The flesh-rotting drug Xylazine being mass-produced in China and is now flooding America’s illicit drug supply. The drug is available on online Chinese pharmacies for just $1 a kilo.
Xylazine is cheap animal tranquilizer. More popularly known on the street as “tranq,” it has been dubbed a “zombie drug” due to the hunched-over, lifeless state it leaves users in and the fact that it causes users’ bodies to erupt in gaping wounds.
It is mainly being mixed with fentanyl to create a fatal cocktail, which the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has described as “the deadliest threat our country has ever faced.”
The DEA is concerned mainly because Xylazine is unbelievably cheap and because it is highly addictive.
But xylazine has an even more sinister side. It causes a host of horrific side effects, including rotting skin and a zombified stupor dubbed the “dope lean.” And there is no antidote for overdoses, meaning taking too much xylazine can be a death sentence.
Xylazine was developed in the 1960s to help vets treating cows, horses, sheep and other large to medium animals.
Drug dealers in Puerto Rico began using it as a cutting agent in the early 2000s to make their supply of more expensive drugs like heroin and cocaine last longer. A kilogram of xylazine can be 15 times cheaper than fentanyl and 16 times cheaper than cocaine.
Xylazine has a longer duration than drugs like fentanyl, which gives the impression of a longer-lasting “high” in users. It also boosts the intensity of the euphoria experienced with other drugs.
Experts estimate that at one point, xylazine was present in 80 percent of Puerto Rico’s supply of those substances. However, within a decade, users became dependent on xylazine by itself.
The illicit tranq made its first appearance in the U.S. in 2006. Because Xylazine is easy to make, it is being produced at industrial levels in Chinese labs.
Zombie drug found in 48 states, says DEA
Despite recent congressional pushes to make xylazine a controlled substance, which would criminalize its use, the drug is still widely available online — making it easier to flood into the east coast of America undetected.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that monthly overdose deaths involving xylazine rose from 12 in January 2019 to 188 in June 2022. It also found monthly fentanyl overdoses involving xylazine rose by 276 percent in just over three years.
But these figures only looked at 20 states and the District of Columbia.
The DEA reported in March that illicit xylazine has been found in 48 out of 50 states. In 2020, there were 808 drug overdoses reported in which xylazine played a role. That figure rose to 3,089 in 2021. (Related: Flesh-eating “zombie drug” tranq now FLOODING the streets of Los Angeles.)
The greatest increase in xylazine spread between 2020 and 2021 was in the south, with a 193 percent jump. The amount increased by 112 percent in the West, 61 percent in the Northeast, and just seven percent in the Midwest.
According to a 2022 study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, xylazine was present in nearly 26 percent of overdose deaths in Philadelphia, 19 percent in Maryland and 10 percent in Connecticut. It’s also been found in 90 percent of Philadelphia’s heroin supply.
Between 2020 and 2021, xylazine-related overdose deaths exploded by 1,127 percent in the south, going from 116 fatalities to nearly 1,500. These deaths increased by 750 percent in the west, 516 percent in the Midwest, and 103 percent in the northeast.
Read more stories about dangerous and highly addictive drugs at Addiction.news.
Watch this video about the rise of zombie drug tranq in American cities.
By Oliver Young