DEADLY ‘TRANQ’ SCOURGE
Rx-tied ODs soar
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 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 opioid epidemic 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 “widespread threat” 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.”
Found in Queens
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 userready 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.”
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 reported 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 FDA warning to health-care officials.