Minnesota sees sedative overdose spike: "Naloxone isn't going to help"
The Minnesota Department of Health issued a health advisory last week warning of an increase in overdose cases involving sedatives.
Data collected by the department's Minnesota Drug Overdose and Substance Use Surveillance Activity (MNDOSA) project shows just one overdose case where the sedative xylazine was detected. That number jumped to 53 in 2024.
Now, the state is tracking another sedative emerging in the drug supply.
"Medetomidine, it has been seen in other parts of the country," said Deepa McGriff, the department's epidemiologist supervisor. "It is a veterinary sedative that's not approved for human use, and in 2025 we started to see more detections."
The state's Public Health Laboratory started tracking medetomidine in 2024 and this year has seen 12 cases.
"Here in Minnesota, we are somewhat insulated, initially, from new substances as they emerge, maybe on the East Coast or West Coast," said Jason Peterson, who supervises the chemical threats and bio monitoring units at the Public Health Laboratory.
Peterson says medetomidine was "starting to grow" out on the East Coast.
"They do take delays in a lot of times in entering our state, but we are mindful of that and we are mindful of the patterns where drugs typically flow across the country," he said.
This increase in sedatives is a dangerous reality for drug users across the state.
"Certainly for the subset of people that we work with that are using substances, we do see these things come through," said John Tribbett, the service area director for Avivo's ending homelessness division. "We are at a point unfortunately where you never know what people are getting, and what they end up putting in their body.
Tribbett said all of Avivo's teams are trained in overdose reversal.
The state's health advisory warns that these sedatives "significantly complicates the treatment of overdose patients."
McGriff says the department wants the community and first responders to understand that sedatives may be a factor in an overdose, and how that can impact treatment.
"If there's a sedative involved, the Naloxone isn't going to work to reverse that unresponsiveness," McGriff said. "We want to emphasize the need to focus on restoring the breathing of the overdose patients, rather than restoring the consciousness."
McGriff said an opioid reversal drug like naloxone should still be used in these cases.
Tribbett believes the emergence of medetomidine is a reflection of policy aimed at restricting xylazine.
"What we see time and time again is a crackdown on one particular chemical, and then something emerges to replace it," Tribbett said.
Some states have made an effort to limit access to xylazine in recent years, including Pennsylvania, which classified xylazine as a Schedule 3 drug.
Minnesota's health department says data is still limited when it comes to medetomidine, but awareness is important — something Tribbett agrees with.
"Making people aware, helping our teams have the information they need, helping people in the community know what's out there," Tribbett said.
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