Student group distributes fentanyl testing strips

In stride with the inaugural National Fentanyl Awareness Day taking place May 10, a team of USC students have been distributing fentanyl testing strips to minimize the occurrence of drug overdoses in the University and greater Los Angeles community. 

Following the deaths of nine USC students, including a close friend, due to fentanyl and other drug poisonings, Team Awareness Combating Overdose was founded in 2020 by neuroscience students who felt moved to take action and inform the University community on the effects of the drug. 

Fentanyl is a highly addictive pharmaceutical opioid prescribed to treat severe pain, especially that which is linked with advanced cancer. However, most cases of harm and death from the drug in the United States take place when the drug is illegally made and mixed into heroin and cocaine, often when the user is unaware. Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine — the amount of fentanyl equal to a speck of dust could be lethal. In 2020, more than 50,000 individuals in the U.S. died from synthetic opioid poisoning from drugs such as fentanyl. 

In the cases of the nine deaths in 2020, fentanyl was present in at least three of the autopsy reports, and were determined to be accidental by the coroner. 

Much like a coronavirus or home pregnancy test, the fentanyl testing strips use a two-line system to distinguish between a positive or negative result. The strip is dipped into a mixture of one tablespoon of water and a strawberry seed-sized amount of a drug for 90 seconds. The strip will display a single line if fentanyl is detected, in which case the drug is considered lethal and the user should not ingest it. 

Along with the distribution of fentanyl strips, the organization has created multiple safety videos and infographics found for social media platforms, including Instagram, that aim to increase knowledge of drug addiction, dependency and overdose.

“Our job is to educate the naïve drug user,” said TACO’s interim chief operating officer Kameran Mody, a rising junior majoring in biomedical engineering. “Those happen to be primarily college students … Our job is to educate them, give out fentanyl test strips and provide information about the drug so they’re educated before they actually use them.”

When the project started in 2020, TACO set up twice-weekly distribution stands for the testing strips both on University Park Campus and on The Row to be given out to all in the USC community. Later on, the organization partnered with student-run delivery services, including Handle, Duffl and Snag, to distribute the strips, and is now affiliated with 11 schools across the U.S. To maximize accessibility, the strips can be ordered for one cent for community distribution if need is expressed.

“We never want an inability to pay to be a barrier to safety,” said director of distribution Max Reed, a 2022 graduate who majored in neuroscience.

The organization has seen “pretty crazy” growth in the demand for the fentanyl testing strips over the semesters it has been operational, Mody said. 

“We’ve gone from distributing around 200 or 200 fentanyl test strips a month, and now this semester we’ve got up to about 3,500 a month … it just goes to show what kind of impact it’s causing for the school.”