Health officials in Los Angeles are raising alarm over the ‘concerning’ spread of a ‘zombie drug’ that can have gruesome effects on addicts including eating off their flesh.
The officials are trying to stop the spread of the flesh-eating drug xylazine that has taken over the city.
The ‘zombie drug’, a veterinary tranquilizer approved in the US for cows and horses, is now flooding the illicit US drug market, with dealers often cutting it with cocaine and heroin.
According to DailyMail, the drug has spread to Los Angeles of late, with news crews capturing people hunched over and on the ground, strung out on the drug.
The problem, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office officials say, is that the drug is technically a legal substance.
American authorities are now rushing to track the spread of the drug as it rapidly rises in use and can lead to skin and muscle rotting away, according to reports.
‘It’s really gruesomely disfiguring people,’ Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Bill Bodner told KTLA.
‘It’s much more likely to stop someone from breathing and the things that come along with xylazine, it’s a vasoconstrictor. So when you’re injecting it, it’s actually reducing the blood circulation.
‘In videos shared on social media, addicts can be seen on the streets moving in zombie like movements, with some crouched on the floor while others sleeping or acting paralyzed.
‘In the greater Los Angeles area we are seeing Xylazine as an additive within fake fentanyl pills,’ DEA spokesperson for the LA Field Division Nicole Nishida told the newspaper.
‘While the numbers are relatively low in our community compared to elsewhere in the United States, the presence of xylazine is now becoming more frequent and the trend is concerning.’
