ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — On Tuesday, the Drug Enforcement Administration in St. Louis announced a program designed to combat overdose deaths from drugs laced with deadly fentanyl.
Now drug treatment programs have another tool in their arsenal to combat addiction. The Biden administration has approved the use of grant funding to purchase fentanyl detection kits.
Nichole Dawsey is executive director of Prevented, formerly known as NCADA, or the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.
“Fentanyl is deadly,” Dawsey said, “and it has infiltrated the drug supply here in St. Louis but also nationally.”
Dawsey said volunteers can add fentanyl detection kits to drug overdose reversal bags, which are handed out by street outreach teams to churches, food pantries and police stations.
Dawsey said, “The federal government has now allowed us to use grant funding to purchase fentanyl test strips that will allow people who are using substances to test the potency of their drugs and to see if fentanyl is in the drugs they are using.”
Dawsey said a drug user may not know what he or she is really getting. Using a synthetic opioid laced with fentanyl can cause an accidental fatal overdose.
“These fentanyl test strips really allow the person who is using substances to test for the presence of that drug,” she said. “We’re hoping then that if fentanyl is detected, it would then deter them from using it.”
Dawsey said she knows there will be push-back from people who say using fentanyl detection kits will enable drug users.”
“This is one way to keep folks alive,” Dawsey said. “Is it enabling? It’s providing support to be able to get that person the help they need. It buys us time in our efforts to keep these people alive.”
DEA officials say from September 2019 to September 2020, the number of people who died of overdose in the U.S. was 29% higher than in the previous year.