Drug Intelligence Unit from VIFM, said the lab is seeing nitazene pop up in cocaine and ecstasy tablets.
Just two milligrams can be a fatal dose, and the drug has also been found mixed in with others sold as MDMA, ketamine, heroin, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and even vapes.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said the state is bracing for a wave of overdose deaths.
“That’s a huge issue for us, I know the drugs task force is looking at that… our forensic area is looking at the intelligence coming in from that,” he said.
The number of people who have died from drug overdose in Australia has almost doubled in the past 20 years.
The latest data from 2022 shows more than ,300 deaths annually, which is up on the previous year.
80 per cent of these overdose deaths were accidental.
Opioids are the lead killer, followed by benzodiazepines and then stimulants such as methamphetamines.
“It’s horrendous, I never planned on this, we don’t get to have grandchildren anymore and we’ve got to prevent it from ever happening again,” Jetson’s father John adds.