A few well-connected Syrians and Lebanese nationals built the foundations for a vast drug empire amid the chaos of the country’s fragmentation. “The main concern is we’re already amid the worst overdose crisis in history, nationally and locally,” Tsai told the Los Angeles Times. Stay up-to-date on the biggest health and wellness news with our weekly recap. One Edmonton resident knew the bus station, and noted that the city’s downtown is rife with this kind of urban blight, including homeless people and tent cities.
The Zombie Drug
The Syrian mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. The Assad government has repeatedly denied having any involvement with illicit drugs, and in the past year, it announced arrests of several low-level traffickers and the seizure of small quantities of the white pills. Yet Treasury Department documents have identified close relatives of Assad — including his brother Maher al-Assad, commander of the Syrian army’s 4th Armored Division — as key participants in Captagon trafficking. Most of the pills are produced in regime-held areas and moved through borders and port facilities under government control.
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Regular marijuana contains the cannabinoid THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which can attach to receptors in the brain to activate the release of chemical messengers that can make people feel paranoid or anxious, he explained. But the marijuana plant also produces another compound known as cannabidiol, or CBD, which stops the brain from continuing to release these chemical messengers, he said. One possibility is that the drugs lack a compound found in marijuana that may act as a brake, preventing bizarre behaviors.
Skin ulcers
- Additionally, between 2020 and 2021 alone, the number of xylazine-positive overdose deaths increased by 103 percent in the Northeast, 516 percent in the Midwest, 750 percent in the West and a shocking 1,127 percent in the South, according to DEA figures.
- The Biden administration has also announced plans to disrupt the supply of both fentanyl and xylazine into the country.
- “But not only was it a fentanyl overdose, her skin was starting to rot — the muscles on her leg and her arm. So that’s a sure sign of xylazine.”
Although xylazine is not approved for human use, recreational use of the agent, an alpha2 adrenergic agent dubbed “tranq,” has emerged. In addition to the tremendous variability in the type and amount of compounds from batch to batch and product to product, spice users may not be familiar with the amount of the drug needed to get high, D’Souza. This may cause people to use too much of this potent drug, which can also provoke altered behavior, he said.
Educational ReviewXylazine addiction turning humans to zombies: Fact or myth?
Xylazine, also known as “tranq”, “tranq dope”, or the “zombie drug”, has seen increasing usage across major U.S. cities, notably San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. According to one study published in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology in June 2022, xylazine has been detected in drug supply across 36 states and the District of Columbia. It will take a concerted effort to bring forth more testing capable of identifying xylazine’s prevalence in drugs, especially cheap street drugs. The New York Times recently noted that the drug-checking machines capable of identifying a substance like tranq can run to tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, money that most cash-strapped health departments don’t have. Routine toxicology screens do not detect the drug, and a CDC spokeswoman says there is no commercially available version of a less expensive test strip for it.
Xylazine is coursing through the illicit drug supply. Here’s what it does—and why it’s not the main concern.
Xylazine is a strong α-2 adrenergic agonist medication that was initially developed for use in veterinary medicine as an analgesic and sedative for animals. Its primary goal is to calm down animals undergoing https://sober-house.net/esgic-oral-uses-side-effects-interactions-pictures/ medical procedures or testing while minimizing their suffering. Despite being used for veterinary purposes, xylazine has raised concerns because it is increasingly being misused by human populations.
The British Columbia Interior Health authority is warning street-drug users of a synthetic cannabinoid that has been linked to a so-called “zombie” outbreak in New York. The DEA says that the major route of xylazine into the drugs trade comes from https://sober-house.org/recovery-from-addiction/ veterinarian suppliers online, as it is legal to buy the substance for use in veterinary medicine. It can be bought in liquid form either in vials or preloaded syringes, and is sold by concentration based on the animal it is being administered to.
The death of a 43-year-old man is the first in the UK to be linked to the “zombie” drug xylazine, which is prompting overdose warnings in the US. Because it is not an opioid — though it is typically sold cut with or in place of one — xylazine does not respond to naloxone, an emergency treatment that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. In a National Institute on Drug Abuse study, xylazine injected with fentanyl induced a rapid brain oxygen decrease, similar to fentanyl alone.
In the 12 months ending in January, 109,000 Americans died from a drug overdose. Nearly seven in ten of those deaths were attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl and a growing number were linked to xylazine. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, xylazine is a non-opioid tranquilizer used in veterinary medicine which is not approved for human use. However, it has increasingly been used illicitly as an adulterant in combination with other drugs, mostly fentanyl, but also with cocaine, heroin and other drugs, the U.S. On its most basic level, tranq is the latest development in the evolution of street drug composition, in part because it’s so easy to get and it’s relatively inexpensive. People who use drugs sometimes don’t know it’s part of what they’re taking even after they have become addicted to it.
As the effects of the drug combination wear off, people can experience symptoms of xylazine withdrawal. These include discomfort, anxiety, insomnia, elevated heart rate and elevated blood pressure. In conjunction, they may also experience fentanyl withdrawal symptoms, such as pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, fever and chills. Drug overdose deaths involving xylazine are on the rise, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates.
But when the drugs interact with serotonin — a brain chemical responsible for sleep and dreams — it may cause users to feel zombie-like and out of it, he said. But a major challenge in understanding the effects of spice on the brain is that “the chemical composition of the drug is a constantly moving target, ” D’Souza said. Unlike marijuana, whose basic makeup is generally similar no matter https://sober-home.org/drugs-brains-and-behavior-the-science-of-addiction/ where the plant is grown, the compounds in a batch of spice can be very different from one day to the next, even if you buy the drug from the same place, he said. For example, Scalzo said, when synthetic cannabinoids attach to receptors in the brain and then interact with dopamine — a brain chemical that affects movement — it may cause users’ arms and legs to feel stiff or locked up.
“The targets of sanctions, because their survival depends on it, are willing to go through all kinds of alliances to succeed,” Andreas said. U.S. and Jordanian officials say the militias may be responsible for the increasingly sophisticated weapons carried by traffickers. In several instances, smugglers have left caches of weapons inside Jordanian territory, possibly with the intention of providing them to other Iranian-backed militants in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The Post was shown photos of some of the hidden weapons, which included Claymore-type anti-personnel mines.
“They’ve taken Captagon to such a level that the industry can sustain itself,” Rose said. “It’s no longer mobile facilities, but permanent factories that can accommodate industrial-scale production. And on top of that, there’s an active security apparatus that provides guards, protection and support and even facilitates the movement of the drugs. The biggest maritime busts showed smugglers going to extraordinary lengths to conceal their cargo. The 84 million tablets seized by customs officials in the Italian seaport of Salerno in 2020 had been hidden inside industrial-size spools of paper.
