Team of scientific sleuths helps sound alert on Michigan's killer drugs

• Michigan’s largest rapid drug-testing program isn’t about law enforcement but about public health
• As drugs ravage Michigan families, some say this approach may save more lives than strictly policing
• It’s part of the growing shift toward harm reduction — an effort to keep drug users safe as they move toward recovery

KALAMAZOO — Michigan’s largest rapid drug testing and tracking program began with an after-hours drink among colleagues — a medical examiner, toxicologist and a crisis planner. 

All three were frontline workers in the battle against illegal drugs.

They commiserated about the weeks-long — sometimes months-long — delays in identifying drugs that caused fatal overdoses. More immediate intelligence, they mused, could save lives.

That was 2016. Eight years later, a group of scientists and lab technicians in a fourth-floor lab at the Kalamazoo County Medical Examiner’s office can peer into blood samples to quickly identify not only traditional drugs — cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines — but also deadly substances that have been added to boost profits as they make their way from supplier to street dealer. 

The Swift Toxicology of Overdose-Related Mortalities, or STORM, project, is a rapid-response scientific team that can help officials isolate the culprit quickly, offering real-time intel about what’s in the street’s drug supply.

No Better Business Bureau

By the time the final packaged product on the street reaches its buyers, the users can have no idea of what has been added, or “cut” into the drugs: fentanyl, xylazine, krokodil, carfentanil — all potentially deadly.

“You're not going to the Better Business Bureau to research your dealer and know that you're going to get something that's clean or not clean,” said Dr. Mark Kerschner, co-director of the trauma and emergency center at Kalamazoo’s Bronson Methodist Hospital.

Police Capt. Mark Ferguson stood in the police crime lab last month. He held up three clear plastic evidence bags containing angular rocks of three shades of white and brown: a grayish fentanyl, heroin with fentanyl, and bright white fentanyl.

“We've had pink heroin. We've had blue meth, we've had all kinds of stuff,” said Ferguson, a member of the Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team, which focuses, in part, on drug cases.

“It’s not like there’s a grocery store label of ingredients you can check,” he said.

Ferguson and Kerschner were among those working in April 2023, when a spate of deadly overdoses was linked to fentanyl; users thought they had purchased cocaine or another stimulant. STORM helped investigators quickly find the connection between the cases.  

“The ability to have answers immediately was priceless,” said Dr. Joyce deJong, the medical examiner of the regional office at the time.

In Kalamazoo, the STORM project is unique in its speed.

Around Michigan, most medical examiners must ship blood samples to labs elsewhere for toxicology testing, and the process can take days or even weeks. 

From bar talk to brainstorm

In 2016, deJong walked into a Kalamazoo restaurant with Prentiss Jones, a toxicologist, and Dr. Bill Fales, medical director of the county’s Medical Control Authority. 

Talk drifted to the frustrating delay in toxicology test results, and the simple question: Why can’t we do this in-house?

STORM hatched, and today is funded by grants from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Safety and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Among the key investigative tools is the Randox Evidence Investigator, a deceptively nondescript machine.

It sits noiselessly on one of the stainless steel counters — looking a bit like a very tall air fryer, ready to warm last night’s pizza. But the Randox uses light and chemicals to tease out the unique signatures of drugs in the blood, usually of the dead.

STORM allows the Kalamazoo County Medical Examiner’s office to warn the public of new drugs or dangerous additives and to guide law enforcement, emergency medical services, and public health in allocating resources.

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Such warnings are part of a growing approach to fighting drugs called harm reduction. Harm reduction recognizes that some people will use them anyway, despite lectures and threats and even the risk of death. Think clean-needle exchanges. It’s a shift away from the traditional zero-tolerance approach to drug prevention. Think Nancy Reagan and “Just Say No” in the 1980s.

An early alert from STORM was critical in April 2023. As police, public health leaders and clinicians at Bronson pulled together clues from scenes and medical reports, Randox spat out the answer just after midnight on the 14th.

The information allowed the Kalamazoo County Health & Community Services Department, treatment centers and the COPE Network harm reduction group to quickly alert local users of the deadly doses, possibly saving lives, said Jones, the toxicologist.

Each of the dead had stimulants in their blood — cocaine or meth, but fentanyl was the common denominator.

This year, STORM alerted health care organizations, treatment centers, and law enforcement of the arrival of medetomidine, a potent veterinary tranquilizer, similar to xylazine, that lowers blood pressure and slows the heart and central nervous system. 

That followed its 2023 alert of a four-year increase in xylazine, a year after it examined the increase of methamphetamine use across Michigan.