Metro
The lab report left the prominent New York businessman stunned.
The 40-something-year-old from Massapequa Park, a tony suburban village on Long Island, had dabbled in cocaine now and again, but nothing harder.
But his toxicology report painted a far different picture: His blood was rife with fentanyl and xylazine — the animal sedative known as “tranq,’’ which is now not only infecting hardcore addicts but also recreational drug users by slithering into the cocaine supply.
“He said the only drug he took was cocaine, as a fun thing to do with friends occasionally,” Dr. Carol McKinney, a clinical social worker at Victory Recovery Partners in Massapequa Park, recently told The Post.
“He was shocked when we gave him the test results showing xylazine was in his system.”
Tranq is often associated with urban rot — with videos showing barely conscious addicts wandering mindlessly through drug-riddled neighborhoods in Philadelphia or Chicago, victims of a tranquilizer so powerful, it can put down a horse.
Now the “zombie drug” is lurking in mainstream party drugs such as cocaine, law enforcement officials and health care professionals say.
“We’ve seen an increase in street-level distribution of cocaine-xylazine mixture[s],” Frank Tarentino, the special agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Division, told The Post.
“It’s widespread. And it’s getting worse.”
The agency has found that about 15% of all drugs tested in its Northeast regional laboratory include xylazine, Tarentino said.
And more than 85% of the drugs with xylazine also contain fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid, Tarentino added.
What is tranq?
Tranq is a powerful veterinary tranquilizer known in medical circles as xylazine.
Although never approved for human use, the drug has somehow found its way into the nation’s illicit drug supply as a cutting agent, wreaking havoc on people suffering from addiction.
Tranq – which is often found blended with fentanyl – can cause flesh-eating lesions and psychosis. It also knocks its victims into a lumbering state of semi-consciousness, which can lead to robberies and other forms of street crime.
Tranq’s use is expanding quickly as it spreads from coast to coast.
In 2021, the rate of drug overdose deaths involving xylazine was 35 times higher than it was just three years earlier, according to a June report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
READ MORE
That means the cocaine, heroin, meth or fake painkillers that people buy on the street could easily be laced with a malevolent mixture that can kill with just a few grains.
The situation could increasingly blindside users who aren’t expecting the flesh-rotting, psychosis-inducing tranq in their party drugs.
“Young people can innocently take a pill, not knowing it has fentanyl in it or that it has fentanyl and xylazine,” Tarentino said.
“That’s what people should be concerned about: Tranq can end up anywhere, at any time, and can kill anyone.”
That warning is supported by statistics, which show that overdose deaths involving xylazine rose 20-fold between 2015 and 2020 in all regions tested, according to a study published in the scientific journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence last year.
In the Big Apple, which in 2021 began testing deceased opioid overdose victims for tranq, about one in five such deaths involved xylazine, according to the New York state Department of Health.
Statewide, about one in 20 fatal opioid overdoses that year involved tranq, the department added.
McKinney buttressed Tarentino’s worries when she told The Post that she’s had reams of patients test positive for xylazine since Victory Recovery Partners — which operates a constellation of rehab centers throughout Long Island — began testing for it about eight months ago.
Earlier this month, 86 patients tested positive for the tranquilizer in the span of seven days, McKinney said.
“The patients don’t even know,” McKinney said. “I say, ‘Well, it’s in your system.’ And they say, ‘There’s no way, my dealer wouldn’t do that!’
“I say, ‘Guess what? Your dealer doesn’t know.’”
Few know that better than Andrew Walsleben, a 27-year-old from Long Island who has been hooked on illicit drugs since age 14.
First it was pills, like Percocet and oxycodone. By 16, he was shooting heroin. In 2017, his drug habit landed him in federal prison, where he remained for more than four years.
After his 2021 release, Walsleben developed a $1,000-per-week cocaine habit that led to him to start shooting the drug in pursuit of a “better high.”
That’s when he first unwittingly encountered tranq, he said.
Soon, he was stricken with rotting flesh wounds that would not heal and the drug’s trademark psychosis — which had him seeing shadow people.
“I thought people were putting spider eggs in my cocaine, and I saw spiders under my skin and under my toenails,” Walsleben said. “I saw big welts moving in my body when I looked in the mirror.”
Walsleben, who kicked the habit about two months ago, is convinced that tranq-laced cocaine is to blame.
“I have only used powdered cocaine this past year,” he said. “[But] I got the sores from xylazine.”
Doctors aren’t clear why dealers have chosen to cut their narcotic supplies with tranq. The sedative doesn’t quite match the mission of drugs such as cocaine, known for reshaping its users into wired, hyperactive messes.
“It makes a lot of sense with fentanyl or heroin,” Dr. Steve Salvatore, chief medical officer at Victory Recovery Partners, told The Post. “It doesn’t make any sense in cocaine … other than that maybe we’re not dealing with biochemists.”
But the dangers are clear, Salvatore said.
Cocaine is toxic enough to a user’s heart — it can cause coronary spasms in longtime addicts. But combining an upper and a downer — which effectively puts one foot on the gas and the other on the brake — is particularly dangerous, Salvatore said.
“The respiratory, central nervous and cardiovascular systems are put into a conflicting position about whether to slow down or speed up,” he said.
“This can lead to dangerous side effects, including increased heart rate and blood pressure, nausea and vomiting, anxiety and paranoia, and death.”
Cops and doctors may encounter this more and more as the fentanyl-and-xylazine combo crawls into the wider drug supply — which it’s likely to do because crooks have begun importing xylazine, a cheap cutting agent, by the kilogram, according to the DEA’s Tarentino.
That could batter the Big Apple, which Tarentino called drug traffickers’ Mecca.
“New York City is the hub,” he said. “It’s a destination city for these large quantities of cocaine, heroin, meth, fentanyl and xylazine [that are] then further distributed out to the outlying cities and states.
“In the last two years, we’ve seen this increase [in tranq importation],” he continued. “And it continues to increase.”
Bridget Brennan, New York City’s special narcotics prosecutor, believes tranq is being mixed with drugs like heroin and cocaine here in America — not overseas — where the synthetic cutting agent is often manufactured.
A legal sedative with legitimate veterinary uses, xylazine isn’t classified as a controlled substance in the US.
As such, drug labs certified by the Empire State don’t test for it when cops make a big drug seizure locally, though the DEA does at the federal level.
Brennan previously told The Post that she wants the drug named a controlled substance, which would help authorities regain some control of its distribution.
“We should be able to come up with legislation which would allow us to both control it and to require those who distribute it … to maintain control over it and verify who their customers are,” Brennan said.
“The most effective way to prevent loss of life is to cut off the supply at the top of the chain,” she added. “You don’t want to wait until it gets out on the street to try to scoop it up.”
It would also let labs start testing for it, which could lead to more accurate statistics.
Brennan said the city’s crime labs do note the presence of xylazine in the chemists’ notes but not in the lab report. In other words, authorities looking for evidence of tranq must go through a longer, more arduous process to find out whether it’s there.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office has been similarly frustrated.
“Our crime lab can’t test for it, because it’s not illegal in New York,” a spokesperson said, referencing xylazine that might be present in drug seizures.
“We do find [tranq] in a few places … but it’s almost anecdotal because they don’t test. So we don’t know how widespread it is.”
Often, Suffolk County authorities only find xylazine in corpses because it shows up in the toxicology screening, the district attorney’s office said.
The DEA also wants to have the drug made a controlled substance, which would give the agency the authority to arrest dealers of illicit tranq.
“We’re taking it very seriously,” Tarentino said.
Until then, drug users take note: There be dragons lurking in those little bags of bleached powder.
“We have so many people coming in who had xylazine in their cocaine,” McKinney, of Victory Recovery, told The Post.
“The cocaine an actor or wealthy Manhattan businessman might do over drinks after work on a Friday night doesn’t exist anymore.”
Load more…
{{#isDisplay}}
{{/isDisplay}}{{#isAniviewVideo}}
{{/isAniviewVideo}}{{#isSRVideo}}
{{/isSRVideo}}
