SAN ANTONIO — Mothers united by tragedy are pushing for Congress to decriminalize fentanyl test strips with the hopes of saving lives.
“John was my middle son, middle son of three boys,” said Libby Pender. “He was right on the verge of signing the biggest deal of his whole sales career so he was real excited.”
Pender’s son John Salem, 38, died of fentanyl poisoning on May 10, 2022, in New Braunfels. He took a pill he thought would help him go to sleep. But Salem never woke up. Pender and another one of her sons made the heartbreaking discovery.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine, according to Texas Health and Human Services.
“I know for my son, I’d still have my son today had he had a fentanyl test strip and been able to test the pill that he thought was going to help him get a good night sleep,” Pender said.
Ever since Salem’s death, Pender has advocated for change in Austin by pushing for a bill that would have decriminalized fentanyl test strips, which are currently considered drug paraphernalia.
House Bill 362 passed the Texas House but failed in a Senate committee. Gov. Greg Abbott expressed support for the legislation which never made it to the Senate floor.
“If a fentanyl test strip was able to save just one life, wouldn’t that be worth it,” Pender said.
Senator John Cornyn has led a bipartisan effort in Washington D.C. to pass a bill that would legalize fentanyl test strips nationwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supports the strips as harm reduction tools to reduce the risk of fentanyl overdoses.
“Fentanyl is ravaging Texas communities, and poisonings among children and teenagers have skyrocketed in recent years given the rise in fake prescription pulls containing this deadly drugs,” Cornyn said. “This legislation would help prevent deaths due to fentanyl poisoning by giving people the tools to identify it, and I urge my colleagues to pass it without delay.”
Texas health data shows more than 2,000 people died from fentanyl poisoning in 2022, an increase from 2020 and 2021.
“Kyle was a really sweet person. He loved animals, especially dogs,” said Christina Villagrana.
Kyle Hinkel passed away from fentanyl poisoning on May 27, 2022, six weeks after he and his mother moved from California to eastern Bexar County. Villagrana said her son worked as an EMT and was aware of the dangers posed by fentanyl. She noted he wasn’t an addict but experimented with psychedelic drugs, using fentanyl test strips before taking anything. However, fentanyl test strips are legal in California unlike in Texas.
Villagrana works alongside the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office to educate youth about the impacts of fentanyl.
One of the prominent arguments against fentanyl test strips comes down to the potential for condoning experimental drug use. But Villagrana doesn’t believe that’s the case.
“If you’re not a drug user, you’re not going to use drugs no matter what. And if you are somebody that uses drugs you’re going to safe and you’re going to have a better chance at surviving something than taking something with a legal dose of fentanyl in it,” Villagrana said.
In October, Gov. Abbott announced the ‘One Pill Kills’ campaign as way to combat the fentanyl crisis through statewide education.