ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Field Forensics announces the release of the new Fen-Her™ test kit for heroin and fentanyl. The new kit detects and differentiates heroin and fentanyl, even at trace levels, and increases the safety of law enforcement. Overdose deaths due to the synthetic opioid fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives has hit crisis proportions in the US, Canada, Europe and in many other countries around the world. Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent. It is a schedule II prescription drug used to treat and manage pain in many people. Often, fentanyl is mixed with heroin or cocaine and sold illegally. Unsuspecting users, believing they are taking one drug may also be taking an unknown quantity of fentanyl, leading to overdose and even death. Police officers, border agents, and law enforcement drug-sniffing dogs are more likely to accidentally overdose from exposure to fentanyl (and heroin) than habitual users because they have not built up a tolerance to the drug.
Drug test kits on the market have received bad press recently because of their high rate of false positives, leading to wrongful arrests. Yet these colorimetric kits are often used by law enforcement to presumptively identify heroin, fentanyl and other drugs, like cocaine and methamphetamine. None of these drug test kits currently can reliably detect and differentiate heroin and fentanyl, and, they require relatively large amounts of the drugs to get a reaction - more than enough to cause an accidental overdose.
The new Fen-Her™ test from Field Forensics overcomes all of these problems. Though still considered a presumptive test, Fen-Her™ includes two analytical techniques which combined create a test with greater strength. False positives are reduced and largely eliminated, heroin and fentanyl are clearly differentiated, and the amount of drug required to conduct the test is far less than a microgram, which means that officers might be able to sample the contents of a bag without even opening it. Fen-Her™ is small, fits in a shirt pocket, has a long shelf-life and is offered by a company that has been developing test kits used by special forces and elite counter-terrorism units around the world.
About Field Forensics
Field Forensics is the developer of E.L.I.T.E.™, I.D.E.X.™ and ULTRA™ explosives detection kits as well as DABIT™ narcotics identification; in addition to these test kits, FFI now offers the confirmatory Spot.On.ID™ that takes in-field presumptive testing to the next level. Also, our HandyRam™ Raman spectrometer uses the power of laser light to quickly and positively identify hundreds of explosives, narcotics, and related compounds and optionally thousands of other chemicals.
We proudly support hundreds of elite military, law enforcement, and security organizations around the world. Our clients have more important things to worry about than whether or not their chemical ID kits are working, so we design our products with this in mind.