News Photo by Barbara Woodham Kathy Freel, Clinical Director of Sunrise Centre sits in her office on Monday.

ALPENA — In a meeting last week, officials from District Health Department No. 4 discussed the importance of focusing on the growing opioid epidemic and working toward ways to reduce fentanyl deaths in Northeast Michigan in 2022.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many drug users purchase drugs unaware that they contain fentanyl.

Health officials would like to obtain and begin distributing fentanyl testing strips, so that users could test their drugs before administering them to themselves.

However, this may prove to be a challenge because local law ordinances consider the test strips to be drug paraphernalia and it would be illegal for drug users to be in possession of them.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the CDC.

The CDC calls it the major contributor to fatal and non-fatal overdoses in the United States.

“We want to work with our local commissioners about the ordinance because I think we need to adapt to the threat of fentanyl,” said Denise Bryan, administrative health officer.

Health officials cited that the CDC has named fentanyl the biggest cause of death between 18 to 45 year-olds.

Kathy Freel is the Clinical Director at Sunrise Centre in Alpena.

The Sunrise Centre is a rehabilitation center.

“Narcan is what we use if you want to save a life,” said Freel.

Narcan is a nasal spray that can be administered to a person that is overdosing on opioids and can save their life.

Freel said that they use fentanyl strips to test people coming into the rehabilitation center to see if they have fentanyl in their system.

Keen said that the test strips used to test for usage are the same test strips used to test the drug itself before using.

Health officials hope that education and knowing what they actually have will give users a better chance of making the right choice.

Freel said that they would never use the strips in that way at her facility because the people at the Sunrise Centre are determined to stop using drugs all together and stay clean.

She said it would be a good thing for the health department to use them as harm-reduction tools if it can save lives.

On Monday, Freel asked a group of recovering addicts what they thought about the fentanyl strips and would it have deterred them from using if they had tested a drug and the drug was positive for fentanyl.

“There was a mixed bag reaction,” said Freel.

Some of them compared it to the clean syringe exchange, harm-reduction programs that are being practiced nationwide and thought it was a great idea.

Others said that they would have used the drug anyway, but may have used a lesser dose if they had known that it contained fentanyl.

Public Health Director Kayla Keen said that they have the possibility of getting fentanyl strips and are working on policies and education to see if this is something that DHD4 can roll out in 2022 as part of their harm-reduction program.

“We are working on getting more nurses out there to work on harm-reduction,” said Keen.

There were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during a 12-month period ending in April 2021, according to CDC data.