IIn September 2021, an 18-year-old Texas woman named Alize Martinez was found lifeless in bed by her mother, who described that moment to ABC’s “Good Morning America” as the “worst day of her life.”
The girl with the “super goofy personality,” with plans on enrolling in cosmetology school, suddenly gone way too soon at the hands of fentanyl toxicity.
Just a few days earlier, a Shawnee, Kansas, mother named Libby Davis got the early-morning phone call that all parents dread.
She was told her son, Cooper — who she described to Kansas City’s Fox 4 News as “adventurous” with a passion for soccer — was having a medical emergency, and the family needed to come quickly.
Libby told the news station that she did get to see her son before he passed away, but some of the last images of him were emergency personnel “violently pumping his chest” as they fought to keep him alive.
Cooper Davis, 16, died at the hands of fentanyl toxicity.
But it’s not just a “that only happens somewhere else” problem.
In October 2021, authorities were called to an Allen County residence, where they located 1-year-old Savannah Rose Brown.
The toddler was unresponsive and rushed to a nearby hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.
According to her obituary, the little girl was “extraordinary” with an “amazing personality,” gone too soon at the hands of fentanyl toxicity.
In 2021, over 2,700 Hoosiers died of drug overdoses, a 21% increase from the previous year (around 2,200), per statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And according to state officials, around 85% of those deaths can be attributed to fentanyl.
The dangers of fentanyl
To understand why fentanyl is so deadly, you have to first look at how it works.
A synthetic opioid that binds to the receptors in the brain, fentanyl is odorless and colorless, which experts say makes it difficult to detect.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, there are two main drug cartels based out of Mexico that traffick most of the fentanyl found in the United States, often brought over the southern border via trucks.
And because since such a small amount of fentanyl has a strong potency — about 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine — it’s easier to move the substance without being caught.
Douglas Huntsinger is the executive director of Drug Prevention, Treatment and Enforcement for the state of Indiana.
“If you think about the drug busts of the past, we’re used to seeing large amounts of drugs placed on the hood of a car,” Huntsinger said. “But just recently in Marion County, there was about a little bigger than a tennis ball and a little smaller than a softball amount of fentanyl that was seized, and that was enough to kill 28,000 people. Just enough to fit on the end of a pencil is enough to kill someone.”
And so what’s happening, Huntsinger and other experts that were interviewed said, is that illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana are being laced with fentanyl, which causes an opioid overdose and the person using it to stop breathing.
Fentanyl is also being pressed into pills.
“Rainbow fentanyl” refers to brightly colored pills and powder, which has been located in 21 states so far, according to Anne Milgram, head of the DEA, during an NBC News interview earlier this week.
They’re commonly referred to as “Skittles” or “Sweethearts” due to their candy-like appearance.
From May to September of this year, according to Milgram, the DEA seized 10 million of those fentanyl-pressed pills and 1,000 pounds of powder, an equivalent of 36 million potentially lethal doses.
And it’s not just adults who are getting into those potentially lethal doses of fentanyl, experts point out.
Jeanette Craw is the director of administration for Overdose Lifeline Inc., an organization in Indiana that works to help individuals, families and communities affected by substance use disorder.
According to statistics provided by Craw, overdoses among youth age 16-29 increased 864% from 1999 to 2020.
And in 2020, 84% of overdoses in youth age 15-24 were due to opioids, Craw added. That number more than doubled when fentanyl was involved.
Craw, like Huntsinger, noted that because of statistics such as those, it’s important to talk to kids early and often about the dangers of illicit drug use.
But it’s also important to understand the factors that come into play which lead people, including youth, to use drugs in the first place.
“The key to fighting addiction is much bigger than just expecting abstinence,” said Matt Oliver, CEO of Kokomo-based recovery center Turning Point System of Care. “Some would say abstinence is the only way to recovery, and that’s one way to look at it, but it’s not largely effective for a whole lot of people.
“When we look at it, there are a lot of individuals that use (illicit drugs) to escape,” Oliver added. “What are they escaping from? They might be escaping from family stress, financial stress, just day to day things.”
So we know why fentanyl is so dangerous and potent, but what can we as a society do in the fight against it so we don’t continue to lose our parents, siblings and children to its impacts?
The answer, experts say, is not as simple as just telling people not to use drugs.
They admit that it’s more about providing the proper tools and support should an overdose occur and walking alongside people on the path of recovery.
NaloBoxes, vending machines and voices in the fight
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton once stated that it takes a village to raise a child, and experts say that can also relate to helping those struggling with substance use disorder.
“It’s all hands on deck, and it requires all of our communities to come together to fight it,” Huntsinger said when asked how to curb opioid overdoses across the Hoosier state.
And while what that approach looks like might be different throughout the state, Huntsinger said one very important tool in the fight against fentanyl has been the drug naloxone, also known as Narcan.
Naloxone is an opiate overdose reversal drug, meaning that it removes the opioids that are stuck on receptors in the brain and allows that individual’s respiratory system to begin working properly again.
Prior to 2015, Hoosiers had to have a prescription to carry and administer the life-saving drug, but now it’s free and available for use by anyone, thanks in part to Overdose Lifeline Inc.
Justin Phillips is the organization’s executive director.
“We recognized the gaps that existed in knowledge and awareness of the education,” she said. “So side by side, we sort of started filling those gaps, and we continue to grow according to continued recognized gaps.”
Some of those gaps had to do with naloxone accessibility, Phillips noted.
So a couple years ago, Overdose Lifeline Inc., the state of Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s administration partnered up to distribute 5,000 naloxone kits per week, which they do so through the help of over 200 local distribution partners.
Those naloxone kits — which are completely free — have come in the form of NaloxBoxes and Narcan vending machines.
There are 430 NaloxBoxes and 19 vending machines throughout the state, Huntsinger noted, positioned anywhere from the outside of libraries and drug treatment centers to hospitals and the side of a neighborhood bar.
“It really is our goal to make access to naloxone,” Huntsinger said. “We want to have a zero-barrier access in all 92 counties. … We know that access to naloxone is giving people another chance in entering recovery.”
Overdose Lifeline Inc. also partnered up earlier this year with the CareSource Foundation to form a new program that will allow school officials throughout the state to have naloxone training and kits supplied to their corporations.
“I think that it was best said by former (United States) Surgeon General Jerome Adams,” Phillips said. “You’re more likely to administer naloxone in this current climate that you are CPR. Everyone should have it, and it should be accessible wherever we have other emergency medication and emergency response equipment like AED machines.”
Turning Point SOC’s facility has two NaloxBoxes, and Oliver said he believes the boxes are a big assurance to those who might someday need them.
“In the past three months, we’ve gone from distributing 50 kits to over 150 kits,” Oliver admitted. “We see the numbers expanding. And we also give out fentanyl test strips in the kits, which helps to know what’s in what someone is about to use.”
And while Oliver and the other experts interviewed said there are still stigmas and misconceptions when it comes to naloxone — such as you’re just enabling people to continue to use opioids — those stigmas are just plain wrong.
“The reality is, whether you like it or not, there is a population in any given community that uses drugs,” Oliver said. “It comes back to how people feel about their ability to impact change. … I think what’s important is that naloxone does change lives. It saves lives, and it allows people to move into a life of recovery simply because they’re alive to do it.”
And if you can get that person with substance use disorder into a life of recovery, there’s a chance to positively affect that person’s life, Oliver said.
“I would certainly love to see that nobody uses drugs,” Oliver noted. “Is that practical or realistic? Probably not. Why probably not? Well, because people are human, and sometimes people wan to escape from bad experiences or bad situations. … But I would like to see is that we have a response and an appropriate care system that gives people every opportunity to say, ‘Yes, I want to invest in my recovery.’
“So I think society as a whole, we need to look at what we value,” Oliver added. “What do we want to invest in? … The more we learn, the more we serve others, the better capacity we have to help each other out and love our neighbors.”
It’s a concept that all the experts interviewed agreed on.
“Substance use disorder is a chronic disease of the brain,” Phillips said, “and no one gets recovery the first time because of a plethora of reasons. … People want to label it as an acute situation, but it’s a chronic situation. So, I would argue that when people say these kinds of negative things (about it) that we don’t say these kinds of things about Type 2 Diabetes, which is also a chronic disease. So why are we saying them about substance use disorders.”
For Huntsinger, who’s traveled the state in recent weeks and months lauding the importance of naloxone, recognizing that fentanyl is a crisis but also understanding that we as a society have the tools to combat it is critical.
“You’re hard-pressed these days to find somebody that hasn’t been touched by the drug epidemic,” he said. “That has gone a long way to reduce stigma right there. But our society as a whole can be a lot more compassionate toward one another. I think if we were willing to reach out and help our fellow Hoosiers, it’d go a long way. That’s something I’d say to people reading this.”
“Oh, and carry Narcan,” he quipped.