A librarian in Wilson County saved a man’s life late last year during an overdose by administering the drug Narcan, reviving him as police and medics arrived.
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Category: Breaking News
Lawmakers, families fight for harsher punishment to combat fentanyl crisis
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Senators move to increase punishments as fentanyl (overdoses) poisonings rise
Treasury Sanctions Sinaloa Cartel Network
Understanding the Sinaloa Cartel
NC Family Summit Media Coverage
The NC Family Summit received substancial press coverage.
CBS 17 News
WRAL TV5 News
NC Policy Watch
CBS17 Coverage of Family Summit
RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Dozens of families from across North Carolina and beyond were together in Raleigh on Saturday, remembering loved ones who died from fentanyl poisoning.
“Matthew was my first grandchild, my first grandson, and I always called him my uno because he was my number one,” one woman said to a group at the Family Summit on Illicit Fentanyl Fatalities in North Carolina.
Family members said the names of victims and their forever ages.
“Jesse’s forever age is 26,” one mom said of a son she lost to fentanyl poisoning.
Families were crying together, hugging each other and remembering loved ones.
Read the article and watch the news segment on the CBS17 web site.
WRAL TV5 Coverage of Family Summit
RALEIGH, N.C. — More than 40 families came together Saturday at the Public Safety and Justice Conference at NC State University.
Eight North Carolinians die each day from fentanyl poisoning, and over 13,376 died from fentanyl from 2013 to November 2022.
Barb Walsh, founder and executive director of the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina, lost her daughter 24-year-old daughter, Sophia, to fentanyl poisoning. Now she’s trying to connect others who’ve lost loved ones to fentanyl.
“Other people who lost a child to fentanyl, or loved one, they shouldn’t stand alone,” Walsh said. “I felt like we would all be stronger if we stood together.”
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NC Family Summit on Fentanyl
Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina and Forgotten Victims of North Carolina are hosting a Family Summit on Fentanyl on Saturday, March 4, 2023. North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein is the keynote speaker.
Stein to keynote summit on fentanyl as legislature considers related bills
Attorney General Josh Stein will be the keynote speaker at a “Family Summit on Illicit Fentanyl Fatalities in North Carolina” this Saturday.
Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid used to manage pain that has become popular in the illicit drug market, is a scourge in North Carolina and across the country, responsible for more than 13,000 deaths in the Old North State over the past nine years.
The gathering is a private event. Stein, who is running for governor, will speak alongside people who have lost loved ones to fentanyl overdoses, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration official and other law enforcement officials. Stein goes on at 12:40, but the event runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the McKimmon Conference Center in Raleigh.
Stein recently asked the legislature for money so he could create a Fentanyl Control Unit. The special group within the North Carolina Department of Justice’s Special Prosecutions and Law Enforcement Section would help local prosecutors handle big trafficking, wiretap and overdose cases. Special prosecutors with the state’s Department of Justice have previously prosecuted drug traffickers, distributors and dealers.
“Fentanyl is deadly and highly addictive,” Stein said in a statement. “Even as we interdict more fentanyl at the border than ever before, too many North Carolinians overdose from fentanyl and are dying. We must hold those who peddle this poison accountable and take them off our streets. I look forward to working with leaders in the legislature to strengthen our state’s ability to prosecute these cases and save lives.”
More than 70,000 Americans died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021.
Stein is the only state official listed on the summit’s agenda — other speakers include Harnett County Sheriff Wayne Coats and Harnett and Lee County District Attorney Suzanne Matthews — but addressing fentanyl overdoses has become a bipartisan affair as the number of people die from overdoses continues to increase each year. The legislature is considering a number of bills that would increase prison sentences and fines for people who traffic fentanyl and broaden the state’s “death by distribution” law, which allows people who deal drugs to be charged with second-degree murder if the drugs they sold resulted in a person’s death.
Progressives in states like New Jersey have expressed concern that more punitive drug laws would mean more people struggling with addiction would end up in jail. Others have warned enacting harsher punishments for fentanyl could be the next phase of the War on Drugs, undermining efforts to reform the criminal justice system.
According to a press release for the event, the summit’s goals are to support victims’ families, investigate and prosecute fentanyl dealers and suppliers, develop a training model for prosecutors to uniformly prosecute fentanyl homicides using laws already on the books. They will also advocate for putting Narcan in every school in the state and equipping all police with Naloxone, which quickly reverses overdoses.
Read the original article on the NC Policy Watch web site.