Fentanyl’s poisonous toll aided by stubborn inaction from Kansas officials

Audio Astra reviews recent audio reporting on Kansas news, including podcasts and radio stories. Eric Thomas directs the Kansas Scholastic Press Association and teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the University of Kansas.

Imagine a drug so deadly that a few powdered grains could kill you. A drug that puts you in the emergency room through contact with your skin. A drug so powerful that its analogue is used as an elephant tranquilizer. A drug so powerful that 70 pounds of it could kill 12 million people. 

This drug is so potent that law enforcement officials don’t open bags of it on crime scenes because it is only safe when handled in a laboratory. 

This is not a drug. It is fentanyl. 

And it is a poison. 

The latest dark chapter in the opioid epidemic is upon us as fentanyl kills more and more Kansans than the year before. Recent inaction by the Kansas Legislature was  stubbornly ideological while overdose deaths mount. 

The proposed intervention is simple: declassify test strips as drug paraphernalia in the state of Kansas. Yet, conservatives removed a provision earlier this month that would have allowed for the decriminalization of the test strips. Addicts and drug users could use the paper strips to detect the presence of this chemical poison in everything from marijuana to pills.

The rhetoric and reasoning to block the provision was laughable.

“The best warning to figure out whether (the drug you are using) might have fentanyl in it is don’t buy the illegal drugs,” said Sen. Kellie Warren, a Leawood Republican.

Feel free to read that again: The best warning about your drugs is to not buy drugs? Ignoring the logical trap doors that Warren tries to use in that quote, I can only assume she is parroting the old Nancy-Reagan slogan of “Just Say No.”

While Warren leans on worn-out 1980s political mantras, our current dark reality screams for sharp intervention. 

A commission — with both Republican and Democratic chairs — observed in a February report that, “Cumulatively, since 1999, drug overdoses have killed approximately 1 million Americans. That number exceeds the number of U.S. service members who have died in battle in all wars fought by the United States.”

Other Republicans are acknowledging the threat in one way or another. For instance, Sen. Roger Marshall announced his support this week for permanently classifying fentanyl as a Schedule I substance. Perhaps Marshall’s words as a fellow Republican would have helped sway Warren and others. 

He said, “We must do everything in our power to stop this terrible scourge and give Kansas law enforcement the tools to help combat it.” 

“Do everything” could include legalizing fentanyl test strips.  

The federal government’s experts on substance abuse are far ahead of Kansas in their support of test strips. Last year, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration announced that grants could be used to purchase test strips. 

In the announcement, the acting director said, “This will save lives by providing tools to identify the growing presence of fentanyl in the nation’s illicit drug supply and – partnered with referrals to treatment – complement SAMHSA’s daily work to direct help to more Americans.” 

The bipartisan federal commission on combating opioid trafficking agreed. Their final report reads, “Harm-reduction Services … often serve as initial points of entry for long-term treatment by engaging with people who might not be ready for treatment and giving them lifesaving tools (e.g., take-home naloxone, fentanyl test strips).”

Given the choice between substance abuse specialists and a state legislator like Warren leaning on political mantras, I trust the experts. 

A recent episode of Jason Probst’s podcast “That Guy in Hutch” introduces another expert — this time, Stephen McCallister, a former U.S. attorney appointed by former President Donald Trump.  

Does he think that harm-reduction strategies like test strips will encourage addiction? 

“I don’t think they will,” McCallister said. “Addiction is powerful. … The people, they need help, they need our support and our sympathy, not our condemnation. Anything that will save their lives. Eventually most addicts do try to find their way out of that world. If we can keep them alive until they get to that point, that seems to me the better policy, rather than saying don’t give them any tools to prolong or save their lives.” 

These urgent words from a Trump-appointed law enforcement official, when combined with those from a fellow Republican politician and substance abuse specialist should sway those like Warren. Nevertheless, the effort failed. 

This failure led Probst — not just a podcast host but a state representative — to tell the Kansas City Star, “Kansans will die from fentanyl overdoses in the coming year, and their deaths will fall squarely on Sen. Kellie Warren and every Senate Republican who voted to ensure the continued criminalization of fentanyl testing strips.” 

These coming deaths are preventable. Only two ingredients are required. 

One is a piece of paper that can be submerged into a solution to report whether it contains a lethal poison. 

The other ingredient is compassion from our state legislators to see addicts as human lives worth saving — regardless of time-honored political stances.

What did we miss? Email [email protected] to let us know of a Kansas-based audio program that would be interesting to Audio Astra readers.