Gangs mix another potent sedative into U.S. street drugs causing ‘mass overdoses’.

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/nx-s1-4974959/medetomidine-overdose-fentanyl-sedative

Preliminary data also suggested another mass overdose event linked to medetomidine in Pittsburgh, but those initial findings proved false, according to Krotulski.

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Experts say the chemical, mixed into counterfeit pills and powders sold on the street, slows the human heart rate to dangerous levels. It’s impossible for drug users to detect.

Public health advisories have been issued in Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Dr. Brendan Hart at Temple University in Philadelphia says they first began hearing reports of street drug users exposed to the fentanyl-medetomidine mix in April.

“Some of our emergency medicine doctors started stopping me in the hallway,” Hart told NPR.

“They said ‘Something funny is going on with the overdoses.’ Patients were coming in with very low heart rates. As low as in the 20s. A normal heart-rate is sixty to a hundred [beats per minute] so 20s is extremely low.”

Laboratory tests of street drug samples came back positive for the powerful sedative, which is used in some formulations by doctors with human patients, but only in carefully controlled medical settings.

Medetomidine was previously detected in the illicit drug supply as early as 2022 but only rarely and in small amounts. This time experts say it appears to be spreading rapidly, with large-scale overdose events also reported earlier this year in Toronto, Canada.