A PJ source told Lusa agency that this substance, N-desethyl-isotonitazene, was seized at the end of December during a customs operation, and sent to the Scientific Police Laboratories (LPC), which detected this drug in fake oxycodone tablets whose final market would not be Portugal.

The same source explained that these pills were “extremely well made” and were “exactly the same” as oxycodone, a painkiller sold in the pharmaceutical industry, but also widely used in the illegal drug consumption market.

Police believe that this new synthetic drug would be sold “as if it were oxycodone” on illegal markets.

To identify it, the LPC relied on complementary analyses, carried out in collaboration with the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and the Instituto Superior Técnico.

This new psychoactive substance belongs to a chemical class that recently emerged in Europe, called nitazenes, and which causes a feeling of euphoria, followed by drowsiness, causing blockage of the respiratory system, which is one of the main causes of death from overdose.

Since 2019, the European Observatory on Drugs and Drug Addiction has already flagged 16 compounds from this class of nitazenes, mostly in the north of the European continent.