These days, drug use in New York’s Washington Square Park is very much out in the open. On the park benches, you can see people smoking, injecting themselves and their bench mates and even cooking methamphetamine. On a recent Sunday morning, they did so undisturbed.

But the big shocker for an infrequent visitor is something different. A few of the people present in the park have red and black wounds on their skin. In at least one case this past weekend, parts of human tendons appeared to be exposed.

Most likely, the gruesome sight is a consequence of seeing the effects of someone using the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine, colloquially tranq. Commonly mixed with the synthetic opioid fentanyl and obtained with relative ease, xylazine — pronounced “ZY-la-zeen” — is sometimes called the “zombie drug” in acknowledgment of its flesh-eating properties.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the jarring sight of the horrific physical effects on humans of this horse tranquilizer recall the fictional wounds visible on characters in the dystopian TV show “The Last of Us.”

Xylazine, which has no FDA-approved use in humans, is becoming a massive problem in both New York and Chicago. Why do people mix the two drugs together? In essence, the addition of xylazine extends the duration of the fentanyl high. And for those who traffic in the misery of others, the creation of this horrific cocktail increases profitability.

At a recent Texas meeting of editorial page editors from across the country, sponsored by the American Press Institute, a consensus emerged that there was far too little coverage of the fentanyl crisis in U.S. media, given the scale and scope of its level of human destruction.

And when xylazine is added into the mix, as is so often the case now, that situation only gets much worse.

Among the issues: Xylazine is a nonopioid agent, meaning, the FDA has said, not only that it is notoriously difficult to detect but also that it may not be reversible by naloxone, the substance commonly used to treat overdosing patients and often able to block or temper the effects of opioids like heroin, morphine and oxycodone.

Last month the federal Drug Enforcement Administration put out a harshly worded warning, saying that “xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier.”

The DEA went on to say it had “seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 states. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022 approximately 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.”

In Chicago, the problem appears to be getting worse. Data from the Cook County medical examiner’s office earlier this year showed that xylazine was showing up more and more in autopsy reports. In February, ABC-7 reported on the growing frequency of the drug’s appearances in Lake County autopsy reports, too.

Last year, Dr. Neeraj Chhabra, a medical toxicologist and emergency physician with Cook County Health, told the Tribune that xylazine was now a factor in more than 1 in 9 fentanyl overdoses in Cook County. That was using 2021 figures. By many accounts, 2022 was much worse, and in these first months of 2023, the prevalence of xylazine only has increased on Chicago’s streets.

Various efforts are underway in both Springfield and Washington to combat xylazine, including a bipartisan bill introduced late last month by U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) to make xylazine a Schedule III controlled drug. That bill got the attention of veterinarians and ranchers, worried that they’ll lose easy access to a routine tranquilizer important to their work.

In fact, the bill employs a savvy two-track strategy, protecting access for veterinary uses while introducing Schedule III penalties for all illicit use, which means anytime xylazine is used in a human body. Significantly, the bill also requires suppliers to closely track the drug in terms of who is getting access to it and for what use. None of that was happening when this problem emerged.

Xylazine is literally eating human flesh and you can see precisely that in the parks, and on the streets, of America’s great cities.

Surely, a national and bipartisan effort can be made, on all fronts, to fight back against such a stunning act of self-destruction, all in service of a temporary high.