Karma at work, things just get worse and worse....
Flesh-rotting ‘tranq’ drug spreads to 48 states, cut with fentanyl: urgent DEA alert
By
and
March 22, 2023 1:32pm
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 use as it
Often cut with heroin, dealers are now mixing it with fentanyl as an inexpensive way to make highs last longer amid the “disgraceful”
killing up to 300 Americans per day.
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the
alert. “DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states.”
A rep for NYC’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Office told The Post they had not yet released any hard data documenting the prevalence of xylazine in the Big Apple.
However, on Monday, Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan told the City Council Committee on Public Safety: “Xylazine is increasingly linked to overdose deaths in New York City. It has been present in the city for over a year and is now beginning to saturate the street market.”
Brennan also revealed that officers uncovered more than 44 pounds of fentanyl cut with the “extremely cheap to purchase” xylazine during a recent money laundering raid in Queens.
“We see it in our bulk seizures, as well as in user-ready glassines sold on the street,” Brennan told The Post. “It is usually found mixed with fentanyl [but] mixtures may also contain other drugs, like cocaine.”
The Drug Enforcement Administration has issued an urgent public safety alert regarding the animal tranquilizer xylazine, saying it is now being used as a cheap cutting agent for fentanyl in 48 states.
Meanwhile, the shocking new DEA statistic is sure to alarm Americans, as there has been little reporting about the rapid spread of the dangerous drug.
Last June, it was
that xylazine had been discovered in 36 states, meaning its spread in the nine months since has been rapid and extreme.
Those who OD on xylazine do not respond any known antidote, according to an
to health-care officials.
“The combination of xylazine and fentanyl is particularly lethal, because xylazine does not respond to the overdose reversing drug naloxone [
},” Brennan told The Post.
“The DEA laboratory system is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized contained xylazine,” Milgram said 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 the skin ulcers may be attributable to blood-vessel damage caused by the drug.
According
to the
107,735 Americans died between August 2021 and August 2022 from drug poisonings, with 66% of those deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
as being at the center of America’s xylazine crisis. The drug is behind a staggering 26% of all overdose deaths in Pennsylvania more broadly, the National Institutes of Health reported.
Philadelphia is at the center of America’s xylazine crisis. An ill woman is pictured in that city. Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Philadelphia
that 90% of lab-tested dope samples from 2021 contained xylazine.
“It’s too late for Philly,” Shawn Westfahl, an outreach worker with
, told
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 year, one Philly user
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,
. “Until nine months ago, I never had wounds. Now, there are holes in my legs and feet.”
Around a quarter of all tested drugs in the Big Apple now contain the animal tranquilizer. Stephen Yang
A drug user is seen in Philadelphia. Xylazine has worsened the drug epidemic there, and is now responsible for more than a quarter of overdose deaths in Pennsylvania as a whole.
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
.
“This would increase deaths from overdoses.”
