Nitazenes are a chemically defined class of substances derived from the parent compound nitazene. Nitazenes were developed in the second half of the 1950s by the Swiss company Ciba AG as pain-relieving agents. They are important as centrally active, selective μ-opioid receptor agonists. The high potency of fentanyl is matched by a few nitazenes and surpassed by etonitazene and isotonitazene. Nitazenes were never included in the pharmacopoeia of human or veterinary medicine and have not been approved for human use. Since 2019, highly potent nitazenes have proliferated as ″new synthetic opioids″ in the North American and European narcotics markets and as such have become a formative component of the opioid epidemic in the United States. Overdoses of nitazene opioids have led to several hundred documented fatalities.