SYNTHETIC COUNTRY –
April 10, 2025 – A powerful street drug that began showing up alongside “tranq” (xylazine) and fentanyl in Philadelphia and other cities last year, medetomidine or “rhino tranq,” may be making its way west. And the SF Department of Public Health issued a statement this week about a recent local overdose death in which this drug was involved, calling the development “concerning.”
As the Chronicle reports, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed that a 46-year-old woman had died in the city in February, and she had a mixture of drugs in her system including fentanyl, medetomidine, and benzodiazepines (i.e. lorazepam and the like).
The first Chronicle report about medetomidine came last May, just as warnings about the drug were being issued in East Coast cities. The drug, used for animal anesthesia, can cause “heightened sedation” and “profound bradycardia” in humans, and it appears to have entered certain drug supplies in mixtures that also contain fentanyl and xylazine.
