Illicit synthetic drugs are proliferating faster than ever, with new compounds reaching users before health agencies can identify or regulate them, according to an April 8 report from The New York Times.
Here are five things to know, per the report:
- MDMA has been illegal since 1985, but unregulated chemists have modified its structure to create variants such as methylone, which legally entered the U.S. market in 2010 as bath salts before being banned in 2011. Methylone’s chemical structure now serves as a template as unregulated chemists tweak the molecule to evade bans.
- Poison control centers received a few hundred calls related to synthetic cathinones — of which methylone is an early example — in 2010, rising sharply to 6,000 in 2011, according to the report.
- The Drug Enforcement Administration said in a 2019 proposed rule that controlling one synthetic cathinone often leads to another unscheduled version entering the market.
- More recently, nitazenes – synthetic opioids — have raised concern due to their potency. One compound, etonitazene, has been found to be 50 times as potent as fentanyl, while newer variants can be up to 90 times as potent.
- At least 22 nitazene molecules had been identified by the end of 2024. China banned nitazenes in July 2025, a move that may simply shift production to other regions, the report said.
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