Synthetic opioids continue to complicate rates of opioid dependance and death, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Nitazines are the new kid on the block when it comes to synthetic opioids being found in street drugs, and they can be about 40 times as powerful as fentanyl. Eric Strain, a substance use disorders expert at Johns Hopkins, says we already have our hands full with it.

Fentanyl in itself is a highly potent opioid there are other fentanyls as well so there's carfentanyl and things like that, and people are coming up with new fentanyl formulations regularly. Fentanyl is highly potent so you only need a little bit to get the effect and people develop higher levels of tolerance as they're using fentanyl, so it can be more difficult to treat somebody who's fentanyl dependent when you're trying to use buprenorphine. I think the thing we need to keep in mind is that we need to have quality treatment access available for people.    :31

Strain says as opioids are created that are more powerful, interventions must also ramp up to be successful and some medicines to help are rendered ineffective or unusable at higher doses, both in the ED and in treatment. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey