Thread by @jeppdx

Today I celebrate the life of my forever 18 year old son. He passed in December 2020, but due to COVID, we could not gather until now. Today will be a day of celebration and I plan to put my drug awareness advocacy aside for today after sharing this message. (1)

Drugs have taken a horrible human toll on our society through all the years of Cal’s life. Close to 1,000,000 Americans have died from drug induced causes in the last 20 years. All the gains we made from auto safety and others have been wiped out by drugs (2)

In aggregate, for the most part, the toll on our youth has risen right along with the rest of the pop,always lower but parallel to the overall trend. As the opioid epidemic went to 2nd wave from pharma to heroin, the gap widened prob due to less youth likely to choose heroin (3)

But the 3rd wave, fentanyl, is completely different. This cheap powerful and unlimited supply is driving a hockey stick of death.Legit pharma & heroin are flat, and fentanyl death is the new reality.Fentanyl is sold illicitly as safe looking pills disguised as legit ones (4)

There is now a new victim of the epidemic, joining the others who did not choose to be addicted and also did not choose to die.But these victims may show no signs of drug use.These victims could be your child, buying what they think is a ‘safe’ Pharma over social media. (5)

In many states we now can see the death curve for youth rising faster than others, in part due to the #fentapill issue. I5 corridor in the west especially hit as the illicit fentanyl and fake pills come up from Mexico. Kids do not understand the risks they are taking (6)

Every community is being hit, rural, urban, affluent, not… This will be #1 health issue in the land when we are not fighting and talking about COVID. But kids are dying NOW. They are not aware. To not warn them in the face of these hard facts is practically criminal itself.(7)

And most of this is evident without the latest 2020 data where we know it was worse (93k drug deaths, +29%, +54% fentanyl) and with what many say are under-reported CDC numbers. My son was one of the 2020 victims of this scourge. Here is Cal’s story (8)

I am grateful to journalists such as @noellecrombie and @NickKristof for highlighting these dangers. But there are many political and complex aspects to this problem. I don’t know the answer, but I do know that we can all WARN THE KIDS. (9) oregonlive.com/health/2021/05…

So today while I celebrate Cal’s life,and a mom in Co. Springs mourns the loss of her 2 sons who took a fake pill together and countless others mourn similar devastating losses find out how you can help warn unsuspecting youth.We must at least do that songforcharlie.org END

@SongforCharlie

@SongforCharlie