The terrifying flesh-eating drug that turns users into shambling 'zombies' - ... trends now
It's already laying waste to cities in the US, rotting the flesh of drug users - and now it has its terrible claws firmly embedded in Britain.
An appallingly destructive street drug and tranquiliser called xylazine - also known as 'tranq' and the 'zombie drug' - has killed 11 people in the UK and has 'penetrated' the country's illegal drugs market.
That is the terrifying conclusion of a new study by King's College London on the relentless spread into Europe of a drug usually used to sedate large animals.
Tranq is so powerful it can knock out an elephant so its effect on humans is inevitably extreme. Their heads drooping and eyes glazed, users sit or stand motionless for hours in a semi-conscious state known as 'nodding out'.
Being a respiratory depressant, xylazine also causes a user's breathing, heart rate and blood pressure to plummet to dangerously low levels. Taking it with opioids increases the chance of a potentially lethal overdose. A tiny amount can be fatal.
And its potency also causes horrific skin abscesses and ulcers — wounds that won't heal and frequently become infected.
Xylazine depresses the central nervous system, causing users, such as these in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, to exhibit a zombie-like appearance
As the drug spreads beyond the cities to suburbs and small towns, tranq has taken hold in urban addiction epicentres such as Philadelphia's Kensington district (pictured)
The resulting necrosis — rotting of infected tissue — leaves festering wounds like chemical burns that must be amputated.
Xylazine was identified on 35 occasions across UK toxicology labs, drug-testing facilities and through drug seizures between May 2022 and August 2023.
The labs found xylazine in 16 people during this period, of which 11 died.
It isn't the first time the drug has been identified in Britain. The study's senior author and director of the UK's National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths, Caroline Copeland, told the Mail last year that the death of xylazine's first UK victim, 43-year-old Solihull factory worker Karl Warburton, 'could be the tiniest tip of a growing iceberg'.
Few people take tranq by choice and Mr Warburton is believed to have accidentally consumed xylazine after taking heroin laced with it. Unscrupulous dealers use it because it's so cost-effective - often it is mixed into heroin or the powerful synthetic opiate fentanyl to intensify and prolong the 'high' the drugs produce.
Researchers said the drug had even been found in the UK in cannabis-based vapes and the sleeping drug temazepam, as well as the sedative diazepam and pain reliever codeine phosphate.
Solihull factory worker Karl Warburton, 43, was xylazine's first UK victim last year
However, as xylazine isn't included in the routine drug screening conducted by British hospitals and coroners, there could be many more instances in the UK that have so far gone undetected, Ms Copeland said last year. She said xylazine could have a 'huge impact' on the UK if drug users and those trying to help them weren't made aware of the threat it poses.
'This is not a problem just for the heroin users. This is a problem for a wider population of people who use drugs, who might not think that they're at risk of xylazine harm,' she warned this week.
One only need look across the Atlantic to see the possible consequences. A year ago this month, acknowledging that it was being increasingly detected in overdose deaths, the White House took the unprecedented step of declaring xylazine to be an 'emerging drug threat', a formal designation that has never been used before and which required the US government to coordinate a national response to the drug within 90 days.
As the drug spreads beyond the cities to suburbs and small towns, tranq has taken hold in urban addiction epicentres such as Philadelphia's Kensington district. Its streets have been taken over by the squalid tents and sleeping bags of shambling opioid addicts shooting up in full view of passers-by.
'When you start getting sick from the tranq, you start shaking violently, salivating and vomiting,' one tranq user said
The drug has spread across the country, from Los Angeles (left) to New York City (right), with news crews capturing people hunched over and on the ground
Xylazine is currently sweeping across the US and it is invading Britain too
There, tranq users have described its devastating consequences. 'When you start getting sick from the tranq, you start shaking violently, salivating and vomiting,' said addict Devin Bair. 'You're pretty much just a mess on the
