‘Tranq tourism’: alarm in Philadelphia as TikTokers travel to film drug users
Sarah Laurel, a harm-reduction professional, sat behind her desk and asked the man who walked into her store how much he’d been paid to be in a viral video she’d recently watched.
The man was an active substance user, struggling with addiction, who had probably taken drugs on the streets of Kensington, Philadelphia, earlier that morning. His answer was $50.
Sarah laughed and said that was more than usual.
Since 2021, Kensington, a lowincome neighborhood in North Philadelphia, has been ground zero for a new and dangerous sedative called “tranq”. Also known as “xylazine”, a side-effect of this drug can be struggling to stand upright, which is why users are commonly described in the media as “zombies”. People taking it can also develop severe flesh-eating wounds.
Xylazine has only been approved for veterinary use, and because it’s not an opioid, its effects cannot be reversed by emergency medication like Narcan, resulting in more fatalities. The percentage of deadly opioid overdoses in which it was detected rose by 276% between January 2019 and June 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported.
Rapidly, the use of the sedative has spread across the US, spiking in areas such as Philadelphia, where it is cut with other potent drugs like fentanyl.
Now, though, a new and unique problem seems to be affecting areas where the drug is showing up: a dark and voyeuristic type of content creation referred to as “tranq tourism”. This adjacent social media industry is becoming so prevalent it has even been the subject of a News Movement documentary.
In viral videos uploaded to social channels such as TikTok, tranq users are filmed when they are in a physical state in which they are unlikely to be able to consent. In some, they are asked questions about their private life or situations in a probing way that plays on their vulnerability. The videos are filmed by content creators, some of whom just visit the area for a short while and then monetize the views.
“There are over 150 channels dedicated to Kensington and all the things that take place here,” said Sarah Laurel, founder of Savage Sisters, a non-profit in Kensington supporting those affected by substance disorders.
The group offers resources like wound care, showers and daily supplies from their storefront on Kensington Avenue.
“People need to stop coming into our community and exploiting us and profiting off what we are going through. Interviewing individuals one-on-one and asking them such traumatizing questions at a street-level basis with no follow-up care will never be OK,” Laurel adds.
“If you’re not here to help, just get out.”
In 2022, the typical compensation for YouTube content creators in the United States was roughly $4,600 monthly, according to Influencer Market Hub research. Profit depends on the reach of a video, so in some cases, it can be far higher, but the platform pays approximately $20 for every 1,000 views.
TikTok is similar, and to begin earning money through the app, a user must have at least 10,000 followers. In one video posted by “Addiction After Dark” that reached 1.3m views, a woman, who is probably high, is filmed in an unspecified location in the US. After the interviewer asks how old she is, she responds: “I’m sorry, please give me a moment.” Then, later, holding her hand up in front of her face, she asks the person behind the camera to show her some respect.
Underneath the video, someone commented: “This is absolutely disgusting of the person posting this; quit exploiting these poor people. Shame on you!”
Other viral videos that document tranq in Kensington specifically show people lying on the floor or zoom in on users who have taken the drug, labeling them “zombies”, “junkies” or “fiends”. The faces of individuals in these videos are rarely blurred out, and #Kenzingtonzombies now has millions of views.
“These videos don’t pull at the heartstrings; they make these people look like animals in a zoo instead of individuals that need help,” said Dr Geri-Lynn Utter, a clinical psychologist specializing in addiction.
Utter grew up in Kensington, above a bar, with parents who struggled with addiction throughout her childhood. Every month or so, she returns to the area, volunteering on the streets and encouraging people to consider treatment.
“It’s become very exploitative there; people from all over Europe and the US are coming into the area and putting their phones or cameras in people’s faces,” Utter said.
“It’s detrimental because it isn’t helping. It’s continuing to dehumanize. These people are not in the right frame of mind to consent or participate in a social media clip.”
Indeed, “help” or “raise awareness” are keywords often thrown around by creators to justify why they are making this content in the first place. Some believe their videos are the only way to support or are an effective mode of shining light on the reality of what’s happening in Kensington.
Others interviewed in the News Movement documentary, like Mr Work, who runs a YouTube channel called Kensington Daily, admit it’s mostly just for the money.
There is hardly any way for viewers to donate funds or assist those they’re watching.
Laurel said the subjects of these videos, many of whom she knows or are her “friends”, will not get paid more than $5 for a single clip.
“Don’t just show up and record, bring resources, clean up,” Laurel said.
“Ask the community what they need.”
Jeff, a content creator in Kensington who runs a channel called Jeff’s High on Life, believes there is an ethical way to do this sort of filming if you pour the resources back into the community.
He makes about $1,000 a month, which he spends on wound care and supplies like clothes, but says he’s heard of cases in which content creators set up GoFundMe pages for the addicts who never see that money.
• In the US, call or text SAMHSA’s National Helpline iat 988. In the UK, Action on Addiction is available on 0300 330 0659. In Australia, the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline is at 1800 250 015; families and friends can seek help at Family Drug Support Australia at 1300 368 186
It’s become very exploitative there; people from all over Europe and the US are coming into the area and putting their phones or cameras in people’s faces
Dr Geri-Lynn Utter
trend line is one of escalation,” said Orna Mizrahi, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser for foreign policy, now at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “This is the most worrying thing about the situation, this trend of escalation. Nobody wants to have a full-scale war but we can get there anyway.”
A radio mast on the Israeli side of the line at Rosh Hanikra has been hit 13 times by anti-tank missiles. Last week, a missile landed on the roof of a building in the 7056th battalion’s base, improvised in a hastily abandoned village resort where tourists came until recently to see Rosh Hanikra’s famous grottos in the cliffs below.
Several times in a typical day, a security alert is sounded whenever a Hezbollah fighter is seen preparing a missile or a drone, sending the soldiers scuttling for cover. The battalion has a network of reinforced trenches just a few metres from the concrete border wall, which is topped by a high metal mesh intended to stop missiles. On the other side is a concrete command post that belongs to the Lebanese army, but Reuveni said Hezbollah fighters had been spotted nearby. He believes they have the free run of Lebanese army facilities in the area.
The wall rises upwards from the sea cliffs towards the east, following the line of the high ridge of the Ladder of Tyre mountain range which straddles the border, and the curve in the ridge lines provides a pocket of Lebanese territory a vantage point to look down on Rosh Hanikra.
The paratroopers are keenly aware of which parts of their base are visible from that pocket of mountainside. They believe they have driven Hezbollah spotters and snipers away with artillery fire that has left that section of ridge scorched black, but the Israelis’ concern is that the Hezbollah fighters will return at night.
The yellow metal border gate blocking the clifftop coast road is unmanned but overlooked by a machine-gun nest on the roof of the resort restaurant, and 30 metres on the far side of the gate is a concrete hut with a blue roof, where Italian soldiers with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) are stationed. Unifil was set up in 1978 to keep the peace but there have been two major conflicts since then, after Israeli invasions in 1982 and 2006.
Since Israel’s second Lebanon war there have been 17 years of relative calm, but the key peace terms in 2006, laid out in UN security council resolution 1701, have never been implemented. Hezbollah was supposed to pull back from the border across the Litani River, about 20 miles away, and to disarm. It has done neither, and instead built up a fearsome arsenal, with Iran’s help, estimated at well over 100,000 rockets, with the potential to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome defences and inflict significant damage on the country’s cities. Unifil has observed the buildup but has not prevented it.
After the Hamas attack, Hezbollah fired on border villages and sent raiding parties across the border, in what appear to have been calibrated operations to show solidarity with the Palestinians, without going far enough to provoke a full-scale war.
“Their escalation along the border has been proportional and incremental in a tit-for-tat pattern,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow and director of conflict resolution at the Middle East Institute. “At this point, the decision to go into an all-out war is totally Israel’s to make. Hezbollah and Iran do not want the escalation.”
In Israel, perspectives have changed dramatically on tolerating the Hezbollah presence on the northern border. “In the morning of 7 October, you had 2,000 people waking up knowing that it could easily have been them,” said David Azoulay, the council head of the town of Metula, towards the eastern end of the Israel-Lebanon border. Metula has been evacuated and its residents are being sheltered in hotels and private homes, mostly in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee.
In order for those people to return home, Azoulay said, something “radical” would have to change on the border. “The minimum would be pushing Hezbollah behind the Litani River,” he said.
As the displacement of 80,000 northern Israelis continues, along with a deep economic slump, the calls for a military solution are getting louder. At a meeting with northern mayors on 6 December, Gallant, the defence minister, said Israel would “act with all the means at its disposal” if the international community could not force Hezbollah to withdraw.
Benny Gantz, a former prime minister who is serving in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, made a similar promise to displaced northerners by the Sea of Galilee on Friday. “If the world doesn’t get Hezbollah away from the border, Israel will do it,” Gantz said.
The US and France are pursuing diplomatic efforts. According to Arab press reports, the US envoy Amos Hochstein is proposing a deal by which Israel and Lebanon resolve longstanding territorial differences on their border, in the hope it would drain support and purpose from Hezbollah. However, the government in Beirut is in crisis and in no position to make agreements, let alone enforce them. Lebanon has no president, only a caretaker government, and a long-running, debilitating financial crisis.
The vacuum in Beirut only exacerbates the growing risks. Emile Hokayem, the director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: “Both Iran and Hezbollah are uninterested and deterred at the moment. For them this is not the big one. But if Israel decides to go in, then it’s going to be interpreted by Hezbollah as an existential war, and then all hell will break loose.”