SAN ANTONIO – A state lawmaker who introduced a bill to make fentanyl test strips legal to save lives says the issue should be revisited during the upcoming legislative session.
This week, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced that 120,600 fentanyl test strips were distributed to organizations across the state to help prevent drug overdose deaths.
In Texas, the bipartisan bill introduced by Dallas state Rep. Jasmine Crockett would have decriminalized drug paraphernalia in Texas, including fentanyl test strips, but failed to reach the floor last legislative session.
“There have been a lot of accidental deaths, and they could have been prevented if we really just would have taken the time to decriminalize something such as these test strips,” Crockett said.
There were more than 1,600 fentanyl overdose deaths in 2021, up from about 200 in 2014, according to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.
Crockett is now running for a different political office. She said she hopes one of her colleagues would pick up the bill for the next session.
She said many harm reduction organizations in the state support the bill. But she warned that lawmakers should remain open-minded about other harm reduction solutions and should stray from narrowing the bill’s intent.
“What we see with science is that it’s continually developing. And so there may be something else that comes out that isn’t in the form of strips that may be better,” Crockett said. “And so I would think that it would be problematic if you start to make it so specific to fentanyl test strips.”
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