These days, drug use in New York’s Washington Square Park is very much out in the open. On the park benches, you can see people smoking, injecting themselves and their bench mates and even cooking methamphetamine.
But the big shocker for an infrequent visitor is something different. A few of the people present in the park have red and black wounds on their skin. In at least one case, parts of human tendons appeared to be exposed.
Most likely, the gruesome sight is a consequence of seeing the effects of someone using the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine, colloquially tranq. Commonly mixed with the synthetic opioid fentanyl and obtained with relative ease, xylazine is sometimes called the “zombie drug” in acknowledgment of its flesh-eating properties.
Xylazine, which has no FDA-approved use in humans, is becoming a massive problem in both New York and Chicago. Why do people mix the two drugs together? In essence, the addition of xylazine extends the duration of the fentanyl high. And for those who traffic in the misery of others, the creation of this horrific cocktail increases profitability.
And Xylazine is a nonopioid agent, meaning, the FDA has said, not only that it is notoriously difficult to detect but also that it may not be reversible by naloxone, the substance commonly used to treat overdosing patients.
Last month the federal Drug Enforcement Administration put out a harshly worded warning, saying that “xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier.”
The DEA went on to say it had “seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.”
Various efforts are underway in Washington to combat xylazine, including a bipartisan bill introduced late last month by U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) to make xylazine a Schedule III controlled drug. That bill got the attention of veterinarians and ranchers, worried that they’ll lose easy access to a routine tranquilizer important to their work.
In fact, the bill employs a savvy two-track strategy, protecting access for veterinary uses while introducing Schedule III penalties for all illicit use, which means anytime xylazine is used in a human body.
Significantly, the bill also requires suppliers to closely track the drug in terms of who is getting access to it and for what use. None of that was happening when this problem emerged.
We hear the bill has broad bipartisan support, as well it should, and its expeditious passage into law should encounter no reasonable objection.
Xylazine is literally eating human flesh and you can see precisely that in the parks, and on the streets, of America’s great cities.
Surely, a national and bipartisan effort can be made, on all fronts, to fight back against such a stunning act of self-destruction, all in service of a temporary high.
Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service
