‘Zombie drug’ 1000 times more powerful than heroin hits Sydney streets
Nitazenes have ravaged parts of the US, leading to addicts staggering around cities like zombies. These drugs are now arriving in Australia in alarming numbers.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Super-strength opioids that have turned major US cities into zombie zones have been intercepted at Australian ports.
Nitazenes, which can be a thousand times more powerful than heroin, are high on the Australian Border Force watch list, alongside the date rape drug of which the agency has seen a 500 per cent spike in the amount seized in the past 12 months.
Similar to fentanyl, nitazenes have ravaged parts of the US, leading to addicts staggering around in a haze in cities that include San Francisco and Philadelphia.
While still dealing with the perennial problem of cocaine and methamphetamine, the spikes are a concern for new Border Force Commissioner Gavan Reynolds, who says his staff need to be more shrewd and diligent than ever.
In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph, his first since taking charge in November last year, Mr Reynolds said the synthetic opioids, often smuggled in pill or powder form through the mail in quantities so small yet so powerful, are of huge concern.
“We are seeing these extremely powerful nitazenes coming into the country and we are on very high alert because of how dangerous they are,” Mr Reynolds said.
“We’re actively looking for it. We’re sharpening our targeting.
“We’re working with our partners, particularly in North America, because of the availability of fentanyl in Canada and the United States, to prevent as much as we can of those sorts of really dangerous synthetic opioids coming into the country.”
“What we are now seeing is these serious organised crime groups finding substitutes because of the shortage of heroin.
“Such a tiny amount of these nitazenes is required, they can shift it easier.”
Mr Reynolds said the huge spike in butanediol made him shudder to think how many Australians could have fallen victim to sexual predators had it not been for the diligence and shrewdness of his workforce.
“It’s horrifying to think that if that gets on the streets ... the fact that we can pick it up at the border is something we are really working hard on,” Mr Reynolds said.
“We have had really good support throughout Southeast Asia and we are working with the Australian Federal Police to now cut the flow, for one, of butanediol, because we have seen that increase and that’s very alarming.
“And to give you a perspective of the increase, the eight tonnes we have seized in the last six months, that’s an increase of 474 per cent over some six months last year.”
Mr Reynolds, the former chief of defence intelligence, knows how important good information is when it comes to stopping drugs from entering the country — but not without a workforce who knows what to do with it.
“Our job is facilitating people and cargo into the country and stopping threats from entering the country,” he said.
“Over the period between July and December of last year, we had 11 million people coming to Australia.
“It’s an enormous number of people and it was the ability to be able to pick up those that thought it was a good idea to courier methamphetamine or cocaine from North America, which has seen an increase over that six-month period.
“But because of the way that we conduct our intelligence targeting, we know who these people are. We know their methodologies, and we can profile to identify those we need to have a closer look at and as the numbers are going up, it means we are catching them.”
Mr Reyndolds said the challenge was, as the number of people entering the country continued to rise, his staff had to be “far more selective, and your intelligence has to be really good to identify who they are”.
In the last six months of 2024 there were 10.3 tonnes of methamphetamine and cocaine seized from 7500 detections.
“I look at it from the perspective that, well, for every kilogram of meth or cocaine that we pick up on the border, that’s the number of people’s lives that are saved, and it’s a reduction in the harm to the community which is caused by those drugs coming into Australia.
“It’s wonderful to be a part of that, in supporting the nation.
“I’ve had the opportunity now to visit staff in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Townsville Cairns and Adelaide, and they’re all up for that mission.
“And every single day they come to work with the intent of enabling people to come through the border, and then making sure that those who carrying illicit drugs, carrying illicit tobacco, or the horrific incidents of child abuse, material are picked up.”
Having taken over the reins in November after working for 40 years in the Australian Defence Force, the new boss has hit the ground running.
Mr Reynolds got a first-hand look at a recent seizure when he visited the mail centre in Sydney recently.
“I was there watching them do their work on the line … they said, ‘this one’s probably one’ and sure enough they found a butane dial which really is the evil precursor for GHB, the date rape drug,” he said from Canberra headquarters last week.
“We’ve got a special room where we go through the testing to find out what it is, and it was about two litres of that.
“So automatically your mind goes to, ‘so how many people have we saved from being assaulted from that amount?’
“It’s really frightening and a real threat, so that makes it a big focus for us.”
This week The Daily Telegraph reported on a big bust in Western Sydney when NSW police found a small amount of butanediol — commonly known as “bute” — during a Firearm Prohibition Order check.
Burwood investigators tracked other similar parcels to local post offices, and in Silverwater they allegedly found 225kg of bute at a mail facility, and 23kg at Rhodes post office.
Anyone convicted of importing it can face life imprisonment.
Do you have a story for The Daily Telegraph? Message 0481 056 618 or email tips@dailytelegraph.com.au
Originally published as ‘Zombie drug’ 1000 times more powerful than heroin hits Sydney streets
Australian Border Force’s staggering illegal cigarette haul
In the last six months, the Australian Border Force has seized billions of dollars worth of illicit cigarettes and hundreds of tonnes of loose tobacco.
Read more
Tunnel-borers smash through 80 per cent of new Metro West line
Tunnel-boring machines Dorothy and Betty have smashed through solid rock at Clyde on the Metro West line, with more than 80 per cent of the tunnels for the project now completed.
Read more