WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — In the midst of the nationwide fentanyl crisis, a new drug has been discovered in West Palm Beach according to officials during a press conference Wednesday.
The drug, called N-Desethyl Isotonitazene or "ISO", includes fentanyl along with opioids mixed in. The other city it has been detected in is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Lietenant Joseph Herb with the West Palm Beach Police Department said the investigation of the new drug dates back to February.
"We had some of it tested and it came back 50 times more potent than the normal fentanyl," Herb said.
According to police, ISO is a public health threat. They are seeing the powdered drug being pressed into oxycontin pills and percocets.
"I don’t want to pound it into the stand, but when we have open borders and fentanyl just crossing freely, we have a problem," Herb said. "Now we see it in Florida. We have a big problem.”
Authorities announced the arrest of a man and 1.6 million dollars of ammunition and drugs were seized during an undercover investigation. The drugs were seized from a home and storage unit.
Herb, who has been a police officer for 34 years, said this is part of a larger drug problem throughout Palm Beach County.
"This is scary, when I stated it was cocaine and marijuana, it's getting to the point now where you have patrolmen searching cars, hopefully not coming across this," Herb said.
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Herb added that in some instances, narcan has not reveresed the effect of ISO, causing it to be deadly.
"Narcan will work on fentanyl, the problem that we’re seeing now is when you start increasing the dosage on fentanyl and people are dropping because of this, sometimes narcan is not working," Herb said. "Sometimes first responders are not getting there fast enough to inject the narcan into the person and we have people dying because of this drug.”
