Last year, Overdose Lifeline gave more than 158,000 fentanyl test strips to Indiana residents.
Staff at the nonprofit hear every day about someone’s child, parent or sibling dying from using a drug they didn’t know was laced with fentanyl. The test strips can save lives by detecting the potent synthetic drug, which was found in 94% of Indy’s opioid overdoses last year, according to Marion County Coroner’s Office data.
But there was a huge question mark hanging over the use of test strips: People wanted to know if they’d be arrested under Indiana’s drug paraphernalia law.
It criminalizes devices that test the “strength, purity or effectiveness” of a substance — though it was up to local prosecutors to decide if test strips fit the definition.
In Marion County, people are not being charged, but other parts of the state have different policies. Advocates say the confusion bred aversion.
“There was a blanket fear of being prosecuted for wanting to be safe and alive,” said Yvette Markey, founder of InTouch Outreach, another community nonprofit that distributes the test strips. Black residents, who die from overdoses at disproportionate rates, told her they were scared of being arrested by police.
That’s why Markey and other advocates started calling on state lawmakers to clarify Indiana’s law. But they said they ran up against a long-held stigma: the idea that harm reduction tools like test strips encourage drug use.
“Fentanayl is in every drug on the street and we need to give people the ability to understand what they’ve purchased,” said Justin Phillips, who founded Overdose Lifeline after her son’s death in 2014. “I wish we didn’t have people using, but until we address the demand, we have to make the supply safer.”
How to get help
You can request free fentanyl test strips and naloxone from Overdose Lifeline here.
But, after a bill failed last year, advocates were finally successful.
Indiana lawmakers officially decriminalized fentanyl test strips during the 2025 legislative session. It took a team of Republicans and Democrats to get there.
‘Meet people where they are’
Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn, a Democrat whose district includes Fishers and Indy’s north side, started the effort in 2024.
“We recognized that drugs are getting smarter than we can keep an eye on,” she told Mirror Indy. “Curiosity can kill.”
She wanted to remove the language around testing for “strength, purity or effectiveness” in Indiana’s drug paraphernalia law so more people would feel comfortable using test strips. Rep. Jennifer Meltzer, a Republican from Shelbyville, co-authored the bill. Both pointed out that addiction affects everyone, regardless of background or political party.
The 2024 legislation moved through the Indiana House, but never received a hearing in the Senate. Some fellow lawmakers, they said, were hesitant about harm reduction, a public health approach that treats addiction as a disease to be managed, not a moral failure.
“My heart is in trying to meet people where they are and get them to treatment,” Meltzer said. “You can’t do that if they’re not here.”
Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin. A person can test for its presence by dipping a strip into a mixture of the substance and water. If the result is positive, they should discard the batch. In an emergency, naloxone is a medication that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
Trying again
Meltzer and Garcia Wilburn filed another bill this year.
This time, they were joined by Sen. Brett Clark, an Avon Republican and former sheriff of Hendricks County.
He likened the test strips to a pregnancy test: It says yes or no.
“There’s no drug dealer sitting on the corner waiting for us to legalize this for their trade,” Clark said. “People who test don’t want that fentanyl.”
He proposed clarifying that Indiana’s drug paraphernalia law does not apply to tools that merely test the presence of a drug. That got House Bill 1167 across the finish line, with nearly unanimous votes in both chambers. Gov. Mike Braun signed it into law April 10.
Markey, who runs InTouch Outreach, said the Indianapolis community is already feeling the impact.
“We’re raising our voices louder and letting people know they don’t have to worry about hiding (test strips) or going to jail,” she said.
The relief has started spreading through support groups.
A clarification was made on July 7, 2025: This story has been updated to reflect the path of Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn’s 2024 bill, which passed the House but did not receive a hearing in the Senate.
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Mirror Indy reporter Mary Claire Molloy covers health. Reach her at 317-721-7648 or email maryclaire.molloy@mirrorindy.org. Follow her on X @mcmolloy7.
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