TOPEKA — An effort to allow Kansans access to a tool that tests for the drug fentanyl is heading in the wrong direction after the Kansas senate blocked a provision legalizing it.
Senators chose last week to send a bill clearing Food and Drug Administration-approved cannabis medication back to a conference committee over a provision that would allow for legal fentanyl test strips. The test strips are a response to a growing opioid addiction epidemic, driven in large part by fentanyl, widespread in Kansas and many other nearby states.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid frequently combined with heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA. When people do not know if or how much of the powerful drug they are consuming, the risk of overdose spikes.
Lawmakers eventually removed that provision from the bill, despite a bipartisan coalition of legislators backing it in the House, and Senators passed it without opposition. Those who opposed the measure said it would further enable drug users.
However, proponents of the strips lamented the exclusion of what they viewed as a useful tool in addressing the wave of overdose deaths.
“Those strips are a way to help save lives out there,” said Sen. Jeff Pittman, a Leavenworth Democrat. “There’s a rash of fentanyl out in the community, unfortunately, and it seems as though fentanyl strips are a way to help our citizens prevent unnecessary deaths and can be used in ways that are just about information.”
About half of all states, including Wisconsin, Tennessee and New Mexico in recent months, have approved bills legalizing these strips in response to their problems with opioid use. According to the Sedgwick County Forensic Science Center, overdose deaths from fentanyl topped all other drug-related overdose deaths in Kansas in 2021.
Earlier this year, Kansas Department of Health Environment officials shared the provisional result of a report on drug overdose deaths between Jan. 1 and June. 30, 2021. Of the 338 deaths from drug overdoses in Kansas, 149 were related to fentanyl or fentanyl analogs.
It also marked a 54% increase in fatalities from an overdose during the same six-month period in 2020.
The test strips are currently labeled as drug paraphernalia in Kansas, which means an individual can be charged with a crime for possessing them. Harm-reduction advocates say these strips can guide individuals to treatment and make it safer if they are using fentanyl.
But Senate Republicans argued the strips would only enable those addicted to drugs.
“Fentanyl strips don’t save lives,” Sen. Molly Baumgardner, R-Louisburg. “Let’s be clear. There are individuals that want fentanyl in the drug that they’ve purchased or acquired.”
Baumgardner added that these strips are unlike other strips that determine exactly how much of the substance is present, instead only detecting if the drug is present.
All but three Republicans voted to send the bill back to the conference committee.
During the GOP caucus meeting before the debate, Sen. Kellie Warren, R-Leawood, said allowing the use of these strips was not helping but “giving up” on those suffering from addiction.
