Achi news desk-
Four or five times a week, Josue Goguen tests street drugs at Ensemble in Moncton, NB, to see exactly what’s in them.
Since January, just over 10 percent of what has been tested at the harm reduction clinic has had Xylazine in them.
Josue Goguen, overdose prevention service coordinator at the Greater Moncton Ensemble, tests an unknown substance. (Derek Haggett/CTV Atlantic)
Xylazine is a powerful animal sedative that is used as an additive in opioids such as fentanyl to prolong their effects.
Ensemble executive director Debby Warren said it inhibits breathing and heart rate and is not safe for human consumption.
“It also affects their skin and causes horrible skin infections. Infections that can go very deep. Infections that may lead to elevation and are difficult to cure,” says Warren.
Homeless advocate John Renton knew it was only a matter of time before he showed up in Moncton.
“I’m horrified by it. I think this summer is going to be tragic. Probably the worst we’ve ever seen,” Renton said. “It’s not approved for humans. It is something that has been made to stop a rhino or an elephant. It causes necrosis of the flesh. It leaves the user to be walking zombies.”
Ensemble client Eric “Stitch MacLeod” is aware of it and said it appears that the use of Xylazine in other drugs is a more common practice because fentanyl has become a difficult commodity to find.
He is well aware that taking street drugs may have animal tranquilizers in them.
“We gamble every day. But even before that we were gambling. Most street drugs are put together half the time in someone’s bathtub. You never know what you’re putting in your skin or what you’re breathing in,” says MacLeod.
Warren said the main fear about Xylazine is its toxicity and that overdoses happen not because substance users are taking too much, they may not know what they are taking.
“They didn’t get what they thought they were buying,” he said.
Staff at Ensemble began training in January to see what is in the drugs commonly used by their clients in the hope of preventing overdoses.
“Every three and a half days a New Brunswicker dies from these poisonous, toxic substances on the street,” Warren said. “The difference between their substance and the substance we call alcohol and cannabis is that this group has a ban on it.”
Renton said there’s a good chance the people selling drugs aren’t making them.
“They buy it somewhere else and they don’t know what’s in it. Maybe they cook it back further and add more things to it,” Renton said.
Adding additives to drugs to increase the amount that can be sold goes back decades, Renton said.
“That has always happened to the drug supply,” he said. “Back in the seventies pot used to have herbs thrown in to increase the volume. Now that’s what they’re doing with things that are out there now and it’s not pot, it’s much worse.”
