Sewage lines: Cape Cod summer hotspot testing its waste for cocaine and other drugs to monitor abuse
A summertime island hotspot off Cape Cod will start testing its sewage for cocaine and other drugs to find out when and how often residents are getting high, officials said.
Nantucket health officials want to sniff out when drug use spikes — including seasonally and around holidays — to help folks with recovery outreach in the scenic town, the Nantucket Current reported.
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'Everyone's got a good idea of what the [drug] situation is, but we have very little direct measurement,' the town's human services director, Jerico Mele, told the outlet. 'When we get away from our gut to getting data, we get a better picture of what's going on.'
Nantucket will start testing its sewage for cocaine and other drugs to find out when and how often residents are getting high, officials said.
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Biobot, a firm that specializes in wastewater epidemiology, will start testing the island's Surfside Wastewater Treatment Facility for drugs — also including fentanyl, opiates, methamphetamine and nicotine — later this month, according to the report.
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The goal is to potentially team up with drug rehab centers and medical providers to help local addicts based on the results, Mele said.
'If we can get an idea of the standard usage of drugs, we can see if interventions and behaviors change the rate of consumption,' Mele said. 'That can give us a scorecard on the efforts and reducing usage.'
The data gathering project is Nantucket's, well, number two in the world of sewage: In 2020, it started testing its wastewater for COVID-19 and still does weekly.
Nantucket officials said the drug data gathering project will help with recovery outreach.
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Officials don't plan to post the new drug testing results publicly but may share them with healthcare partners, they said.
It's unclear if the windswept island destination, which has a year-round population of roughly 14,000, currently has a drug use problem.
A report from the National Drug Intelligence Center from 2001 named cocaine — specifically crack— as the biggest drug threat for Nantucket and surrounding areas.
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