A fatal drop: what do we know about the drugs, 500 times stronger than heroin, taking Australian lives?
Only a few years after first being detected in Australia, nitazenes have been found in everything from vapes to fake heroin – and the death toll is risingFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastIn the middle of winter last year, in a unit in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, Carly Morse, Thomas Vale, Michael Hodgkinson and Abdul El Sayed used a rolled-up bank note to inhale cocaine.About 3am on 24 June 2024, all four likely became unresponsive.El Sayed’s uncle, Cory Lewis, became concerned late the following night when his nephew, who had been living with him, did not return home.He banged on the door of the unit but there was no answer.A reflective tint on a side window meant he could not see inside, so Lewis jumped a fence and went to the back of the unit.
Through a small gap in a blind on the rear kitchen window, Lewis could see El Sayed sitting on the floor against the pantry with froth coming from his mouth.Lewis used a rubber mallet to smash his way inside the unit.Hodgkinson was face-down at the entrance of the lounge.Vale lay also face-down nearby.Morse was between the couch and rear sliding door.
Each had likely died within minutes of each other, a coroner later found.Morse, 42, and Vale, 32, were in a relationship, and both were parents.Hodgkinson was 37.El Sayed, the father of an infant daughter, was only 17.The substance they snorted was not cocaine, as they had thought, but protonitazene, a highly toxic synthetic opioid.
“We don’t want his death to be in vain,” El Sayed’s aunt, Fatima El Tarek, told his inquest.“If we can prevent one more loss of life by sharing our pain and devastation it will be worth it, and it will become part of his legacy.“Consuming any illicit drug or substance could be fatal.You don’t know what you’re taking.”Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best readsThe four Broadmeadows deaths were the largest cluster of Australian overdoses linked to nitazenes, extremely potent drugs that in some forms are 500 times stronger than heroin and 10 times stronger than fentanyl.
Nitazenes have never been approved for clinical medicine, despite having been developed by the pharmaceutical industry in the 1950s as analgesics.And yet they are increasingly common on the black market: in vapes sold as containing cannabis, in pills shaped as teddy bears supposed to be MDMA, in powder trafficked as cocaine, in counterfeit pain medication.It was not until 2019 that a nitazene was first reported to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime; now 26 different nitazene substances are on their radar.In September, a pill-testing site in Canberra recorded the first known detection of isotocyanozene in Australia, a drug never before reported to the UNODC.Nitazenes have been linked to thousands of overdose deaths in the US and dozens in the UK, with the Australian federal police saying that taking them is like playing “Russian roulette”.
The Australian Border Force has made more than 60 interceptions of the drugs, mostly in the post; the acting commander, Troy Sokoloff, last December warned “the threat they pose to the Australian community is immense”,The scale of the danger is in direct contrast to how little can prove fatal: less than a drop, or only a fifth of a grain of salt, can be enough to kill,There have been at least 30 nitazene-related overdoses in Australia since the drugs were first detected in the country in 2021, studies show, but that is likely a significant underestimation and a number of suspicious deaths are under police or coronial investigation,The death toll linked to the drugs in Australia has prompted familiar calls to arms: conservative politicians and police warn there is no such thing as safe illicit drugs, and harm-reduction advocates plead for more to be done to limit the carnage,In 2024 a Victorian coroner reported that there had been 16 overdoses involving nitazenes in the previous three years and called for a state government-funded drug-checking service that could prevent similar deaths.
The coroner was delivering findings into the death of SL, a 38-year-old man who was found unresponsive by his father in late 2022, in one of the first nitazene deaths examined by the coroner in Australia,The man died after injecting what he thought was heroin,It was not the first time the court recommended such a service; indeed, it recommended it on four separate occasions in relation to eight drug overdose deaths in the previous three years,“It is impossible to know for certain whether SL would have submitted a sample of the substance he injected on or prior to 5 December 2022 to a Victorian drug-checking service, had one existed at the time,” coroner Ingrid Giles found in March 2024,“However, he would have at least had the option to do so.
”Four days after the deaths in Broadmeadows, the acting secretary of the Victorian health department, Katherine Whetton, wrote to Giles and told her the state government would be trialling such a service,An inquest into the Broadmeadows deaths in April heard evidence from Associate Prof Dimitri Gerostamoulos, the chief toxicologist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine,About a decade ago, Gerostamoulos travelled to Vienna as part of a UNODC working group of international toxicologists designing a portal to track novel synthetic drugs,“At the time, it was recognised that these were causing great harm around the world,” he said,Sign up to Five Great ReadsEach week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues.
Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morningafter newsletter promotionSoon after, the portal started to record reports of nitazenes,Most drug users were accidentally consuming nitazenes in “tainted” illicit substances, as opposed to seeking them out,If tainted with nitazenes, as little as six puffs of a vape, one pill sold as MDMA or a single line of “cocaine” can be enough to kill,The manufacturers of these substances may be intentionally adding nitazenes to change or increase the “high” an illicit drug produced, Gerostamoulos said, but they were so potent that adding a speck could be fatal,Even first responders who attend crime scenes where people have overdosed on nitazenes must be careful they do not inadvertently inhale them.
Their potency, Gerostamoulos said, causes respiratory depression within minutes, leading to hypoxia, the body being deprived of oxygen.“They can lead to paralysis, seizures and most often, death,” he said.Gerostamoulos identified various measures including the use of naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of opioids, drug-testing services, improved education and nitazene testing strips as possible ways to reduce nitazene-related deaths.But many of the measures identified by Gerostamoulos are not available in major Australian cities.Others are even being stripped back in states that recently recorded nitazene deaths.
On 15 October, Queensland Health issued an alert about nitazenes, after two overdose deaths in the previous fortnight related to the drugs,Later that day, the deputy premier, Jarrod Bleijie, defended the state government’s decision to abandon drug-testing without taking the policy to parliament,“Only the commies in Victoria support pill-testing,” he said,“They are illegal for a reason – they kill you,“The only people that benefit from illegal drugs and pill-testing is bikie criminal gangs.
”Queensland is, however, at the forefront of another type of testing: the analysis of wastewater for nitazenes.Whereas other illicit drugs are regularly detected during this type of analysis, no test existed for nitazenes, until research led by the University of Queensland detected the drug in Australian wastewater for the first time in 2023.Researcher Dr Richard Bade says he is working to ensure he can test for more types of nitazene and could, in theory, be able to analyse wastewater within a week.It is challenging work: because of how little of the drug is needed to produce a high or kill, it is like finding the point of a particularly sharp needle in a particularly dense haystack.Despite the growing number of nitazene-related deaths, few people have been charged with trafficking the drugs that caused them.
In September, police in Victoria decided there was not enough evidence to charge anyone with supplying the nitazene-laced cocaine that killed the four people in Broadmeadows.“Any new information provided to police will be thoroughly investigated,” a spokesperson said.There was little for police to go on.But one lead was a series of messages exchanged between Hodgkinson and the dealer on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, the day before the deaths.The username of the person Hodgkinson was communicating with, the person who sold him the nitazine laced cocaine that would take his life and that of three others, was TryMe.
From fritters to pizza, there’s more to pumpkin season than soups and carving
G’day! The last time I wrote to you was in the midst of our Australian winter, as the wind tippity-tapped tree-branch morse code on the windows and I tried to summon spring with the might of several tins of summer tomatoes and some inspiration from the Feast recipe archives.Well, allegedly, our spring has sprung, though you wouldn’t be able to tell, seeing as one of the challenges – or joys – of living in Melbourne is that this city’s concept of “seasons” is a little more fluid than most. Blustery winds have kept the trees dancing, wreaking havoc on the darling buds of May – sorry, October – and sending enthusiastically woven “cobwebs” and other Halloween paraphernalia flying.But I can guess which vegetable is going to be on your supermarket shelf, no matter which side of the international date line you are on: pumpkin! This is the time of year when European eaters are reaching for pumpkins to make soups and curries, while many across the Atlantic are mostly just carving them up. So, how to find more things to do with pumpkin than souping or sculpting? It helps to remember that pumpkin is also known as winter squash – and what’s summer squash? Courgettes or, as I say, zucchini
Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for ginger biscuit s’mores | The sweet spot
What’s Bonfire Night without some toasty, gooey marshmallows? And it’s only right to have them in a s’more, the American classic that’s also now part of the festivities over on this side of the pond. Digestive biscuits are typically the go-to, but I like to add extra flavour, depth and texture by using ginger oaty biscuits instead. These are quick to put together and don’t require any chilling. Ideally, the s’mores would be made over a real fire, but a blowtorch or hot grill will do the job, too.Prep 5 min Cook 30 min Makes 9100g unsalted butter 25g honey 130g plain flour 120g caster sugar 45g oats 2 tsp ground ginger ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda ½ tsp salt 9 squares dark chocolate 9 marshmallows Flaky sea saltHeat the oven to 190C (170C fan)/375F/gas 5 and line two oven trays with baking paper
How to turn pastry scraps into a quick and tasty caramelised onion tart – recipe | Waste not
This is my quick version of pissaladière, and it transforms a small amount of leftover pastry scraps into a spontaneous treat. Keep and combine any trimmings into a ball and re-roll as and when required. Pastry keeps well in the freezer, and by skipping two time-consuming steps in the traditional recipe – that is, making the pastry and caramelising the onions – this one comes together about an hour faster. Instead, the onions are cooked upside down, steaming and caramelising beneath a blanket of pastry with anchovies and black olives for a fast, fun twist on a French classic. And if you have less pastry, you can always halve the recipe
Australian supermarket chocolate ice-cream taste test: ‘My scorecard read simply: “I’m going to buy it”’
Sweet memory lane or boulevard of broken creams? Nicholas Jordan and friends sample 23 tubs in search of nostalgia, glee and chocolate excessIf you value our independent journalism, we hope you’ll consider supporting us todayGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailI grew up in a house barren of treats – there was no regular supply of chocolate, snakes, sour lollies or caramels. There was one exception: ice-cream, and I was mostly free to eat it whenever I wanted. That constant, childhood joy was the start of a storied love affair. Later, when I had money to buy my lunch in high school, I would get a one-litre tub, a pair of spoons, and my friend and I would eat the entire thing and nothing else. Sometimes, if we were particularly greedy, we’d split a two-litre tub
Sweet dreams? Healthy ways to put pudding back on the menu | Kitchen aide
I eat healthily, but my meals are never really complete without pudding. Yoghurt and stewed fruit aside, do you have any suggestions for what will hit the spot without verging too far into the unhealthy? Wendy, by emailThe truth is, you can’t often have your cake and eat it – or not a big piece, anyway. “My main piece of advice, which maybe isn’t all that welcome, is to keep to small portions,” says Brian Levy, author of Good & Sweet, in which his recipes contain no added sugar. “My grandma would keep mini chocolate bars and have just one, but that’s never really worked for me.”’Tis the season for stewed fruit, but have you tried Melissa Hemsley’s banana slices sandwiched together with peanut butter, half-dipped in melted chocolate and put in the freezer? (FYI the same tactic also works like a dream with dates
José Pizarro’s recipe for pumpkin and spinach with pimenton
I grew up with the taste of pimentón de la vera, the smoky, fiery spice Spain embraced from the New World and made its own. Pimentón gives our food its soul. One of the dishes everyone loves back home is espinacas con garbanzos (spinach and chickpeas), which is it’s simple, nourishing and full of comfort. At this time of year, however, when the markets are overflowing with sweet pumpkins, I love adding them to the mix, too. Their gentle, autumnal sweetness lifts the spinach and chickpeas beautifully, and they combine to create a dish that we’ve been serving all month at my restaurant Lolo in south-east London
Talking Horses | Willie Mullins eyes Melbourne and Breeders’ Cup double after shock triumph
NFL week nine: Bills take down Chiefs, Jaguars edge Raiders in OT thriller – as it happened
Pitch invading prankster Daniel Jarvis charged after lining up with Kangaroos players at Ashes Test
India beat South Africa by 52 runs to win Women’s Cricket World Cup final – as it happened
Saracens Women enjoy World Cup bounce with record crowd for derby
Coco Gauff’s serving troubles return in WTA Finals defeat against Pegula