America’s drug crisis is entering a new and deeply troubling chapter. For years, opioids like heroin and fentanyl have ravaged families and communities across the nation. Now, a new and far more disturbing threat is compounding the damage: a powerful animal tranquilizer called xylazine.
Originally developed for veterinary use, particularly to sedate large animals such as horses, xylazine is now being found in the illegal drug supply in cities like Philadelphia and beyond. Known on the streets as “tranq,” xylazine is not classified as a controlled substance by the DEA and remains entirely legal to purchase. It’s also not an opioid, which makes treating overdoses far more difficult.
Xylazine is frequently combined with fentanyl to increase the drug’s effect and to stretch supply for street-level dealers. But this combination is turning already-deadly drugs into something even more horrific. Tranq causes severe wounds and painful withdrawal symptoms that are pushing users further into despair and making recovery even harder to achieve.
Unlike opioids, xylazine does not respond to Narcan (naloxone), the drug used to reverse opioid overdoses. This means when someone overdoses on a drug cocktail laced with xylazine, emergency responders are often helpless. Doctors and hospitals also struggle to identify the substance quickly, making it difficult to deliver timely and effective treatment.
In addition to the overdose risk, xylazine causes terrifying physical damage. One of its most disturbing effects is the development of painful skin ulcers and infections—often in places on the body where users never injected drugs. These wounds can fester and grow, leading to tissue death, long-term disability, and, in some cases, amputation.
Health experts report that users sometimes inject directly into wounds in an attempt to relieve pain—because xylazine, as a potent α2-adrenergic agonist, reduces the perception of pain. But this only worsens the injury. A 2021 report in Injury Prevention noted that users sometimes cut into or drain their own wounds in misguided attempts at self-treatment, often with disastrous consequences.
Former addict Sam Brennan, who now runs a recovery house in Philadelphia’s Badlands neighborhood, described his firsthand experience with tranq’s devastating effects. “I would inject in my neck,” he said, “but these wounds were coming out of my hands and legs. It would scab up, and you would rip the scab off and it would be like a crater under your skin, like it’s eating your flesh.”
These kinds of injuries are not rare. While intravenous drug use already carries a high risk of infection, the mixture of xylazine and fentanyl seems to accelerate and intensify the damage. What once might have been a localized skin issue now becomes a systemic, flesh-eating problem that can affect multiple parts of the body.
Perhaps most alarming is how rapidly xylazine has spread. In 2015, it was found in only 0.36% of fatal overdoses in the United States. By 2020, that number had surged to nearly 7% nationwide. In Philadelphia alone, xylazine was involved in 31% of fatal overdoses in 2019. The trend shows no sign of slowing down.
This growing crisis demands action. Without regulations on xylazine and better tools for law enforcement and medical providers, more lives will be lost to a drug that the average American still hasn’t heard of. As policymakers consider next steps, the stakes couldn’t be higher—for families, first responders, and communities on the front lines of the addiction epidemic.
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Sources: Awm, Newstimesuk, Dailymail