BALTIMORE — People waiting for the bus at the corner of Pennsylvania and North avenues early Thursday afternoon remained unfazed to all the activity across the street - emergency responders treating a man who appeared to be suffering from a drug overdose.
"This has been going on," resident Lisa Logan said. "We got people that that's overdosing around the corner on Etting Street. We had overdoses on the bus stop. I even lost my nephew to an overdose on the bus stop."
"So, it happens a lot down here, but not to the extent like that was, that was terrible. That was really rough," Ronny Wells said.
Wells is referring to last week's mass overdose, which sent a staggering 27 people to the hospital - some in critical condition.
The area is notorious for being an open-air drug market.
WATCH: Testing and analyzing drug samples from last week's mass overdose in Penn North
"What I heard was that whoever it was, they were giving testers out, you know, they try to put the drug out [to see if] the public likes it and it was just a bad batch," Wells said.
To get to the bottom of what exactly was in the drugs, the city sent samples to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The federal lab has a program that's called "RaDAR," or Rapid Drug Analysis and Research.
The program started in Maryland in 2021. The goal is to "capture the chemical makeup of the illicit drug landscape in near real-time," according to its webpage. Researchers analyze trace drug residue samples to screen for emerging substances.
In the Baltimore mass overdose samples, according to the Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Banner, they found a combination of substances that are already common in Maryland's illegal drug supply - including fentanyl. But according to the Sun and the Banner, lab testing also revealed a new one, a benzodiazepine derivative called N-methylclonazepam that has strong sedative properties.
An In Focus look at N-methylclonazepam
Mayor Brandon Scott addressed the incident on CNN Wednesday night: "If you are someone who is pedaling drugs, a drug dealer doing harm, literally giving people things you know will kill them you need to be removed from that community and put in jail but we also have to grow and evolve in our understanding of how to deal with addiction."
Nearby on the 1700 block of North Carey Street, Baltimore Police made five drug arrests over the weekend. Police say these arrests were not related to the overdose event last week.
The department says it's focused on addressing open air drug markets across the city, which "has led to an increase in both felony and misdemeanor drug arrests this year."
"The number one thing is find out the root cause of why the people are still getting high," resident Lisa Logan told WMAR-2 News. "If people are going to jail and coming home to nothing, then they're going to start getting high again. If nobody don't have nothing, they're getting high to alleviate or escape from what they're going through."
The Baltimore Police Department's investigation into the mass overdose is ongoing.
