It’s an apocalyptic scene: a population of addicts so tolerant of powerful opioids that even fentanyl doesn’t create the high they crave anymore. In Estonia and a few other pockets of Europe, a recent scourge called nitazenes has entered the illicit drug market and led to soaring overdose rates.

Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.

• Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.
• Get exclusive access to the Vancouver Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.
• Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.
• Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists.
• Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.

Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.

• Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.
• Get exclusive access to the Vancouver Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.
• Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.
• Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists.
• Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

• Access articles from across Canada with one account.
• Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.
• Enjoy additional articles per month.
• Get email updates from your favourite authors.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

• Access articles from across Canada with one account
• Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments
• Enjoy additional articles per month
• Get email updates from your favourite authors

Sign In or Create an Account

or View more offers

With fentanyl and other potentially deadly unregulated narcotics still circulating widely in B.C., it raises the question. Are we about to see nitazenes make the drug emergency even worse?

Turns out, they’ve already been here for years. Yet, through some mix of luck, limited supply and lack of black market demand, they so far haven’t created a similar crisis here.

“Nitazenes have been detected in the Vancouver illicit drug supply since January 2020,” says Vancouver police Const. Megan Lui. “Nitazenes and orphines are classes of synthetic opioids, with some substances being significantly more potent than fentanyl.”

These new opioids show up in counterfeit prescription medications like fake Percocet and hydromorphone tablets, says Lui. Though they’re only an occasional additive in the supply, police, health practitioners and border officials take nitazenes and other emergent “designer” opioids seriously.

“These substances are highly potent, even in low concentrations, increasing the risk of overdose,” says Lui.

“The high quality of some illicitly manufactured pills can make it very difficult to distinguish authentic medications from counterfeit ones based on appearance alone. As a result, the use of any pill obtained from the unregulated drug supply carries a risk of unintentional, and potentially fatal, toxicity.”

They’re also hard to spot using current drug-checking methods, Lui says. Neither nitazenes nor orphines are reliably detected using fentanyl test strips.

1. Advertisement 1

   Story continues below

   This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

“The emergence of nitazenes, and other highly potent synthetic opioids, is something the Canada Border Services Agency is taking very seriously as these substances pose a significant and growing threat to public health and safety,” says spokesperson Karine Martel.

However, how much is coming into Canada isn’t clear, Martel says, because nitazenes and other newer opioids and precursors are only listed as “other drugs” in CBSA statistics. Still, that category has accounted for over 9,500 kilograms in border seizures so far this year.

Dr. Mark Lysyshyn, the deputy chief medical health officer at Vancouver Coastal Health, says fentanyl and carfentanil began circulating in the city between about 2012 and 2016, when the public health emergency was declared. As it reached its 10-year anniversary, deaths are steadily dropping.

Nitazenes haven’t flooded the black market with the same intensity, but the rise of fentanyl also occurred without there initially being a market for it. “People weren’t aware they were consuming these synthetic opioids and didn’t desire them,” says Lysyshyn.

“But as time went on, people realized that there was no more heroin on the street,” he says. “It was all synthetic opioids and fentanyl, and people got used to that and expected to have that, and I guess you could say that they were seeking it out.”

Street drugs remain a game of Russian roulette for those who are addicted because no one knows exactly what they’re getting, says Lysyshyn. “They don’t know how potent the drug will be. So we’re still in this situation where people have a lot of trouble getting the opioid that they want.

“We’ve seen nitazenes in the drug supply here since probably about 2018. They appear intermittently, but they’ve never become a regular or persistent contaminant,” says Lysyshyn. “We see them mostly in fake tablets made to look like oxycontin or hydromorphone, but they actually have various nitazenes in them.

“And more recently we’ve seen a few examples of cyclorphine, which is similar to nitazines in a way — but not a lot of them. We’re still having the most trouble from fentanyl and fentanyl analogues.”

Recent overdose statistics back that up.

In toxicology tests of those who have died so far in 2026 of an unregulated drug overdose, the B.C. Coroners Service says fluorofentanyl was present 67 per cent of the time, fentanyl 55 per cent, and methamphetamine 52 per cent. Two other powerful depressants similar to benzodiazepam were found in nearly a quarter of overdose victims and hydromorphone was found in five per cent.

By contrast, nitazenes don’t even register in coroner statistics, meaning they were present in fewer than one per cent of fatalities.

Still, the Estonia crisis provides a warning for those battling the drug epidemic in B.C. That country had all but wiped out the fentanyl supply and seen a dramatic drop in deaths years before nitazenes began to emerge.

“There’s this thing where precursors and various different types of opioids don’t appear on the controlled drugs acts of various countries,” says Lysyshyn. They get scheduled as illicit, then traffickers tweak their formulas a bit, then those new drugs have to be listed as illegal.

“So, for periods of time, things can be sold from one place to another, and then all of a sudden it becomes illegal. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole.”

jruttle@postmedia.com