Mike Wolanin | The Republic Outreach specialist Alison Grimes displays fentanyl test strips at the ASAP Hub in Columbus, Ind., Friday, July 22, 2022.
The Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress has started distributing test strips to help drug users determine whether a drug contains fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that officials say is a major contributor to a historic rise in overdose deaths in Bartholomew County.
Earlier this summer, ASAP officials received about 400 fentanyl test strips from the nonprofit Overdose Lifeline and started distributing them at the ASAP Hub, 1531 13th St. ASAP staff have also taken strips to some recovery meetings, officials said.
“We have them here at the Hub, and people can come by anytime that we’re open to pick them up,” said ASAP Executive Director Sherri Jewett. “We also are looking for ways to put them in our Narcan boxes so that people can access them even without having to come to the Hub.”
The strips are about 3 inches long and work by dissolving a portion of the drug into water and then dipping the test strips into the water, according to instructions provided by local officials. Lines will appear on the strips to indicate whether fentanyl is present.
Officials say fentanyl is being increasingly cut into other drugs, often without the buyers’ knowledge, and the strips can alert people to whether a drug contains fentanyl.
The ultimate goal of the strips is to help keep people alive, not condone drug use, said Dr. Kevin Terrell, medical director at Columbus Regional Health’s Treatment and Support Center (TASC), which offers a range of outpatient treatments for substance use disorders.
“I understand the apprehension that some people may feel about the ASAP Hub distributing fentanyl test strips,” Terrell said. “It may seem that we are approving of drug use, but we definitely don’t condone substance use of any kind. Fortunately, there is no evidence that fentanyl test strips increase drug use in any way. Of course, I’d prefer that people not use drugs at all, but the larger goal is for people to stay alive, so they can someday, hopefully, get into treatment.”
The new effort comes as drug overdose deaths in Bartholomew County continue their record-setting pace this year, largely driven by fentanyl, according to updated figures from the Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office.
There had been a total of 19 confirmed overdose deaths in the county as of Thursday, as well as two additional suspected overdose deaths that are still under investigation, said Bartholomew County Deputy Coroner Jay Frederick.
That puts the county on pace to surpass the record 33 deaths that happened last year. At this point last year, there were 16 confirmed overdose deaths, said Bartholomew County Coroner Clayton Nolting.
“We’re slightly ahead, unfortunately,” Nolting said.
“Fentanyl is still our primary culprit,”Nolting added. “However, as we’ve said in the past, most (overdose deaths) contain more than one illicit drug.”
The rise in overdose deaths is largely being fueled by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is more potent than heroin but cheaper to produce and distribute, officials said. The drug is quickly becoming “the primary fatal drug in drug overdoses” in Bartholomew County, officials said.
Officials fear that a continued influx of fentanyl in the community will continue to accelerate a crisis that has killed at least 172 people in Bartholomew County since 2015.
Drug traffickers have started churning out fentanyl pills under the guise of prescription medications, including Percocet, Adderall, Xanax, oxycodone, among others, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
These drugs are increasingly being sold online and delivered by mail. And users often have no idea that they are buying fentanyl, leading to accidental overdoses and “killing unsuspecting Americans at an unprecedented rate.”
Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, setting another tragic record in the nation’s escalating overdose epidemic, The Associated Press reported.
Last year, overdoses involving fentanyl and other synthetic opioids surpassed 71,000, up 23% from the year before. There also was a 23% increase in deaths involving cocaine and a 34% increase in deaths involving meth and other stimulants.
Terrell is urging anyone who uses any illegal drug that is dissolvable in water, including fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy and pills, to use the strips.
“It is fairly common for methamphetamine to be laced with fentanyl, and there have been some reports from other communities of marijuana being laced with fentanyl,” Terrell said.
TASC, for its part, uses the same strips as ASAP and has found them to be accurate and easy to use, Terrell said. TASC officials are confident in the accuracy of the strips because they sent urine specimens for confirmatory testing. The test strips “almost always” match the confirmatory test results.
However, “no test of any kind is 100% accurate,” Terrell said.
“All tests have false positives and false negatives,” he said. “It would be a mistake to assume that the fentanyl test strip is perfect.”
