image by: Cory Doctorow

HWN Suggests

With overdose deaths rising, here’s how to test drugs for fentanyl

Ed Ternan, co-founder of Song For Charlie, said counterfeit pills are a huge problem that most people don’t know exists.

“These fake pills are everywhere, to the point that if you get a pill online or anywhere that didn’t come directly from your doctor, you pretty much can assume that it’s counterfeit. And if it’s counterfeit, it’s made with fentanyl,” Ternan said.

According to TACO, different types of drugs require different preparations for better test accuracy: Powders: Shake and thoroughly mix in the bag that the drug came in. Any chunks need to be broken up. Crystals: Crush into a fine powder and mix thoroughly. Pills: Crush into fine powder and mix thoroughly. Then,…

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  Fentstrips.com

FentStrips.com is dedicated to preventing deaths by providing the Fentanyl Test Strips manufactured by BTNX. They are the only strips recommended by a 2018 John Hopkins University Study for testing substances for the presence of Fentanyl and trusted by governments and programs around the world.

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The low-cost testing strips — similar to a home pregnancy test — detected the smallest amounts of fentanyl (0.125 micrograms/ml) and were the most accurate at detecting the presence or absence of fentanyl.

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New legislation will allow people to test illicit substances at music festivals and beyond. Experts say it will save lives.

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As deaths from drug overdoses have hit record highs, claiming an estimated 107,000 lives last year across the United States, many public health advocates, researchers and activists are pushing to help people find out what is in their drugs — and use that knowledge to reduce their risk.

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$1 Fentanyl Test Strip Could Be a Major Weapon against Opioid ODs

As the deadly crisis refuses to wane, cities search for unconventional responses to overdoses.

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Built For Counterterrorism, This High-Tech Machine Is Now Helping Fight Fentanyl

Sarah Mackin runs a cotton swab around the inside of a tiny plastic baggie that appears to be empty. She spreads whatever residue the swab picked up onto a test strip that resembles a Band-Aid, then slides the strip into a buzzing machine about the size of a boxed, take-home pie. Then she waits, hoping for information that she can share with Boston's community of opioid users.

Fentanyl Test Strips Empower People And Save Lives—So Why Aren’t They More Widespread?

And yet after years of press and discussions of the strips’ utility, FTS aren’t as widely available as one would expect them to be. It is time to take a more critical look at the importance of destigmatizing this tool and increasing its distribution and availability, while highlighting the grave risks in not doing so.

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... providing testing strips alone is not enough. The strips can often give false positives or negatives, especially when used in dimly-lit and rowdy nightclubs. Most strips were produced by a medical supply company BTNX for urine drug tests, and their use to detect the drug in substances like MDMA is entirely off-label.

Resources

Song for Charlie

Song for Charlie is a family-run nonprofit charity dedicated to raising awareness about ‘fentapills’ — fake pills made of fentanyl.

TACO

If someone does engage in drug use, illicit Fentanyl contaminating recreational drugs is a tragic but real possibility. It’s a leading accidental cause of death nationally. TACO provides free Fentanyl test strips to help avoid accidental consumption and overdoses on Fentanyl.

DanceSafe

Drug checking is a harm reduction service that helps drug users avoid ingesting unknown and potentially more dangerous adulterants found in street drugs. We manufacture and sell testing kits from this website so users can test their own substances. Since 1999, we have sold hundreds of thousands of testing kits to people in dozens of countries.

FentCheck

FentCheck is a harm reduction focused non-profit. We provide fentanyl test strips and education to people who use drugs and are at risk from an increased prevalence of street drugs being tainted (cut, laced) with opioids- often with fentanyl. Simply, our goal is to get test strips into venues making them widely available to counter the increase in accidental overdoses.