The Portuguese Criminal Investigation Department announced on Tuesday that it had found a new type of synthetic drug called N-Desethylisotonitazenein a confiscated stash of counterfeit oxycodone pills, in what would be It is the first time that this substance has been detected in Europe.
Authorities said in a statement I didn’t know what the final destination of this shipment waswhich was confiscated on Portuguese territory, reports Efe.
The new drug was discovered by the scientific police laboratory of this institution in collaboration with the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and the Higher Technical Institute.
N-Desethylisotonitazene is one of them a chemical class of nitazenes that recently emerged in Europe.
According to the criminal police It causes euphoria followed by drowsiness and can block the airways.the most common cause of death from overdose of this drug.
Since 2019, the European Drug Monitoring Center has identified 16 compounds in this class of nitazenes, most of them in the north of the continent.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says its early warning system first received information about the existence of a new type of synthetic opioid in 2019. Nitazene, whose structure is different from that of fentanyl.
At that time, the UNODC was able to demonstrate that Nitazene had similar effectiveness to fentanyl and therefore posed a serious health risk.