A Monday announcement from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) expressed that authorities confiscated fentanyl which has been mixed in with a pharmaceutical drug normally utilized to sedate animals across 48 states, offering up a warning to Americans that this could be part of a more widespread issue.
Authorities have expressed, as part of a recently released public safety alert, that the agency captured Xylazine, which is normally known as “tranq,” and fentanyl mixtures, which could wind up inflicting severe harm such as necrosis that could cause the need for amputation.
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” explained Administrator Anne Milgram as part of a recent news release.
Milgram stated that a DEA laboratory system offered up a report that close to 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained Xylazine in 2022.
Xylazine has been labeled by the National Institute of Drug Abuse as a non-opioid veterinary tranquilizer which has been found to be a link to the rising level of overdose deaths across the country.
“Research has shown Xylazine is often added to illicit opioids, including fentanyl, and people report using xylazine-containing fentanyl to lengthen its euphoric effects,” stated the website of the institute. “Most overdose deaths linked to both xylazine and fentanyl also involved additional substances, including cocaine, heroin, benzodiazepines, alcohol, gabapentin, methadone, and prescription opioids.”
Over the period of 2015 to 2020, the Northeast region of the U.S. experienced the most significant impact of overdose deaths connected to Xylazine, with Pennsylvania increasing from 2% of overdose deaths up to close to 26%. Maryland reported 19% of all drug overdoses in 2021 involved Xylazine and 10% in Connecticut in 2020.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that 107,735 Americans dies between August 2021 and August 2022 due to drug poisonings, with close to 66% of said deaths being in connection to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, as explained in a news release.
Authorities have expressed that experts recommend giving a dose of naloxone if someone is in the act of overdosing on drugs, although Narcan does not reverse course when it comes to non-opioids.
DEA officials blamed the vast majority of trafficked fentanyl entering the United States on personnel from the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel in Mexico, who are both known to get their chemicals out of China.
