The US Drug Enforcement Administration has issued an urgent public safety alert regarding the animal tranquilizer xylazine — warning it is now being used as a cheap cutting agent for fentanyl in 48 states.
The medication — known on the street as “tranq,” “tranq dope” and “zombie drug” — is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for veterinary use. However, it is not safe for human consumption as it causes flesh-rotting sores and respiratory depression.
Often cut with heroin, dealers are now mixing it with fentanyl as an inexpensive way to make highs last longer amid the “disgraceful” opioid epidemic killing up to 300 Americans per day.
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” agency administrator Anne Milgram said in the “widespread threat” alert. “DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states.”
The shocking statistic is sure to alarm Americans, as there has been little reporting about the rapid spread of the dangerous drug.
Last June, it was reported that xylazine had been discovered in 36 states, meaning its spread in the nine months since has been rapid and extreme.
Those who overdose on xylazine do not respond to naloxone, or Narcan, the most common overdose reversal treatment, according to an FDA warning to healthcare officials.
“The DEA laboratory system is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23 percent of fentanyl powder and seven percent of fentanyl pills seized contained xylazine,” Milgram further stated in the public safety alert, showing just how popular the drug has become as a mixing agent.
“People who inject drug mixtures containing xylazine also can develop severe wounds, including necrosis—the rotting of human tissue—that may lead to amputation,” she added.
Doctors are unsure why the wounds occur and fester, but it may be down to damaged blood vessels caused by the drug.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 107,735 Americans died between August 2021 and August 2022 from drug poisonings, with 66% of those deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
Philadelphia has previously been identified as being at the center of America’s xylazine crisis. The drug is behind a staggering 26 percent of all overdose deaths in Pennsylvania more broadly, the National Institutes of Health reported.
The city reported that 90% of lab-tested dope samples from 2021 contained xylazine.
“It’s too late for Philly,” Shawn Westfahl, an outreach worker with Prevention Point Philadelphia, told The New York Times in an interview back in January.
“Philly’s supply is saturated. If other places around the country have a choice to avoid it, they need to hear our story.”
However, the drug has also been showing up in other major cities at an alarmingly high rate. Xylazine is now in 25% of opioid samples tested in New York City, according to the Times.
Last month, one Philly user suddenly developed xylazine-specific wounds near her opioid injection sites.
“I’d wake up in the morning crying because my arms were dying,” Tracey McCann, 39, told the New York Times.
“Tranq is basically zombifying people’s bodies,” 28-year-old user Sam, whose last name was withheld for privacy reasons, told Sky News. “Until nine months ago, I never had wounds. Now, there are holes in my legs and feet.”
Meanwhile there are fears that xylazine could worsen the drug epidemic in Los Angeles.
Dr. Gary Tsai, the director of substance abuse prevention and control with the LA County Department of Public Health, believes the drug’s prevalence “would increase deaths from overdoses.”
“The main concern is we’re already amid the worst overdose crisis in history, nationally and locally,” Tsai told the Los Angeles Times.
“This would increase deaths from overdoses.”