Glenwood Avenue and Cornerstone Tavern bustle with club-goers before 1 a.m. in the Glenwood South district on Friday, July 21, 2023.
BY JOSH SHAFFER JSHAFFER@NEWSOBSERVER.COM
The phone rang at 3:30 a.m. on a Friday night, and Kelsey Walters woke to chilling news:
Her daughter and a friend took an Uber home from a Glenwood South bar, but by the time the ride ended, they were blacked out in the back seat — unresponsive when the driver tried to shake them awake.
The driver called 911 and EMTs found the two young women with pupils constricted to pinpoints, making the crackling sound of a death rattle. It took Narcan to revive them. When Walters got the call, they were recuperating inside a pair of ambulances, confused about everything.
CARY, N.C. (WTVD) — On Tuesday, Wake County school officials took another step toward putting potentially life-saving medicine into public schools — countywide.
Wake County School Board members approved a new policy Tuesday that would require all schools in the county to keep a supply of Naloxone — also known by its brand name Narcan — and train faculty members on how to use it. Families who have been touched by the fentanyl epidemic say that’s a big win.
“The more we say fentanyl out loud without shame, the more people understand that anybody could die,” said Barb Walsh, a Cary mom and founder of the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina.
Someone’s going to die because Naloxone wasn’t in school. And is that a risk they want to take?
Barb Walsh, founder of Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina
Barb’s daughter, Sophia, died in August 2021 after drinking from a water bottle that had the dangerous opioid mixed into it. Since then, Barb’s made it her mission to not only support families like hers but also promote life-saving medicine however she can. She founded the Fentanyl Victims Network in August 2022, one year after Sophia died.
“I have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen just in case I have a fire, that’s because I want one,” she said. “Naloxone is the same thing.”
In December, Barb attended a Wake County school board meeting, urging officials to consider requiring Naloxone be put into schools. Now, that’s one step closer to becoming reality, after a new policy was approved — and just needs to be voted on to become official.
“We don’t know where the threat is going to come from. But if we have a tool that can save a life, particularly one of our students’ lives, we want to do everything we can to take those steps,” said board chair Chris Heagarty.
According to state health statistics, Naloxone was used for suspected overdoses 21 times on school grounds statewide last year. Walsh said it’s not worth waiting for more.
“It may not have happened in North Carolina yet. But someone’s going to die because Naloxone wasn’t in school. And is that a risk they want to take?” she said.
Though there’s work to be done — only about 20% of North Carolina’s public school districts have Naloxone policies — the significance of Tuesday’s decision isn’t lost on Walsh.
“It doesn’t take an army. It doesn’t take a lobbyist. It takes a mom who’s lost a child to stand in front of the school board to make this happen. And that’s significant,” she said.
Funding for the new policy is not yet clear. Heagarty said they’ll be targeting possible state and federal funds in addition to county funding out of the superintendent’s budget. The policy will be discussed at a full board meeting in May, and if passed could be in place by next school year.
Narcan is the FDA-approved nasal form of naloxone for the emergency treatment of a known or suspected opioid overdose. The Wake County school board is considering a policy to have naloxone at all schools. News & Observer file photo
Wake County schools could soon be stocked with Naloxone to treat potential opioid overdoses on campus.
The school board’s policy committee recommended on Tuesday new rules on emergency use of Naloxone. The policy requires schools to train people in how to administer Naloxone and directs Superintendent Robert Taylor to develop a program to place Naloxone at schools, early learning centers and district administrative offices.
“This is fantastic,” said school board member Sam Hershey. “This warms my heart we’re going in this direction. I think it’s crucial. At some point it’s going to hit, and we’ve got to be as ready as we can be.”
Many people in recovery from drug use often need help finding a place to live.
Housing can be even more of a challenge if they lack familial support or struggle with mental-health issues. If they are recently incarcerated, they are 50 times more likely to overdose and die as a result.
Wake County leaders want to expand ways to help with $7.5 million in opioid settlement money next year.
Over the next 18 years, Wake County will get $65.6 million from the historic national opioid settlement. The money comes from companies that made or distributed prescription painkillers and were sued for their role in the millions of people who overdosed on opioids or became addicted.
“We’re serious about this; we’re excited about this,” said Wake Commissioner Cheryl Stallings, one of the leaders who spearheaded the effort. “We all now recognize how great this need is. Unfortunately, sometimes, it takes a real crisis to get our attention and I’m sorry that we’re in this place, but we have a great opportunity.”
Where is the $7.5 million going?
In 2022, 219 people died from drug overdoses in Wake County. Opioids, medicines prescribed for pain like codeine, fentanyl, oxycodone, and morphine, were responsible in three-quarters of the deaths.
Over the next 18 years, Wake County will receive $65 million to fight the opioid crisis.
Families who lost loved ones to opioids are helping Wake County plan how to spend millions of dollars to prevent more deaths.
According to Wake County, 219 people died from overdoses in the county in 2022, the last full year of recorded data. That’s one person every 40 hours.
Data from the Raleigh Police Department shows 103 of those deaths — nearly half — occurred in Raleigh, making 2022 the city’s most deadly year on record since police began tracking drug overdoses in 2015.
Over the next 18 years, Wake County will receive $65 million as part of a $50 billion nationwide settlement that forces drugmakers and distributors to pay for their part in the opioid epidemic.
On Friday, Wake County leaders asked for the community’s input on how to best use the money.
Wake County’s Opioid Settlement Community met Friday inside the McKimmon Center at North Carolina State University. The committee brought together more than 100 people, including families who’ve lost loved ones to the opioid crisis.
Cheryl Stallings, a Wake County commissioner, said the county has already received about $4.85 million.
“This is significant, and this is historical,” Stallings said. “We really want to use these funds wisely, and we think one of the best ways to do that is to plan with as many people as involved as how we want to use those funds moving forward.”
The funds have helped expand treatment for people with opioid use disorder and provided resources for survivors of an overdose.
Now, Wake County must create a plan to spend more settlement funds over the next two years.
“We have these funds that can actually do something in stopping that trend and building an infrastructure of health and well being for our community moving forward,” Stallings said.
Cary resident Barb Walsh said moving forward is how she honors her daughter, Sophia, who died of fentanyl poisoning in 2021.
“She stopped at an acquaintance’s house and grabbed a bottle of water, and in that bottle of water was diluted fentanyl,” Walsh said.
Walsh now runs the nonprofit Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina to help shape the response to the opioid crisis in Wake County.
“These folks are compassionate,” Walsh said. “They’re committed to saving lives, and so am I.”
Walsh said she hopes there can be easier access to the drugs Naloxone or Narcan, which can reverse an opioid overdose.
Wake County is currently trying to expand where people can get the life-saving drugs, including working with the Wake County Public School System to make Narcan available on all campuses.
RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Wake County wants the community’s input on how to spend more than $65 million. The county will receive the money over the next 18 years as part of a national opioid settlement.
The county says it wants people directly impacted by the opioid epidemic to help make these decisions, and they hosted a community meeting Friday, bringing together several different groups sharing their stories.
“She died immediately. Naloxone was not administered and 911 was not called,” said Barb Walsh, executive director of the Fentanyl Victims Network of NC.
In August 2021, Walsh’s daughter Sophia was 24, applying to grad school and getting ready to buy a house, but one day, she stopped at an acquaintance’s house.
“She grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge,” Walsh said.
Walsh said the bottle had fentanyl in it, killing her daughter.
“You go into a black hole when your child dies,” Walsh said.
She joined nearly 150 people at Wake County’s community meeting Friday to discuss how the county should spend money from the national opioid settlement.
“This will really help us define how to make these investments over the next two years,” said Alyssa Kitlas, Wake County’s opioid settlement program manager.
Overdose deaths in Wake County have increased since 2019. In 2021, state health records show 240 people died of of an overdose.
“We’d like to slow that trend and really support people with their most immediate needs,” Kitlas said.
The county wants to keep investing in treatment, early intervention and housing support.
Other groups, like the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, also want to make sure people with firsthand experience are part of making decisions.
by Jennifer Fernandez, North Carolina Health News March 4, 2024
By Jennifer Fernandez
LEXINGTON — On a recent Saturday, family members gathered in a circle at a church here to share stories of loved ones lost to fentanyl.
“Our whole world is turned upside down,” said Michelle, a Forsyth County mother who lost her 19-year-old son to fentanyl poisoning. She didn’t want to use her full name for this story or go into details about his death, as authorities are still investigating.
She doesn’t think her son knew he had taken fentanyl, which has become more common as drug dealers add it to everything from heroin to fake prescription medications.
Just a few grains of the highly potent opioid — about 2 milligrams, an amount that’s barely enough to cover the date on a penny — can be fatal. In 2021, fentanyl was involved in 83 percent of fatal medication or drug overdoses in the state, according to N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
“If this can happen to him, this can happen to anybody,” said Michelle, who has made it her mission to help educate other parents about the dangers of fentanyl.
She’s not alone in her fight.
Barbara Walsh, whose Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina organized the recent Lexington meeting, is pushing for North Carolina to require that the opioid reversal drug naloxone be available in all schools. Her 24-year-old daughter died from fentanyl poisoning in 2021 after unknowingly drinking a bottle of water laced with the drug.
The North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force also is looking into the role fentanyl has played in the deaths of not only teens, but young children who likely are getting exposed through trash from illegal substance use left within reach.
“We were floored when we started seeing the deaths of the infants and the toddlers, and that’s really what started our prevention efforts,” said Sandra Bishop-Freeman, the state’s chief toxicologist who works in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
In North Carolina, fentanyl contributed to the deaths of 10 children age 5 or younger in 2022. Just seven years prior, the state recorded only one death in that age group.
For children ages 13 to 17, fentanyl deaths increased from four to 25 in that same time period, according to data shared with Child Fatality Task Force members.
“Having one child or infant death related to fentanyl or other drugs is …, is too much,” Michelle Aurelius, North Carolina’s chief medical examiner, told task force members in November.
During that meeting, Bishop-Freeman read from investigators’ notes about child deaths due to fentanyl poisoning.
The decedent’s mother reported seeing the deceased pick up a baggie and put it in her mouth.
During the autopsy, a small piece of folded paper was recovered from the baby’s stomach.
Law enforcement stated there was a plastic bag and loose pills on top of a 4-year-old brother’s bed.
Another report focused on 22 cases in 2021 where a single substance was linked to the child’s death. Pathologists determined that fentanyl was the single substance in 15 of the fatalities. Only one other single substance killed multiple children that year — carbon monoxide, which killed two children. Also that year, fentanyl was one of the substances attributed in six out of seven deaths where pathologists determined more than one substance caused the death.
“These are startling stories to hear. They’re awful stories to hear, but we need to talk about them so we can prevent them,” Aurelius said. “I don’t want to have to do another autopsy on an 8-year-old who … died of (a) fentanyl overdose with (a) fentanyl patch on her skin after she was left alone.”
Counterfeit pills
For older children, fake pills laced with fentanyl are a rising concern.
In 2021, authorities seized 77,000 counterfeit pills in North Carolina alone. Eight in 10 pills contained some fentanyl.
Data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shows that of the fake pills tested by the agency, seven out of 10 contained potentially lethal doses of fentanyl.
Many fake pills are made to look like prescription opioids such as oxycodone (Oxycontin®, Percocet®), hydrocodone (Vicodin®), and alprazolam (Xanax®); or stimulants like amphetamines (Adderall®).
The fake pills have become easier to obtain, with sales taking place online and on social media.
Further evidence of the impact of these fake pills comes from a recent study by the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Officials looked at a sample of 75 toxicology reports from deaths between 2020 and 2022 and compared results to what investigators learned about the deaths.
The study showed that 50.7 percent of those who died thought they were taking Xanax (an anxiety/depression medication), and 54.7 percent thought they were taking a form of oxycodone (a pain reliever). However, the toxicology reports were most often positive for fentanyl with no traceable amounts of the medications the victims thought they were getting.
Last year, the DEA seized more than 79.4 million fentanyl-laced fake pills in the country, according to a tracker on the agency’s homepage. So far this year, more than 19.8 million pills have been seized nationwide, which is on pace to be one and a half times last year’s number.
Barb Walsh is executive director of the nonprofit Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina.Two women hug while sharing stories of loved ones lost to fentanyl poisoning at a meeting of the Fentanyl Victims Network in Lexington, N.C., on Feb. 10, 2024.Information on fentanyl poisonings in North Carolina sits on a table at a Lexington church that hosted a meeting for families of fentanyl victims on Feb. 10, 2024. A woman shows support for another woman who broke down while telling the story of how she lost a loved one to fentanyl at a meeting of the Fentanyl Victims Network in Lexington, N.C., on Feb. 10, 2024.
Finding solutions
Walsh says the opioid reversal medication naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, should be available in every school. It should be treated like any other emergency item that schools stock, like epinephrine pens for allergic reactions or automated external defibrillators to shock a heart back into rhythm.
Some North Carolina school systems are starting to do that.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is adding naloxone to its first aid kits at every school. Nurses and at least two first responders at each school are to be trained in how to use it.
Wake County Schools, which already allows school resource officers to carry naloxone, may soon follow Charlotte’s lead. District officials plan to recommend that naloxone be placed in every school and a policy be created for staff on training and using it, WRAL-TV reported last week.
Last school year, school nurses, staff or SROs administered naloxone 21 times on school grounds in the state, according to the annual School Health Services Report Brochure. The year before, it was used 14 times. According to the report, 84 school districts last school year reported having the opioid reversal drug available on school grounds through SROs and 22 through a districtwide program.
As of September last year, eight states have passed laws requiring all public high schools to keep naloxone on site in case of overdoses at the school or a school-sponsored event, according to data compiled by the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association.
“Studies show that naloxone access can reduce overdose death rates, that its availability does not lead to increases in youth drug use, and that it causes no harm if used on a person who is not overdosing on opioids,” Gupta and Cardona said in the letter.
They also noted that most states have Good Samaritan Laws that protect bystanders who help someone who is overdosing. North Carolina passed a limited Good Samaritan law in 2013 that permits people who are “acting in good faith” to seek medical help for someone who is overdosing without fear of being prosecuted for possessing small amounts of drugs or drug paraphernalia.
“Our schools are on the frontlines of this epidemic, but our teachers and students can be equipped with tools to save lives,” Gupta and Cardona wrote.
Limited resources
One of the big frustrations that family members expressed at the Lexington meeting was how long it took for them to learn that fentanyl killed their loved one.
“We didn’t know for six months it was fentanyl,” said Michelle, the Forsyth County mother whose 19-year-old died. “They just said, ‘Your son is gone.’”
The Office of the State Medical Examiner has faced an increasing workload due to the rise in opioid-related deaths while struggling to retain new forensic pathologists who can make tens of thousands of dollars more for doing the same job in neighboring states.
Last year, legislators took steps to address that wage disparity in the budget by adding $2 million in recurring funds for each of the next two fiscal years to help increase the state’s autopsy capacity.
Lawmakers also added two toxicology positions, however, those jobs were in response to the expected increase in workload due to the new requirement of comprehensive toxicology on all child deaths investigated by a medical examiner. While those new positions will help address that expanded workload, they do not help with the existing work where the department still needs additional positions, the Office of the State Medical Examiner said in an email to NC Health News. The two new jobs have not yet been posted.
One strain on the office is that 45 percent of the workforce is made up of temporary or time-limited employees, “which creates a very unstable workforce,” according to the medical examiner’s office.
The toxicology lab performs more than 36,000 analytical tests each year, performing analysis on 90 percent of medical examiner cases, the office said. On average, the toxicology lab issues reports on about 15,000 cases every year.
That work won’t let up any time soon, as the number of overdose deaths continues at a steady clip in the state.
In January, the medical examiner’s office identified 332 suspected overdose deaths, down from 368 in January 2023. While some will be classified as non-poisoning deaths after further investigation, most will end up being confirmed overdoses, the medical examiner’s office said.
At last week’s meeting of the Child Fatality Task Force, members talked about the difficulty of seeing so many child deaths from overdoses.
Pediatrician Martin McCaffrey told the task force that the child fatality review committee he is on just reviewed three infant/toddler fentanyl overdoses. Jill Scott, president and CEO of Communities in Schools North Carolina, shared that a 17-year-old had died not too long ago.
“He got a hold of something,” she said. “He didn’t know what it was.”
They are part of a much larger picture of the toll that the opioid crisis has had.
In Arlington, Va., pictures line the walls at the DEA’s offices as a memorial to those who have died from fentanyl. There are so many victims, they ran out of wall space for photos, Michelle, the Forsyth County mom said.
“It kind of takes your breath away,” she said, “when you see face after face after face.”
Patricia Drewes decided to write the message. She wrote Heaven’s story in a letter, wrapped it in a photo of her and sealed it in a bottle. It was found in France.
When Patricia Drewes dropped a message in a bottle off the Carolina coast, she didn’t expect it to be found halfway around the world – but she hoped it would.
“I wanted anyone who found that bottle to know the story of this beautiful girl who had such a beautiful life and a beautiful heart,” Drewes said.
Her daughter, Heaven Leigh Nelson, died of a Fentanyl poisoning in 2019. She was 24.
“These kids are getting illicit synthetic Fentanyl and they don’t have any clue that’s what they’re getting,” Drewes said. “”(Her) life was stolen from her, from myself, from her family, from her friends by a poisoning.”
Since then, Drewes has been raising awareness about the dangers of the illicit drug while caring for her grandson.
“I am the founder of Forgotten Victims of North Carolina. We have eight chapters across the state,” Drewes said. “We reach out to these families, we support these families and our motto is ‘No one stands alone’. That’s the one thing I remember is being alone and thinking I was the only person in the world that this has happened to. We offer support to these families and we become friends and then we become family.”
Every year, Drewes and her grandson take a beach trip on Jan. 28 – Heaven’s death date.
18-year-old Jacob Cope died on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. According to a Facebook post from Franklin County Sheriff Kevin White, Cope died from accidentally ingesting “the tiniest amount of fentanyl
According to a Facebook post from Franklin County Sheriff Kevin White, Cope died from accidentally ingesting “the tiniest amount of fentanyl.”
“His family is scarred forever,” White said.
Cope’s friend, 2023 Heritage High School graduate Wilson Moore, was also found dead that morning.
White said he keeps Cope’s photo in his office to remind him why he wanted to become Franklin County Sheriff.
“It hits close to home for me,” he said. “It will serve as a constant reminder of the passion I have to end the rapid decline that is eroding our neighborhoods, our state and our country.”
It is unclear if fentanyl ingestion is the cause of Moore’s death, but Moore’s mother suspects it is drug-related.
