Gangs Mix Dangerous Medtomidine into U.S. Streets

Gangs mix another potent sedative into U.S. street drugs causing ‘mass overdoses’.

Updated June 03, 2024 at 14:54 PM ET

Public health officials say Mexican cartels and drug gangs inside the U.S. are mixing a dangerous chemical sedative called medetomidine into fentanyl and other drugs sold on the street. The combination triggered a new wave of overdoses that began in late April and have accelerated in May.

“The numbers reported out of Philadelphia were 160 hospitalizations over a 3 or 4-day period,” said Alex Krotulski who heads an organization called NPS Discovery that studies illicit drugs sold in the U.S.

Medetomidine, most often used by veterinarians as an animal tranquilizer, but also formulated for use in human patients, has also been linked to a recent “mass overdose outbreaks in Chicago.

Preliminary data also suggested another mass overdose event linked to medetomidine in Pittsburgh, but those initial findings proved false, according to Krotulski.

Experts say the chemical, mixed into counterfeit pills and powders sold on the street, slows the human heart rate to dangerous levels. It’s impossible for drug users to detect.

“Law enforcement is trying harder and harder to crack down on xylazine,” Singer said. “If the drug trafficking organizations are interested in adding a sedative [to their street drug mixes] they can always add medetomidine.”

Singer believes interdiction of synthetic drugs is so difficult that U.S. policy-makers should focus resources on helping drug users find medical treatment instead of funding more law enforcement efforts.

Efforts to tightly regulate medetomidine could be complicated by the fact that a version of the sedative called dexmedetomidine is widely used by physicians as well as veterinarians.

“That medicine is used everywhere along the lifespan, from [neonatal intensive care units] to sedate babies that need to be on respirators, to elderly patients who can’t breathe on their own,” said Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, a street drug expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“[Restricting access to] medetomidine like xylazine or even fentanyl will have major impact on every hospital in the country,” he said.

For more information:

https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/what-you-should-know-about-xylazine.html