Two dangerous and highly potent illicit drugs are increasingly infiltrating the supply of street drugs, putting people at risk for deadly overdoses. "Nitazenes are an emerging group of highly potent psychoactive substances" that are often left out of drug screening tests, the report's authors wrote. The highly potent opioids has been found in street drugs across the Midwest and Northeast since 2019, but has since spread to other states. She and her colleagues have recently begun to detect nitazenes in illicit drug samples gathered across the state. The drug has also been linked to reports of skin abscesses, not unlike cases seen in other injectable drug users.

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