By Portland Medium Staff
Fentanyl is in the news because of the many deaths associated with the cheap, powerful synthetic opioid. The Portland Medium reported the deaths of four teens who had overdosed on the drug that is often mistaken as being another drug. A bar in Portland has decided to take safety precautions for the sake of it’s clientele.
Star Bar on Southeast Morrison Street began making the strips available for free to customers. It’s position is the bar is not encouraging drug use but using harm reduction methods.
Over 160 clients has used the strips. This may have save lives as believed by those that support the theory of harm reduction. Harm reduction comes in many forms. Needle exchange programs are one such form. It decreases the use of dirty needles which can cause fatal deserves.
Believes in the harm reduction method say that it is critical to keeping people who use drugs alive and as healthy as possible, and is a key pillar in the multi-faceted Health and Human Services’ Overdose Prevention Strategy.
A small dose of fentanyl is dangerous and had increasingly become a fatal problem because people often don’t know they’re taking it — counterfeit pills can contain deadly amounts of fentanyl. The strips are designed to warn drug users if their pill contains fentanyl, a synthetic opioid responsible for thousands of deaths. It is reported to be the number one cause of death for people 18 to 45.
The test strips cost about a dollar to make. It maybe in line to decrease the toll of what is being called a deadly epidemic that kills adults and kids.
Fentanyl, often found in pill-form, is up to one hundred times more powerful than morphine. Narcotics experts say counterfeit fentanyl pills are mass-produced on the black market and you never know what you’re going to get.
