Super-Lethal Drug Brandings Identified by NJ Investigators

Power Hour. Strike Dead. Taliban. That's the branding on packets of drugs so powerfully deadly that even Narcan might not help bring a user back, say New Jersey officials who tie them to six recent overdose deaths.

The New Jersey Regional Operations and Intelligence Center (ROIC), state police and health officials and law enforcement agencies in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania identified as circulating among heroin users, but often containing no heroin at all.

In those instances, users have literally no idea what is going into their systems.

Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of New Jersey State Police, pointed out that the information is a public service to save the life of anyone holding wax folds with any of these three stamps embossed on them.

"Since early last year, we have taken a fresh approach to combating the heroin epidemic in the region based on information sharing from the local through the federal levels.  When we learn of clusters of drug overdoses, we immediately alert our law enforcement partners with details of the threat," Fuentes said in a prepared statement.

New Jersey Acting Attorney General John Hoffman added that a multi-tiered, comprehensive approach is the only way to effectively meet the state's heroin crisis head-on. "The Drug Monitoring Initiative is a common sense, life-saving program that sounds the alarm when we identify lethal drug brands being peddled on our streets," Hoffman said.