85% of fentanyl seized in Oakland County contains deadly animal tranquilizer
The White House and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have warned against the dangers of a potent animal tranquilizer infiltrating the nation's street drug supply and Friday, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard sounded the alarm locally, saying that up to 85% of the fentanyl his department seizes is now laced with the deadly additive.
Xylazine is approved for use by veterinarians on large animals. But it is showing up in street drugs, most frequently mixed with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. Like fentanyl, xylazine is a central nervous system depressant and together, they pack an incredible wallop and increase the odds of overdose.
Unlike fentanyl, xylazine is not an opioid. Naloxone, a drug known as Narcan, that can reverse a opioid overdose, can work on fentanyl but doesn't work on xylazine. And that makes authorities worry that an already record breaking number of overdose deaths — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates more than 109,000 people across the nation died from drug overdoses in 2022 ― could increase even further into the stratosphere.
"It's a terrible, terrible drug," Bouchard said, noting that xylazine can "degrade and disingrate" the skin of people who use it.
Fentanyl, which is up to 50 times more potent than heroin, is added to most street drugs. Its high is more intense than that of heroin but it's also short-lived. Xylazine is almost always found mixed into fentanyl. There is some evidence that adding xylazine to drugs containing fentanyl makes the fentanyl high last longer.
While xylazine — also called tranq ― has not been approved for human use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it also hasn't been given controlled subtance status, which means law enforcement doesn't have authority to try to stop it from entering its jurisdictions.
Congress is considering bills to make is a scheduled drug.
But Bouchard said xylazine needs immediate attention and has reached out to State Rep. Kelly Breen, D-Novi, who now plans to introduce legislation making xylazine a controlled substance in Michigan. She said she plans to introduce the legislation as early as next week that would make the drug available only to licensed veterinarians "What we are seeing here with tranq is taking our worst opioid epidemic and compounding it," she said.
Xylazine: Feds warn against deadly animal tranquilizer in Michigan street drugs
CDC: 2022 national overdose deaths hit new record; decline in Michigan
Not all crime labs test for xylazine and not all are calibrated to test for the drug. The Oakland County Sheriff's Department crime has only been testing seized fentanyl for xylazine since February or March, Bouchard said.
The DEA has said that 23% of the fentanyl powder and 7% of the fentanyl pills it seized across the nation in 2022 contained xylazine.
Swift Toxicology for Opioid Related Mortalities (STORM) at Western Michigan University identified 206 xylazine-positive deaths in Michigan between October 2019 and September 2022. That number is most certainly an undercount.
In the first nine months of 2022, there were 62 xylazine-positive deaths in Michigan, compared with 60 for all of 2021.
Contact Georgea Kovanis: gkovanis@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Deadly animal tranquilizer has infiltrated Oakland Countystreet drugs
