Trump’s sudden cut in substance testing is ‘going to kill people’, experts warn

The Trump administration ’s decision to restrict use of federal funds for fentanyl test strips, in what officials described as a “clear shift away from harm reduction”, could have fatal consequences, experts and critics have warned. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa) issued an open letter in April ordering an end to the use of its funding for all substance testing strips, including fentanyl, xylazine and medetomidine, the latest novel street drug to wreak havoc across the US. The letter claimed that testing strips facilitate “illicit drug use” and are “incompatible with federal laws”. But the move could substantially reduce the availability of drug-testing strips for people at risk of overdose amid an ever-changing drug supply, harm reduction advocates warned. “It’s going to kill people,” said Maia Szalavitz, a New York Times columnist and the author of Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction. “God forbid you should have a safe supply of something that might get you high.” She described the pro-abstinence US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, as “somebody who represents himself as being in recovery” but is in fact “the worst thing that has happened to the addictions field for decades and decades”. …