PA Groundhogs hit the streets in Butler
Butler County has two places where people can pick up kits used to test drugs for fentanyl: the Butler County sheriff’s office and Totalus, a business on East Jefferson Street that also sells baked goods and sweet beverages.
Working to expand access to potentially life-saving materials is the PA Groundhogs, an organization aiming to implement harm reduction tactics in communities to help prevent drug overdose and deaths from drug use.
The group, which moved into the area in September, recently lead a “compassionate response” workshop at Totalus, where people could not only pick up “harm-reduction items” like the fentanyl test strips and naloxone, but learn how to use them from the PA Groundhogs.
Providing these life-saving tools to the community is an important mission for Kayla Fleming, Totalus’ owner, who said the Groundhogs are now helping keep the placed certified and stocked on the materials.
“I grew up seeing drug use and even seeing people from my graduating class pass away from drugs and alcohol over the years,” Fleming said. “Having that option (for test strips and naloxone) indiscriminately available could have saved lives. My hope is that it does that and continues to grow.”
Carter Graves, with the PA Groundhogs’ western office, said the agency recently came to Butler County. Graves said that even though a rural community like Butler may see “chaotic drug use” rather than concentrated recreational drug use, which is more common in urban areas, having the tools to fight overdose can still reduce harm wherever it exists.
“Compassionate opioid response is tailored for a recreational drug user, because you’re more likely to be partying at a bar and your buddy takes coke than you are ... (to be) walking over somebody in Butler experiencing a reaction,” Graves said. “This is equipping the community with the tools to fight overdose; we never know what’s going to happen, what we’re going to come across.”
Graves led a workshop on Saturday afternoon, May 24, demonstrating how to use naloxone and fentanyl test strips the PA Groundhogs brought with them to Totalus. Graves said the Groundhogs will be able to supply Narcan, a brand of naloxone, to people in Butler now that they have a base in the area.
Graves said the fentanyl test strips were illegal in Pennsylvania until 2022, when House Bill 1393 was signed by then-Gov. Tom Wolf, officially excluding fentanyl test strips from the list of items considered drug paraphernalia in the state.
Graves demonstrated how to use Narcan, and then demonstrated how to use a fentanyl test strip to determine if the substance is mixed in with other substances.
The compassionate opioid response workshop was also meant to educate people, not only on how to address drug use in their communities, but how to speak about it in a way that doesn’t stigmatize users or people in recovery.
Grimm Criley, rural engagement liaison for PA Groundhogs, said part of the push here is bridging the gap between abstinence and recovery, which are terms commonly found in Butler, but are on two polar opposite ends of drug use. Criley said the Groundhogs are bringing harm reduction methods to Butler County, so people in the midst of drug use, whether it be recreational or out of habit, are not left out of the conversation.
The Groundhogs even adapted language to help relate better to residents of rural areas, to help ease people into harm reduction as a method of preventing overdose.
“In rural environments, it’s that they really haven’t been exposed to the harm reduction model... They’re not brought up knowing that harm reduction is an option,” Criley said. “We have to change our language from being, ‘recreational drug user’ back to, ‘chaotic use’ — the ‘What you see on the news’ drug user.
“I tailored the entire kit system, and how we distribute, how we communicate with people, to be more rural-friendly.”
Data gathered by OverdoseFreePA showed that 678 overdose deaths were reported in the county from 2011 to early 2024. The report showed that Butler County reported 66 accidental overdose deaths in 2022; 41 accidental overdose deaths in 2023; and five deaths reported for 2024, as of March 11, 2024.
Although the PA Groundhogs are working to ease rural residents into harm reduction models, Criley said the organization received a good response from Slippery Rock University students when they presented compassionate response at a workshop in January.
“We were invited to SRU for their overdose awareness and we were extremely well received about overdose response and drug use,” Criley said.
In addition to the PA Groundhogs, other people interested in harm reduction in Butler attended the compassionate response workshop May 24. Kari Cousins, with the Radical Acceptance Project, said she was on harm reduction duty on her own earlier this year, at a music festival in the northwestern part of Butler County.
“I had a backpack full of our supplies and just said, ‘Who needs this, who needs that?’” Cousins said.
Criley said music festivals and public events aimed at young adults were big targets for PA Groundhogs harm reduction efforts, because “party environments” are where people may wind up in a situation where untested drugs are being used.
This type of drug use could lead to more dire consequences, because people may not know what to do if they find themselves in a situation where they have ingested fentanyl.
Rachel Shuster, a certified addiction registered nurse living in Butler, said the compassionate response methods can be helpful to people who are more likely to encounter recreational drug use, but are unsure of how to troubleshoot. She said organizations like PA Groundhogs can be resources that people can turn to without fear of getting in legal trouble.
“As a clinician, there’s a disconnect between the community,” Shuster said. “People don’t see the recreational use between abstinence and recovery.”
Graves said the PA Groundhogs have also made contact with Armstrong and Mercer counties, to help provide overdose prevention supplies to individuals there.
Criley described drug use a “sliding scale,” where abstinence, recreational use, addiction and recovery are not all black and white.
“The express purpose was to get together and say, you are abstinence, you are harm reduction, you are bickering back and forth when you should be looking at what works from each,” Criley said of compassionate opioid response.
For more information on the PA Groundhogs, visit the group’s website at pagroundhogs.org.
