Current Study Offers Testing of Illicit Substances To Prevent Overdoses, Deaths
By Dolores Quintana
As accident overdoses of fentanyl are happening more and more often and mixing fentanyl with other street drugs is considered a cause, a UCLA study seeks to prevent deaths, prevent overdoses, and study the drugs that are circulating in the Los Angeles area, as reported by The Los Angeles Times.
The group offers weekly drug checks in Hollywood, Downtown Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles with Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry, test strips, and confirmatory mass spectrometry. The UCLA team checks for fentanyl, benzodiazepines, and a newer drug that is becoming more popular, xylazine, a tranquilizer normally used on animals that can cause skin ulcers, abscesses, drowsiness and amnesia and slow breathing, heart rate, and cause blood pressure to drop dangerously low levels. Xylazine is also known as tranq.
Testing with the Fourier-transform infrared spectrometry and test strips usually takes about ten minutes. The study can tell the UCLA group whether or not drugs are being mixed, they aren’t convinced that they are, and their testing seems to bear that out. Most samples of meth were confirmed to simply be meth as of mid-July.
Meghan Hynes, a harm reduction consultant in Los Angeles, as quoted by The Los Angeles Times, said that drug contamination is a “huge problem” but that “certain substances are more stigmatized than others,” so she believes that “folks are intentionally using both, but they don’t want to admit it.”
This pilot study usually conducts its drug testing near sites that hand out clean needles, and concern about drugs is so strong that people will drive from places like Palmdale and Downey just to access this testing. If you are interested in learning more about the group, you can check out their website, and if you want to know more about the testing, you can go here.
