State might legalize fentanyl test strips
Zach Creighton was headed to bed the night of Dec. 12, after a long day of work. Unreachable all the next day, his parents rushed from their Boynton Beach home to Creighton’s place in West Palm Beach.
There, they discovered their son, 31, had died from a fentanyl overdose — becoming part of a staggering, and growing, number of deaths across Florida and the rest of the nation.
In the weeks since, Mary Beth Creighton has been grieving the loss of her son, and become an advocate for combating the scourge of fentanyl.
Zach Creighton’s death has put her face to face with local, state and federal elected officials and their aides as she implores them to take action.
Last week she was in Tallahassee, and will be back at the state Capitol again this week, pushing the state Legislature to legalize test strips that can detect the presence of fentanyl, something she — and many experts — believe would save lives.
Enormous problem
Fentanyl is widespread, and deadly.
“The lethality of fentanyl is very hard to overstate,” Wilton Manors Police Officer Kevin Loughran said at a late January event in Miami. “Fentanyl poisoning is happening more frequently than I think anyone realizes.”
Loughran has received commendations for saving lives by administering naloxone, an antidote, to counteract the effects of an opioid overdose. But he said when he was asked to appear at the event with Gov. Ron DeSantis, “I couldn’t even recall the exact situations or the details of the situations because there’s been so many of these lifesaving interventions. It’s hard to keep track of them.”
Dr. Kenneth Scheppke, a deputy secretary of the Florida Department of Health, said Friday at an event in Destin that the death rate from fentanyl has increased almost 800% since 2015.
State statistics for 2021, the most recent year available, show that fentanyl caused 5,791 deaths in Florida, a 9% increase from 2020 — and a 77% increase from 2019.
Reports from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission shows fentanyl was responsible for more than double the deaths caused by cocaine, the cause of the second-highest number of drug-related deaths, in 2020 and 2021.
In South Florida, there are dozens of fentanyl overdoses every day. In both 2000 and 2021, there was more than one fentanyl-caused death every six hours in the region. In 2021, there were a total of 568 deaths in Broward, 479 in Palm Beach County and 299 in Miami-Dade County.
Fentanyl deaths can happen in many, many ways, experts said. Often, someone using a recreational drug or supplement — a teen who pops what they think is an ADHD pill from a friend, a student who uses marijuana, an adult who takes cocaine — can die if the drug has been laced with fentanyl unbeknownst to them.
“No one takes fentanyl itself.
The site had a big crew of workers during the walk-through, and there’s plenty of unfinished business still to do. But standing amid the rails, it was easy to imagine the future. Visitors use the walkway beneath Pipeline, which runs from the entrance near Flamecraft Bar and connects to Bayside Stadium. (Workers were installing netting during the hard-hat tour.)
This area, before the construction phase, was used for festivals and seasonal events such as Halloween Spooktacular. But some days it has been closed off altogether or shut down in the mornings.
“This is a much better activation of the space in the park” and it will be open all day, all year, Brinker says. “We do continue to have our temporary events and festivals, so this will get utilized for that as well.”
Move by move
Here’s how Brinker describes the coaster’s travels.
“You launch out of the station immediately with an airtime moment, up to 60 miles an hour. We’ll go over Hammerhead wave turn at 110 feet, all the way in the back. And your car [goes] left and right as you plunge down into our water feature here, which will splash up with lighting effects. You curl right into our one inversion here at the wave curl. After that, we’ll have cutbacks, making figure-eights all the way back to the station,” he says.
The ride experience takes 110 seconds and includes five airtime moments, SeaWorld says.
Where we stand
Surfing and beach culture pervade the area, even while on the
ride. The trains are designed to look like big, wide surfboards, and riders will be in upright positions while in motion.
This sort of bent-knee/ bouncing sensation will be achieved through the “seat,” which adjusts up and down to match individual passengers. There are overhead restraints for each person.
“The ride is personalized to your height. You stand in your neutral natural position, and our operators will set the ride to your height,” Brinker says. “That will give you a little bit of up-and-down free motion as you ride the ride.”
The height requirement for Pipeline is 54 inches.
The coaster was announced in October, and the ride vehicle was unveiled during IAAPA Expo in November.
Feet feats
So, when we think of a coaster’s airtime, we usually think of being lifted up out of our seats. With Pipeline, the air will be underfoot.
“The dynamics of the ride are going to dictate that you will kind of float up and down a little bit,” Brinker says. “But you have a nice amount of freedom, both in the up and the down limits. So every rider will have some freedom.”
That freedom also means ride experiences should vary on every trip, he says.
Could passengers lift their knees and go fetal or do a one-legged flamingo-style stance in keeping with a beachy theme?
“I imagine some riders will lift their feet, while it’s not encouraged,” Brinker says.
“This is such a unique, one-of-akind roller coaster. I can’t wait to experience it because even I don’t know what it’s going to feel like,” he says.