Standing at a podium facing reporters at the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, Project Overdose founder Andrae Bailey proposed a thought experiment: What would hurricane prep look like without Doppler radar?
Without tools to gauge the strength of storms and track their movements, people would be in the dark, responding to the damage rather than having the information needed to take the necessary precautions.
“That is where we are when it comes to drugs,” said Bailey, who on Wednesday announced the rollout of DrugTRAC — tracking, reporting, advocacy and coordination — an AI-powered dashboard that aims to revolutionize how people and organizations understand the drug epidemic.
The dashboard uses data from anonymized urine tests provided by third-party testing firms to figure out which drugs are prevalent in the community.
Described as a first-of-its-kind tool, DrugTRAC was developed by University of Central Florida professor Kendall Cortelyou, who is also research director for Project Overdose, a Florida nonprofit working to tackle illegal drug use.
The data collected statewide describes what drugs are present in the tests and in what combinations, but it does not include any personal information. The dashboard, updated daily, can even be broken down by ZIP code as well as by county and metro area, offering local governments and law enforcement a way to identify real time trends in drug use and further inform efforts to crack down on suppliers.
Additionally, the tool is capable of flagging changes in the illegal drug market, so police departments and other organizations can more quickly address them.
“When I saw this is revolutionizing the way that we study drug trends in communities, I am not being hyperbolic,” Cortelyou said. “… It allows you to know what’s going on in your community, what’s happening with your drug supply, so appropriate interventions can be made.”
The initial rollout, first to law enforcement and community stakeholders, comes ahead of next weekend’s Electric Daisy Carnival. The three-day rave festival, an event where drug use is known to take place, will be where the first DrugTRAC alert will warn attendees of the presence of carfentanil, a fentanyl analog the Centers for Disease Control says is 100 times more potent than fentanyl.
The new database recently picked up its presence in Central Florida.
Along with partnering with onsite medics and law enforcement, Project Overdose will launch its own public awareness campaign ahead of EDC. A publicly accessible version of DrugTRAC, meanwhile, is expected to be unveiled before the year’s end.
“We’re not saying, ‘Just say no’,” he said, referring to the Reagan-era slogan, “we’re saying, ‘Just be careful.’”
A Florida Department of Law Enforcement report released this month showed deadly drug overdoses in Florida decreased in 2024 by 14%, the latest annual data available, while cases related to fentanyl and fentanyl analogs saw a roughly 32% drop statewide. In Central Florida, Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties saw respective decreases in fatal fentanyl-related overdoses by 36%, 38% and 45%. Lake County, however, saw a 25% increase.
But those reports, Cortelyou said, are indicative of a more traditional — and belated — way of studying trends in drug use. Until now, the issue has mainly been studied through mortality data, and it can take months to confirm what drugs were the deadly culprit.
“So, no more waiting 18 months to find out that carfentanil has entered our drugs our drug supply,” Cortelyou said. “We now can find out almost instantaneously.”
Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma, who has pushed for broader access to treatment services for drug users along with greater accountability for suppliers, sees DrugTRAC as a game changer as Florida seeks to continue its downward trend of drug overdoses.
“It was very much reactive prior to this — you would see the numbers, whether they’re criminal justice and arrests or overdoses and fatalities, and then react to the numbers that you’re seeing,” Lemma said. “What this provides us is an ability to forecast where the next storm is going to be hitting when it comes to the to the drug epidemic to get ahead of it.”
