Illicit drugs dealers and suppliers are increasingly cutting their products with xylazine, or “tranq,” a powerful animal sedative that can halt breathing in humans and cause severe skin wounds.
BTNX, a Canada-based company that makes fentanyl test strips, will distribute the new but similar tests.
A price of $200 per box of 100 has been reported by STAT, a health news service of Boston Globe Media.
Testing shows the strips are highly sensitive at a wide range of concentrations.
Moreover, testing showed zero false negatives — that is, they detected the drug every time it was present. They did occasionally give false positives for the local anesthetic lidocaine.
Although the sedative is most widespread on the East Coast, it is spreading. Arizona public health and safety agencies issued a warning to health care providers about the drug in December
