Published June 22, 2026 at 12:36 PM EDT

Last year, Baltimore had three mass overdose incidents in the span of three months in its Penn North neighborhood.

The incidents left dozens of people laid out on the street after accidentally overdosing on what they thought was opioids.

However, after testing from the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, analysts found, N-Methylclonazepam, a benzodiazepine that operates similarly to Xanax or Valium, laced the drugs.

“It can cause a depressed level of consciousness and reduced respiratory drive,” said Dr. Gentry Wilkerson, an emergency medicine physician at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “When you have that drug working together with an opioid, then they're going to have a more profound effect on somebody.”

It also doesn’t respond to opioid overdose reversal drugs.

Since that incident, members of the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition pass out tester strips to people specifically for N-Methylclonazepam.

“This horrible event that happened, a direct result is that we now know that we need tester strips for this specific thing, so that we can continue to make sure people are safe,” said Candy Kerr, a member of the coalition. “Nobody really knows what they're getting whenever they're getting stuff off of the street, and so having the test strips available for the general republic gives them the option to move slower if they're going to use whatever they're going to use.”

However, it may be harder for Kerr and other organizations across the nation to give out test strips to the general public after a new policy from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released this year. That policy is shifting the administration away from harm reduction and practices that the Trump administration claims, “facilitate illicit drug use and are incompatible with federal laws.”

The letter bans the use of the Department of Health and Human Services funds for things like clean syringes and pipes and overdose hotlines that keep people on the phone with people doing drugs who fear potential complications.

It also bans federal funds for the public distribution of test strips for adulterants like fentanyl, xylazine, medetomidine and other drugs like the strips Kerr and the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition issue.

The purpose is to focus more on techniques like giving out naloxone, which can reverse overdoses, according to an HHS spokesperson.

“It is critical that federal funding provided by the American taxpayer goes to effective, common-sense solutions that have been proven to save lives and keep people out of an endless cycle of addiction and moves them into a life of recovery,” HHS’s spokesperson said.

The policy does not, however, prohibit federal funds from being used for test strips for law enforcement, EMTs, public health officials and other health professionals.

That creates an important loophole for government agencies that test drugs and send out regular reports on what adulterants are saturating the drug supply in certain locations.

Still, medical experts like Dr. Yngvild Olsen, who oversaw SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment under both the Biden and Trump administrations, say there is a substantial body of evidence that shows giving test strips to people who use drugs can change behavior.

“There’s some people deciding not to use the substances, some people in a deciding to reduce to use less or take other types of precautions, including naloxone, and making sure that there are people around that can actually then help in the case of an overdose,” Olsen said.

Kerr says she feels the best approach would be to allow people to test drugs and continue giving out lifesaving medications like naloxone. She’s personally seen it happen as Baltimore’s opioid overdose death rates, some of the highest in the country, have dropped more than 40%. However, adulterants continue to claim lives.

Of course, nonprofits will still be able to hand out test strips, just using funds from other areas. Kerr says that will impact her work.

“We've been making these strides forward because we've had these things, because we've been funded, and it's like a step backwards to defund something that has been so essential to the work that we've done, and also, like, we're going have to pull money from other places, right?,” Kerr said.

She says the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition is going to have to cut back on things like giving out hygiene and wound care kits to pay for the test strips.

But, she says, it’s a better option than the potential for another mass overdose in the city or a preventable fatality.