8 March 2023
TOPEKA (KSNT) — With fentanyl deaths on the rise, Kansas lawmakers are considering a potentially lifesaving bill that would making materials used to test for the synthetic opioid legal.
The Kansas House recently passed House Bill 2390, also known as the Kansas Overdose Fatality Review Board Act. In addition to establishing a review board, it would exempt test strips for fentanyl, ketamine, flunitrazepam or gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) from the drug paraphernalia definition. This bill will allow law enforcement officers to carry fentanyl test strips for use in the field.
Rep. John Eplee is part of the House Committee on Health and Human Services that introduced the bill. He says passing this bill will help combat the growing fentanyl crisis and protect law enforcement.
“It allows law enforcement to be able to identify substances in the field more rapidly, more efficiently than they have been able to,” Eplee said. “Much more efficiently, [because] it allows test strips.”
The Cato Institute reports most states consider fentanyl test strips drug paraphernalia because drug abusers can use them to test illicit drugs. However, law enforcement has increasingly and unknowingly encountered fentanyl-laced substances in the field.
Many officers are now required to carry Narcan, a nasal spray that can treat narcotic overdoses in an emergency. However, under current Kansas law, officers don’t have a way to test a substance for fentanyl before handling it.
27 News met with Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez, who explained how hazardous fentanyl-laced substances are for law enforcement.
“Fentanyl has become so dangerous that they don’t even field test anymore,” Valdez said. “What they do is they put gloves on — they’re really risking their own lives to just try to get it all together — bag it up and send it to a lab who can handle it professionally.”
Click here for more Local News stories
Fentanyl’s potency is so volatile, Valdez says a tiny speck can be enough to kill a person. But, unlike past drugs that have ravaged specific demographics, all communities are now affected by fentanyl.
“What we are seeing is that it is just so random that there is just no way to approach it,” Valdez said. “To sort of have an awareness that ‘oh, this is going to affect this group of people.'”
While the state Senate reviews the bill, Valdez hopes it can also help struggling users, and says the DA’s office only wants to prosecute the dealers and cartels distributing death.