Frank Rodriguez stands over an addict struggling to stay on his feet
Ethan Barton – Fox News April 8, 2023
This is the fourth story in a series about the open-air drug market in Kensington. Read the first, second and third parts.
PHILADELPHIA – Rotting flesh. That’s a key indicator someone is addicted to xylazine, a drug sweeping the nation. And Kensington, a neighborhood in the City of Brotherly Love, served as ground zero.
“It’s crazy to think … the good option is to have good old fashion heroin back,” Frank Rodriguez, a local advocate, told Fox News. “That s— sounds so crazy and so foreign to say or to think.”
Rodriguez, himself a recovering heroin addict, said it’s become difficult in Kensington to score H that hasn’t been cut with fentanyl or xylazine. The latter, a veterinary tranquilizer often called tranq, tranq dope or the zombie drug, was ravaging Kensington well before it was identified elsewhere.
A tranq dope cocktail — used to bolster fentanyl and sold for half the price of a traditional dose — causes users to fall into a deep stupor, leaving them susceptible to rape and robbery. When they come to, they may already be facing withdrawal and craving another fix.
The zombie drug also causes excruciatingly painful wounds, including necrosis, that could require amputation if they’re not treated.
A xylazine wound covers the back of a users hand. If such wounds go untreated they can lead to amputation. Click to enlarge
“You literally see people, you know, with sores, with their skin falling off their body,” Rodriguez told Fox News. “You could smell rotting flesh when you get in a group of a few individuals in the summertime.”
On the arms and legs, the wounds might look like a portion of flesh was carved out or maybe a minutes-old chemical burn. Hands and feet may be swollen almost out of recognition.
Sometimes the wounds become hardened tissue. Sometimes they fester and ooze.
“The tranq dope literally eats your flesh,” Brooke Peder, a 38-year-old Kensington resident known as the Hood Grandma told The New York Times. Her leg had been amputated because of a tranq-induced infection.
“It’s self-destruction at its finest,” she said.
Another addict, Tracey McCann, told the Times she’d seen fleas and maggots covering users’ tranq wounds.
And since xylazine isn’t an opioid, common overdose treatments aren’t effective.
“You give them Narcan and it doesn’t matter because you’re treating the wrong thing,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a completely different ball game now.”
Health experts say to try a single dose of Narcan anyway, since it’s not easy to tell what drug is causing the overdose.
‘The deadliest drug threat’
Almost out of thin air, xylazine flooded Kensington, with the deluge starting in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. Addicts have said they might shoot up without realizing xylazine, which can make fentanyl last longer, is mixed into their dose.
“Most people tell me, ‘I wish I could find dope that didn’t have xylazine,’” Dr. Joseph D’Orazio, an expert in addiction medicine at Temple University Hospital told the Times.
In 2021, over 90% of dope samples in Philadelphia contained xylazine, according to city data. And a June study found that it’d been identified in 36 states and D.C.
A Kensington drug user sits on a Philadelphia sidewalk with an exposed wound from xylazine. Click to enlarge
But more recent findings suggest a more dire situation.
The Drug Enforcement Administration announced in March that the agency has found xylazine in 23% of fentanyl powder and in 7% of fentanyl pills. It’s made seizures in 48 states.
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement.
In Kensington, xylazine has driven a 313% increase in visits to a nearby wound care clinic over a three-year period, according to the Times.
‘A tremendous impact’
Before xylazine took hold, the neighborhood was already struggling to get a handle on fentanyl addiction. Overdose kits can be found scattered throughout Kensington.
“I remember when the heroin first became tainted with fentanyl,” he said. “People would let you know ‘Yo, be careful, this has fentanyl in it.’”
“Out of 100 different corners, there might be 10 corners that had heroin that was cut with fentanyl,” Rodriguez added. “Now you can’t find a bag of heroin without fentanyl in Philadelphia.”
As dangerous as xylazine is, fentanyl’s own lethality shouldn’t be forgotten.
The synthetic opioid can be up to 100 times more potent than heroin and has become a regular staple in the drug overdose epidemic. About two-thirds of the more than 106,000 overdose deaths in 2021 were from synthetic opioids — primarily fentanyl, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“Fentanyl has had a tremendous impact on Kensington,” Rodriguez told Fox News. “It’s almost as if when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it got kicked up about five or 10 notches.”
The Iron Law of Drug Prohibition — works every time.
The harder you come down against drugs, the stronger the drugs will be.
Blame the DEA, blame prohibition, but the poor folk on the street are only a danger to themselves.
Then again, maybe the drug laws are goofy on purpose to get the death toll higher.
When one person does it it’s him coming apart. When many people do it it’s society coming apart.
It would be better if good old-fashioned patience were back; you have to wait a while for the body to do its healing work. Old-fashioned respect for other people’s rest is also needed
Good grief, I thought ‘House Prices must be dropping there’ until I read on and found out this is one of those places in America confusingly named after some place else in the Old World.
The next thought that occurred was – ‘here’s a suggestion – why not just not take it?’
This seems to be an incredibly difficult concept for a lot of people here in the post-Christian West –
But, by the grace of God, go I.
The dark side of the moon is like a blackhole…what you don’t see is the reality.
Those who we trust to run the world are not like those who were running the world hundreds of years ago.
The Renaissance was managed by the “leaders”, but was not created by them.
The human-being has a dark side of the moon managed by those who pretended to go to the moon, but they came nowhere near.
What we see in today’s dysfunctional human—-veritable zombies—-is a dirge mimicking the demons that roam the planet in the hopelessly dark minds of those running the world.
Not that I needed a reason to steer clear of Philthy, forced myself to watch the whole video, now I don’t feel quite so bad about living in Zoo Jersey. Used to know someone who lived in Kensington, and before he died he complained about not being able to walk without stepping on needles.
God help them all!
I saw a show on TV about four years ago filmed in America with people like these donating for money their blood. Their blood was bound for European folk who were non the wiser.
Some European folk who learned later who their blood donors were were not well pleased.
Maybe someone is paying them to look and behave this way for some ulterior reason? Looks a bit over-the-top to me.
So… who do you think could be adding xylazonk zombie juice® to the the drugs these imbeciles consume…
To create this Holly weird predictive ‘narrative’..
l’d wager that it’s the goons that really run the ‘drugs business’ (both sides)… with the Langley postcode… and their ‘District’ partners that empty the jails and have legalised the open usage…
Well..it’s obvious..isn’t it?..
disgusting this evil plutocrate kapitalist
USA system ! THE LAND OF THE FREE
Rothschild thats your created system !
If heroin made its comeback by some divine intervention, it would still take months, if not years, for most of these fentanyl addicts to switch to it. Their opioid tolerance is so tremendously high that even 3 grams of pure heroin would be ineffective.
More scenes from hell. You have to wonder if there’s a god, that he sits at his telescreen watching his creations suffer and die horrible deaths.
If you are lucky, you’ll die with dignity. I plan on going way out into the wilderness and dying without anyone knowing, and anyone doing something weird to my body. Can you imagine all the bizarre things that go on at the funeral home? They drain your blood and pump you full of some chemical, and what happens to your blood? Do they sell it to Jews?
What those living corpses need is heroin, a big dose of heroin so they leave while high. China does that I hear. One final high to the beyond.
The bottom line to life is this, all life is suffering, and the only relief to life is death. When you figure that out, you will then realize that the worse curse imaginable is being born, especially on a hell planet like earth. And if you are really bright, you will also realize that the worst thing that could happen is that you survive death, then go to the light, and get reincarnated back to hell.
Just think about what reincarnation actually means – you are stuck in an infinite loop, never ending lifes in hell. If you figure out that your soul is trapped on earth, a prison planet, that implies you are already been cast to eternal life in hell. Think about that next time you get on your knees to pray to god.
And if you are really smart, you can draw the final conclusion, infinite suffering life in an infinite universe is the greatest crime of all time. And this crime is double for sentient life forms as ourselves, who are aware they are being tortured and can not get out of the program, and even worse, when you realize that you did not choose to be born, it was done to you, and thus the moral thing to do is never have children. Think about it, why would you want to bring children into hell?
michaelpaulbo–it took me ages to see the pun–the sinister side of the moon. The album has an Irish voice at the end, saying “there is no dark side of the moon, in fact they are both dark”. Randomly (-ordered comment), Americans did go to the moon, but Communistas do not like the fact
the upper drug lord is jew CIA !
since over 50 years !
Oh, Calcutta!
They’ve rolled out robodogs in New York City. To know the plans for these things we’ll need to see the sentences given to people who kick them over or otherwise damage them. If they get small fines as though they kicked over a trash can then robodog is just a policing aid, but if they get heavy fines, probation or jail time we’ll know the real role of these things is an automated jackboot.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/LJfzpzdwi-I/
Of course thus stuff could be all but stopped IF there wasn’t so much corruption in the USA….
ACTUALLY….China put a stop to this jewish corruption virtually overnight……SASSOON who was once the richest man in the world thanks to his opium industry.He used Indian slave labour to make the drug which was exported to China.(It helped that the Viceroy was an English crypto jew).
So China was able to save itself….The Chinese also go after the rich who are involved in the business…and they don’t go to a Club Fed prison either.
In America there is no real War on Drugs…..
Afterall what sane government would allow entry to MILLIONS of foreign people…..a corrupt government.
Ditto Britain allowing hundreds of thousands of gypsies and Albanians into the country…..you’d have to be crazy or CORRUPT…..
The media are supposed to inform the public,but don’t…..
Today the jewish Sassoons are part of the European upper classes…mainly in France.Highly respected with blood on their hands.Meantime the jewish controlled media keeps telling the public they are innocent suffering victims.
THEY force German taxpayers to pay for the Israeli Navy….and Jews within the US Government force American taxpayers to pay for their airforce.
They forced the French Railways to cough up or else,using the holowco$t as the leverage.
People who publicise this get “visits” from activists……
Don’t underestimate the power of these corrupt fiends…..
THE BIDEN BROOD…..are pure corrupt distilled FILTH.
They’re NOT REAL CATHOLICS….they are Marrano’s/crypto jews/ and the upper levels of Catholicism are infested with them.
Biden….as is revealed in numerous videos….is as rotten as is his predecessor Obama…….there is good evidence to suggest that the Obamas are CRYPTO JEWS….like Drake the hiphop star…..only in Drakes case there is incontrovertible evidence.
How anyone could not see through Biden is a bit of a mystery….because his brain is fu*ked it has become more obvious.
The mayor of city which experienced bank shoot up….about five people killed in USA.
GUESS WHAT THE MAYOR…is a crypto jew….
Like so many Mayors all over the country.
He MAY be an honest mayor…but given the jews track record……
Anton: It’s Hell if that’s your perspective. You gotta take the good WITH the bad…
http://gnosticacademy.org
http://innerversepodcast.com
Adopt the ethics of the international rootless clique and you will arrive at your destination. I talked with a man from a once mining village who said how the social fabric had been destroyed since the mines were shut by the reptile Thatcher, one consequence was the arrival of heroin. Take away the means to earn a living and one option will be narcotics, I believe $500 investment soon turns into $100,000 welcome to capitalism. Didn’t LeRouche brand the British Queen the biggest dope dealer on the planet ?