“The report findings from the Pennington Institute are concerning,” he said.

“This is something we’re actively monitoring.”

In July last year the government launched a nationally consistent opioid dependency treatment program, granting around 40,000 patients subsidised treating medicines.

Uniting Medically Supervised Injecting Centre’s medical director Marianne Jauncey said these drugs were “extraordinarily potent”.

“These are an order of magnitude stronger than fentanyl,” she said.

Jauncey was concerned overdoses would start occurring in recreational drug users not well-versed in the signs of overdose and without access to opioid overdose reversal medicine Naloxone, which is distributed for free at pharmacies and safe injecting clinics.

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“Nitazines are going to start potentially killing unexpected people,” she said. “What a devastating society we live in, if it takes, educated, rich, white kids dying for people to take notice.”

This year, nitazines were detected in the bodies of four people found dead in a Melbourne home, in cocaine sold in Melbourne, and in black market cannabinoid vape juice, leading to three overdoses, one of which was fatal.

In May, the Australian Federal Police warned of rising imports of nitazene after 22 packages from the UK were intercepted in October.

CEO of drug checking and harm minimisation advocacy group Unharm, Will Tregoning, said the “terrifying potency” of synthetic opioids meant they were easier for drug dealers to ship and import.

“They’re contaminating all sorts of other drugs, reported from people taking what they thought was MDMA, ketamine and methamphetamine,” he said.

“We’re on the brink of becoming the next frontier of the next opioid overdose crisis by nitazenes – it’s terrifying.”

Natural opioid use is also on the rise, with unintentional deaths involving heroin increasing 40 per cent between 2021 and 2022 to 460 deaths, largely concentrated in Melbourne.

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