Los Angeles is finding the abuse of the "zombie" street drug "tranq" on a dangerous rise, causing abusers' flesh to rot off of them, and putting it on experts' radar to be tracked closely now.
"It's really gruesomely disfiguring people," Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Bill Bodner told KTLA, as the city is now tracking the drug for a month.
"It's much more likely to stop someone from breathing and the things that come along with xylazine, it's a vasoconstrictor. So when you're injecting it, it's actually reducing the blood circulation."
The street name "tranq" comes from xylazine's veterinarian tranquilizing use to sedate animals. It has been mixed with dangerous drugs like heroin and fentanyl.
The problem with tranq for localities like Los Angeles is, unlike heroin and fentanyl, xylazine is not illegal, but the city is tracking the drug from its ties to addictive illegal drugs.
"I've never seen anything like what we're dealing with right now," addiction expert Cary Quashen told KTLA.
"We had a woman come in and her sister had passed away from a fentanyl overdose, but not only was it a fentanyl overdose, her skin was starting to rot, the muscles on her leg and her arm. So that's a sure sign of xylazine."
The program to track tranq will go on for another month before recommendations are put in place for legislative and administrative action in LA, the L.A. Times reported.
"In the greater Los Angeles area, we are seeing xylazine as an additive within fake fentanyl pills," DEA Field Division spokesperson Nicole Nishida told the Times. "While the numbers are relatively low in our community compared to elsewhere in the United States, the presence of xylazine is now becoming more frequent and the trend is concerning."
The DEA has issued a March alert on tranq, warning it makes the "deadliest" drug fentanyl even deadlier.
"Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier," DEA Administrator Anne Milgram wrote in the alert. "DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 States. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine."
Xylazine and fentanyl drug mixtures place users at a higher risk of suffering a fatal drug poisoning. Because xylazine is not an opioid, naloxone (Narcan) does not reverse its effects.
Still, experts always recommend administering naloxone if someone might be suffering a drug poisoning. People who inject drug mixtures containing xylazine also can develop severe wounds, including necrosis — the rotting of human tissue — that may lead to amputation.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/tranq-zombie-drug/2023/05/15/id/1119827/?ns_mail_uid=3f95ecc7-9aa9-4015-8059-773507b79fff&ns_mail_job=DM474260_05152023&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010502izpwjw
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