Editorial: The horrors of ‘xylazine,’ the ‘zombie drug’ roiling Chicago and New York

From the Editorial Board: Chicago may have many problems demanding action, but this one has to be near the top of the new administration’s list.

Outreach workers attend to a man who they believed had just injected tranq dope in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 12, 2022. Drug dealers are mixing xylazine, an animal tranquilizer relied on by veterinarians, into fentanyl, with deadly results.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the jarring sight of the horrific physical effects on humans of this horse tranquilizer recall the fictional wounds visible on characters in the dystopian TV show “The Last of Us.”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.

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.” Last year, Dr. Neeraj Chhabra, a medical toxicologist and emergency physician with Cook County Health,that xylazine was now a factor in more than 1 in 9 fentanyl overdoses in Cook County. That was using 2021 figures. By many accounts, 2022 was much worse, and in these first months of 2023, the prevalence of xylazine only has increased on Chicago’s streets.

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