Oklahoma Bureau Of Narcotics Agents Warn Of Deadly Sedative

Content Warning: the video above contains graphic content depicting the effects of the drugs mentioned below.

Oklahoma drug agents said a deadly drug that’s being mixed with fentanyl is now in Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics said Mexican drug cartels are mixing in Xylazine, which is a tranquillizer used for large animals like horses, but is not approved for humans.

OBN said fentanyl is already an extremely deadly drug, and mixing in the Xylazine makes it a nightmare. The problem is Xylazine isn't an opioid, so Narcan can't reverse the overdose.

OBN agents said Xylazine is a sedative for large animals and it's very cheap. It slows down the central nervous system so the body isn't able to heal. So, people's wounds just keep getting worse.

"The continued use of it and what it does is slow down the healing. When someone is using fentanyl, that's been adulterated with Xylazine. What happens is the person using has these open sores that continue to kind of grow and just eat at the flesh. They are very hard to deal with,” said Deputy Director of OBN, Brian Surber.

Surber said Xylazine is following the same path fentanyl did. It started on the east coast, then made its way to Oklahoma.

He said there was an 1,100 percent increase in overdose deaths in 2022 in this part of the country, where the victim tested positive for both fentanyl and Xylazine.

Agents believe the cartels were using Xylazine to mix in with other drugs. However, just recently, officers in New Mexico seized Xylazine by itself in the spare tire of a car during a traffic stop.

"If you get these really concentrated aspects of Xylazine, it can independently cause a fatal overdose. For all of ours, they've been mixed together. Again, both of them are depressing the central nervous system,” said Surber. "If you take Narcan with fentanyl, it will counteract the fentanyl, but you are also taking this sedative that is for large animals in a veterinary setting. If that is taken at a very concentrated, very non-therapeutic level, even for an animal, that's when it can be a fatal overdose."

Surber said the fentanyl crisis has killed thousands of people in the U.S. and they want to warn people about this new threat, as soon as possible.

"It's prevalence is probably underestimated because it has happened so fast and we haven't looked for it, so we are kind of seeing those signs. It is something that is very concerning to us and we want to get the information out to the public,” said Surber.

The other problem is that Xylazine isn't a controlled drug, meaning it is not illegal, so it wasn't being tested for until recently.