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Oakland Press

Tranq: Veterinary sedative making drug crisis deadlier

FILE – Deb Walker visits the grave of her daughter, Brooke Goodwin, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, in Chester, Vt.
FILE – Deb Walker visits the grave of her daughter, Brooke Goodwin, Thursday, Dec. 9, 2021, in Chester, Vt. Goodwin, 23, died in March of 2021 of a fatal overdose of the powerful opioid fentanyl and xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that is making its way into the illicit drug supply. According to provisional data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, May 11, 2022, more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, setting another tragic record in the nation’s escalating overdose epidemic. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke, File)

Xylazine is a sedative used by veterinarians and was never approved for human use. But experts say it’s the latest thing making a national drug crisis even deadlier.

Also known as tranq, it’s sometimes mixed with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid –  and the user doesn’t even know it.

Fentanyl mixed with tranq doesn’t respond to Narcon, or naloxone, a drug that can reverse a slowed respirat overdose deaths.

Dr. Stuart Etengoff, an emergency department physician at McLaren Oakland Hospital in Pontiac and McLaren Clarkston, a stand-alone emergency facility, says he has encountered numerous tranq overdoses, although they’re difficult to quantify.