Zombie drug ‘tranq’ is in Sedgwick County, sheriff says

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Less than a month ago, the White House warned that xylazine-laced fentanyl is an official emergency drug threat to the nation. On Thursday, Sheriff Jeff Easter said his office is seeing it in Sedgwick County.

“There’s a new drug that has hit here, which is fentanyl-laced with xylazine, which is a horse tranquilizer,” he said.

Because xylazine (ZIE-luh-zeen) is a tranquilizer, it has gotten the street name ‘tranq.’ People have compared tranq addicts to zombies, hence the nickname “zombie drug.”

Drug dealers have been putting it with fentanyl or other drugs to extend a user’s high.

Sheriff Easter said Narcan and other naloxone products do not work on tranq.

“Narcan’s not going to stop you from dying,” he said.

We asked Easter how prevalent tranq is in the Wichita area.

“It’s just starting really to hit here,” he said. “We had an overdose inside the jail beginning of this week, and we suspect that that was laced with xylazine or the zombie drug.”

He said xylazine-laced fentanyl can be deadly.

“You’re not coming back from that for the most part,” Easter said. “Fentanyl oppresses your respiratory system, and so does this tranquilizer.”

He said it can sometimes take five doses of Narcan before someone is revived from a fentanyl overdose.

“That’s how potent and strong these drugs are, and then you throw xylazine on top of it. Narcan’s not touching that,” Easter said.

It was just five years ago that fentanyl became noticeable in Sedgwick County. When deputies intercepted some fentanyl pills in 2018, the Sheriff’s Office didn’t even know what they were initially.

Since then, fentanyl use has grown, and people have died. Easter said there were 200 overdose deaths in 2021. The 2022 number is still pending because some toxicology reports aren’t back yet.

“As of April, we had 174 with about 120 autopsies still pending, so we could still top the 200 level, and that’s from levels of in the 20s … before that,” he said.

Easter said one of the problems is that Kansas highways are a direct pipeline from Texas and Arizona to any place north or east.

“The amount of fentanyl that’s passing through this community is enormous, but the amount that’s actually here is very disturbing,” he said.

He said it is really easy for children to become fentanyl victims.

“It’s mixed in Xanax and Adderall and, of course, Percocet pills,” Easter said. “Five to 10 years ago, if kids wanted to get an Adderall, which happens all the time … they didn’t have to worry about the fentanyl aspect. Now, anything that you do not get from a pharmacy … probably has fentanyl in it, especially Percocets.”

He said anything that is considered “blues” or Percocet “is a fentanyl-laced pill. Period.”

Plus, he said fentanyl-laced drugs are cheap, that kids can buy a pill for a dollar.

“We have got to really educate our youth,” Easter said. “We have got to change the mindset of our youth that, you know, ‘Trying drugs is just what we do as youth’ and ‘Doing drugs every once in a while is an OK thing.’ It’s not.”

The sheriff said drug use has been a problem in Wichita since he joined the Wichita Police Department in 1989.

“They started the war on drugs around 1985, and we’re not winning,” he said. “We’re still fighting the war on drugs, and it’s getting worse.”

Easter said arresting addicts and throwing them in jail is not the answer.

“We’re not going to arrest ourselves out of this,” he said. “We’ve got to figure out how to boost rehab services and give the judges the opportunity to place them into rehab instead of back out on the streets on probation.”

He said research has shown that addicts need to be in rehab for an extended period.

“We’re not talking a month. We’re talking six months or more. And the statistics show that most folks will relapse at least one time,” Easter said.

“There’s a lot of statistics that show as well, and I’ve seen it personally, where folks were able to kick the habit,” he said. “They’re back being productive citizens, have jobs, or contributing to the community, instead of some of the stuff that we see here anymore of people out on the streets, property crimes going up, violent crime going up. A lot of those crimes are directly related to some sort of drug issue.”

Easter said America has to slow or stop the drugs coming across the border.

“If you can stop the influx of drugs coming into this country and drugs coming into this community, they have no choice but to seek rehab. Their habit’s done. We saw that in the 90s, when we’d take off big loads of cocaine, we would see crack cocaine addicts that were coming up to the police saying, “I’ve got a problem,’ because now they’re more lucid, ‘I’ve got to get to rehab.'”