White House introduces national strategy to combat deaths from powerful veterinary sedative increasingly involved in drug overdose deaths

The Biden administration has introduced a new plan to combat overdose deaths from xylazine, a powerful veterinary sedative that has increasingly shown up in such deaths across the country, exacerbating the opioid overdose epidemic in the United States.

“I’m announcing that the White House is releasing our national response plan to coordinate a whole of government response to this threat,” White House Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Dr. Rahul Gupta said during a call with reporters on Monday. “Xylazine itself slows breathing and heart rate and lowers the blood pressure to unsafe levels and complicates efforts to reverse opioid overdoses with medications like naloxone or Narcan.”