Watertown Daily Times | Community members now able to test drugs for fentanyl before use

WATERTOWN — Community members struggling with addiction are now able to test their drugs before using them to see if they contain fentanyl.

ACR Health’s syringe exchange program, 135 Franklin St., is distributing inexpensive test strips drug users can dip into heroin, methamphetamine and other street drugs to detect fentanyl. That drug, which is 50 times more powerful than heroin, is a leading cause of drug overdoses.

The Watertown program has been open for about a year, while strips have been offered since January. The program offers free needles and dirty-needle disposal to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases, while also offering ground-floor access to addiction treatment services and drug overdose prevention.

Shelby L. Anderson, program coordinator for Watertown, said when a client comes in, the workers typically ask them what kind of drugs they use and how often.

Clients using methamphetamine or heroin will be encouraged to take a test strip, as those drugs are the most commonly laced with fentanyl in the area, Ms. Anderson said.

ACR Health has given out test strips to about 150 clients in Watertown, Syracuse and Utica. To buy the strips, which cost about $1 each, the organization received a $2,000 grant from Excellus BlueCross BlueShield.

The strips were originally developed as urine tests for patients legally prescribed fentanyl for pain, but a medically-supervised safe injection program in Vancouver, Canada, started using the strips three years ago to test clients’ drugs.

More than 1,000 tests at that program found the strips detected fentanyl in 80 percent of heroin and crystal meth samples and 40 percent of cocaine samples. The study also found drug users were 10 times more likely to lower their dose after discovering their drugs contained fentanyl.

Since then, a growing number of programs nationwide have been using the test strips.

The strip comes in a sealed plastic bag along with instructions.

Clients take the strips when they leave and are encouraged to return if the test reveals their drugs did contain fentanyl.

“In the past two weeks, six people have come back with positive strips,” Ms. Anderson said.

She said though getting treatment for their addiction is ideal, many people aren’t ready to seek it. The hope for the program, and now the strip tests, is to keep clients alive.

“We find that no matter what, we aren’t going to be able to stop people from doing what they are doing,” Ms. Anderson said. “We don’t want to see more hospitalizations.”

Jefferson County had 13 reported overdose deaths, eight caused by fentanyl or a fentanyl synthetic in 2018, according to the county medical examiner’s office.

Tribune News Service contributed to this report.

The total number of overdoses has decreased over the past two years, but the number of fentanyl overdoses has fluctuated. In 2016 — the highest year for overdoses from data starting in 2000 — there were 23 overdoses, 16 from opiates, of which nine were from fentanyl. By 2017, the number of total overdoses decreased slightly to 18, with 12 from opiates, two from fentanyl.