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Flesh-eating ‘Tranq’ drug leads to 150 ODs, 9 deaths in opioid-ravaged Florida county

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Flesh-eating ‘Tranq’ drug leads to 150 ODs, 9 deaths in opioid-ravaged Florida county


Flesh-rotting fentanyl laced with the animal sedative known as “Tranq” has flooded opioid-ravaged portions of a Florida county, leading to 150 overdoses and nine fatalities over the last 18 months alone, officials said.

Orange County Sheriff John Mina said a shocking 80% of fentanyl seized during a recent takedown contained Xylazine, a powerful narcotic used to sedate animals during veterinary surgeries.

In addition to eating away at flesh near the user’s injection site, Tranq is known for leaving fentanyl addicts hunched over in a “zombie”-like stupor.

The drug’s growing prevalence has laid waste to junkie-populated neighborhoods from Philadelphia to San Francisco, spurring law enforcement agencies across the country to sound the alarm.

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Mina called Tranq an “emerging public health threat” at a press conference Tuesday, warning that overdose victims do not respond to emergency treatments.

“Perhaps the scariest thing about Xylazine and its prevalence in street drugs here and throughout the country is that it is not receptive to Narcan,” Mina said, adding that the drug has been directly linked to three fatalities in his county this year so far.

In addition to tissue rot, Tranq causes low blood pressure, difficulty breathing, and a dangerously slowed heart rate, he stressed.

Doctors have warned that flesh loss often leads to amputations.

“Tranq” can rot flesh and cause skin lesions, low blood pressure, breathing problems and slowed heart rates.
Sky News

Orange County Sheriff John Mina
Orange County Sheriff John Mina called Tranq an “emerging public health threat” and warned that overdose victims do not respond to emergency treatments.
News 6 WKMG / ClickOrlando

Capt. Darryl Blanford said his department recently broke up a fentanyl distribution ring that left portions of south Orange County awash in Xylazine-laced fentanyl.

The operation led to more than a dozen arrests, including alleged ringleader Jazzmeen Montanez, who faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

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Blanford said undercover agents eventually traced the origin of the fentanyl to a supplier in New Jersey, and that police intercepted a drug mule transporting a half-kilogram through Volusia County.

“The drugs were targeting areas that already had a massive problem” with opioids, Blanford said.

The department highlighted that the use of Tranq in fentanyl has exploded over the past five years, and has become the norm.


Mugs of drug Florida drug suspects.
80% of fentanyl recovered during a recent sting contained Xylazine.
Orange County Sheriff’s Office

“You can see that it’s accelerating at an extremely fast pace,” he said.

Profit-hungry fentanyl producers are using Tranq because it extends a user’s high and keeps them coming back for more despite the risks, according to Blanford.

Whereas Xylazine can be purchased from China for $100 a kilogram, fentanyl costs $50,000 for the same amount, he said. Cutting the pure product with Tranq, he said, boosts dealer profits.

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A kilo of fentanyl, he said, can produce up to 15,000 individual doses when cut with Xylazine and other substances.


Homeless
Tranq has ravaged downtown areas of big cities from Philadelphia to San Francisco.
urbanvisuals2.0/Tiktok

Fentanyl needles in Philadelphia
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said.
Teun Voeten/Sipa USA

“That’s the volume of the product that’s being kicked out onto your streets right now,” he said.

While it is readily available from China, Blanford said he suspected that some veterinarians are likely selling Xylazine for illicit purposes.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram previously warned that Tranq could present a historic public health threat.

“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” she said.

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3 most underrated signees in Florida State football's 2025 class

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3 most underrated signees in Florida State football's 2025 class


Florida State football had an embarrassing 2024 campaign where it finished with a 2-10 record. This is not the expectation of what the Seminoles are all about.

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Head football coach Mike Norvell understood the urgency as he could not allow the program to snowball into a laughing stock after a productive 13-1 season in 2023. Norvell was heading into a pivotal sixth season with his job on the line.

As a result, he went out and hired a ton of new coaches on his staff, including Gus Malzahn, Tim Harris Jr., Herb Hand, Tony White, Terrance Knighton, and Evan Cooper. This was uncharted territory for Norvell since he had never had to fire multiple coaches like that.

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Nonetheless, we were wondering how the Seminoles’ 2025 recruiting class would play out with new coaches as well as the struggling year in 2024.

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The recruiting class did well, and it finished with the 20th-best in the 247Sports Composite rankings (prospects can still sign in February). In this article, I want to highlight three of the most underrated signees from Florida State’s 2025 recruiting class.



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U.S. Amateur runner-up Noah Kent is transferring to Florida

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U.S. Amateur runner-up Noah Kent is transferring to Florida


Noah Kent is heading home.

The 2024 U.S. Amateur runner-up is transferring to Florida, he announced Saturday. The sophomore at Iowa, whose hometown is Naples, Florida, entered the transfer portal earlier this month, and he made his decision to join coach J.C. Deacon and the 2023 national champions come next fall.

Because of NCAA rules, Kent won’t be eligible to compete for Florida until the 2025-26 season, but he can finish his sophomore year with the Hawkeyes. This fall, he placed in the top 13 all four tournaments, his best finish being a T-5 at the Fighting Irish Classic.

And, of course, he has a tee time at Augusta National Golf Club in the spring.

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Kent will essentially be the fourth member of Florida’s 2025 signing class, which ranked second in the country on signing day. He’ll join a talented roster that includes Parker Bell, Mathew Kress and Jack Turner, though with new NCAA roster limits coming, there’s bound to be some unprecedented roster turnover in college golf before the start of the 2025-26 season.



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State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida?  | NHL.com

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State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida?  | NHL.com


There are two NHL teams in Florida: the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

They are separated by about 250 miles and have been fierce rivals since the Panthers joined the NHL for the 1993-94 season. The Lightning joined the League a season earlier.

Florida (21-11-2) and Tampa Bay (18-10-2) meet for the first time this season at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, CRIPPS, SN, TVAS).

The teams have played each other 157 times in the regular season; the Panthers have gone 77-51-19, and the Lightning are 70-64-13. There have been 10 ties.

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For years, the rivalry was a parochial affair, deeply important to hockey fans in the state but under the radar nationally. Lately, though, Florida supremacy has often meant NHL supremacy.

The Panthers are the reigning Stanley Cup champions and defeated the Lightning in five games in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round last season to start that title march. They reached the Stanley Cup Final two seasons ago, going on a miracle run before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. The season before that, they won the Presidents’ Trophy with an NHL-best 122 points but lost to the Lightning in a second-round sweep, marking the second straight time that their noisy neighbors ended their season.

The Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021 before reaching a third straight Final in 2022, losing to the Colorado Avalanche. Tampa Bay won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018-19.

This season, each team is on course for another appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and has a point percentage of better than .600.

So which team has the merits to claim bragging rights in this all-Florida showdown as the rivals face off for the first time this season? That’s the question debated by NHL.com senior writers Amalie Benjamin and Dan Rosen in the latest installment of State Your Case.

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Benjamin: Let’s lay out what the Lightning have accomplished in their 32-season history: They’ve won the Stanley Cup three times, becoming the first team from Florida to win it when they took the championship in 2004. But that doesn’t come close to what they’ve accomplished during the past 11 seasons, starting in 2013-14, when they became a powerhouse. They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 times in those 11 seasons, making the Stanley Cup Final in a whopping four of them. Let me repeat that: Four trips to the Cup Final in the past 11 seasons, winning twice, in 2020 and 2021. And if that’s not enough, they made two more trips to the Eastern Conference Final, in 2016 and 2018. Forget Florida’s team. They’re the team of the past decade in the entire NHL.

Rosen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what have you done for me lately? Florida’s team fluctuates. It was the Lightning. It is the Panthers. They’ve got the Stanley Cup. They went to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row. Sure, a few years ago, this wasn’t even a debate. Florida’s team, the Panthers? Please. No shot. Even the top executives with the Panthers would tell you that. But things change. With success come the riches. Just think about the past three seasons for the Panthers: Presidents’ Trophy winners in 2021-22, Stanley Cup Final in 2022-23, Stanley Cup champions in 2023-24. The Lightning lost in the 2022 Cup Final, lost in the first round in six games the next season and lost in the first round in five games to the Panthers last season. Florida’s team is Florida.

Benjamin: OK, sure, you have a point. Florida has done pretty darn well lately. But let’s see how history will judge the state of Florida and its hockey teams. Hall of Famers? The Lightning have got ’em. Though Steven Stamkos has moved on to the Nashville Predators, the Hall of Fame is going to come calling, and the forward will go in as a member of the Lightning. Add in coach Jon Cooper, forward Nikita Kucherov, defenseman Victor Hedman and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, and you’re talking at least five future Hall of Famers on a single team. That’s not just good, that’s historically good. It’s a group whose names are synonymous with winning, with the Stanley Cup, with the state of Florida. That’s powerful. That says the Lightning win this debate, no question.

Rosen: I have a question. Is Aleksander Barkov not paving his way to the Hall of Fame? Is Sergei Bobrovsky, with a Stanley Cup ring, 400-plus wins and two Vezina Trophy wins as the NHL’s best goalie, not a lock for the Hall of Fame? Is Paul Maurice, who could finish his career with at least the second-most coaching wins of all time, along with his Stanley Cup ring, not also a lock for the Hall of Fame? In the way-too-early department, could Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart be future Hall of Famers? I lied. That’s four questions. But you get the point. You brought up the Hall of Fame and I countered. That’s why the Lightning do not win this debate without question. Could they win it? Yes, certainly, if we were having this debate in 2023. It’s almost 2025. It’s a different world. It’s the Panthers’ world, at least in Florida. The Lightning are just living in it. At least the sun is still shining on them too.

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