New website provides families with resources, education about fentanyl
A new fentanyl education website for Oregon families launched this week with the aim of reducing significant gaps in communication with teens and young adults about pills laced with the highly lethal synthetic opioid.
In the last five years, 332 Oregonians aged 15 to 34 have died from drug-related causes, primarily from fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a statewide survey of 1,352 Oregonians, about 75% of Oregon parents reported talking to their child about the dangers of prescription pill use, but only 40% of teens and young adults recalled having had this conversation.
The study, commissioned by national nonprofit Song For Charlie, also found three out of five Oregon youth and young adults consider the misuse of prescription pills a serious issue, but saw the use of of illicit drugs as a much more dangerous issue.
About 75% of teens and more than half of young adults surveyed said they were less likely to use a prescription pill without a prescription after learning about the risks of counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl.
Beaverton resident Jennifer Epstein, who lost her son to a fentanyl-laced pill overdose in December 2020, is leading the launch of The New Drug Talk Oregon.
“The drug landscape is so much more dangerous than a few years ago,” Epstein said. “One misstep can cost a young person their life.”
The free resources for learning about fentanyl, prescription pills and how to have impactful conversations about
their dangers are at thenewdrugtalk.org/oregon A Spanish version is at lanuevadrugtalk.org
“One pill can kill”
Epstein and her husband, Jon, found their 18-year-old son, Cal, unconscious in bed, a bag of pills nearby.
Cal was visiting home during his winter break from college and had purchased what he believed to be OxyContin, but the pills were laced with fentanyl.
An investigation following his death found Cal had searched online the effects of OxyContin, what the right dosage for his weight was and how the pills would interact with his prescribed anxiety medication.
“While he made a poor choice, he was trying to be safe and he was trying to take the appropriate amount for his body,” Epstein said.
She said she and her husband had taken their sons to school-led presentations about the risks of drug use, but fentanyl was not something any of them knew about at the time.
Mark Stewart, Willamette University professor of psychology, agrees that the prevalence of counterfeit pills for prescription medications such as Adderall, OxyContin, and Xanax that are laced with fentanyl increases the risk for drug-related deaths.
With the rise of fentanyl, the drug landscape is becoming more complex, and now “one pill can kill,” said Stewart, who is on the advisory board for The New Drug Talk Oregon.
He said a lot of the risk for overdose has to do with the way fentanyl-laced pills are manufactured. There’s very little quality-control and illicit manufacturers are using non-scientific processes to make pills that contain fentanyl, he said.
“Nobody wants to kill their customers, but you’re talking about something that’s so powerful, so highly addictive and so inexpensive to make and easy to conceal,” said Stewart.
Education to save lives
The goal of The New Drug Talk is to inform parents about risk factors and change the way they talk with their kids about drugs, based on expert advice around effective communication strategies.
The program was first piloted in California and has been updated, Epstein said.
“When we lost Cal, it was complete shock, and it hit us hard,” she said. “We knew that prescription drug misuse was a problem, and that if we could share this information, that we could save other families from experiencing the same loss as ours.”
Epstein said one important takeaway is to have those conversations when your kids are not distracted.
The New Drug Talk contains tips for how and when to have these conversations, such as when your child gets a phone, is going to a sleepover or if there’s an overdose in the community, Epstein said.
Sydney Wyatt covers healthcare inequities in the Mid-Willamette Valley for the Statesman Journal. Send comments, questions, and tips to her at SWyatt@gannett.com or (503) 399-6613
The Statesman Journal’s coverage of healthcare inequities is funded in part by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust , which seeks to strengthen the cultural, social, educational, and spiritual base of the Pacific Northwest through capacity-building investments in the nonprofit sector.