Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday is part of a coalition of 21 attorneys general calling on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to take emergency action to schedule bromazolam, a drug linked to deaths in the state and across the country.
In a letter to DEA Administrator Terry Cole, the coalition of law enforcement officials raised alarms about the drug, which often referred to as “designer Xanax.”
Bromazolam is a synthetic benzodiazepine that is highly potent and unpredictable, especially when mixed with opioids. Naloxone, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, is ineffective against bromazolam in an overdose, officials said.
“It is a race to stay ahead of drug traffickers when dealing with synthetic drugs, and lives depend on immediate action that will give law enforcement the tools to proactively target traffickers,” Sunday said. “This substance has no legitimate purpose, and is becoming far too common in Pennsylvania and across the nation.”
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, “designer” benzodiazepines, including bromazolam, contributed to 59 overdose deaths in the state in 2022. That figure nearly tripled a year later.
According to law enforcement in Pennsylvania, bromazolam overdoses are a rising trend in the Keystone State.
The attorneys general wrote in the letter that illicitly manufactured bromazolam lacks any quality controls, making it “particularly lethal for unsuspecting users.”
Some traffickers are incorrectly labeling the drug as a legal prescription medication or compounding it with other drugs, such as fentanyl, other opioids or methamphetamine, the attorney general said.
Emergency action by the DEA would help law enforcement remove bromazolam from circulation, give prosecutors the tools to hold traffickers accountable and “send a clear signal it has no place on the streets of America’s neighborhoods,” according to the letter.
Sunday was joined in the letter, which was led by officials in Kentucky, by attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.
While overdose emergency room visits are down in recent years, according to data from the Pennsylvania of Health, drugs remain a pressing issue in the state.
The Bucks County Coroner’s Office reported that there were 109 drug-related deaths in the county last year.
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