Children pay the price in Florida opioid crisis

TALLAHASSEE — Ciara sobs as she recounts how, as a middle schooler, she helplessly witnessed her mother’s downward spiral into drug addiction, an affliction that left Ciara at times wishing her mother would simply die to end their suffering.

Now 20, she is one of the countless child casualties of an opioid epidemic Florida lawmakers are struggling to curb.

With a 35 percent jump in opioid-related deaths in 2016, legislators are considering options to stop the spread of drug addiction and to keep patients from getting hooked on prescription medicines that can lead to the use of even more lethal heroin and fentanyl.

Policymakers are focusing their attention on drug users, dealers and doctors.

But child-welfare advocates want to make sure that the needs of wounded children and other family members aren’t forgotten.

On the surface, what Ciara experienced growing up with an addict for a mother pales in comparison with the tales of children discovered in the backseats of cars with their parents passed out from drug overdoses in the front, or toddlers left alone in fetid apartments for days while drug-addled mothers or fathers scour the streets for a fix.

But after her mother, Elizabeth, became hooked on pain pills due to back pain, life as Ciara once knew it rapidly changed. The electricity would be disconnected. The water was shut off. Money would disappear. The family — Elizabeth, her boyfriend, Ciara and