Fentanyl awareness campaign opens eyes in Miami-Dade high schools

The numbers are staggering.

There were more than 110,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States last year: nearly 8,000 in Florida, and 75% were caused by the synthetic opioid fentanyl. An assembly crowd made up of seniors at Miami Lakes Educational Center, a public magnet high school, absorbed the statistics and were riveted to the program staged by a group called Fentanyl Fathers.

The presentation included a documentary film called Dead On Arrival, which features real-life stories of fentanyl’s victims and parents and siblings of the dead.

“It was like you could feel the pain they went through, through the whole thing,” said Stenica Simon, a student who was at the assembly.

Greg Swan led the presentation. He speaks from heartbreaking experience as his son, Drew Swan, died after taking a pill laced with fentanyl. He founded Fentanyl Fathers and travels the country spreading awareness.

“I’m doing this because you can barely get out of bed after you lose your kid, it’s awful, and I get my biggest kicks out of helping other bereaved parents find purpose and passion in their pain,” Swan said.

The main takeaway is that it takes an insanely small amount of fentanyl to kill an adult human being, about two milligrams. When teenagers order drugs such as Oxycontin and Adderall from illicit sources through social media, they rarely get the real deal, and what they do get can kill them.

High school seniors Gabi Lieberman and Stella McLaney started an effort called SAFE, an acronym for Students Advocating Fentanyl Education, to spread awareness about the danger and to advocate for the drug Narcan, which can reverse an overdose, to be available in schools.

“But we also want our message to be to teens that, don’t take that pill that’s labeled as Xanax, don’t take that Percocet, because that’s where the problem is,” McLaney said.

“Seven out of 10 pills are laced with fentanyl and anything that you don’t get from your pharmacy could potentially kill you,” Liberman added.

Swan says he will continue to do his presentation until every high school kid gets the message.

“This should be curriculum in every single school but until it is we get tremendous satisfaction knowing these kids are leaving right now and they will not go anywhere near an unprescribed pill, they’ll be like, I don’t think so, bro,” Swan said, as students were leaving the auditorium.

It sounds like simple common sense: don’t ever take a pill that has not been prescribed for you. However, fentanyl also occasionally turns up in marijuana as well. So the best way to avoid the danger, of course, is to not do drugs in the first place.