Featured Image Credit: KLTA
Topics: US News, Drugs, News, Los Angeles
Gregory Robinson
Los Angeles police are trying to stop the spread of a flesh-eating ‘zombie drug’ as it takes over the city.
Drug users have been spotted hunched over and high on the drug Tranq, which is also known as xylazine. The sedative drug used by veterinarians to anesthetize animals like cows and horses has become increasingly present in the illicit drug market in the US.
While drug dealers are cutting it with cocaine and heroin, xylazine is often cut with fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is lethally potent.
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In the event of an opioid overdose, naloxone – which is sold under the brand name Narcan – can be given to reverse the effects. Unfortunately, because xylazine is not an opioid, it can’t be used to reverse its effects.
Local news crews filmed drug users in the streets of Los Angeles as Los Angeles County Sheriff’s officers are faced with the issue that the drug is technically legal.
Due to the detrimental impact the drug is having on the people in Los Angeles. The County Sheriff’s office is trying to track xylazine presence throughout the city.
The DEA and the Los Angeles county health department have both issued warnings against the use of the drug.
In official health documents about the use of xylazine in LA country, the County of Los Angeles Public Health department explained: “When combined with opioids like fentanyl, as is frequently the case, xylazine enhances the life-threatening effect of respiratory depression (slowing or stopping breathing) caused by opioids, increasing the risk of overdose and death.”
It explains that xylazine is a ‘cheap additive that increases potency as well as the risks of overdose and death’.
When taken by humans, the muscle relaxant drug reduces pain and slows brain activity, which causes a decrease in breathing rate and slows the heart rate and lowers blood pressure, leading to sedation and sleepiness.
The drug was specifically designed to be used clinically to put animals to sleep during veterinary surgeries and was found to be too dangerous to be used for humans.
Because xylazine causes ‘dangerously low blood pressure’ and slows breathing and heart rates, taking the drug can lead to death.
Xylazine has been dubbed a ‘zombie drug’ because injecting the drug can cause damage to the tissue around the injection site, leading to skin damage and large sores and ulcers that may develop into complex infections.
Officials say tracking the drug will allow them to get a sense of how severe the drug issue is in the country and help them decide the best practices to put a stop to it.
A public safety alert released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) warned the public about the ‘sharp increase’ in the trafficking of fentanyl mixed with xylazine.
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” administrator Milgram said. “DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 States. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022, approximately 23 percent of fentanyl powder and 7 percent of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.”
The CDC reports that 107,735 Americans died between August 2021 and August 2022 from drug poisonings, with 66 percent from those deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl.