(KHN) — With time working out within the 2022 legislative session, Georgia lawmakers took up a invoice to manage uncooked milk.
An modification instantly acquired tacked onto the Home model of the invoice, though the brand new wording had nothing to do with dairy. The language known as for legalizing using strips that check medication for fentanyl, a potent artificial opioid fueling a wave of deadly overdoses throughout Georgia and the U.S.
The modification, mentioned Sen. Jen Jordan, an Atlanta Democrat who sponsored it, was “a commonsense resolution to avoid wasting lives.”
The revised milk invoice handed overwhelmingly on the final day of the Basic Meeting session. If the invoice would not draw a veto from Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia will be a part of a rising checklist of states decriminalizing using fentanyl testing strips because the drug’s scourge has unfold throughout the nation.
Governors in New Mexico and Wisconsin this yr signed payments permitting check strips in these states, and legislatures in Tennessee and Alabama lately handed related laws. In Pennsylvania, though a state regulation prohibits check strips, the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have ordered bans on prosecuting folks possessing them. The state’s legal professional basic mentioned he will not cost folks for having the check strips. Alaska state well being officers, horrified by a surge of overdose deaths, have began giving out free check strips. A merchandising machine in Ohio gives the fentanyl-detecting units alongside naloxone, a drugs for reversing overdoses.
However the Florida legislature balked this yr at a invoice that may decriminalize the testing strips. Fentanyl check units — prohibited beneath drug paraphernalia legal guidelines adopted a long time in the past — stay unlawful in about half of states, drug coverage consultants say.
Many public well being and habit consultants, although, promote the speedy testing units as what’s often known as a “hurt discount” tactic to assist stop overdose deaths from illicit medication that customers could not know are laced with fentanyl.
“We hope all of the states would come to appreciate the risks of contamination are so excessive and that fentanyl check strips empower an individual taking medication to know whether or not they have fentanyl,” mentioned Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being.
Road variations of fentanyl, an authorised painkiller that is being produced illegally, largely come into the U.S. from Mexico. Fentanyl is as much as 100 instances as highly effective as morphine. It’s generally present in what’s offered as heroin — typically taking its place completely. It additionally might be combined into cocaine, methamphetamine, and counterfeit avenue tablets offered as opioid medicines — substances that many consumers should not anticipating to comprise fentanyl.
The unfold of fentanyl has helped result in a surprising rise in drug overdose deaths. Artificial opioids — together with fentanyl — had been concerned in about two-thirds of U.S. drug overdose deaths within the 12-month interval that led to November 2021. And three-quarters of overdose deaths from cocaine final yr had been related to fentanyl, Volkow mentioned.
“Fentanyl is so potent that it could actually cease your respiratory at very low doses,” she mentioned.
The fentanyl epidemic additionally “has exacerbated racial inequities,” Volkow added. From 2019 to 2021, fentanyl overdose deaths greater than tripled amongst youngsters — and surged fivefold amongst Black teenagers, based on an evaluation of Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention knowledge produced by the advocacy group Households Towards Fentanyl.
This month, the Drug Enforcement Administration despatched a letter to federal, state, and native regulation enforcement officers warning of a nationwide spike in fentanyl-related mass-overdose occasions. “Fentanyl is killing People at an unprecedented fee,” mentioned DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “Already this yr, quite a few mass-overdose occasions have resulted in dozens of overdoses and deaths.”
The testing strips are cheap, costing about $1. A drug person can take a small amount of the substance, add water, and dip a strip briefly into the answer. If one crimson stripe seems on the strip, fentanyl is current; two stripes imply none of that drug is discovered.
A draw back is that the check strips do not gauge the quantity of fentanyl within the drug.
Nonetheless, the strips are efficient in detecting “very small quantities of fentanyl,” mentioned Brown College epidemiologist Brandon Marshall, a part of a workforce that has studied illicit drug customers and the units in Rhode Island. Most of the contributors who tried the strips, Marshall mentioned, discarded the substance if fentanyl was current, used the drug with another person current, or had naloxone accessible throughout use.
An analogous research of North Carolina intravenous drug customers discovered 3 in 4 folks indicated that fentanyl strips made them really feel higher capable of defend themselves from overdose.
In South Carolina, which has made fentanyl check strips accessible, the state sends an nameless survey to anybody who receives them. Sara Goldsby, director of the South Carolina Division of Alcohol and Different Drug Abuse Providers, mentioned survey responses point out that individuals who use the strips report utilizing fewer medication, with some selecting to not use the medication altogether, and that they really feel safer in stopping overdoses.
The testing strips, Brown’s Marshall added, “should not going to be a silver bullet to handle the overdose disaster. However they are often an vital device to assist folks keep secure.”
In Georgia, the place the testing invoice awaits the governor’s approval, public well being officers mentioned fentanyl-related overdose deaths jumped after the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, doubling between Might 1, 2020, and April 30, 2021, in contrast with the identical span in 2019 and 2020.
And fentanyl-related overdoses lately spiked in Savannah, Georgia, based on Dr. Jay Goldstein, medical director of the emergency division at Memorial Well being. He mentioned that many overdose sufferers mentioned they had been stunned on the efficiency of the drug that they had consumed, however he fears that giving them strips will not stem its use.
“Unhappy to say, however some customers need fentanyl of their medication as a result of it provides them a extra intense excessive, although the chance of crashing and burning is far worse,” he mentioned.
Present drug paraphernalia legal guidelines could discourage states or organizations from making use of for grants to purchase check strips or creating packages to distribute them, mentioned Jon Woodruff, senior legislative legal professional for the Legislative Evaluation and Public Coverage Affiliation. However in lots of states that have not decriminalized the strips, individuals who possess the papers aren’t being prosecuted.
In Georgia, “folks might be charged, but it surely’s typically not prosecuted, notably if it is these testing strips,” mentioned Pete Skandalakis, government director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which supported the testing strips modification.
Regardless of the present Georgia prohibition, the Atlanta Hurt Discount Coalition group mentioned it distributes the strips to particular person drug customers and different group members.
In the meantime, households in Georgia who’ve seen family members die from fentanyl overdoses assist making the testing strips extra accessible.
Doreen Barr of Fayette County in suburban Atlanta misplaced a son to a mixture dose of heroin and fentanyl seven years in the past. She has arrange a nonprofit basis in Ryan Barr’s title to coach folks about habit.
Barr mentioned she believes testing strips can save lives.
“Why not have the fentanyl strips?” she mentioned. “Cocaine or a pretend tablet can have fentanyl in it. One time may kill you. If that they had a check strip, perhaps they would not take it.”
KHN South Carolina correspondent Lauren Sausser contributed to this text.
KHN (Kaiser Well being Information) is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points. Along with Coverage Evaluation and Polling, KHN is among the three main working packages at KFF (Kaiser Household Basis). KFF is an endowed nonprofit group offering info on well being points to the nation.
This story was first printed on CNN.com, “Extra states permit fentanyl check strips as a device to forestall overdoses“
