New test strip detects opioids laced with veterinary sedative xylazine: ‘They give us the ability to curb that exposure’
Thank you for supporting our journalism. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Chicago Tribune.Drug-checking program manager and lead technician Taylor Wood examines a drug sample at the Chicago Recovery Alliance warehouse on Chicago's West Side, May 17, 2023.
As the lead technician and drug checking manager at Chicago Recovery Alliance, Wood is using a drug test strip that detects the presence of xylazine, one of the newest tools available to public health workers in their efforts to thwart the growing danger of xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer increasingly found in people who die of opioid overdoses.
“These xylazine test strips are phenomenal because they give us the ability to curb that exposure and also provide a better supply to some degree,” Wood said. Pronounced “ZY-la-zeen,” the drug is a relatively new adulterant in the supply, said Dr. Neeraj Chhabra, a medical toxicologist and an emergency physician with University of Illinois Chicago, whofentanyl-related death reports in Cook County from January 2017 to October 2021 and found an alarming number of overdose victims had xylazine in their systems.
“That’s what drug creators are counting on, because it’s a lot less expensive for them to add xylazine, or to cut their drugs with xylazine,” Allen said.Last month, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a public safety warning about the sharp increase in the trafficking of fentanyl mixed with xylazine. The DEA has reported that xylazine-positive overdose deaths have risen by 1,127% in the South.
Wood said he even receives samples from out of state, which help him understand the broader landscape of adulterants in the country.While volunteers sit in a large room outside his office and package safe usage kits with test strips, cookers, water capsules and paper instructions for those who don’t have a smartphone, Wood crushes up the drugs he receives in packets from users across the state.
He pointed to the glass vial of newly approved xylazine test strips that sat on the counter. CRA also offers fentanyl and benzyl strips.
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