Houston Chronicle Editorial: Abbott's big flip-flop on fentanyl could save lives

For too long, many believed that fentanyl wasn’t a Texas problem. “There’s no sense of urgency,” paramedic Daniel Sledge complained to the Chronicle last year. As one of the people who saw the drug’s deadly impacts on the state, he knew better than most the damage the potent, highly addictive drug could do. But his efforts to save people, many of whom weren’t even aware they had ingested fentanyl, were hampered by the state’s own underfunded lifesaving drug overdose treatments and restrictive policy that demonized fentanyl testing strips as illegal "drug paraphernalia." Now, as fentanyl deaths rise in the state and nation, Gov. Greg Abbott finally seems to have woken up to the reality of the crisis.

Though he’s touted his $4 billion-and-counting Operation Lone Star as a response to the deadly wave, he’s historically eschewed the changes that harm-reduction advocates say could make an immediate difference on the streets, including decriminalizing testing strips that would help users confirm whether fentanyl is in other drugs they buy. “I was not in favor of it last session,” Abbott admitted after a visit to the University of Houston, where researchers have developed a vaccine that could potentially inoculate people against the effects of synthetic opioids, according to the Texas Tribune. But times have changed — and lives have been lost, including 1,672 Texans in 2021, according to the state’s estimates. “There’s going to be a movement across the state to make sure we do everything that we can to protect people from dying from fentanyl, and I think test strips will be one of those ways,” he said. We hope he's right, and we applaud the governor's change of heart. It may indeed save lives. As many as half of overdose deaths are due to drugs laced with fentanyl without the users’ knowledge, according to a 2019 estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.