My teen son was killed by ‘Frankenstein’ drug 300x stronger than HEROIN

A TEENAGER died after taking a fatale dose of a drug which is 300 times stronger than heroin.

Will Helstrip, 18, passed away in May 2022 after he reportedly ordered a Valium-type medication from the dark web to help him sleep.

However, the medication was laced with a lethal opioid that is up to 20 times more powerful than fentanyl, and 300 times stronger than heroin, Hull Live reported.

The computer programmer’s parents have stated their son had no idea the medication was laced with the synthetic opioid drug known as N-pyrrolidino etonitazene.

“Due to his inability to sleep, Will would self-medicate with prescription medication,” Will’s mum Ruth said.

“When you’re a computer genius, you know how to order from the dark web and have something sent out to you in the post.

“We do not know what Will thought he had ordered, but what we do know without a shadow of a doubt was that he would never have known it would be laced with a new, highly dangerous, lethal synthetic drug which is 1500 times stronger than morphine and up to 20 times stronger than fentanyl.

“Will never stood a chance.”

Dubbed Frankenstein drugs, nitazenes — which are man-made to mimic the effects of opioids such as heroin — can be mixed with other drugs to create much stronger, and often fatal, results.

They have already killed 49 people across the UK, including a young entrepreneur and a talented teenage software developer.

In Dublin, 40 heroin addicts overdosed in the space of 36 hours last month after nitazenes made their way into the local drug supply.

And in the same month cops seized the biggest ever haul of nitazenes after a raid on an illegal factory in North London.

Nitazenes are believed to be mostly shipped in from China — and there are fears they could spark a new war between organised crime gangs.

Drug expert Tony D’Agostino, who trains frontline workers, said: “They are called Frankenstein drugs because they can be mixed with tablets or powder. They don’t have a ‘face’ or any sort of look.

“They can make their way into the heroin supply chain and Xanax-type drugs that are bought online or through social media.

“The bigger worry is if they make their way into the cannabis market because up to 16million Brits take cannabis.

“These drugs were developed in the late 1950s by a Swiss company that shelved them because they were too potent.”

Former undercover cop Neil Wood has insisted the Government must return to the old drugs policy in the UK, known as the British System.

“We need to take control and take the power away from organised crime and steal their wealth away from them [China],” he began.

“We can do this by allowing doctors to prescribe to users .There are pockets of licensed legal prescribers in the UK but they are not wide enough to prepare for what’s coming. 

“Under the British system we had 1046 heroin users. We now have 300,000. The policies aren’t working.

“The epidemic we have now and tsunami of increased deaths is clear cause and effect because we stopped doing things the British way.”

On July 26, the Government issued a National Patient Safety Alert warning of a spike in overdoses, primarily in heroin users, over the previous eight weeks “in many parts of the country”.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities revealed testing in some cases had identified synthetic opioids called nitazenes, which have already led to deaths in the US.

There have been clusters of fatalities in Bristol, Basildon, Coventry and the West Midlands, with nitazenes also in Glasgow.

Dr Justin Varney, director of public health for Birmingham City Council, said: “Fentanyl is ten times the strength of heroin, nitazenes are ten times the strength of fentanyl.

“That’s why people are overdosing.”

Movements in the global market have made space for drugs such as nitazenes.

Dr Varney said: “The national opium supply chain is disrupted, particularly by the action in Afghanistan, as well as the global war on drugs. It means the drug market is turning to synthetic opioids.”

Crime and policing minister Chris Philp added: “These new highly dangerous substances have the potential to devastate lives, ruin families and damage communities.

“We must be one step ahead to ensure we are stopping new drugs from plaguing our streets and endangering the lives of vulnerable people.

“Our strategy is to tackle both the illicit supply of drugs by relentlessly pursuing criminal networks, and to build a world-class treatment system to turn people’s lives around and stop the cycle of crime.”