Sunday was National Fentanyl Awareness Day.
If parents think heroin or meth are bad, drug experts these days have zeroed in on fentanyl as the most lethal, especially in border states like Texas.
It's a painful lesson Deb Scroggins learned more than two years ago.
"It's just, it’s hard,” said Deb.
She lost her vibrant, motivated and funny daughter to an overdose in March of 2020.
“Went and got what she thought was an Oxy pill, and took it. She got sleepy, laid down at the friend's house and the next morning she didn’t wake up," says Deb.
A[lison was only 21 years old.
“She had a smile that would light up a room and a laugh that was so contagious [… ] she was doing something that she shouldn’t have been doing but she shouldn’t have died from it.”
That anguish is becoming shockingly familiar across Texas and the country.
Last year, the CDC said more than 107,000 people overdosed in the U.S. Some 67 percent of those deaths were due to synthetic opioids, like fentanyl.
“It only takes two milligrams, which can fit on the tip of a pencil, to cause an overdose,” said Jason Bradford, the DEA Resident-In-Charge agent for the Waco area.
Locally, I-35 is a favorite route for traffickers moving drugs north, and with social media it’s easier than ever to target teens and young adults.
“The overdoses are skyrocketing. It’s the number one killer ages 18-45," says Bradford.
It’s a reality Deb’s family knows all too well.
“It hurts everyvday. It never leaves my brain. I call our family the not normal family. because this isn't supposed to happen,” she says.
She urges parents to talk and talk to their kids.
It could save a life.
