Sthey call them “nitazenes” and are very powerful opioids which have already caused more than 200 deaths worldwide. In Italy the alarm went off a year agowhen a thirty-year-old from Brunico died of an overdose. The first victim of a narcotic substance that can also be found via the internet but which has devastating and, indeed, lethal effects.
In the last one report on the spread of drugs prepared by the policeanalysts have framed the problem: «At present, the threat of Fentanyl is limited to the diversion of opioid drugs used in pain therapy; however, law enforcement activity has highlighted the arrival of a new class of synthetic opioids, nitazenes, which on one occasion caused the death of a young man from an overdose.”
The emergency of pill consumption, especially among young people, is becoming increasingly serious. It is the same dossier that highlights the results of the latest investigations which demonstrate how it is the creation of domestic laboratories to process this type of substance is increasingly frequent and then place them on the market at low prices, precisely to spread them as much as possible.
Fiorenza Sarzanini (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
In March 2025 it was discovered in Novara «one of the largest clandestine laboratories for the production of methamphetamine and numerous other synthetic drugs found in Italy, which led to the arrest of a 22-year-old Italian on charges of drug production.”
Nps, New Psychoactive Substances, are sold on the web as chemicals for scientific research, food supplements, drugs or as legal recreational substances (photo Getty Images).
Not even a month later «the supplier of the precursors was arrested in Trieste (legal chemicals, which can play an important role in the illicit preparation of drugs, ed), a 23-year-old student enrolled in the Faculty of Chemistry. The young man managed a website for the sale of chemical products, a site closed after the Novara operation. At his home the student had created a clandestine laboratory to produce synthetic drugs, with a distillation system, a scientific microscope, a large fume extraction hood to prevent the smell of cooking the substances from spreading to the neighbourhood, and he had ketamine and soaked stamps in his possession.”
This is precisely the danger. It starts as a game by tasting what looks like candy or licking a stamp. The effect is guaranteed, the high often appears fun. And yet the risk is very high, there are many young people who feel unwell, even more so those who have serious consequences. We need to inform them, warn them, talk to them about what can happen. It must be clearly said that it is not a game, especially that the game can become deadly.
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All articles by Fiorenza Sarzanini.