Fentanyl Test Strips: The Newest Way to Combat Overdose
New inventions are around every corner. Our society would be unrecognizable without advances in technology. Imagine a world with no cell phones, no laptops, no tablets, and no app store. Technology is there to make our lives easier and more convenient, at least when it works. The opiate crisis could be said to be the “mother of invention” as far as the development of means and methods to combat it. Suboxone, methadone, and Vivitrol are just some of the inventions that promised to help—along with needle exchanges, safe injection sites, and the development of a heroin vaccination. On the flip side, many inventions were created to ensure the drug problem continues, such as all the different analogues of fentanyl, synthetic drugs, and different herbal supplements to help you unwind after a long day. Recently, the newest invention to come from the “think tank” means well, but I think it’s taking the wrong approach to handling the drug issue.
Fentanyl testing strips were recently released by a Canadian company and have begun to be used by public health officials in California and New York as a way of reducing the overdose rate. A study released last week found that the strips were able to detect the deadly drug accurately 96% of the time it was used on a given sample of heroin. The idea here is that addicts will be able to test their heroin before deciding to shoot it up or not. It seems to be a type of harm reduction where we indirectly tell addicts that we know they’re going to shoot heroin anyway, but they might as well know if they’re getting fentanyl or not. Senior research scientist at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University professor Traci C. Green said, “If you provide people with safe materials and safety messaging they act in their own interest and the (interest of) others that they care about to keep safe. And this has been how we’ve actually succeeded as a country, and especially as a state, to bring down HIV transmission in people who inject drugs.”
I get it. Hypothetically, if we give addicts a choice of whether or not to shoot heroin laced with fentanyl, at least they’ll have the option not to do it based on the results of the test strip. But let's look at this realistically. When a person is completely addicted to opiates, they don’t care if they shoot fentanyl. As a matter of fact, many addicts want dope mixed with fentanyl because it’s stronger. And I don’t know any addict who’s completely sick from dope withdrawals that are actually going to take the time to test the heroin they just hustled 5 hours to get. They’re not going to say, “Well, this has fentanyl in it, so I’m going to throw it away and find something else.” Being sick with withdrawals, they want fentanyl because it’ll take less of the drug to get high and make the sickness go away. While you’re looking for your next hit, you want to get as much of the drug into your body as fast as humanly possible. No addict is going to waste their time testing their dope first. While it’s the thought that counts, it’s not the right way of addressing potential overdoses. The answer isn’t in harm reduction. The answer is in long-term drug rehab. The answer is in actually handling a person’s addiction. Let’s scratch this one, give it an A for effort and move on.
Sources Used:
http://ripr.org/post/new-tool-combat-overdose-deaths-fentanyl-test-strips#stream/0
