The Eastern Finland Police Department has warned of a dangerous designer drug circulating in the Kuopio region.
Police said on Thursday afternoon that there have been several deaths in the Kuopio region this late autumn and early winter that they suspect were related to overdoses of a designer drug called metonitazene.
Examinations of the cause of death in these cases conducted by police indicated the presence of the drug, which Finland classified as a highly dangerous narcotic in February 2022.
The risk of overdosing on metonitazene is extremely high, resulting in respiratory depression, loss of consciousness and skin turning blue or grey.
Metonitazene is a potent synthetic opioid of the nitazene class. It is estimated to be hundreds or even thousands of times more potent than morphine and 10 times as potent than fentanyl.
Nationwide, metonitazene has been found in tablets that resemble 8mg medicinal tablets of Subutex (buprenorphine), which is prescribed to help patients overcome opioid dependence, but is frequently abused as a street drug.
According to the police statement, the tablets were not sold in standard blister packs, but as loose pills on the street.
In 2022, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction said that Finland had Europe's highest rate of drug overdoses among people under the age of 25. Buprenorphine was identified in 60 percent of the drug-induced deaths reported in Finland in 2021, it said.