Pain reliever for animals is showing up in Miami Valley, mixed with illegal drugs – WHIO TV 7 and WHIO Radio

DAYTON — A drug for use in animals that is being mixed in with illegal street narcotics is showing up in the Miami Valley, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent confirmed to News Center 7.

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Xylazine, which DEA agents said is commonly called “Tranq” on the street, has turned up in street drugs being dealt throughout the area, including in Dayton and Greene County, John Bedell, News Center 7 I-Team lead investigator, reported Thursday.

The FDA-approved drug is a sedative and pain reliever that is supposed to be used on animals.

“It’s not for human consumption,” said John Schumacher, assistant special agent in charge, Cincinnati DEA Office.

“So they’ll mix it with other drugs like fentanyl, heroin, cocaine. And it’s just taken our communities by surprise,” he said. “And it’s extremely dangerous.”

Greene County Sheriff Scott Anger warned those who are buying drugs on the street that “you just don’t know what [street drugs are] going to be cut with.”

Anger, whose sheriff’s office is part of a countywide drug task force that works with the DEA regularly, said his deputies are seeing xylazine in the county.

“In our lab, in tests throughout the last year, we have seen [xylazine],” he said.

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The side effects from overdosing on xylazine mimic the effects associated with opioid use. But, because xylazine is not an opioid, Narcan will not reverse the effects of a xylazine overdose.

Xylazine, the DEA’s Schumacher said, “is extremely deadly.”

The DEA continues to post a public safety alert to dea.gov warning the American public of “a sharp increase in the trafficking of fentanyl mixed with xylazine.” According to a statement on the website from agency Administrator Anne Milgram, “DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23 percent of fentanyl powder and 7 percent of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.”

Schumacher suggests that today is the day people have to talk with their loved ones and educate them about “Tranq,” that “no drugs are safe unless you’re getting them prescribed by a doctor and getting them from a legitimate pharmacy.”

Sheriff Anger said that during the past weekend (Oct. 21-22), three people in one Greene County home overdosed. According to the preliminary investigation, the three people in that home thought they were snorting cocaine, he said, but whatever they were snorting was laced with something else and one of the three died.

The sheriff’s office is still waiting for test results that will determine what narcotics and/or drugs were being abused, Sheriff Anger said.

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