Category: Media Coverage

After several UNC-Chapel Hill students died from fentanyl, these students are handing out the antidote

College senior Riley Sullivan often carries a vial of the drug naloxone in his backpack, in a pocket next to his pens and pencils.

He has done this for years, long before he was a student at UNC-Chapel Hill. Once, while volunteering at a homeless encampment in his home state of Michigan, he used it to save a man’s life.

“He was using drugs with somebody else, and they did not have naloxone,” Sullivan says. “This guy came out screaming, asking if anyone had some. And I did.”

Naloxone is the antidote to an opioid overdose. Sullivan took a syringe of injectable naloxone from the backpack he was carrying, walked into the tent and loaded it with a vial of medicine.

“I injected it through his pants, into the front of his thigh,” Sullivan recalled. Then he performed rescue breathing on the man. “And luckily he made it.”

Today, Sullivan has a $15,000 supply of injectable naloxone in his closet at his off-campus apartment in Chapel Hill. He and two of his classmates have become unexpected distributors of the drug in this college town where several students have recently died from opioids.

The deaths are largely unknown to the campus community, but they were discussed at a recent public meeting of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees. The university’s director of student wellness Dean Blackburn led the presentation.

“I want to share a shocking statistic with you, that I hope you find shocking. It is for me. In the last 20 months, we have lost three active students and one young alum to fentanyl poisoning,” Blackburn said. “And I use that term specifically; not ‘overdose’ because our students and alum were not using fentanyl.”

“They were using other substances that were laced with fentanyl, and they did not know that. And the result of that poisoning was their death and our loss,” he added.

Read the full article and listen to the interview on the WUNC website.

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‘Harm reduction’ alliance: Hey, take it easy on the fentanyl dealers

The following OpEd is from the Oct 9 edition of the Carolina Journal.

While most of North Carolina’s political observers have been focused on the long-awaited completion of the state budget, there have also been other bills progressing through the legislature — like SB 189, Fentanyl Drug Offenses and Other Related Changes, which increases fines and penalties for distributing the drug and sets up a task force to come up with new law enforcement strategies.

The bill aims to crack down on fentanyl and other powerful synthetic opioids, a positive step in an environment where over 100,000 people per year are dying of drug overdoses, including over 4,000 North Carolinians. The explosion of these deaths, which used to total around 5,000 people annually nationwide before the new millennium, has made it now the leading cause of death for adults 18-45, higher than other major causes like car accidents or heart disease. Over 70% of overdose deaths are due to fentanyl, an opioid so powerful many immediately overdose and die when they try it for the first time.

State Sens. Tom McInnis, Danny Britt, and Michael Lazzara introduced the bill, which passed the Senate unanimously in March. This week, SB 189 also passed the House, albeit with 20 Democrats voting against. Now the bill heads to the governor for his signature or veto, and at least some on the left think he should choose the latter.

Before the House vote was taken, a coalition of “harm reduction” advocates, including the NC Council of Churches, sent out a press release denouncing the bill.

“Amid State’s Worsening Overdose Crisis, Harm Reduction Advocates Argue SB189 Will Fuel Deaths and Systemic Racism,” the statement begins.

To back the claim that arresting fentanyl dealers will increase overdose deaths, the harm reducers say, “Prosecuting dealers disrupts the drug supply, leading to more preventable overdose deaths.”

This, clearly, ignores the fact that fentanyl dealing is already highly illegal, so supplies are already disrupted when they are arrested. Increasing the fines and penalties on dealers isn’t going to make much difference on that front. But it might act as a deterrent and reduce supply.

The study they cite, from NC State, looked at Haywood County after the original death-by-distribution law was implemented. Either those sending the press release didn’t read it, or they hoped the reader wouldn’t. But the study found the impact of the law was actually a lowering of overdose risk (because dealers lowered potency to avoid the serious charge) in the short term. The study did say there was a possibility of a greater risk in the longer term, but they were unsure, so their biggest takeaway was, “Our study demonstrates most conclusively that further research on the individual and community-level impacts of DIH laws is urgently needed.”

Harm-reduction proponents are fond of calling all their claims “evidence based,” but I’ve found their evidence to be paper thin, like this claim that “prosecuting dealers lead[s] to more deaths” with the study saying mostly the opposite as proof.

After presenting their weak evidence, they go on to demand action based on it: “It is time for lawmakers to recognize the failings of the Drug War, and come to the realization that we cannot punish our way out of the overdose crisis.”

Read the full article on the Carolina Journal website.

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Law change should make it easier to prosecute those who sell deadly drugs

Victims’ families say “death by distribution” laws are a step forward, but they want more prosecutions.

With overdose deaths at all-time highs, North Carolina lawmakers moved this year to make easier to prosecute drug dealers who sell a fatal dose.

Victims’ families say “death by distribution” laws are a step forward, but they want more prosecutions.

Debbie Peeden’s granddaughter, Ashley, overdosed in a Greensboro apartment in 2021.

In the years since, Peeden has been relentless: holding signs in the rain outside the state capitol, showing up at meetings and reaching out to law enforcement, all to try and raise awareness of the threat of fentanyl, and a tool she says prosecutors often fail to use: North Carolina’s death by distribution law.

She saw some success last week when Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law a change that makes it easier to link a drug dealer to an overdose death. The law now no longer requires proof that drugs were sold to the victim in the case of a fatal overdose, just that those drugs were supplied by the suspect.

Read the full article and watch the video on the WRAL News website.

Families advocate for more education and legislation to prevent fentanyl-related deaths

According to the CDC, more than 150 people die everyday to opioids, including fentanyl. Over 13,000 NC families have lost a loved one to the deadly illicit drug.

BURLINGTON, N.C. — According to the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina, 8 people die each day from fentanyl poisoning. 

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, 100x stronger than morphine. 

It can be mixed with illegal drugs, made into pills, and even candies. 

In the eyes of more than 13,000 North Carolina families, fentanyl is a killer. 

“We probably already have surpassed 14,000, that’s enough to fill the Charlotte Knights stadium of dead people,” said Barb Walsh, the Executive Director of the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina.

Walsh lost her daughter, Sophia, to fentanyl poisoning. 

She hosts events throughout the state to let other families to know, they are not alone.  

“You go into a black hole when your child dies and some people don’t come out. I am there for them. I go to the court dates. I feel lucky enough to get them, hold events like this, so they can meet other people who are going through the same thing,” said Walsh.

Read the full article and watch the news segment on the WFMY News 2 website.

Fentanyl Isn’t Just Smuggled In From Mexico. It Also Arrives Duty Free By Mail

Fentanyl isn’t only arriving in the U.S. by your standard-fare drug smuggler, hiding it in suitcases and the back seat of a go-fast boat from Mexico bound for San Diego. It’s still coming in via U.S. mail and other international shippers. And it comes in duty-free. Barring drug-sniffing dogs at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities catching the wayward package shipped usually from China and Mexico, duty-free entry remains a small but active way of getting the killer drug to addicts nationwide.

“CBP continues to see bad actors seeking to exploit the increasing volumes of de minimis shipments to transit illicit goods, including fentanyl and the precursors and paraphernalia used to manufacture it,” a spokesperson for CBP told me. De minimis is a Customs trade provision that allows for duty-free entry of all goods if priced under $800. CBP said that in fiscal year 2022 (beginning Oct 1 and ending Sept 30), most package seizures by Customs agents were from de minimis mail, including seizures for narcotics.

Although the CBP did not specify the source of these packages, Mexico and China are the top two, with China long known as the go-to spot for the raw materials and equipment used to make fentanyl in a lab.

Equipment such as pill presses, used by drug cartels for turning powder into consumable pills, were often seized at CBP mail rooms. Some 80% of those seizures came from duty-free entry, Brandon Lord, executive director of the trade policy and programs directorate, said on Sept. 11 at the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America conference.

Read the full article on Forbes.com (subscription may be required).

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Revised death by distribution law offers relief to victims’ families

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) — Advocates and law enforcement in the fight against opioids in North Carolina are calling a new piece of legislation a major victory. On Thursday, Governor Cooper signed a revised version of SB 189 into law, establishing harsher penalties for people who traffic and provide bad drugs.

Under the revised bill, which treats death by distribution as a Class C felony, drug traffickers and people whose drugs result in others dying will face more serious jail time. It also makes charging those people easier, no longer requiring prosecutors to prove a transaction, just that the drugs were “delivered”.

“What this means is the families who worked to help change the law for the better won. And it means that anyone who loses a loved one in the future faces a better chance of justice,” said Barbara Walsh, Executive Director of the Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina.

Walsh lost her daughter, Sophia, to fentanyl in August 2021, and founded the Victims Network to help impacted families get justice — and to advocate for legislation like the revised SB 189.

Read the full article and watch the video on the ABC11 website.

AG Garland announces $345M in grants to tackle fentanyl epidemic

Vowing to attack the nation’s fentanyl problem on multiple fronts, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Tuesday the Justice Department has awarded $345 million in grants to support education, prevention, treatment and recovery programs.

“We know that no one — no one person and no one family — can defeat the epidemic alone. We need each other,” Garland said during a speech at the Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Family Summit on Fentanyl in Arlington, Virginia. “That is why the Justice Department is providing resources to public health and public safety programs across the country.”

Nearly a third of the funding will go toward the DOJ’s Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program for initiatives such as increased access to the overdose-reversing drug Naloxone, medication-assisted treatment and peer support to overdose survivors and their families. 

Twenty-five million dollars will go toward support, mentoring and other services for young people who have been affected by opioid and other substance use, as well as those who are at risk for substance abuse.

“No one, especially no young person, should have to face this alone,” Garland said.

Garland did not say how all the grant money will be spent. 

Read the full article on the Spectrum News One website.

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Demonstrators call for more federal help to address fentanyl epidemic

WRAL News coverage of the National Fentanyl Rally held in Washington DC on September 23, 2023.

Hundreds of people from around the country attended the march and rally outside the White House yesterday. It was organized by Lost Voices of Fentanyl.

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