Bill would help law enforcement detect fentanyl

Fentanyl’s rise is posing a risk to more than just those struggling with addiction.

The synthetic opioid is 50 times more potent than heroin and first responders have been cautioned about making contact with the substance.

An East Liverpool police officer was hospitalized last year after making contact with the drug during a traffic stop.

Now a group of U.S. senators, including Ohio’s Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, are introducing legislation help state and local law enforcement pay for screening equipment.

According to Brown’s office, the equipment that would be purchased with the funding uses laser technology to analyze potentially harmful substances — even through some packaging — and identifies those substances based on a library of thousands of compounds that are categorized within the device. That library can be updated as most drug compounds come on the market.

“Law enforcement officers are on the front lines of our effort to combat illegal fentanyl,” Brown said in a recent conference call with reporters. “We know this drug is increasingly one of the biggest contributors to the opioid epidemic.”

The equipment that state and local law enforcement would be able to purchase is the same the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is buying with the INTERDICT Act, which was supported by Brown and Portman and signed into law by President Donald Trump in January. That bill allocated $15 million to fund the purchase of hundreds of new screening devices and lab equipment as well as facilities and personnel for “24/7 lab support.”

“This will start off as a grant program — we don’t know how much exactly we’re going to need and what police officers are going to ask for,” Brown said.

He added it will start with about $20 million and is unsure yet if that will be enough to meet the demand, though he doesn’t think it will. The cost of the devices ranges between $40,000 and $60,000.

On the conference call, Cuyahoga Falls Police Chief Jack Davis said as a precautionary measure, his department — like many others — no longer conducts field tests they used to do on unknown powders. This lessens the chances of an accidental exposure, but it also keeps them from charging suspects until they get the lab tests back.

“By being able to use a high-tech portable device like the one the senator’s talking about, we’d be able to obtain the results of the substance (test) faster and thus be able to charge the suspects earlier, which would hopefully prevent them from spreading the drugs around our community,” Davis said.

The bill’s sponsors said this also helps with the backlogs that many crime labs are facing. The Lake County Crime Laboratory is among those that have seen a significant increase in caseload with the rising opioid crisis.

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