A powerful animal sedative was mixed with opioids in the drug samples collected from the mass overdose in Baltimore’s Penn North Neighborhood earlier this month, Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Michelle Taylor said during a meeting Wednesday.

Medetomidine was detected in the drug samples that caused 11 people to simultaneously overdose in Penn North in early October.

The drug is an animal sedative used by veterinarians for dogs, cats and horses.

“Unlike typical opioid overdoses, medetomidine intoxication may require different management strategies due to prolonged sedation, bradycardia, and hypertension despite standard-of-care overdose treatment,” a study from the Journal of Addiction Medicine states.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the drug is often used to cut opioids because it provides a similar depressive effect.

Sedatives like Medetomidine are particularly dangerous because they do not respond to naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal drug.

About nine percent of samples collected by Maryland’s Rapid Analysis of Drugs program in the second quarter of 2025 showed traces of the drug.

Baltimore is in the process of creating a mass overdose protocol to respond to situations like those in Penn North.

In total about 42 people have fallen victim to mass overdoses in the neighborhood since July 10.

No one has died from the mass overdose incidents, however, the problem continues to happen in the area.

The previous overdoses may have been due to N-Methylclonazepam, a benzodiazepine that operates similarly to Xanax or Valium, in the opioids that were given out in the neighborhood.

“It can cause a depressed level of consciousness and reduced respiratory drive,” said Dr. Gentry Wilkerson, an emergency medicine physician at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “When you have that drug working together with an opioid, then they're going to have a more profound effect on somebody.”

Baltimore is in the midst of starting to spend hundreds of millions of dollars it won in settlements and lawsuits filed against opioid manufacturers and distributors for their role in the epidemic.