The synthetic drug Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of eighteen and forty five. The number of Alabamians who overdosed on the opioid in the year 2021 was fourteen hundred. That’s up from just over eight hundred in 2017. That doesn’t count the over fifteen thousand emergency room visits due to Fentanyl last year. Alabama lawmakers responded to the overdose crisis last month by unanimously passing harsher penalties for tracking fentanyl. Defendants can get up to life in prison. That’s one response. Here’s a possible second course.
The group Operation Save Teens says another step in addressing the Fentanyl drug crisis is educating parents and children. The synthetic opioid is getting stronger and easier to get.
“It's like you get tired of hearing it, so you just tune it out,” said Lieutenant Mike Reese is with Operation Save Teens. He’s traveled Alabama for more than twenty years giving presentations in gyms, classrooms, and churches. Reese was an undercover Narcotics agent. He realized people were dying from OxyContin. He gave a city-wide meeting in Anniston about the new drug trends that later grew into the program that has educated hundreds of thousands of teenagers and parents across Alabama. But the drugs he warns about are also growing.
“I'm going into my 40th year in law enforcement, and I've never seen anything like the situation in this country right now with fentanyl,” said Reese.
Reese’s warnings go beyond opioids. He also begs teens not to buy marijuana based C-B-D products in gas stations.
“If tomorrow they call me up and say, you can do one thing today that would make a tremendous difference in Alabama, the first thing that I would do is get every single bit of the Delta eight, delta nine THC products out of the convenience stores, all of it,” Reese contended.
THC is the chemical in marijuana that makes you high. Reese adds another substance to the crisis.
“Right now, the number one problem in schools, according to administrators across the state, is vaping,” said Reese. “These kids are vaping, and they're buying the pods off the street. When the death toll starts piling up, that's when everybody gets interested.”
“There's lots of vaping in schools,” said That is Ashleigh Simon, a clinical director with The Bridge, Inc., an adolescent drug and rehabilitation center covering 30 counties in Alabama.
“There's challenges such as vape in school, hashtag vape school that kids will vape in the classroom and post it. The teacher never even knows,” said Simon.
She says almost all kids who enter services with the Bridge are vaping. Some are vaping TCH extracts from marijuana. It’s called dabbing.
“Dabbing is one of the things that we are most concerned about because it is so concentrated and easy to conceal. The kids become very addicted and get dangerously ill at times. Dabbing is concerning because it is much more concentrated than typical marijuana. It’s up to 15% more concentrated than just smoking marijuana.
Simon says using substances during adolescence and teenage years can cause permanent damage to coordination, learning, memory and problem-solving.
“My recommendation to parents is to talk soon and early,” said Simon. “If they don't know anything about it and they're hearing words such as vaping or dabbing, then research it. There's a wealth of information out there.”
The biggest problems were teenage drinking and marijuana when Simon started working at the addiction treatment center called The Bridge 20 years ago. The program still serves 12 to 18-year-olds, but the age of first use is getting younger, sometimes seven or eight years old.
“With legalization of marijuana changing social norms around it, it's become something that teens and younger adolescents don't find to be concerning,” she said. “And so they are curious about it because most of their peers are doing it. They start and it goes from nicotine to marijuana to dabbing and gets increasingly worse and more addictive.
The Bridge offers multiple levels of care to help teens through substance use disorder and behavioral rehabilitation. There is no out of pocket expenses for the youth and families they serve.
“It’s not a matter of whether kids are going to be exposed to these things, but when. So, the sooner they talk about this, it may be awkward for them or uncomfortable, the earlier the start, the better. Not only having these conversations but letting your child know that I will look in your backpack regularly. I will go into your room,” she said.
Reese also talks about addiction and treatment in his presentations. He explains that addiction is a brain disease, not a character flaw or moral failing. Reese says the federal and state government should provide better and cheaper options for treatment.
“What we need to be doing now is listening to what the Surgeon General of the United States said in 2016 that addiction is a disease,” Reese contends. “We have to have compassion in treating people with that disease. We have to know that out of all the people that are addicted, in 2016 it was 21 million. Out of that, only 10% ever get the help that they truly need.”
At the end of each presentation, Reese shares a last story and picture. It’s of his son Matt, who was one of the 1400 overdose deaths in Alabama in 2021.
“How much is a kid’s life worth? Everything, to a parent,” said Reese.
