West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey joined a bipartisan coalition of 41 attorneys general today in a letter to Congressional leadership urging passage of the Combating Xylazine Act. The bipartisan, bicameral legislation would classify the illicit use of xylazine (also known as “tranq”) under Schedule III of the federal Controlled Substances Act. It also would authorize the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to track the manufacturing of the drug and would require reporting to Congress on the prevalence of illegal xylazine use.
Xylazine is primarily used as a veterinary tranquilizer for large animals and is not approved for human use. The drug is frequently added to fentanyl, and the combination of these two drugs has resulted in increasing deaths and severe health complications. Since xylazine is not an opioid, it creates challenges in rescuing those who have overdosed because it reduces the efficacy of traditional opioid reversal agents such as naloxone.
The combination of xylazine and fentanyl or other opioids is more dangerous than anyone can imagine. Naloxone is less effective with this combination. Like opioids, xylazine also slows breathing and heart rate. It’s incredibly important to get this drug reclassified so the DEA can use all resources to stop the proliferation of “tranq” and any drug like it,” Attorney General McCuskey said. “West Virginia already treats xylazine as a controlled substance. Local officials stress that it’s still a serious and growing problem—so much so that West Virginia has even been studied as an epicenter for the substance’s use in medical studies. We cannot let another illicit drug take hold in the Mountain State.”
The letter is led by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Connecticut, New York and Tennessee. West Virginia joined the letter along with the attorneys general of American Samoa, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, U.S. Virgin Islands, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.
Read the letter here.