‘It’s made things worse for everyone’: Philadelphia grapples with rise of new street drug

Medetomidine has extreme and fast-acting withdrawal symptoms – and the detox centers that help patients are struggling with how best to cope

The staff at harm reduction hub Sunshine House in the middle of Kensington, a neighborhood in north-east Philadelphia home to the most notorious open drug scene in the US, often reverse at least one overdose per day.

But the mutating illegal drug supply is regularly conjuring new drugs with novel sets of potentially deadly risks. For the past 18 months, there has been a new drug in circulation, the veterinary sedative medetomidine, also known as “rhino tranq”. It has perhaps the most extreme and fast-acting withdrawal symptoms of all known street drugs.