Legislature weighs expanded drug-checking tools, amid crisis
No state has been spared from the ongoing drug overdose crisis, including Georgia, where thousands of people die annually from ingesting various controlled substances—sometimes unknowingly. It has become an inescapable reality, and the Legislature to its credit has worked feverishly to try to stem the tide of the crisis with varying degrees of success.
Last year, the Georgia General Assembly introduced a slew of bills to prevent overdose deaths, although most of them failed to cross the finish line, but often the key to combating crises doesn’t require a novel legislative solution. Rather, sometimes lawmakers need to revise well-intentioned—albeit flawed—laws. In fact, that is what Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, aims to do—expand access to life-saving drug-checking tools by tweaking a 2023 law, which has a curious origin story.
On April Fool’s Day 2022, then-Senator Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, sipped a glass of milk as he presented HB 1175 to the Georgia Senate. The legislation was intended to legalize the sale of raw milk to consumers. Despite misgivings from some members, it passed both chambers by wide margins, and it went into effect the following year.
It was a huge win for the raw milk lobby, but the most important provision of the bill had nothing to do with dairy. Tucked within the proposal was critically important language that legalized “any testing equipment used to determine whether a controlled substance has been adulterated and contains a synthetic opioid.” In layman’s terms, it legalized fentanyl test strips, which are a critical frontline weapon that allow people to easily determine if a controlled substance has been tainted with fentanyl.
Georgia wasn’t a leader on this, but rather a follower. Nevertheless, nearly every single state now permits tools like this to check for the presence of opioids like fentanyl, and the legalization was sorely needed.
A host of Georgians have inadvertently overdosed because controlled substances have been adulterated with fentanyl and other potentially deadly synthetic opioids. “From 2019 to 2022, fentanyl-involved overdose deaths in Georgia increased by 308 percent. That’s 1,601 lives lost in one year alone,” Georgia’s Office of the Attorney General reported. In 2020, 67 percent of overdose deaths in Georgia involved fentanyl.
Thankfully, Georgians now have access to fentanyl test strips, but the law legalizing them was a job half done. The manner in which policymakers drafted HB 1175 means that such testing equipment is legal only if they are testing for a synthetic opioid, not other substances.
The problem is that there is a wide range of adulterants being laced into controlled substances and making Georgians ill, or worse, killing them. One such drug is xylazine, which is a potent non-opioid tranquilizer, and it is on the rise in the Peach State and making its way into other drugs unbeknownst to many.
When ingested, xylazine can cause your heart rate, breathing and blood pressure to plummet—too often leading to death. Once ingested, people have few options since there is no reversal agent available for humans—underscoring the importance of testing for its presence. From 2020 to 2022, deaths involving Xylazine surged 1,380 percent, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. HB 1175 doesn’t legalize testing equipment to detect this drug, even though at least 23 other states already have enacted such measures.
The issue goes far beyond xylazine too. As the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education notes, there is a wide range of other pharmaceutical adulterants harming Georgians and even industrial chemicals. What’s more, as new drugs and chemicals are continually developed, there is no telling what the next deadly substance might be that will kill myriad unsuspecting Georgians.
Without legalized drug-checking equipment, Georgians are at risk. While I don’t condone illicit drug use, I understand that prohibitory laws have failed to prevent it. Abstinence-only approaches simply don’t work for every Georgian. Thus, it makes sense to seek ways to reduce harm—when that harm cannot be eliminated—by legalizing drug-checking equipment.
To that end, Sen. Kirkpatrick has introduced a bill to fix the current statute. If adopted, it will permit the use of tools to check for current and future adulterants to keep Georgians safer. Georgia’s legislative session is a quick marathon consisting of only 40 legislative days. So time is of the essence as Georgia remains mired in crisis.