Why the Government Just Slashed Harm Reduction Funding and What You Can Do About It
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In this clip from our May 20, 2026 episode, we review recent news that the Trump administration has halted funding of fentanyl test strips. If you'd like to take action in support of harm reduction services, fill out the Drug Policy Alliance's form letter and send it to your representatives:
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.
[00:00] Hey everyone, this is James with Psymposia. Check out this recent clip where we talk about the cutting of funding for fentinel test strips and why that is ultimately a horrible thing to do. And if you enjoy this content, make sure you see our full video as well. And you can also subscribe to our Patreon and help to support the work that we do. At the end of April, the Trump admin announced it would be restricting federal funds from purchasing fentanyl and drug testing strips. They say that the government would no longer pay for the strips because they are quote intended for use by people using drugs. It just seems incredibly hypocritical for an organization that is signing executive orders to prop up ibeane as some miracle treatment for substance abuse and mental health and all of this stuff to be cutting funding for fentanyl
[01:00] Test strips which directly help people who use drugs from killing themselves and overdosing. My guess there is it's just some sort of cut the grants off so one of our companies can step in and pick up that contract. That's an interesting thought. Yeah, I could definitely see that happening. Pass it all on to Canoa or whatever. Yeah, some something like that. How do we like cleave off, you know, some sort of public health related thing? Privatize that so someone connected to our network can profit there. Yeah. And there has been some push back to this decision from 11 senators who wrote a letter to RFK Jr. They had concerns asking Yeah, they did asking him to reverse this decision and they called out the hypocrisy here saying that they're that test strips are a proven key tool to fight against opioid overdoses and deaths.
[01:50] They also note that less than 5 months ago, Donald Trump signed the Support for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act of 2025 into law with strong bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. Section 113 of this law expressly provides that federal grant funding for state and tribal response to opioid use disorders may be used to quote facilitate access to products used to prevent overdose deaths by detecting the presence of one or more substances such as fentanyl and xylazine test strips. Despite this, you have chosen to remove this key support without warning. I mean, this is all in line with everything that this administration does in any issue involving public health. Yeah. You know, maybe the reason why they're, you know, getting rid of the fentanyl testing strips is that it's all fentanyl now.
[02:41] It's not heroin. That's a I kid. I kid. And there but there is some truth to it. And in fact, there's fentanel has really like supplanted heroin in the United States market. like this is borne out by seizures. The drug seizures at the border, the rates of heroin seizures at the border are just dropping or plummeting. Yeah. And but even to that point, these strips are really important for people who are using opioids, but also other drugs, too. Like if you're testing your MDMA, your ketamine, your cocaine, whatever, they're finding fentanyl in these things. And that's an important tool in being able to educate yourself and maintain your own safety if you're using these drugs, right?
[03:26] And despite, you know, the decline in heroin, if you are a heroin user, chances are you probably like a heroin user because that's your preferred opiate and you'd probably like to keep it that way. I've talked to people who would say like, I would kill to find heroin. like I have to do fentanyl because it's the only option left. And the reason that became the case was because of how hard it was to get fentanyl test strips. It became impossible to really trust like a heroin supplier without being able to easily test what you were getting from them. And like something like this just it always just feels like our government just being overly horny for consequences.
[04:14] Like they just love people suffering because they're living a life that's like different from theirs. You know, it's I think of it the same thing as like I saw a guy nod off and drive into a telephone pole once and this [expletive] dick, pardon my language, came running up and the first thing he said was, "What are you on, buddy?" And I was like, is that really what's important right now? Like you just really want to like, you know, feel all jolly because someone else is living a life you've decided is bad and they suffered a consequence. Like I don't know. This just this stuff just pisses me off so much. I saw someone responding to this story saying that this administration is full of like reactionary policy to crisis. Like so you see all the antiback stuff after COVID.
[05:00] You see all of the anti- drug user safety techniques being that these techniques are being demonized. These products are being demonized after an opioid epidemic. Like it's all like reactionary policym after people have already started dealing with a crisis. Yep. And yeah, just going and rolling back the few public health laws that reduced that number is just the sort of thing that the Trump administration loves to do. Yeah. And we can't say how many it's prevented, but we can say how many it's caused. It's caused zero. So [laughter] like that's another thing, too. Like why are we Great point. I think it's something like a dollar a strip as well when they're ordering. It's like not some crazy expense. Yeah. I would just love to know what the actual reasoning going into it.
[05:48] Is it just a completely reactionary thing that we're supposed to be focused on that, you know, some sort of, you know, the right-wing evangelical totally prohibitionist part of MAGA is just so opposed to this. Or I again I think more likely is that this is a potential business opportunity for you know some Trump connected entity to profit off this. That's where or multiple categories at once. Yeah. This generally it fits a narrative that the MAGA people want to see and it could be it's also just in alignment with the you know the chaos of the internal contradictions. But again, I think if you approach Maha as it's an authentic thing, you're going to be very confused about it.
[06:37] Whereas the real point of MA is a screen is, you know, a facade for every corporation, the Trump administration to sell to MAGA that this is all about health when really it's about look at Maha while we're allowing, you know, Roundup to just to go crazy, all the other [expletive] [expletive] yeah, and to the to that point, we've got some confusing maja policy to discuss next. And before I kind of move on to that next story, I did just want to plug a little call to action here. If the harm reduction funding and the harm reduction supply access is an important cause to you, and this is all very disturbing, the Drug Policy Alliance does have like a really easy to fill out form letter on their website.
[07:24] I'll put a link to that on screen. I'll put a link to that in our show notes that you can send to your representatives. It covers the test strips. It covers other overdose access supplies that are being targeted and things like that. So, if you want, that's a really easy way to at least fill something out, send that to your representative, get that in their mailbox. Something along those lines.
