What To Know About Medetomidine
The goals of recreational drug use tend to fall into several categories. Some people seek out stimulant drugs that enable them to stay awake for the excitement and experience the sights and sounds of the night for acutely. Others look for drugs that will numb their physical or emotional pain and calm their anxiety. Another group pursues drug-induced experiences that, without drugs, you could only experience in a dream. The drugs that hold the potential to produce these effects are of virtually endless variety. No matter how frequently federal and state authorities update the lists of controlled substances, chemists are always synthesizing new drugs, and the troubled and adventuresome people of the world are always consuming them for purposes other than those for which their makers originally intended them. To further complicate matters, when you buy pills or drug powders off the street, you cannot be sure what you are getting. Most of the time, there are other psychoactive drugs in the mixture besides or instead of the one that the seller is advertising. These drugs interact with each other in ways that unsuspecting buyers can scarcely predict, and this is when drugs are at their most dangerous. Here, our Miami drug crimes defense lawyer explains the recent rise of medetomidine, a veterinary tranquilizer that has become increasingly widespread in the illegal drug supply over the past several years.
Veterinary Tranquilizers Complicate the Opioid Epidemic
Fentanyl causes more overdose deaths than any other drug, but most people who overdose on fentanyl do not know that they are taking it, much less at what dose. Because of the low price and high potency of fentanyl, manufacturers of drugs meant for the illegal market mix it into drug powders to sell on the street and use pill presses the press the powders into counterfeit pills that look like oxycodone and other prescription opioids. Sometimes counterfeit pills that mimic the appearance of non-opioids such as Adderall or Xanax also contain fentanyl.
Naloxone is kryptonite for opioids, though. It can reverse the effects of fentanyl and even the synthetic opioids that are stronger than fentanyl. The availability of naloxone has caused a decline in the number of drug overdose fatalities. There are always twists and turns in the illegal drug epidemic, though. Drug dealers have started to mix fentanyl and other inexpensive opioids with veterinary tranquilizers, which cost even less. When all goes well, these drugs simply mimic the effects of opioids, from the buyer’s perspective. An overdose on veterinary tranquilizers is even worse than a fentanyl overdose, because non-opioid tranquilizers do not respond to naloxone. In the past several years, the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine has caused an alarming number of overdoses in South Florida. Most overdose events involved drug powders that patients had believed contained opioids. More recently, another veterinary tranquilizer, namely medetomidine, has entered the illegal drug supply.
What Is Medetomidine, and Why Is It So Dangerous?
Medetomidine, a veterinary tranquilizer first synthesized in 2007, seems less scary than xylazine at first. Xylazine can knock out the largest animals, from cows and horses to rhinoceroses and elephants. By contrast, the intended patients of medetomidine are dogs and cats. Veterinarians give household pets micro doses of medetomidine for pain management, and they administer it at higher doses for anesthesia during surgery.
Since 2022, law enforcement has reported an increasing number of incidents involving medetomidine overdoses and confiscation of drug powders that tested positive for medetomidine in forensics labs. Mass overdose events related to medetomidine have occurred in Philadelphia and Chicago. Medetomidine slows patients’ heart rates to dangerously low levels. Some patients who overdosed on medetomidine had heart rates as low as 20 when first responders attended to them, whereas a normal resting heart rate is 60 beats per minute or slightly more. Even though naloxone cannot reverse the effects of medetomidine intoxication, a drug called atipamezole can.
Legal Status of Medetomidine
Medetomidine does not have any legally accepted medical uses in humans; it is only legal for veterinary use. Therefore, the legal consequences for possession of medetomidine are similar to those for so-called research chemicals, which are recreational drugs that have not been formally added to the schedules of controlled substances. As with any illegal drug, you can get felony charges even for possession of a small quantity.
Contact Our Criminal Defense Attorneys
A South Florida criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing charges for illegal possession of veterinary tranquilizers. Contact Ratzan & Faccidomo in Miami, Florida for a confidential consultation about your case.
Source:
npr.org/2024/05/31/nx-s1-4974959/medetomidine-overdose-fentanyl-sedative
