Jacksonville Police Captain Richard Kellum asked state legislators to consider adding a powerful animal sedative that’s frequently mixed with fentanyl to the state list of controlled substances.
Xylazine is not approved for human use. Called “tranq,” xylazine is used to cut other street drugs, including the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
“Xylazine depresses the heart rate, slows breathing, and can even stop both,” Kellum told members of the House Select Committee on Substance Abuse on Wednesday.
House members are considering ways to ban certain harmful substances. Last month, the committee talked about ways to ban tianeptine or “gas station heroin.”
Several states are considering xylazine-related bills, Stateline reported. Some states have classified it as a controlled substance.
Xylazine intensifies the effects of fentanyl. Repeated use can cause open wounds, whether or not it’s injected.
The presence of xylazine in North Carolina was first detected and linked to a skin wound in 2021 according to information the UNC Street Drug Analysis Lab provided the House committee. Since then, the lab has detected the sedative in 21 of 48 counties where it has tested samples. Of 516 fentanyl samples, 42% contained xylazine, the lab reported.
“The wounds that people have with xylazine are some of the most gruesome that I’ve seen in 20 years of doing this work and looking at skin wounds from different types of substances,” said Nabarun Dasgupta, a street drug scientist at the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center. “They can be treated if you catch them early. They occur beyond the site of injection. They can occur in people who have not ever injected a drug in their life.”
People with wounds caused by xylazine have been turned away from drug treatment and told to return when they’re healed, and doctors have unnecessarily amputated limbs, he said.
“We have a lot of misunderstanding of how to handle these wounds at a medical level throughout the state,” Dasgupta said. “If we want people to live with dignity, to not become permanently disabled from a misinterpretation of a wound, we need a better job educating our medical providers and our surgeons on what xylazine wound treatment really is like.”
The medical system is not set up to effectively treat these wounds, Dasgupta said. Dressings need to be changed every day or two.
Some cities are making treatment mobile to reach substance users.
Harm reduction vans in Baltimore carry wound-care supplies, NPR reported. Philadelphia responded to xylazine use by equipping a mobile wound-care van.
A common misconception is that naloxone, a medicine that reverses opioid overdose, doesn’t work on xylazine, Dasgupta said. Naloxone does work, but it won’t suddenly shock people awake as it does with fentanyl overdoses. “People may not wake up the same way for 45 minutes.”