How One Syringe Exchange Is Turning Drug Users Into Scientists

At St. Ann's Corner of Harm Reduction, a needle exchange in the Bronx, the people who come for "safe use kits" also get a crash course in data collection. 

Leaders at the exchange told WNYC they are trying to get a handle on what they see as a deadly threat: the synthetic opioid, fentanyl. According to the New York City Department of Health, fentanyl, which can be 50 times as strong as heroin, is driving the surge in overdose deaths they've recorded over the past year: over 1,000 deaths in 2016 alone.

Part of the problem is that drug users may not know they're ingesting fentanyl because it's mixed into whatever they're using. 

That's where the experiment comes in. Van Asher, who helps run the program at St. Ann's Corner, distributes fentanyl test strips to willing participants and teaches them to test their drugs before they use, to see whether their heroin contains any fentanyl. 

For Vincente Estepa, almost all of his heroin has tested positive. But that didn't mean he chose not to take the drug; the addictive high of fentanyl is very difficult to resist.

"You know what's so funny? You can hear somebody died off of drugs, and that's the one you want," Estepa said. "That is crazy, that's how we think. But I don't know why is it that we think that way, knowing someone just died off that drug, and you want that one."

Still, Asher said he hoped the testing data would give pause to at least one user when facing a potentially deadly choice.