On drug allegations, a man from Lake Worth Beach is on his way to federal prison. Undoubtedly, you are aware of fentanyl, a hazardous and addictive substance that is offered on the black market. This example contains nitazene, a substance that scientists think is as deadly to fentanyl. Some of the women at Blake Kolessa’s Lake Worth Beach home were upset to see us and ordered us to leave when CBS12 News visited. The 27-year-old Kolessa was recently given a sentence of 15 years in federal prison and five years of supervised release.
In 2024, he admitted to selling thousands of crushed pills to undercover agents in Palm Beach County without their knowledge. Methamphetamine and nitazene, a synthetic opioid similar to fentanyl, which the feds claim can equal or surpass that potency, were found in those pills. The effects of nitazene are amplified when coupled with fentanyl, significantly raising the risk of lethal drug poisoning. “I’m really worried about it. Dr. John Dyben, a drug misuse treatment specialist at the Hanley Foundation in West Palm Beach, stated, “We’ll see more and more people coming in overdosing, needing multiple interventions, and we’ll see people, an increase in deaths, which is the saddest thing.”
According to a former Special Agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, nitazenes are meeting a need because they are 800 times more strong than morphine. “They’re manufactured by hand. They’re inexpensive to produce. The majority of the ingredients are accessible lawfully. According to Craig Wiles, a former DEA Special Agent, “they can be pushed with much less overhead than producing, moving, and transporting traditional heroin.”
One of the main sponsors of a bill in the Florida Legislature to make possession of nitazene a felony carrying a maximum life sentence was Treasure Coast State Representative Toby Overdorf (R-Dist. 85). State Representative Overdorf declared, “This drug is an extremely scary, addictive drug.” In 2023, Rep. Overdorf’s bill was approved by the Florida Legislature and became state law. Authorities claim that the rise in drug overdose mortality is caused by the frequent addition of synthetic opioids, such as nitazene, to substances like cocaine or heroin.
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