Why People Use Xylazine

Xylazine is taking over certain drug markets. Still, there's a reason people are seeking it out while others want to avoid it at all costs.

Let’s call her Liza. Her skinny arms look as though they’ve been melted by a corrosive, flesh-eating acid. Even as I write this (literal) description, I’m aware of the skin rotting “zombie” drug trope already forming around xylazine.

The New York Times recently published a big feature story about the once obscure veterinary tranquilizer causing devastating injection wounds in people like Liza. Xylazine is a highly caustic drug; it can kill soft tissue. The skin ulcers caused by xylazine usually appear to be black. Skin also turns black in severe cases of frost bite. Once tissue is too far gone, or it’s too deeply infected, the course of action is usually amputation. People are losing their limbs out there.

I’ve previously written about what xylazine is and various policy approaches in play for dealing with it. What I haven’t seen spelled out so clearly yet: Why people are using xylazine, even when they know it causes such horrorific wounds.

What Will Scheduling Xylazine Accomplish?