Animal tranquilizer in street drugs raises alarms

Harm reduction workers in Ottawasay animal tranquilizersin the city's street drug supply areputting users at even greater risk of severe harm.

Both Ottawa Inner City Health (OICH) and the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre say they've come across a potent veterinary sedative called xylazine in recent weeks.

Typically used tosedate large farm animals such ascattle and horses,xylazinecan have dangerous effects in humansincludingprolonged blackouts, according to Ottawa Public Health.

As a central nervous system depressant, it dangerously suppresses vital signs such as heart rate and blood pressure.It'snot approved for use in humans in Canadaand its long-term effects on humanhealth are unknown.

When mixed with fentanyl, it's known as "tranq" or "zombie dope" and cancause painful wounds that lead toamputation.

Its emergence in communities across Canada is also worrying becausenaloxone, a medication used to reverse overdoses of fentanyl and other opioids, doesn't work on it.

Six fentanylsamples voluntarily submitted for testingat OICHsince the beginning of thisyear have tested positive forxylazine, while Sandy Hill found the tranquilizer for the first timein fentanyl samples brought to the centre by users last week.

"This is kind of new for us at least that we're finding [it] in the testing," said Derrick St John, a nurse who oversees Sandy Hill's supervised consumption site and other harm reduction services.

'Atypical overdoses' in past years

LeahPodobnik, a member of the grassroots group Overdose Prevention Ottawa, saidxylazinehas actually been circulating in Ottawa for two years without this detection.

"We've seen atypical overdoses where we can't revive the person with just naloxone," said Podobnik, who'd previously spent six years workingat supervised consumption sites.

The useof new drug-testing machines at Ottawa clinics has helped both drug users and harm reduction workers better navigate a scene where as St John put it users unwittingly expose themselves to a "dog's breakfast" of opioids and stimulants with "no quality control."

BothOICHand Sandy Hill are now regularly testing drugs that come in toflagunexpected components such asxylazine.

St John demonstrated Sandy Hill's testing machine on Friday, when the health centre received three fentanyl samples for testing.

Wearing gloves,St John took a morsel of crystalline green fentanyl from a baggie, placed it on a chip readerroughly the size of a matchbook and insertedthe chip inside a black computer tower with laser scanners.

The results, displayed on a laptop via Bluetooth about five minutes later,confirmed the presence ofxylazine.

Sandy Hill has done about400 scans sincegettingthe machine in November. St John said people get their drugs tested for various reasons such asan unusualcolour of the drug or an unfamiliar seller.

Other tranquilizers found in drugs elsewhere, including medetomidineanddexmedetomidine, will be added soon to the scanner's database.

People can come to the centre to have their drugs tested seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Drugs given back after testing

Though some people at Sandy Hill ultimately surrender their drugs, they are given the choice of whether to keep them, no matter the test results, St John said.

Those who keep them are encouraged to also keep naloxone on them and not take the drugs alone.

"Think of harm reduction kind of like a seat belt," St John said. "It doesn't mean that you're not going to get into an accident. It just won't make it as bad."

Ottawa Inner City Health's CEO said theclinic hopes to have improved monitoring now that it's getting "better" surveillance data.

"Multiple sites are really helpful to understand if there are differences,"said Rob Boyd via email. "Ideally, we would establish an intercity or interprovincial system of surveillance."

Drug dealers are using the testing machines too, Podobnik said,because they don't want to poison their customers.

"It's a lot of different people," she said. "You'd be surprised the amount of people that use this machine."

Ottawa Morning8:52Animal tranquilizer found in Ottawas street drug supply

Xylazine, which is known on the streets as tranq dope or zombie drug, can cause extended blackouts. Worse still, its resistant to naloxone, a fast-acting medication that can reverse opioid overdoses.