A type of tranquilizer is creeping into Maine’s drug supply, public health officials warn.
The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued an alert Tuesday about medetomidine, saying it’s been detected in Maine and is especially prevalent in the Northeast.
The substance, known as “rhino tranq,” is a veterinary tranquilizer used to sedate dogs, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is increasingly being detected in drug samples, especially fentanyl.
Medetomidine is 200 to 300 times more potent than xylazine, a substance commonly referred to as “tranq” that is also found in fentanyl and has been increasingly linked to overdoses in Maine in recent years.
Both tranquilizers, like other substances that can be mixed in with illegal drugs, can add risks for the people affected by the state’s opioid crisis. Although overdose deaths declined statewide last year, they’ve continued to climb in Penobscot County and Bangor, coinciding with an ongoing HIV outbreak primarily affecting people who use drugs.
Medetomidine hasn’t been as widely documented in Maine’s drug supply as it has been elsewhere in the region, but the Maine CDC has warned health care workers and people who use drugs that it can lead to especially severe withdrawals.
Maine-based harm reduction organizations have stressed that the substance is one of many that can be found in a frequently changing drug supply and it’s important to be aware of the withdrawal symptoms.
“We’re not seeing a ton of it,” Anna McConnell, executive director of Maine Access Points, said, but her organization has detected it as part of its drug checking services.
The substance can cause sedation, low blood pressure and low heart rate, and withdrawal can cause dangerously high blood pressure and heart or brain damage, the CDC said. Experts say anyone who may be going through medetomidine withdrawal with symptoms like continuous vomiting, chest pain, and going in and out of awareness should seek emergency medical attention.
“It’s not something that someone would want to try to manage at home,” McConnell said.
The Street Drug Analysis Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which analyzes drug samples sent in from across the country, began finding medetomidine in other states in 2022 and first detected it in a sample from Maine about a year ago.
Medetomidine was detected in a sample sent to the lab from Bangor in September.
Bangor police are not aware of any overdoses in the city involving medetomidine, according to Sgt. Jeremy Brock, the department’s spokesperson. Brock noted that toxicology reports can take up to eight weeks to be returned in suspected overdose cases.
The Maine CDC was not able to provide information regarding where in Maine medetomidine has been detected, spokesperson Lindsay Hammes said Thursday evening.
The substance can be hard to detect “because it’s so strong, it shows up in extremely small quantities,” McConnell said.
Medetomidine test strips are not widely available in Maine like xylazine test strips, and McConnell said they’re not easy to use without training. She encouraged people to visit a Maine Access Points location, which can be found in Machias, Calais, Sanford, Rumford and Biddeford, if they want to get their drugs tested.
Needlepoint Sanctuary, a harm reduction organization in Bangor, is also encouraging people to get their drugs tested, according to Executive Director Willie Hurley.
“This is just the reality of the drug supply. It’s so unpredictable,” Hurley said.
Medetomidine does not respond to the overdose-reversing medication naloxone, but the CDC still recommends using it in suspected medetomidine-related overdoses because it’s commonly mixed with fentanyl, which does respond to it.
A form of the drug is approved for humans in hospital settings as a sedative, but samples of it on the street have caused intense hallucinations, according to UNC researchers. They say unexpected hallucinations could be an early warning sign that medetomidine is in a drug supply, since opioids do not cause hallucinations.
Rescue breathing is especially important for suspected overdoses involving veterinary tranquilizers, according to UNC researchers.
In some cities, medetomidine has become more common than xylazine as a cut in the drug supply, according to data from Philadelphia. Xylazine was first detected in Maine in 2021, the Bangor Daily News previously reported.
While medetomidine is much stronger than xylazine, it doesn’t appear to coincide with the development of severe wounds.
