House Bill 353 was known as the Fentanyl Test strip bill.

And the goal of that was simply to allow individuals to test for the presence of fentanyl in their product.

It also decriminalized the fentanyl test strips.

It pulled that out of the the paraphernalia statute.

And so, you know, really the goal is to allow individuals to test their drugs for the presence of deadly fentanyl.

And it also implemented an education and awareness campaign.

And so it's it really focuses on the immediate presence of fentanyl and hopefully changing behaviors.

We know that if if an individual is going to take is going to pause long enough to think about what they're ingesting, then they are perhaps on the road to thinking about treatment and their drug use.

Yes, it's a really important piece.

So thank you.

When we saw we saw some years where we were really doing some impressive work on bringing overdose deaths down.

And then fentanyl hit and and now you can see 89, 90% of overdose deaths somewhere in that neighborhood involve fentanyl and folks who may not even know that they're taking it.

So that test strip piece, which used to be a paraphernalia issue, is really important and I think is going to impact survival rates long term.

And how do you get them?

Where do you get them?

You can get them at health departments.

Advocates in the community oftentimes will have them for distribution.

I actually Googled this earlier to see if they were available in pharmacies, and I don't know that they are yet.

So, you know, maybe that's something that we need to work on.

But yeah, it's it's a it's a life saving measure and it's very simple.

You know, if we can prevent an overdose and an unintended unintentional ingestion, oftentimes folks, especially those recreational users, really may not be thinking about these counterfeit pills that they're buying on the street.

And they are all adulterated with fentanyl.

Everything from pills to marijuana.

Wow.

I can't tell you the number of pairs I've sat down with.

My child thought they were using cocaine.

My child out.

They were using a Xanax.

My child thought they were using an Adderall to help them study in college.

And the active ingredient was fentanyl.

Right.

So these test strips will save some lives.

There's no doubt about it.

Right.

Right.