Too little, too late - fentanyl killed my son. CMS and others must do more. | Opinion
“I’m sorry ma’am, we can’t let you in there.” The paramedics and police officers looked nervously at me and at each other, trying to get someone to take the lead in handling my anguish.
I had never wanted to die as much as I did on those steps that led to the quiet upstairs of my son Laird’s best friend’s house. Red-hot grief radiated from me. I couldn’t see as much as I could sense what was happening around me. The house was mostly quiet, except for me and one other person, desolately wailing from another room.
My son was lying mere feet from me, dead. Fentanyl had killed him. While I am grieving, I am also fighting so this does not happen to another teen. I want Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to do more to warn teens and their families about the terrible scourge of fentanyl.
The day I was called to that house, I could not reach Laird, I could not hold him or even see him. The house became a crime scene, and I was ushered outside. The crushing heat enveloped me as I waited for the coroner to come for my son.
Friends and neighbors stopped by to cry and stand vigil with me for hours. Other neighbors rubber-necked and I wanted to scream at them, to rage that my sweet boy had died and I would never see him again.
I was not prepared for all the things that came next. I was not prepared for the standing-room-only memorial. I was grateful for the sudden loud claps of thunder when Laird’s brother and sister spoke on that hot, sunny day — it felt like Laird was there, with his big energy.
I was not prepared to learn the extent of my son’s drug use. It trickled out. There had been experimentation, some of which I knew about, most of which I didn’t. The experimentation had turned to a search for something to help with the anxiety, depression and bottomless hole of sadness. I knew about the anxiety and depression, not the boundless sadness.
I was not prepared to learn about the drug deal that resulted in my son’s death, nor was I prepared to see the video he took the night before of one of his friends overdosing.
I am not prepared to live every day, getting further and further from “that day,” missing my son, with a grief so deep and so profound that most days all I can do is pretend to be human, pretend to be a mother, a daughter, an employee, a friend.
However, I am prepared to fight. To fight for the kids. To give them a chance against this insidious scourge. To give them a chance to know how to handle the dealers who are friends, older brothers and sisters, older teens and young adults from their schools and neighborhoods.
I am prepared to help them understand that there is no “recreation” with drugs like fentanyl — it’s all Russian Roulette. Two in five street pills contain enough fentanyl to kill a person. Fentanyl is in vape cartridges, pills, cocaine, meth, heroin. It’s everywhere. There is no safe “experimentation” — there is only waiting until you die.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police, MEDIC paramedics, the local police and vice officers are working hard to make a difference. Nonprofits and news outlets are trying to reach people, shaking them out of their NIMBY stupor.
The biggest influencer is Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, where providing basic support languishes in a gray area when it comes to the approval for the distribution of Naloxone to the schools.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools could be the hero. They don’t even have to build a comprehensive drug program on their own. They could use one of the many programs already developed in California and Texas that have proven effective. Instead, they are simply checking boxes.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools continues to share ineffective presentations about vaping, continues to penalize and vilify kids with addiction issues, and refuses to see what CMPD, Atrium Health, Novant Health, MEDIC paramedics, the DEA, local nonprofit organizations — and grief-stricken parents — already know. Fentanyl is here. It’s not isolated, it’s everywhere. It’s getting worse.
Gwyneth Brown lives in Huntersville.
