Fentanyl test strips are sweeping college campuses. Our testing found they may not detect laced fake prescription pills.

(Editor’s Note: This story is not about fentanyl addiction, which is a separate serious issue. This story is for people who would never intentionally take fentanyl, and their families and their kids’ friends. Sharing this story could save a life.)

Fentanyl test strips used to be illegal in California. Now, state law requires them on community and state college campuses, and they’re popping up everywhere from vending machines to bars.

They’re intended to help young people avoid fentanyl-laced counterfeit prescription pills and tainted recreational drugs. But as fentanyl test strips are normalized – from high school to college to bachelor parties – experts warn test strips alone can provide a false sense of security, and in some cases do more harm than good. 

We put fentanyl test strips to the test, and what we found could save someone you know.

Percocet pills hid a deadly dose

He taught himself how to play piano. He played violin in the orchestra. He was a straight-A student. He starred in the school musical. He got a nearly perfect score on the SATs. He was on the track team and the soccer team. Zach was the kind of guy who was never sitting still. 

“He was really athletic. That was another reason I thought he wouldn’t be interested in trying any kinds of substances,” Zach’s mother, Laura Didier, explained.

But he did.

It was the week of Christmas 2020. Zach, like many kids, was struggling with COVID lockdown loneliness and the first COVID-era holiday season without extended family and friends. 

That’s when Zach and his friend decided to try what they thought were Percocet pills that they bought from a man on Snapchat. The next morning, Zach’s father found him dead at his desk with his head down as if he’d fallen asleep at the computer. 

“Three weeks before he died at that desk, I was with him at that desk finalizing his applications for the (UC schools),” Laura Didier said.

She now treasures her son’s college acceptance letters, including from UCLA, letters Zach never got to see. 

“Zach deserves to know where he would have gotten in,” she said.

Fentanyl blamed in 1 of 5 California youth deaths

Zach died in 2020, before fentanyl test strips were legal and before many people knew about counterfeit drugs. He wouldn’t have known to test his Percocet pill or to keep Narcan nearby.

Within a year, fentanyl would be blamed for one in five deaths of young people in California between the ages of 15 and 24. A CBS News…