Government bans xylazine and other substances to curb drug deaths

The UK Government has initiated steps to ban xylazine and 21 other drugs. After an investigation, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) recommended this ban as part of the continued battle against drug trafficking and alarmingly high drug deaths.

Xylazine is a veterinary sedative and drug dealers often combine it with opioids to ‘stretch’ amounts. Authorities have also found this drug in cannabis vapes.

The new legislation also addresses recent variations of highly addictive, synthetic opioids called nitazenes. Experts indicated that these drugs are significantly more potent than heroin.

Xylazine-related drug deaths

Xylazine immobilises users and slows or prevents the healing of lacerations, abrasions and other wounds. This characteristic catatonia led to it being called the ‘zombie drug’. Rapid Action Drug Alerts and Response (RADAR) emphasised the toxicity and danger of xylazine and other new synthetic drugs.

In a May 2024 statement, Public Health Scotland indicated that authorities traced xylazine in five drug deaths between October and December 2023. Nitazenes, which first appeared on the scene in 2022, were directly linked to 12 deaths in the same three-month period. Earlier records show that xylazine-based drug deaths spiked from 102 to 3,468 between 2018 and 2021 in the US, further confirming the seriousness of this issue.

UK action against xylazine

In the UK, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 prohibit and regulate the use and trafficking of harmful drugs. Under these laws, it is an offence to possess, supply, produce or import classified (or identified) drugs.

Drugs are classed according to the degree of harm they cause. These categories are:

• Class A drugs – the most volatile, and include magic mushrooms, heroin and cocaine.
• Class B drugs – include medicines such as codeine and ketamine and substances such as cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids.
• Class C drugs – include anabolic steroids, mild tranquilisers and khat.

The UK is the first country to take action against xylazine. The UK Parliament currently has a statutory instrument on its table that proposes that xylazine be controlled as a Class C drug to curb drug misuse and fatalities.

Included in this statutory instrument are 21 other dangerous drugs. New variants of nitazenes are among these. They will also be redefined to close the gaps that drug producers and traffickers use to bypass legal consequences.

Using workplace drug testing for early intervention and drug death prevention

The workplace is, in a sense, on the frontline of drug misuse detection. Those with problems are present at work, day in and day out, long before incidents occur that warrant emergency treatment or entry into drug treatment programmes.

This makes workplace drug testing a core tool in detecting these newly classified dangerous drugs. The Matrix Diagnostics team of experts equip you with the knowledge, training and on-site screening tools to help boost employee welfare and initiate help for those who need it.

Our Matrix Single Urine Cassette and Matrix Multi Drug Dip Cards deliver rapid results in five minutes. Simple tests such as these can help save a person’s life.