Amid a federal funding freeze, a Philly nonprofit that monitors the nation’s illicit drug supply is furloughing workers and falling behind on drug testing

A Philadelphia-area nonprofit that tests for new and dangerous substances in the country’s illicit drug supply hasn’t received the federal funding it depends on for months — forcing the organization to furlough a third of its staff amid a growing testing backlog.

The Horsham-based Center for Forensic Science Research and Education was set to receive about $1.5 million from the Department of State and the Department of Justice this year, a third of the center’s budget, said Barry Logan, its chief scientist.

But federal funding has been paused for the Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) Discovery program, which functions as the country’s “early-warning system” for new additives in illicit drugs, testing samples from street drugs, medical examiner’s offices, and other sources. It’s a particularly crucial task as the nation’s drug supply has become increasingly volatile.

For example, CFSRE raised alarms about xylazine, the animal tranquilizer now found in most of Philadelphia’s illicit opioids, as early as 2020 — years before several federal agencies released alerts on the drug, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal, which first reported on the furloughs.

Also on hold is its Sentinel program that studies drugs seized at the United States’ southern border to determine patterns in both the kinds of drugs crossing the border and the markets they enter.

Two months ago, CFSRE received stop-work orders on both of those projects, Logan said, as President Donald Trump’s administration reviewed federal grants in the early days of his presidency.

And though the stop-work order on the Sentinel program was recently lifted, Logan said the organization has not received the funding necessary to start operations again. The NPS Discovery program is still under stop orders, with no word on when funding might be released.

“There’s a need for that information that’s not being met. It impacts drug mortality and drug threats. It slows the ability of the government to regulate new substances,” Logan said.

“The last thing we want, from a public health point of view, is to be surprised by the appearance of a new and dangerous drug. You want to know about these things before you simply find out about them because people are dying.”

Representatives from the federal justice and state departments did not respond to requests for comment.

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The nonprofit has a backlog of about 1,500 samples that would have been tested by now, about a third of its typical yearly workload. Three weeks ago, it furloughed 12 staff members. CFSRE has also been unable to issue alerts about new substances found in drug samples.

“We haven’t sent out any public health alerts or warnings in the last two months,” Logan said, adding that “we have a list of about eight new substances that had appeared early in the year or in the end of last year that we hadn’t made notifications about yet.”

Still running is the local drug testing funded by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, which sends the center illicit drug samples collected from people who use drugs around the city. A city spokesperson said that the organization has assured them that testing continues.

But, Logan said, understanding new threats in the nation’s drug supply requires a broader approach that, until recently, was funded with federal dollars.

“It is a national drug early warning system. Certainly Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are part of it. But you can’t really understand what the drug threat is by looking at just one area,” Logan said. “Drugs move around, and patterns of drug use will start in one area and then move to another area.”

Jefferson Methodist Hospital works closely with CFSRE to learn how to test for newer substances in patients who exhibit unusual withdrawal symptoms, said Kory London, its director of clinical operations.

The hospital is using CFSRE research to develop testing protocols for medetomidine, a xylazine-like additive that causes severe withdrawal symptoms and is rapidly becoming prevalent in the city’s drug markets.

Medetomidine can be difficult to detect on a typical drug screen. CFSRE is studying how to test for byproducts of the drug instead, London said.

“CFSRE are the ones who tell us what to be worried about before we know we need to be worried about it,” London said.

Work has stalled in studies of another substance the center is monitoring, the industrial chemical BTMPS, often used to protect plastics from cracking but, lately, turning up in street drugs in the Philadelphia area and elsewhere in the country.

“Nobody really knows what the human health impacts of BTMPS are. In the ordinary course of business, we would have monitored [BTMPS], surveilled, collected data from adverse [health] events. None of that has been happening for the last two months,” CFSRE’s Logan said.

Logan does not believe the federal government has targeted CFSRE for cuts as it has other research projects in the area. The Trump administration has centered the spread of fentanyl in its economic and immigration policies.

“It just got caught up in everything else that was going on. But it was very difficult to know who to talk to in the government to point that out. The guidance we got was that ‘You just have to wait and see what happens, and we’ll get through it as quickly as we can, but we can’t tell you when that will be,’” Logan said.

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But he’s received little information on why the organization hasn’t received funding for months. The center’s contacts at the Department of Justice have not been able to share much either, he said.

While some of the furloughed employees have taken new jobs, Logan said, he’s hoping to be able to hire some back if funding to the center is restored. Even then, he said, the center will have to work through a significant backlog of tests that grows each day.