With time operating out in the 2022 legislative session, Georgia lawmakers took up a invoice to regulate raw milk.
An modification out of the blue obtained tacked on to the Home version of the invoice, whilst the new wording had practically nothing to do with dairy. The language named for legalizing the use of strips that check medicines for fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid fueling a wave of lethal overdoses across Ga and the U.S.
The modification, reported Sen. Jen Jordan, an Atlanta Democrat who sponsored it, was “a commonsense remedy to preserve life.”
The revised milk bill handed overwhelmingly on the final day of the Normal Assembly session. If the invoice doesn’t attract a veto from Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia will be a part of a increasing list of states decriminalizing the use of fentanyl testing strips as the drug’s scourge has distribute throughout the country.
Governors in New Mexico and Wisconsin this calendar year signed costs permitting examination strips in those people states, and legislatures in Tennessee and Alabama not too long ago handed similar legislation. In Pennsylvania, whilst a state law prohibits take a look at strips, the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have ordered bans on prosecuting men and women possessing them. The state’s attorney standard reported he will not demand individuals for acquiring the take a look at strips. Alaska condition overall health officers, horrified by a surge of overdose fatalities, have commenced providing out totally free exam strips. A vending equipment in Ohio delivers the fentanyl-detecting equipment alongside naloxone, a treatment for reversing overdoses.
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But the Florida legislature balked this 12 months at a bill that would decriminalize the screening strips. Fentanyl exam equipment — prohibited under drug paraphernalia regulations adopted many years in the past — continue to be illegal in about fifty percent of states, drug plan professionals say.
Numerous public health and addiction experts, even though, encourage the rapid testing devices as what is identified as a “harm reduction” tactic to aid reduce overdose deaths from illicit prescription drugs that users may not know are laced with fentanyl.
“We hope all the states would come to recognize the risks of contamination are so superior and that fentanyl test strips empower a human being having medicine to know no matter if they have fentanyl,” claimed Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on