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Colorado mother develops fentanyl testing kit after son dies of accidental overdose

By July 20, 2024 | updated 2 years ago

Mother develops fentanyl testing kit after son dies of accidental overdose

Jeanie Chung hopes something small will spark a big change.

“I developed a test kit that’s all encompassed, convenient [and] discreet that particularly people who use recreational drugs can keep on hand in the case that they might need to test their drug,” Chung said.

Chung is the co-founder of TaeSun. She came up with the idea for the kit in 2021.

“I resorted back to my basic science background with the constant desire to help people and as part of our medical training is to help people,” Chung explained. “Keep people healthy.”

Chung said she’s been practicing medicine for the last 23 years but is donning a new hat as a drug testing product developer.

“There are things you have to consider [such as] size, type of plastic, amount of water, how much residue of the drug you need because you’re testing illicit drugs, they’re not quality controlled,” Chung said.

She isn’t working alone. Chung pitched her idea to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and was selected to take part in its ‘substance use disorder start-up’ challenge.

“My background is medicine, science and not necessarily bringing a product to market and knowing the business aspects of bringing something like this,” Chung said.

While Chung is motivated by caring for others, her mission to create TaeSun is much more personal.

“I lost my 19-year-old son Jackson to fentanyl,” Chung said. “Unbeknownst to him, he was given a pill with enough fentanyl to kill a horse.”

Chung said her son’s death inspired TaeSun in more ways than one.

“TaeSun is the name of the product [and] that was his middle name. It’s a Korean middle name but it also has Tae and Sun meaning the Sun,” Chung shared. “He was like the sun that people revolved around so I felt it was fitting to name it after him, in honor of him.”

Chung said she knows there are already too many families that share a story similar to hers.

“Obviously having gone through the experience myself, you know, you want to do what you can to help others so they don’t have to potentially experience what my family [and] Jack’s friends have gone through. It impacts us in such unspeakable ways,” Chung said.

Read more at 9News.com.

Tags Fentanyl
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