Overdose deaths involving street xylazine surged years earlier than reported

A nurse treats a man's skin wounds in a community outreach storefront in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia in May. Xylazine, a powerful animal sedative that's moving through the illicit drug supply in the U.S., is causing gruesome skin wounds and scrambling longstanding methods for treating addiction and reversing overdoses. (Matt Rourke/AP)

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday found the street drug xylazine surged much earlier than previously reported.

The CDC concluded that by 2021, the "rate of drug overdose deaths involving xylazine was 35 times higher than the 2018 rate."