A troubling new drug has arrived on the streets of San Francisco. It's called "Tranq," which is a combination of fentanyl and horse tranquilizers.
The street drug has been circulating on the East Coast for the last few years.
The office of the medical examiner made the deadly discovery after reviewing toxicology reports on four people, who have recently overdosed in the area.
“They identified four overdosed decedents, in which they identified xylazine, which is a veterinary tranquilizer in the toxicology of those people, who died of drug overdoses, in addition to fentanyl,” said Dr. Jeffrey Hom with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
In the medical world, xylazine is normally used only to treat horses. One of the most severe effects of prolonged use of xylazine in humans is the potential for severe lesions and abscesses.
The other concern is that Tranq seems to be resistant to Narcan or naloxone, the lifesaving drug used to reverse opioid overdoses.
“We certainly heard of people coming right after getting naloxone. That may not happen if xylazine is present,” Hom said. “But if that person has resumed breathing, that is the most important thing towards saving their life.”
The arrival of Tranq in San Francisco was discovered, in part, because supervisor Matt Dorsey had been asking the medical examiner to review past overdoses.
The city is also in the midst of a deadly wave of overdose deaths from fentanyl. Dorsey said the recent arrival of Tranq and another synthetic opioid called "ISO" will only add to the crisis.
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“We are seeing a loss of life that we have not seen in San Francisco since the AIDS crisis to one drug, fentanyl. And now, we've got some new and deadly ones on the horizon,” he said.
Critics of the city's efforts to address the opioid crisis said this is just another sign that San Francisco needs more resources focused on treatment and prevention.
“There's so much emphasis on harm reduction, which some of it is amazing. But it's gone, it's too focused on harm reduction and there's a limit to really what harm reduction can do and this is a good example,” said Ellen Grantz with Mothers Against Drug Addiction and Deaths.
According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Tranq is usually a powdery substance.
City health officials are now trying to get the word out to people about it's affects, how to treat it and even how to better track how much of it is already being used here.
