FILE PHOTO - A homeless Penticton man holds a glass pipe used for smoking illicit drugs.

(DAN WALTON / iNFOnews.ca)

A new drug has made it's way onto the streets in the Interior Health region and the rate at which it is being found in the local drug supply is slowly increasing.

Xylazine, also known as tranq or tranq dope, is a tranquillizer made for animal use that is now being used by humans because it increases the effects of a fentanyl high. While it's only present in small amounts in the local illegal drug supply, it's hard to say how it will affect the ongoing drug crisis.

"If there's one thing that never changes in the drug crisis that we have is that the supply always changes, in other words, the only thing that is certain about the drug supply and the drug crisis is that nothing is ever certain," Antoine Marcheterre with Interior Health's drug checking team says.

"Xylazine is just another thing that has been added to the drug supply, it could be here for just a year and be replaced by something else. We always see new things in the drug supply, so we're not certain about xylazine and what it's going to mean for the drug crisis."

Xylazine has been found in a small number of tested drug samples, but data Interior Health has gathered shows it is mostly being laced with other drugs.

"Most frequently xylazine is added to what is called down which is a mixture of fentanyl and other active ingredients such as benzodiazepines. However, some people do use xylazine on purpose, but as far as we know in the Interior it mostly appears in down, also known as dope, so people mostly don't know it's in their drugs and it's there to enhance the effects of other drugs," Marcheterre says.

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What worries the health authority is the drug supply is already very unreliable, meaning from one drug use to the next, users can't always know what to expect which can lead to more overdoses.

Adding a new drug can increase the overdose risk, especially with xylazine because it is a non-opioid.

"While it is true that if xylazine is present in a substance it will heighten the chance of it being a culprit for an overdose, there are many things that can be mixed in a substance that can increase the risk of overdose such as the concentration of fentanyl varying from 10% to 25% is a considerable increase," Marcheterre explains.

"Xylazine does not respond to naloxone, so people can still be heavily sedated after receiving naloxone and, especially if mixed with benzodiazepines, people can still find themselves in life-threatening situations after receiving naloxone.

"That said, any opioid overdose should be treated as such and naloxone should be administered. If a person also consumed xylazine and/or benzodiazepines it will not be harmful to them, it will at least help remove the effects of the fentanyl."

READ MORE: BC drug users and advocates issue a warning about xylazine

Another problem with xylazine is that it causes skin lesions on a user's body. These can happen no matter how the drug is consumed.

"There's a misconception that xylazine will make a wound where it is injected which won't heal, but what is being found is that people tend to develop abscesses and wounds that don't heal and get infected in various places around their body, not just at the place of injection. In other words, if someone smokes xylazine they would still be at risk of developing these lesions," Marcheterre says.

So how present is it in the Interior?

"In February, the latest data we have, we found xylazine to be present in 6.9% of all samples that were classified as opioids. Fentanyl, or an analog of fentanyl, and then benzodiazepines, around 70%, of the time and then xylazine are what we find most in drugs that are tested," Marcheterre says.

"The data we have on drugs, including xylazine, comes from drug checking services, so we don't know exactly what goes on in the drug supply because we rely on people voluntarily bringing their substances to the service because they want to know what is in their substance."

Benzodiazepines are seen as a much larger problem in the current drug supply, but the rate at which they appear is now stable as opposed to xylazine.

"Benzos have been around for a couple of years, which makes them pretty old in the drug world, and their level of concentration has risen to around 70% but then has stayed stable," Marcheterre says.

"Xylazine, we've detected more recently than we used to, so rising would be a strong word because we're still at around 6% detection, but it's slowly increasing."

READ MORE: Death toll from toxic illicit drug supply in Okanagan, Kamloops continues to climb

Xylazine is a small problem in BC's Interior when compared to places on the East Coast of the United States where measures have been taken to avoid a new drug epidemic.

Interior Health still has recommendations for drug users to avoid more tragedies caused by drugs such as xylazine.

"The only thing that we can recommend if someone is using xylazine is to use it as little as possible," Marcheterre says. "We also highly recommend that users get their drugs tested so they know what is in their substances."

To find out more about drug checking and where it can be done, visit Interior Health's drug-checking website here.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Gabrielle Adams or call (438) 830-1211 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

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