Source: New Jersey Monitor.com
The horse tranquilizer Xylazine first crept into the illicit drug trade in the U.S. more than two decades ago, but it didn’t widely catch on until around New Jersey until around 2018. As an ingredient in the drug now on the streets as tranq, Xylazine has been linked to gruesome, lingering sores that can raise the risk of amputation and even death.
Such rotting wounds, along with the stupor xylazine typically induces, have driven some to dub tranq as “the zombie drug.” According to an addict locally known as Johnny Narcan:
“You do a shot, and you just crumble where you’re at. When you wake up, you can’t move.
“A horse weighs 700 to 800 pounds. We weigh 150 pounds — 200 pounds, if that. If they’re giving this to horses to put them down, what is it doing to a person that’s 150 pounds?”
Xylazine complicates the overdose response because it’s a non-opioid sedative that doesn’t respond to naloxone. And because xylazine is a legal drug repurposed for illegal use, regulations haven’t caught up with it yet, making it tough for law enforcement to stem the supply.
That is why the Biden administration last month declared tranq an “emerging drug threat,” a designation that requires a national response that will include expanded health interventions, research and data collection, and crackdowns on suppliers.
“This started out as a small problem and then it blossomed, probably because there weren’t great controls put on the availability of xylazine,” said Dr. Lewis Nelson, chair of Rutgers University’s Department of Emergency Medicine and chief of its medical toxicology division. “They’re cracking down on it now. But obviously, it’s going to be tough to do.”
In New Jersey, xylazine is most common in Camden, migrating there from Philadelphia, where it has been found in 90% of the street opioid samples in 2021, according to the city’s department of health. It has also been found in about 30% of New Jersey’s opioid samples in recent years and 7% of overdose fatalities, says Capt. Jason Piotrowski, who heads New state police’s drug monitoring and analysis office.
Officials say drug deaths in New Jersey are actually at their lowest since 2017, with just under 2,900 tallied last year, down from the epidemic’s high of 3,124 in 2021. But that doesn’t mean drug use has fallen: more people are dodging death because of naloxone, which is now free at safe syringe sites and pharmacies
“I’ll tell you a dirty little secret: the vast majority of people who overdose don’t die,” says Dr. Nelson. “We know this because we know that in a city like Newark or Philadelphia, there’s hundreds of people who overdose every night. But if we don’t get them into treatment and get them to stop using opioids, they’re going to die the next time, or the time after.”