Advocates say this policy could prevent fentanyl deaths. Its future in Kansas is uncertain

Speaking on a panel with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly last week, Crystal Tucker said she was convinced fentanyl strips would have saved her son.

On March 4, 2020, the Olathe resident found her 22-year-old son Lantz dead in their home. Suffering from severe back and chest pain following a snowboarding accident, he had purchased a handful of black market oxycodone pills – a high-powered opioid.

Lantz, wracked with pain, took one pill and went to bed, according to his final texts with a friend. Unbeknownst to him, the pill was laced with fentanyl. He never woke up.

“I have absolutely no doubt that if fentanyl test strips were legal and easily accessible, Lantz would have had them and I know that he would have used them,” Tucker said.

Less than 48 hours later, the Kansas House and Senate adjourned their regular session in the pre-dawn hours Friday without passing a bipartisan criminal justice package that included the legalization of fentanyl test strips.

Advocates of the policy are cautiously optimistic the legislation could still become law this year when lawmakers return for their wrap-up session later this month. But they are certain the direct result of inaction will be more overdose deaths among Kansans.

“I believe people will die,” said Rep. Stephen Owens, a Hesston Republican and chair of the House corrections committee. “We have a fentanyl crisis. The only bill in the Legislature right now attempting to deal with that is that bill.”

During the wrap-up session, lawmakers will address the budget, school finance and any attempts to override potential vetoes from Kelly. A spokesman for Senate President Ty Masterson said the chamber will also take up the test strips bills.

This would mark the first time this year the Kansas Senate votes on the test strips policy after the Kansas House already passed the measure three times this year.

The Senate effectively rejected the first two efforts from the House to legalize test strips, stripping the policy out of one bill and letting another die in committee.

The strips are cheap at only about $1 a piece. They detect fentanyl in pills and other drugs, allowing individuals to avoid taking drugs laced with the often-deadly substance, a powerful synthetic opioid. All manner of illegal drugs are now regularly laced with fentanyl, a common method to boost their potency that dramatically raises the chance of a fatal overdose.

Lawmakers have faced growing pressure to take decisive action to combat the spread of fentanyl in Kansas. Overdose deaths soared from 393 in 2019 to 679 in 2021, according to data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, with 347 of the deaths in 2021 attributable in part to synthetic opioids, which include fentanyl.

House and Senate negotiators agreed to include the third bill in a package of criminal policy changes in the final hours of the Legislature’s regular session last week but both chambers adjourned before taking a vote on the package.

The bill combines legalization of the strips with policy strengthening penalties for distributors, granting more authority to prosecute cross-county crimes to the attorney general and creating new penalties for assaulting healthcare workers.

It needed approval in the House before it could move to the Senate but Senate negotiators did not sign and deliver the agreement, a procedural step required for the House to take up the issue.

Senate Vice President Rick Wilborn, a McPherson Republican and one of the negotiators on the bill, said he believed the bill should be addressed during wrap-up session but noted that much of the discussion on the bill has focused on the other items in it, rather than fentanyl test strips.

“The House is very strong on fentanyl strips and frankly the Senate, I would say by a narrow margin, is opposed to them,” Wilborn said.

Legalization was a priority for some House lawmakers and Kelly who called for the legalization in her State of the State address earlier this year.

“It has hit Kansas and hit Kansas hard,” Kelly said of the opioid epidemic during an event in Olathe last week to call for fentanyl test strip legalization. “We came in a little late to the game but boy have we made up for lost time in terms of the crisis level we are facing right now.”

Kelly’s spokeswoman Brianna Johnson said Wednesday that the governor would continue to push for the legislation’s passage during the wrap-up session, adding that lawmakers “must act now to bring relief to the families and law enforcement devastated by the recent rise in opioid overdoses.”

As of September, fentanyl test strips remained illegal in 19 states, according to the health news site STAT, even as the federal government has advocated their use. In April 2021, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration announced that federal funds could be used to purchase test strips.

In September, the Wichita City Council voted to decriminalize marijuana possession and also decriminalized test strips as part of that vote.

While the change meant Wichita police officers no longer write citations for having test strips, it’s effectively a half measure. Individuals can have the strips under the local ordinance, but social service agencies and government agencies still won’t distribute them as long as they remain illegal under state law.

Rep. Jason Probst, a Hutchinson Democrat, has been pushing legalization of the strips for years. He said he was perplexed by the Senate’s continued delays’ on an issue that would cost the state nothing.

“The Senate has not been able to find the resolve to save lives,” he said.