USA. Do you know what’s in your pill? In Mass. there’s a way to find out

There's a trend few people are talking about when it comes to overdose deaths. They rose in some Massachusetts communities last year — even as they plummeted statewide and across the U.S.

Part of the reason might be differences in the drug supply.

The illegal drug supply varies quite a bit from city to city. When xylazine, the animal tranquilizer, dominates — rather than the opioid fentanyl — there tend to be fewer fatal overdoses.

One possible explanation is fentanyl wears off quickly, so people addicted to fentanyl often use it six or more times a day to avoid going into withdrawal and feeling deathly ill. Xylazine, by contrast, can knock a person out for eight hours or longer. A lot of things can go wrong if you don’t move for many hours and are unprotected outside in the sun or cold. But if a person uses drugs twice a day instead of six times, their risk of a fatal overdose drops.

I heard this theory from Traci Green, who runs the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative in the Heller School at Brandeis University. She speaks with unique authority. In 2019, Green started the first statewide community drug-checking program in the U.S. (WBUR, USA, 01.07.2025)

https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/07/01/massachusetts-street-check-drug-testing-fentanyl-xylazine?asam.org