A drug person makes use of a check strip on Aug. 22, 2018, in New York, to see if fentanyl has been added to heroin, which might enhance the chance of overdose.
Bebeto Matthews/AP Picture
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Bebeto Matthews/AP Picture
Final 12 months, Baltimore had three mass overdose incidents within the span of three months in its Penn North neighborhood.
In a single incident, greater than two dozen folks had been hospitalized after many had been discovered unresponsive, mendacity within the streets or on sidewalks. Nobody died, however some got here shut.
Observe-up testing discovered that the road medicine contained excessive ranges of N-methylclonazepam, a benzodiazepine that operates equally to Xanax or Valium.
Like opioids, benzodiazepines suppress respiration. Once they’re mixed, the threat of overdose goes up. And benzodiazepines do not reply to opioid overdose reversal medicine.
Afterward, the Baltimore Hurt Discount Coalition created check strips particularly for benzodiazepines. The group distributed them — together with check strips that establish different dangerous adulterants, comparable to fentanyl, xylazine, and medetomidine — at clinics and neighborhood occasions.
The strips, out there for free of charge, will also be present in bars and unfold out on avenue corners. Individuals testing medicine combine a small quantity with water after which dip a check strip into the liquid. The strip will change shade if it identifies an adulterant.
“No person actually is aware of what they’re getting each time they’re getting stuff off of the road,” mentioned Sweet Kerr, a spokesperson for the coalition. “Having the check strips out there for most of the people offers them the choice to maneuver slower if they’ll use no matter they’ll use.”
However a brand new federal coverage might make it more durable for organizations comparable to Kerr’s to provide out the check strips, and so they’re frightened that overdoses might enhance.
In late April, the Substance Abuse and Psychological Well being Providers Administration banned the usage of federal grants for distributing strips to the general public and for another hurt discount practices which have been credited with saving lives. Check strips have been used for almost 10 years to establish adulterants.
A field with free check strips for several types of adulterants sits exterior the Chesapeake Detention Heart in Baltimore. Many well being advocacy teams attempt to give the strips to folks when they’re launched from jail or jail, to keep away from overdoses.
Scott Muacione
/WYPR
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Scott Muacione
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A letter despatched to native well being departments and nonprofits that present dependancy companies defined that the Trump administration believes these hurt discount practices “facilitate illicit drug use and are incompatible with Federal legal guidelines.”
In accordance with the letter, grants from the Division of Well being and Human Providers additionally can’t be used for packages that help the usage of clear needles or drug paraphernalia comparable to pipes, or to fund a sort of specialised hotline that individuals can name whereas taking medicine, so somebody is conscious and may name for assist in the event that they overdose.
The Trump administration needs to focus extra on different methods, comparable to giving out naloxone, an overdose reversal drug out there as a nasal spray, based on Emily Hilliard, an HHS spokesperson.
“It’s important that federal funding supplied by the American taxpayer goes to efficient, common sense options that have been confirmed to save lives and maintain folks out of an infinite cycle of dependancy and strikes them into a lifetime of restoration,” she mentioned.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott at a press convention after a mass overdose incident in Baltimore’s Penn North neighborhood in 2025.
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Scott Maucione/WYPR
The brand new coverage doesn’t prohibit federal funds from getting used to buy check strips to be used by regulation enforcement officers, public well being officers, EMTs, or different medical professionals.
That creates an essential exception for presidency companies that check medicine and ship out common studies on what adulterants are saturating the drug provide in sure areas.
Nonetheless, Yngvild Olsen, who oversaw SAMHSA’s Heart for Substance Abuse Remedy within the Biden and Trump administrations, says there’s a substantial physique of proof that exhibits giving check strips to individuals who use medicine can change conduct.
“There’s some folks deciding to not use the substances, some folks deciding to scale back, to make use of much less, or take different forms of precautions, together with naloxone, and ensuring that there are folks round that may truly then assist in the case of an overdose,” Olsen mentioned.
Naloxone, a nasal spray that may assist reverse an opioid overdose, is unfold out on a sidewalk for folks to take, after a mass overdose incident in Baltimore’s Penn North neighborhood in 2025.
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WYPR
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Kerr mentioned the most effective strategy could be to proceed to advertise the usage of check strips whereas additionally persevering with to provide out lifesaving medicines like naloxone. She believes that engaged on all fronts has helped result in Baltimore’s decline in overdose deaths, which havedropped greater than 40% since 2023.
Below the brand new coverage, nonprofits will nonetheless be capable of hand out check strips, however they should discover different funding for that work, which Kerr finds worrisome.
“We have been making these strides ahead as a result of we have had these items, as a result of we have been funded,” she mentioned. “We will have to drag cash from different locations.”
To pay for the check strips, Kerr mentioned, the Baltimore Hurt Discount Coalition should reduce on companies comparable to giving out hygiene and wound care kits. However she mentioned that choice is best than risking one other mass overdose in Baltimore — or permitting even only one preventable fatality.
This story comes from NPR’s well being reporting partnership with WYPR and KFF Well being Information.
