The Partnership for a Drug-Free Hall hosted two Fight Against Fentanyl forums on December 8 at Gainesville High School to create awareness about drug use.
The first forum was for students only and was held inside the Student Activity Center from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. Over 400 hundred students attended the forum according to City of Gainesville Police Chief Jay Parrish. The second forum was held in The Hub and was open to all community members from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
“We have to get the message out there,” Parrish said. “You know, as I mentioned to the students and the parents, there was a time when kids would experiment with drugs, whether it be marijuana or just alcohol and vapes. And we didn't have to worry about a deadly substance being inserted into it.”
The focus of the campaign is to share the realities of the fatal drug Fentanyl from multiple perspectives and how it is affecting Georgia as a whole.
One of the guest speakers, Tristan Davis, has been enrolled in Accountability Court in Hall County since March. He first started drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana in high school. Davis then moved on to stronger drugs that were laced with fentanyl.
“Everything's just gotten better. But you know I've also lost maybe three or four friends this year from a fentanyl overdose. And for some of them, they didn't do it on purpose,” Davis said.
According to a 2019-2020 report by the CDC fentanyl is involved in over 59% of opioid deaths. This year between January 1 and November, the Gainesville Police Department has encountered 60 non-fatal overdoses and 23 fatal overdoses.
“As law enforcement, we're going to take zero tolerance against those who are dealing drugs. If we find cases where they dealt fentanyl, and the person died, we're going to charge him with murder,” Parrish said.
Parrish said together with the community they also want to help the user by cutting the demand side of the supply chain and through education and recovery.
“As parents, I think you have to know. This year two teenagers in Colorado smoked a joint. It was laced with fentanyl and immediately died. They didn't know it had been laced,” he said.
Parrish said drug rings are getting clever with the way they distribute the drugs and how they look. A popular method is to make the pills look like candy.
“Four years ago when I first heard of that [fentanyl] being used illegally, it was easily identified as a grey power. We were scared to death because officers were opening the bags like we do with drugs and smelling it - instant overdose. Narcan around the officers,” he said.
Gainesville police officers carry Narcan with them. This is a life-saving drug used to help reverse the effects of an overdose. By May, GPD was running out of Narcan.
Warning signs of an overdose include extreme sleepiness or fatigue, hallucinations, slow breathing, slurred speech, blue fingertips and lips and snoring or gurgling sounds. According to Parrish, sometimes an overdose does not immediately happen.
Jesse Emmett, the chair of The Partnership for a Drug-Free Hall said this is why events like this are important.
“People need to understand the realities, that it is affecting Hall County. It is affecting Gainesville. We're seeing the overdose numbers continue to uptick. And we want to reverse that,” Emmett said.
Resources such as District 2 Public Health and Jays Place Recovery Center were also at the event.
“Addiction is like a disease, one that is deadly,” Davis said, “It's possible to get sober even when you think you can not and to stay sober and try to help the people around you.
