Frequently Asked Questions

About our approach…

  • Combating overdose deaths among young adults saves lives. It also prevents family and friends from suffering such a loss, reduces strain on emergency medical services, and overall supports safe, happy, and healthy living.

  • 100% backed by peer-reviewed research. Our content development team includes over a dozen researchers who vet sources for funding biases and accuracy based on real user testimonials.

    All TACO researchers are pursuing degrees in neuroscience, pharmacology, biology, biochemistry, or health & human sciences. Additionally, our Research Leads are all experienced laboratory researchers.

  • Studies show that the brain in its late teenage and early 20s years critically values the need to forge independence in decision making.

    For the binary statement “don’t do drugs,” the other side of that binary is, “do drugs.” If we tell young adults what their decision about drugs should be by saying, “don’t do drugs,” then the only independent choice we leave them with is, “do drugs.” When every college student will be offered a drug of some form at some point - a drug that they probably aren’t aware of its complete effects - this becomes very dangerous.

    Instead, we trust that young adults are capable of making safe and healthy decisions when they are provided the factual information with which to do so. By providing our audience with journal-published data on individual drugs, the effects of combining various drugs, and other topics related to drug use, we support them in making safe and healthy decisions for themself as an individual.

About Fentanyl…

  • Fentanyl is a synthetic (lab-manufactured) opioid. By comparison, it is 50-100 times stronger than the opioid Morphine.

    Because it is synthetic, Fentanyl does not originate from the opium poppy and does not require as extensive of a supply chain to produce as other opioids. This makes it significantly less expensive to produce.

    Medically, Fentanyl is regularly and safely used to treat severe pain and as an anesthetic. Illicit Fentanyl, however, is what is found in drugs not purchased from a pharmacy leading to tens of thousands of deaths in the United States in 2021.

  • Fentanyl is a highly potent opioid that will kill the average person with the ingestion of only 2mg. That’s about 2 grains of worth of this white powder that easily blends into other drugs like Cocaine, MDMA, and fake prescription pills.

    150 people in the United States die each day from a Fentanyl-related overdose. With Fentanyl test strips, users can avoid accidentally consuming Fentanyl and prevent overdose fatalities.

  • There are a number of reasons for how Fentanyl ends up in other drugs and the answer often varies depending on the drug.

    For instance, stimulants like cocaine or MDMA (Ecstasy) - which have significantly different effects from opioids like Fentanyl - are likely contaminated with Fentanyl unintentionally. In the process of packaging illicit drugs for sale, cross contamination between drugs can occur if the packaging surface (like a table) is not sanitized adequately after each type of substance. Or if multiple substances are being packaged on the same surface at the same time.

    It’s a much different story for counterfeit opioid pills like Percocet and Oxycontin. These drugs are in the same family as Fentanyl and have the same effects on the user - but Fentanyl is both much stronger and much cheaper to produce since it is fully synthetic. Counterfeit opioid pills have a higher profit margin if they’re produced using Fentanyl. Instead of making a pill with 5mg Oxycontin, 0.05mg of Fentanyl can be used since Fentanyl is about 100x stronger than Oxycontin.

    The problem with this method of increasing profits on counterfit pills is that the clandestine producers often don’t have scales fine-tuned enough to measure 1/20th of a milligram. When the lethal dose of Fentanyl is the size of only 2 grains of sand - it’s a recipe for disaster.

About supporting TACO…

  • Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

    Donate to our proven effective overdose prevention program.

  • 100% of donations to TACO support our Fentanyl test strip distribution program.

    Fentanyl test strips allow users to check their drugs for Fentanyl contamination. Only 2mg of Fentanyl will kill the average person (that’s about 2 grains of sand), so checking other drugs for contamination saves lives. We use donation dollars to purchase thousands of these test strips to remove cost and time barriers to access.

    Since beginning this program in March of 2021, we have saved hundreds of lives with Fentanyl test strips (as evidenced by user reports of tests showing positive for Fentanyl contamination.)

    TACO’s team believes so strongly in this work that we are 100% volunteer operated.