BRATTLEBORO — A new factor is making the situation worse - a new opioid-cutting agent called xylazine, also known as “tranq.”
Xylazine is used by veterinarians mainly as a large-animal tranquilizer, and is not approved for human use.
According to Sue Conley of the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont, “It can keep people passed out even if we use Narcan [a prescription medicine used for treating opioid overdoses], and we have to go to the next step, which is rescue breathing, until the EMTs arrive. It's fairly new in Vermont.”
From January through July of this year, Vermont has had 126 fatal overdoses. The state has seen a nearly 42% increase in deaths associated with opioid overdoses since 2020, and in the first seven months of 2022, xylazine has been involved in 30% of overdose fatalities.
A nasty side effect of xylazine is that it also causes users to develop infections in wounds other than at their injection sites, further taxing the medical system.
The drug's improper use was first noted in Puerto Rico around 2015; in the last few years, it has spread in the continental United States from its point of origin in Philadelphia along the Interstate highway system, especially into the Northeast.
When used along with fentanyl in opioids, xylazine can be deadly.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “From 2015 to 2020, the percentage of all drug overdose deaths involving xylazine increased from 2% to 26% in Pennsylvania. Xylazine was involved in 19% of all drug overdose deaths in Maryland in 2021 and 10% in Connecticut in 2020.”
“Xylazine has really changed a lot of things,” said Conley, who said she had just come back from a harm reduction program in Puerto Rico, and xylazine was the main topic of conversation.