A machine designed to detect agents of chemical warfare can also test trace drug samples for fentanyl and other deadly chemicals. Public health workers wonder if it could help reduce opioid overdose deaths. (commonhealth)
Sarah Mackin runs a Q-tip-type swab around the inside of a tiny plastic baggie that appears to be empty. She spreads whatever the swab picked up onto a test strip that resembles a Band-Aid. Mackin slides the test strip into a buzzing machine about the size of a boxed take-home pie.-- initially marketed to the military and hazmat crews fighting bioterrorism or explosions — may help in the fight against one of Boston's top killers: fentanyl.
"Oh yeah," Mackin says, nodding her head."So, there’s multiple kinds of opioid analgesics and multiple kinds of synthetic fentanyls in this sample that was sold as heroin. It’s kind of an example of what the drug landscape looks like here." In Bri’s case, one sample showed no trace of drugs at all, one tested positive for a medical-grade fentanyl, and the third showed traces of something Bri learned is in the range of carfentanil."Now, I’m going to be honest. If I was sick and I had one bag of dope on me and you told me there’s carfentanil in there, I’m not going to lie and say I wouldn't use it," Bri says."But I would know to not put the entire thing in.
That warning may draw people seeking an ever more powerful high. But Traci Green, who is a researcher in emergency medicine at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, says her own work and studies out of Europe show that when drug users can test what they buy, they seek dealers with the safest supply.
For Boston, the device was purchased through a grant from RIZE Massachusetts, a foundation focused on combating the opioid epidemic.
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