Estonia's nitazenes crisis offers foretaste of potential European epidemic

In the early 2000s, Estonia became ground zero for Europe’s first fentanyl epidemic. After heroin smuggling routes collapsed in the wake of the US invasion of Afghanistan, local dealers — aided by Russian gangsters — turned to St. Petersburg to fill the void.

What followed was a decade and a half of devastation that saw Tallinn dubbed the “fentanyl capital” of Europe. It took a massive police crackdown in 2017 to finally dismantle the networks responsible and end Estonia’s long-running fentanyl crisis.

But the victory was short-lived. In 2019, traces of a new class of synthetic opioids began appearing in Estonia’s drug supply — substances tens of times more potent than fentanyl and far deadlier. By 2022, these drugs, known as nitazenes, had unleashed a new wave of addiction and overdoses that now threatens to become Europe’s next opioid disaster.

“Fentanyl is bad but nowhere near nitazenes in how addictive it is and how hard it grabs your opioid receptors,” says Rasmus, a longtime user sitting in the shade, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses in a conversation for an article by the UnHerd publication. 

“It’s basically the crack of opioids.”

Unlike fentanyl, which arrived from Russia through organized criminal networks, nitazenes entered Estonia from China via Latvia — this time through a fragmented, decentralized market. Police have been left playing a desperate game of cat-and-mouse with small-scale dealers and users scattered across Tallinn and the country’s eastern hinterland.

The human cost has been staggering. By 2023, nitazenes were linked to 56 overdose deaths in Estonia — nearly half of the country’s total drug fatalities — catapulting the nation to the top of the EU’s rankings for drug-related deaths per capita.

Across Europe and beyond, nitazenes have caused similar devastation. In Britain, they’ve been tied to more than 400 deaths between June 2023 and January 2025, with experts warning thousands more may have gone unrecorded.

Nitazenes are particularly dangerous because of their sheer potency and unpredictability.

“Potency does not equate to euphoria,” Rasmus explains. “Metonitazene [one of the earlier nitazenes to hit the Estonian market] for example was really good and pleasurable, but some are just like you’re shooting up water.”

The drugs often act fast and fade quickly — sometimes lasting only seconds — forcing users into a cycle of repeated injections and ever-greater risk.

To make matters worse, nitazenes often don’t respond effectively to naloxone, the medication used to reverse opioid overdoses. Multiple doses are frequently required, and sometimes even that isn’t enough.

“If nitazene starts taking over the market,” warns Artur Kamnerov, head of the Drug and Organized Crime Bureau at Estonia’s North Prefecture police department, “there’s no stopping the overdose death rates.”

For Estonia, the crisis exposes more than just a public health emergency. It reflects deep-rooted social and economic scars left from the country’s post-Soviet transition — unequal growth, marginalization, and a generation trapped in addiction despite the nation’s rapid modernization.

As Rasmus and others illustrate, the issue is not simply one of drug supply but of sustained demand — a craving born of despair, perpetuated by chemistry, and now supercharged by nitazenes.

Estonia’s experience offers Europe a grim warning: even when one deadly drug is eliminated, another — stronger, cheaper, and more unmanageable — will rise to take its place.

By Nazrin Sadigova