When a 20-year-old University of Colorado student was found dead in his apartment last July, the Boulder County Coroner’s office suspected he had overdosed.

Investigators found an unknown powder near his body but the chemical was not detected when the student’s toxicology came back from a national drug lab. 

Deputy Coroner Jeff Martin was perplexed, but he didn’t give up.

Martin resubmitted the man’s blood and urine samples to the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education (CFSRE).

And bingo — Martin’s suspicions were correct. 

The synthetic compound found in the Boulder man’s system was a chemical that had never been detected in a deceased person before. 

According to a report from CFSRE, it was a synthetic opioid in the nitazene family, which was probably created by a chemist “looking for a way to make money,” Martin theorized.

The compound now has a name — Desethyl etonitazene and it is 10 times deadlier than fentanyl, the lab determined.

Martin immediately issued a public safety alert that the drug had been discovered in the community.

“It’s alarming because we do have a college population here. These are young individuals,” he said.

The investigation into who sold the student the deadly powder is ongoing, so his name has not been made public.

Because toxicology takes months to complete, the previously unknown nitazene compound was not identified until this past November. Other chemical concoctions of the synthetic opioid are starting to emerge in Colorado.

Nitazene, which remains rare, is often mixed with other drugs. It is not new. It was created in the 1950s as a replacement for morphine, but it was never sold commercially because it was determined to be highly addictive.

What’s new is that it’s appearing on the street as an illicit drug.

There are five known types of nitazene, Martin said, including the newest, Desethyl etonitazene, which proved deadly in the July Boulder case.

According to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, 13 people have fatally overdosed on nitazene in Colorado since the opioid first emerged here in August 2021. The deaths happened up and down the Front Range — from Larimer to El Paso County.

People who died ranged in age — from late teens to late sixties.

Boulder has been hit especially hard with the July death, and then again in October, this time, a 22-year-old man.

Nick Goldberger, commander of the Boulder County Drug Task Force, does not believe that the July and October cases are related because they were different chemical compounds, but he believes the drugs in the July case were bought on via the dark web.

“We want to find the seller and the manufacturer and get them. They’re killing people,” Goldberger said.

Adding to the complexity of the investigation is the fact that, he said, witnesses have not been cooperative.  

Nitazene is usually mixed with other drugs and, much like with fentanyl, users have no idea what they’re taking. The college student who died in July ingested nitazene mixed with other drugs by snorting a powder. The drug is so new there are no strips to test for it, like there are for fentanyl.

Goldberger said that nitazene powder is the color of sand.

The street name for nitazene is ISO or Pyro, according to Dr. Christopher Hoyte, medical director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center, who said that the drug is so new his organization doesn’t know if people are seeking it out to get a more powerful high than what fentanyl offers.

“Dealers may not even know what it is yet,” Hoyte said. 

Nitazene use is not an epidemic, but drug experts like Hoyte are keeping an eye on it, much like they did when fentanyl first started showing up.

“I hope this doesn’t become anything near what fentanyl has become because it’s more potent,” said Hoyte. “It’s out there. Once the media knows about it, the horse is out of the barn.” 

Andrés Guerrero, manager of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s overdose prevention unit, remembers when fentanyl started showing up on the East Coast.

He said that fentanyl arrived in Colorado a year to a year-and-a-half later. It’s the same pattern with nitazene, which, he said. It’s a drug that flies under the radar, he said, adding, “I have not spoken with anyone who knew that what they were looking at was nitazene.”

Like fentanyl, nitazene overdoses can be reversed by naloxone, a nasal spray that blocks opioid receptors. Unlike fentanyl, nitazene is so powerful that it may take a couple of doses of naloxone before it works, warned Guerrero.

The fact that a brand new nitazene compound was sold in Boulder has drug officials on the watch for the next threat. They warned against buying drugs on the street and urged people to keep naloxone handy — and to never get high alone.