Who’s Afraid of Medetomidine?
Medical researchers are always doing experiments to find chemical compounds that will control the symptoms of a disease more effectively than existing drugs but with fewer risks or undesirable side effects. Testing the drugs on animals is often a prerequisite for clinical trials involving human patients, which is itself a prerequisite for the drugs getting legal approval for clinical use outside of a research setting. Sometimes researchers discover that a drug is safe or effective for use in animals but not in humans. Despite this, some legally approved veterinary drugs gain a following for human recreational use; a notorious recent example is the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine. You can get into legal trouble for recreational use or illegal possession of veterinary drugs just as you can for illegal possession or unauthorized use of prescription drugs such as oxycodone or Adderall. If you are facing criminal charges for illegal possession of veterinary drugs, contact a Florida drug offenses attorney.
First There Was Xylazine, but Now There Is a New Veterinary Tranquilizer in the Illegal Drug Supply
Opioids can be deadly; this fact has loomed in the popular imagination for decades. The introduction of naloxone has changed the narrative, though. It can reverse the effects of even the strongest opioids; fentanyl is no match for it. The real trouble begins, though, when people think the drug mixture they are buying contains opioids, but instead or in addition, it contains sedatives that do not respond to naloxone. Drugs like these are so dangerous that they are rarely used in medicine anymore, except in veterinary medicine.
For the past several years, xylazine has been prevalent in the illegal drug supply in the United States, and especially in Florida. It is a veterinary tranquilizer so strong that it is the drug of choice when large animals like elephants and rhinoceroses need surgery. In the past two years, though, another veterinary tranquilizer has appeared on the scene. This is medetomidine, which was first synthesized in 2007. Its veterinary uses are in common household pets such as dogs and cats; vets prescribe it at low doses for pain relief and give it in higher doses for anesthesia during surgery.
Crime labs first detected medetomidine in the illegal drug supply in 2022, usually in drug powders that also contained opioids. Drug dealers add medetomidine to opioids so that the opioids will have a longer lasting effect and because medetomidine is inexpensive. Mass overdose events involving medetomidine have occurred in several cities, but none in Florida yet. Patients suffering from medetomidine overdose tend to have dangerously low heart rates, as low as 20 beats per minute, compared to a normal resting heart rate of 60 beats per minute.
Contact FL Drug Defense Group About Drug Cases
A Central Florida criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are a defendant in a drug case involving illegal use of veterinary tranquilizers such as xylazine or medetomidine. Contact FL Drug Defense Group in Orlando, Florida to discuss your case.
Source:
npr.org/2024/05/31/nx-s1-4974959/medetomidine-overdose-fentanyl-sedative
