The alarm: Became a “zombie” from the new drug

Steven Cameron of Kensington, Philadelphia is trying to quit using drugs. The preparation tranq, or xylazine as it is actually called, gives him large sores of dead skin all over his body.

– It is terrible. And many have it worse than me with amputations and open wounds where you can see bones and tendons. I don’t know why they started mixing tranq into everything, he says to SVT.

White House: “Growing threat”

Tranq is used to mix out other drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. A dose costs as little as three dollars, making it easy for many addicts to afford. Across the United States, laboratories have discovered an avalanche of the drug in overdoses. That prompted the White House to declare tranq combined with fentanyl a “growing threat to the United States.”

– As a physician, I am deeply concerned about the devastating effects, said the White House spokesman for drug-related issues Dr. Rahul Gupta earlier this summer.

“Many are forced to amputate”

The organization Courage medicine is trying to help addicts in Kensington, and progress has been made.

– We help 40-50 patients a day, says Dr. Kevin Moore, responsible at the organization.

But the wounds that have come to be associated with the use of tranq add an extra layer of problems.

– Our nurses have been forced to learn how to take care of patients’ wounds, otherwise body parts are forced to be amputated in the end. It becomes a catch 22. The rehab clinics say they have to get their wounds healed in a hospital first, and the hospitals say they can’t get there as long as they’re drugged, says Moore.

Sweden and Xylazine

SVT Nyheter has asked the police to get an answer to whether they seized any Xylazine in Sweden.

Stewe Alm, strategically responsible for narcotics at the police’s National Operative Department, NOA, states in a written response that at the time of writing no seizure of Xylazine has been made by Swedish police. He also writes that there is no intelligence that speaks for the presence of Xylazine on the Swedish drug market.

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