Nitazenes and the dark web: I (almost) bought dangerous synthetic opioids from the comfort of my local coffee shop – and you can too!

Drug dealing has entered the digital age, with illegal online marketplaces disrupting local drug supplies.

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2020, satellites in the sky watched as the red swathes of poppy fields blanketing the country gradually began turning brown. 

The new ultra-conservative government no longer wanted to be the world’s biggest producer of opium, which is the key ingredient of heroin. Poppy fields were forcefully chopped down, burned, or converted into less lucrative wheat fields. 

In the UK, a long-established market of heroin users felt shockwaves, as the price of heroin surged and its availability declined. The UK’s heroin market has an estimated revenue of £4 billion a year, with a fairly stable customer base of at least a quarter of a million users. 95% of the UK’s heroin was coming from Afghanistan. 

To bridge a new gap in the market came a new class of synthetic opioids called nitazenes. At the same time, an underground drug supply system surged in popularity: the dark web. 

Because of their strength, nitazenes had added advantages. They were easier to transport versus the relatively bulky heroin and fentanyl. Nitazenes are also cheaper and easier to synthesise than fentanyl, the opioid that has ravaged American communities. 

The dark web: cutting out the middleman 

The dark web is a vast, hidden part of the internet that can only be accessed through encrypted browsers. Hailing back to the 1990s, it is almost as old as the internet and was made possible by advances in anonymising software for web traffic. Dark web websites don’t show up on regular search engines like Google, and their traffic is encrypted, meaning users can browse anonymously. 

Because of the privacy and secrecy offered by the dark web, it is host to a huge network of illegal marketplaces, selling everything from drugs to weapons and illegal pornography. 

The first dark web market was called the Silk Road, which ran from 2011 to 2013. The marketplace operated entirely using cryptocurrency transactions and mostly sold drugs. Illegal goods deemed more harmful, such as child pornography or assassination services, were banned from the Silk Road but could be found on later competitor sites.

Creator Ross Ulricht founded the Silk Road on libertarian principles, and once wrote on the forum that, ‘The same principles that have allowed Silk Road to flourish can and do work anywhere human beings come together. The only difference is that the State is unable to get its thieving murderous mitts on it.’ The Silk Road was seized by the FBI in 2013, and Ulricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015. However, he was recently pardoned by President Trump. 

Since the takedown of the Silk Road, new dark web marketplaces have appeared. Instead of one main competitor, there are many popular sites which come and go. Users order drugs with cryptocurrency as payment, and goods are sent via the postal service. 

While the Taliban decimated heroin production, COVID-19 began spreading from China to blanket the globe. Shortly after, drug expert charity Release first raised the alarm about nitazenes in 2021. 

As people whiled away long months in confinement, the dark web increased in popularity. Bored with video games, many turned to something new. 

A study from Release found that during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, 1 in 10 drug purchases had been made through the dark web. Of those who purchased, 13% had not previously used the dark web to buy drugs. To match new demand, listings on the dark web surged during the pandemic by roughly 500%. Today, the postman is the new drug dealer, and innocuous padded envelopes may not be what they seem. 

Drugs sold on the dark web are sometimes counterfeit and are at risk of being contaminated with synthetic opioids like nitazenes. Nitazenes can also be purchased outright on the dark web and can be used to cut drugs that dealers want to strengthen. Because nitazenes are so strong and dangerous, they are rarely consumed on purpose. 

But how easy is it to access the dark web? 

With no previous experience accessing the dark web, I set out to see how difficult it would be to buy nitazenes on an illegal digital marketplace. 

I downloaded Tor, an encrypted browser for accessing the darknet. After a few cryptic Google searches, I found websites with lists of darknet search engines and indexes. The links to darknet sites all end with a ‘.onion’ domain. From there, I found lists of illegal drug marketplaces. 

Some of the marketplaces required me to make an account, which took less than five minutes. All of the marketplaces sold heroin, but many had banned listings for fentanyl, fearing special scrutiny from law enforcement. In at least one case, this market ban extended to all synthetic opioids, including nitazenes. 

Nonetheless, within 10 minutes, I found a listing for a nitazene described as ‘N DESETHILPROTONITAZENE HCL,’ which could be shipped from China to the UK. It was being sold at just £36 a gram. Assuming it was pure, one gram would be enough for thousands of doses for an opioid user. 

Dr. Caroline Copeland, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology & Toxicology at King’s College London, believes nitazenes have partially emerged because of how easy they are to smuggle. ‘You can send 10 greeting cards [with small amounts of nitazenes inside], and if one of them gets through customs, that’s enough. So because people are trying to circumvent punishments, we’ve ended up with even more dangerous drugs,’ she said.

The amount needed to overdose on nitazenes is often so small it’s not visible to the human eye. From downloading Tor to finding nitazenes listed for sale, I managed to source (but not buy) enough nitazenes for several thousand deadly doses. The entire process took less than half an hour.  

The problem locally 

Today, research from the United Nations (UN) suggests that the dark web drug trade is shifting away from small purchases for personal use to wholesale purchases (presumably to dealers). Dealers use synthetic opioids like fentanyl and nitazenes to make batches of drugs more potent and addictive, sometimes with deadly effects. 

In Tower Hamlets, contaminated opioids are of particular concern as the Council claims to have more users in treatment than any borough in London. Local rough sleepers have told the Slice that they are seeing an increase in accidental deaths caused by synthetic opioids. 

Even outside of the dark web, the market has changed forever to suit the Internet. According to a United Nations report, the majority of drug purchases are made through mainstream social media platforms, like Facebook or Instagram. In 2022, social media platform Snapchat launched an internal investigation to combat the sale of the synthetic opioid fentanyl on its app. 

Encrypted chat platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp are also increasingly popular for drug dealers, with private drug shopping channels operating like a mini dark web. Unlike the dark web, which normally requires an encrypted browser and cryptocurrency, all you need to use Telegram securely is a different SIM card. 

Locally, dealers use encrypted chat apps to fly under the radar when making drug deals. In early 2024, a network of 42 drug dealers was arrested in Tower Hamlets. The team had been using WhatsApp for a taxi-style delivery system, and were changing car plates every few weeks to avoid detection.

Around the borough, fake parking street signs reading ‘drug dealers only’ have been spray-painted on roads to protest against open trading. With social media making arranging dealers easier than ever, the ‘street-corner’ model of dealing has disappeared, and the ‘taxi-style’ dealer who comes only when called is the new norm. 

Policing beyond borders

Organised crime adapts quickly to a changing market, and its supply chains extend beyond borders. Labs could be creating the drug in China or domestically, and suppliers ship worldwide. In 2022, German police dismantled Russian-run darknet illegal marketplace Hydra, after receiving a tip-off that its servers might be hosted domestically. The site had been operating openly since 2015, but had been impervious to previous law enforcement attempts at a shutdown until the location of the servers was revealed. 

In 2018, the UK government set £9 million aside for the prosecution of dark web and online illegal sales, as well as another £5 million for establishing cybercrime units. Yet frequently, police trying to chase drugs arriving in the UK through the dark web find themselves beyond their own jurisdiction. 

An article published in The Journal of Criminal Law by Associate Professor of Criminal Law Gemma Davies explains that ‘In many dark web cases, LEAs [Law Enforcement Authorities] may well be unknowingly applying for a warrant to search a foreign computer. 

This places LEAs in a catch-22 situation. This is important as the exponential growth of the dark web means that hacking techniques are increasingly a necessary part of dark web investigations.’ 

Davies goes on to describe cases where other police forces have exploited loopholes in order to prosecute dark web crime. For example, US police investigating the child pornography site Playpen were required to re-share the illegal pornography in order not to blow their cover. However, doing so would’ve been breaking US law. To circumvent domestic law, they collaborated with police in Australia, where the strategy was not illegal. 

While supportive of broadening powers for digital investigations, Davies argues that ‘To deliberately seek the help of police in another jurisdiction, not because the crime had links to that jurisdiction, but because police can use investigation tactics which are not available in the UK, would entirely circumvent investigatory powers in the UK and undoubtedly undermine confidence in UK policing.’ 

As a result of dark web crime, the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and Investigatory Powers Act 2016 have been revised to give the police stronger powers for digital investigations. Whether or not UK police forces collaborate with foreign police forces to circumvent domestic law is unknown, although there is no evidence that they do. 

The Slice asked Davies, who specialises in cross-border crime, what powers local police have over dark web crime. ‘Even when people are operating on the dark web, they’re not operating beyond the range of the police,’ Davies said. 

‘[However] undercover online policing is very important, and it’s quite difficult for local police to do. So that’s something done by the National Crime Agency and other specialized units,’

We reached out to the Tower Hamlets Metropolitan Police for comment, but at the time of publishing have not heard back. 

As supply chains get more sophisticated, efforts from UK police to stem the drug trade feel increasingly futile. With international cooperation, some big busts have been possible, such as Operation ‘Dark HunTOR,’ where £22.67 million worth of drugs was seized. A duo who sold drugs through the dark web from London have also been arrested. 

However, in countries where governments can’t or won’t cooperate with UK police forces, international sellers and/or site servers remain extremely difficult to prosecute.

Efforts to prosecute also have the unintentional effect of pushing dealers to innovate with smaller and deadlier drugs, potentially causing further synthetic opioid crises like we’ve seen with fentanyl and nitazenes. 

To address the rising synthetic opioid issue, it’s awareness, not prosecution, that will be our most effective tool. It is important for anyone who uses counterfeit prescriptions, party drugs, or heroin to know that drugs purchased in the UK, whether from local dealers or online, could potentially be contaminated with nitazenes. 

For our guide to avoiding nitazenes, click here. 

To read this series on Nitazenes from the beginning, click here.