Fentanyl crisis 'not going away,' say organizers of Space Coast conference

It was early one Thursday morning in 2021 when Suzy Pereira woke, walked to her son Tristan’s room to wake him up and found him lying on the floor.

“My first thought was he was such a hard sleeper. But I looked closer,” Pereira said, recalling how that fleeting thought vanished as she saw his face. A trickle of blood ran from his nose; his skin was splotched. A call to 911 brought help, but it was too late for her son.

“The detective told me that she thought he had got a bad batch," she said. "I said, ‘A bad batch of what?’ It was cocaine with meth and fentanyl. He had enough fentanyl in the syringe to kill 12 people.”

Monday, the Blue Plaid Society, a nonprofit organization founded by Pereira with a mission of providing education on fentanyl, held its second annual Central Florida Fentanyl Summit. Experts, law enforcement and others gathered to discuss the impact of fentanyl — which is 50 times more powerful than heroin — and other synthetic drugs on Brevard and communities across the state and nation.

The conference — held on National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day — was presented at the Center for Collaboration in Rockledge and came even as Satellite Beach police investigated a suspected overdose involving a 15-year-old on Sunday, records show.

More: Fentanyl is a poison destroying communities in Central Florida | Opinion

Across the room, a range of professionals in attendance included doctors, teachers, recovery specialists, parents who've lost children, counselors and law enforcement officers. The reason behind the gathering: to talk about the deadly impact of fentanyl, once relegated to treating end-stage cancer victims and others in severe pain. In the lobby, sponsors provided brochures and books about drug use and offering boxes of Narcan nasal spray, a life-saving medication used to treat overdoses.

Brevard County Medical Examiner Sajid Qaiser's office has been overwhelmed with a steady stream of hundreds of accidental overdose and drug poisoning deaths involving fentanyl and other opioid-related drugs.

His office has seen fentanyl-related deaths involving victims as young as 2 years old.

“It has increased sharply from 2014,” said Qaiser, one of the guest panelists at Monday’s conference.

“This is much needed."

Quaiser said he often tells students visiting his office that the fentanyl crisis is something that they will need to aware of if they're going into the world of forensics. Fentanyl is seen as a major contributor to the deaths of nearly 110,000 people across the U.S., with law enforcement warning that dealers are lacing other drugs, from heroin to cocaine and street marijuana, with the synthetic opioid.

The stories and statistics are haunting.

Fentanyl-related deaths on the Space Coast remain among the highest in the state, FDLE reported. In 2021, the latest year for statistics on drug-connected deaths, Brevard recorded 304 drug overdose deaths, including 262 opioid-related deaths, FDLE said.

More: 'Enough fentanyl to kill 302,500' people seized in West Melbourne raid

“Every day more fentanyl flows into Brevard County,” said Vic DeSantis, commander of the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office’s criminal investigative division. Any given weekend, the office works deadly fentanyl-related poisoning cases.

During one 90-day period during Operation United Front, a multiagency investigation involving law enforcement agencies from across Central Florida recovered 7,743 grams of pure fentanyl, DeSantis said. In July, West Melbourne Police recovered 605 grams during a raid, enough, police said, to kill half of Brevard County's population of over 600,000 people. The state attorney's office has also stepped up its pursuit of dealers in death cases involving fentanyl poisoning.

Panelist Helen J. Bruso, special agent for the Orlando District Office of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said that 60% of the pills recovered by agents carry a lethal dose of the deadly manmade drug. She also pointed out that young people are using social media and payment apps on their phones to order the drugs from dealers.

“It’s not just the drug addict that people think about. This affects everyone. This is affecting families across the nation,” she said.

She urged parents to keep track of their children's social media usage: "Keep up to date," Bruso said.

Pereira advised conference-goers to engage in the lives of their children and the community to combat fentanyl's deadly reach.

“This is not going away,” Pereira said.

“We have to do something.”

J.D. Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641 or jdgallop@floridatodan.com. Twitter: @JDGallop.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Fentanyl crisis 'not going away,' say organizers of Space Coast conference