Parents and community members joined a town hall to voice their concerns about the opioid crisis and share their ideas to combat the issue.
Roxanne Wood attended as a member of Surviving Our Ultimate Loss (S.O.U.L), a peer-support group for moms and families who lost a child to overdose. Her son, Donnie, was 32 when he died from an opioid overdose in 2015.
“We just don’t have the feeling that parents and children realize — especially with fentanyl in the picture — that, you know what they say, ‘one pill can kill’ is very true,” Wood said.
“So we hope to find ways to make parents aware that they can have these conversations with their children, and that children understand how quickly they can become addicted, and how just one time can be fatal.”
Use of fentanyl — a synthetic opioid — has been on the rise among youth. Last year, 11 youths under the age of 21 died from opioid overdose, according to Montgomery County Public Schools. Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“If we’ve learned anything we know that substance use disorder has no boundaries,” said Emily Keller, Maryland’s special secretary of opioid response. “It doesn’t care what you look like, where you come from, what kind of household you grew up in, so it’s right to be concerned.” She said work is being done around the state to combat the crisis.
Keller said the Moore-Miller administration wanted to prioritize substance use disorder, noting her position is new. The administration wants to focus on prevention, treatment, recovery, harm reduction and public safety, she said.
The town hall was held Thursday evening at the county council building in Rockville. It was hosted by the state’s Opioid Operational Command Center and the county’s Department of Health and Human Services.
