Public health workers will soon have a new tool at their disposal to thwart a spreading danger to users of illicit drugs: xylazine test strips.
The new testing kits will allow health departments, grassroots harm-reduction groups, and individual drug users to test substances for the presence of xylazine, a sedative often referred to as “tranq.”
The toxin is increasingly common in the U.S. illicit-drug supply — especially in the Philadelphia area, but increasingly in other cities, too. Xylazine, which is typically used as a sedative in veterinary settings, can cause people to stop breathing, and also often causes severe skin wounds when injected.
“It’s the exact same concept as fentanyl test strips,” said Alex Krotulski, a forensic toxicologist at the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education, a Philadelphia-area research lab and outreach center that published a recent study of the strips’ effectiveness. “Their utility is really going to be among people who are using opioids who want to know if their opioids are adulterated.”
The new test strips represent the latest technological innovation in the field of harm reduction, a public health philosophy aimed at helping people who use drugs avoid the worst consequences of substance use, like disease transmission, overdose, and death. The fact that xylazine test strips are necessary in the first place underscores the ever-worsening state of the U.S. illegal drug supply.
Fentanyl, an ultra-potent synthetic opioid, has dominated the country’s illicit opioid market for years. Xylazine, similarly, is now present in roughly 90% of illicit opioid samples in Philadelphia, heightening the risk of overdose and prompting a scramble among local public health officials and harm-reduction groups to offer wound care for those who suffer painful and dangerous skin lesions.
Tags: Drug Test Strips Harm Reduction New Technology Xylazine
