New ‘Zombie’ Drug Puts DEA on High Alert

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is reportedly now deeply concerned about a cheap, flesh-rotting horse tranquilizer that is flooding the illegal drug market in the United States.

Mass-produced in China, the drug xylazine—also known as “tranq”—has recently become quite common on the streets of San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York.

The “zombie drug” may reduce a person’s pulse rate and respiration until they cease, leaving users catatonic or dead, and it can create skin sores that seem like flesh is being chewed off, sometimes down to the bone.

HUMAN TRAGEDY: The fentanyl crisis continues to play out on multiple streets in Seattle, especially in places like #Chinatown-ID. This evening, a young man in his 20's showed me the early stages of "TRANQ FENTANYL" eating away at his skin. Pills laced with xylazine, an animal… pic.twitter.com/cXp5iR1Ha6
— Jonathan Choe Journalist (Seattle) (@choeshow) July 14, 2023

Drug traffickers commonly combine Xylazine with fentanyl to extend the high, a potentially lethal concoction, but “tranq” is also regularly combined with other substances like meth and cocaine.

The DEA said that Xylazine is escalating an already lethal drug issue.

About 23% of the fentanyl powder and 7% of the fentanyl tablets that the DEA confiscated in 2022 included xylazine.

The incidence of fentanyl deaths using xylazine increased from 2.9% to 10.9% each month in 20 states and the District of Columbia between January 2019 and June 2022, according to a report released in June by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).