THE DOUBTERS

A growing list of government agencies in Canada and the United States are paying for the strips, but others have been reluctant.

Dr. Elinore McCanceKatz, a point person in the Trump administration’s response to the nation’s opioid epidemic, said she doubts positive test results deter people from shooting up.

“I don’t think they’re going to be using fentanyl test strips and say ‘Oh gee, this is positive for fentanyl? I better go find something else,’” said McCance-Katz, who heads the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Strip proponents agree: Most heroin addicts won’t walk away from their drugs, no matter what a test result says.

“In the whole time I’ve been doing this, I’ve had only three people throw out positive samples,” said Tino Fuentes, an overdose-prevention outreach worker who has become a kind of Johnny Appleseed in the U.S. for test strips, promoting and handing them out in multiple cities.

But Fuentes and others say the strips can nevertheless get people to reduce their chance of a fatal overdose, for example by taking smaller doses or taking drugs in the presence of someone who has an overdose-reversal drug.

Fuentes said he was delighted when he learned of two people who recently stopped using the strips because they decided to treat every dose as contaminated and to take precautions every time.

“The ideal thing is we no longer need strips because people are using safely,” he said.