CONCORD, NH — A Massachusetts mayor called on New Hampshire’s governor for help Monday, especially with a deadly version of the opioid fentanyl laced with a tranquilizer, xylazine, that leaves users stunned like zombies and potentially out of reach of common anti-overdose drugs.
Granite State Gov. Kelly Ayotte welcomed Lawrence Mayor Brian DePeña to the New Hampshire State House Monday where they stood together along with law enforcement from both states and agreed that there is much more the two states can do to combat crime and fight the scourge of opioid overdoses.
“I am thankful for Mayor DePeña’s willingness to address the dangerous flow of drugs and criminal activity occurring between Lawrence and our state. The more we work together, the safer all our communities will be,” Ayotte said.
According to the governor, the new partnership is being kicked off at DePeña’s request and her participation will come along with funding in the New Hampshire’s upcoming budget to boost cooperation between local law enforcement along the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border and Lawrence. Ayotte did not specify how much money.
What the former U.S. Senator did say is that while the “drug problem” is an ongoing one that affects all states, she hasn’t had a similar get together with Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey or the Bay State’s Attorney General. Ayotte added that she would be “happy to have that conversation.”
“This is the Mayor of Lawrence and the Governor of New Hampshire so far, but this is the beginning, and I think this could be a model. I appreciate the mayor having the foresight to think of this model and to reach out,” she said.
Healey’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ayotte, who just won election and succeeds former Gov. Chris Sununu, campaigned on a theme of preventing New Hampshire from becoming Massachusetts. And she made it a point on the campaign trail to invite Bay State businesses to relocate to their northern neighbor.
A drug overdose epidemic that began with crack cocaine and heroin in the 1980s and prescription painkillers in the 90s and 2000s, has now come to center around the use of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid mostly made in China and Mexico and imported to the United States. The drug, which is many times more powerful than heroin, is often cut into less powerful illicit substances and sold to unsuspecting users.
As of 2016, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids became the leading cause of overdose deaths in the U.S. Of the about 100,000 Americans who die annually due to an overdose, the National Institutes for Health reports that “75% of those deaths involve opioids.”
Ayotte said Monday that behind her willingness to partner with a city outside her own state is the growing prevalence of the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine, also known as “tranq,” in street drugs. Just like fentanyl, drug users are often unaware an illicit substance contains xylazine, and because it’s not an opioid, its presence can cause normal overdose treatments to fail, Ayotte said.
“Xylazine, when it’s mixed with fentanyl, Narcan is not effective with it,” she said. “So it’s resulting in an increase in drug deaths. It’s very dangerous to people both in Lawrence and New Hampshire, and in the entire country. So this is a new challenge that we have and need to work together on.”
Lawrence, along with Manchester and Concord, New Hampshire all lie along the I-93 corridor, a major drug pipeline in the northeast.
According to NIH, “xylazine can slow breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure to dangerously low levels. Overdose reversal medications do not reverse the effects of xylazine,” and repeated use of the drug “is associated with skin wounds, such as open sores (ulcers) and abscesses.”
The Drug Enforcement Agency says that “people who inject drug mixtures containing xylazine also can develop severe wounds, including necrosis—the rotting of human tissue—that may lead to amputation.”
The governor acknowledged that she campaigned against Bay State policies and expressed concern specifically about drugs entering New Hampshire from Lawrence, but she said Monday that meeting with DePeña represented a “new chapter in tackling these issues.”
DePeña said that fentanyl and other drugs, human trafficking, and gang violence “recognize no borders and spare no community,” necessitating his cross-border outreach to Ayotte. The mayor expressed his thanks to the governor for “her commitment to working in partnership with the City of Lawrence to confront this urgent crisis.”
“The time for decisive, extraordinary action is now, but no single entity can combat this alone,” DePeña said.
“Today’s meeting marks a critical step forward in developing a concrete, results-driven plan to strengthen our collaboration, enhance intelligence sharing, and implement a unified strategy to dismantle criminal networks and disrupt the flow of illicit substances,” he continued.
