Deadly nitazene drug ‘more dangerous than heroin’ being sold on app popular with teenagers

Thousands of people are using an app popular with teens to buy a killer drug more dangerous than heroin which is responsible for rising deaths in Britain.

Nitazenes – a synthetic opioid – is being advertised, sold and arranged for delivery on the encrypted app Telegram.

Brits can buy it from dealers with thousands of followers and arrange for it to be delivered by parcel from America.

The drug – said to be 100 times stronger than heroin – was reported to be responsible for 333 deaths in 2024. But new research by King’s College London says the number could have been under reported by a third.

Our investigation has found it being for sale on Telegram in chats with have thousands of people following them.

Photos show it being delivered through courier services hidden in other packaging.

They are being sold via the app as pills which look like ecstasy. The group names all contain Nitazenes as its name.

The majority of dealers appear to be based in the US but are advertising it for sale and collection anywhere.

Other chats are called ‘Main supply’.

On the app, dealers send photos of delivery notifications when they have gone out to people who have bought them.

Photos of the drug are also posted.

Subscribers to the chat are warned “stock is very limited”. Other chats are promoted called ‘Synthesize chemical”.

Another message said: “Shipping from China, worldwide, with tracking.”

Records show some people are taking them by accident, as they are mixed in with other drugs as cheap substitutes.

One source said: “It is shocking it is so freely available on an app like Telegram.

“That is so dangerous. Nobody really knows what they are taking with this stuff. It’s a very disturbing situation.”

Nitazenes are a class of synthetic opioids which can have potencies of up to 500 times that of heroin.

Experts have warned they can be readily manufactured at low cost.

While the National Crime Agency (NCA) reported 333 fatalities linked to nitazenes in 2024, researchers believe that the number of deaths has been underreported as concerns have been raised by toxicologists regarding their stability in postmortem blood samples.

This means they are likely being missed by postmortem toxicology tests.

Dr Caroline Copeland, senior lecturer in pharmacology & toxicology at King’s College London, said: ‘If nitazenes are degrading in post-mortem blood samples, then we are almost certainly undercounting the true number of deaths that they are causing.

‘That means we’re trying to tackle a crisis using incomplete data. When we don’t measure a problem properly, we don’t design the right interventions – and the inevitable consequence is that preventable deaths will continue.’

A spokesperson for Telegram said in a statement: ‘The sale of drugs is explicitly forbidden by Telegram’s terms of service and such content is removed whenever discovered.

‘Moderators empowered with custom AI tools proactively monitor public parts of the platform and accept reports in order to remove millions of pieces of harmful content, including the sale of drugs.

‘Further, Telegram is the only platform that allows users to report not only individual posts or groups but terms that may be used to identify harmful content.

‘This unique community-driven effort lets users identify terms in any language, including slang terms, so they can be investigated and blocked in Telegram’s search feature.’

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