Transcript for:
International Drug Overdose Awareness Event

Good morning. Andrew Sosnowski here from the Law Offices of Andrew Sosnowski in Elgin, Illinois. Today is August 31st. What an absolutely gorgeous day.

It's a somber occasion, though, because this is International Drug Overdose Awareness Day, and we have an event here in Waubonsie Lake Park in Aurora where we have many people coming to speak on this topic of overdose awareness. Please join. Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Robert Renteria.

I'm the chairman of the Barter Foundation and we address bullying, gangs, violence, drugs, school dropouts and I'm here today to support because nobody should have to bury a child. Hi, my name is Bob Denon. I'm running for King County Board in District 4. I'm here today to understand and understand what we can do to try and help solve this problem, solve this crisis because it is a crisis and it hurts real people.

I'm Kathy Zander. I am the founder of My Child's Life Matters and we focus on the families who have lost a child to a fentanyl poisoning. Today is overdose awareness day. We have a hard time calling it overdose especially when fentanyl is involved. It is a fentanyl poisoning which should be followed up with a drug-induced homicide charge.

Hi my name is Courtney Gutierrez. I am the unit commander of Fox Valley Young Marines in Elgin, Illinois. We are here today to help support and spread the awareness of overdose awareness.

What our program does is we highly support the staying drug-free. It is a big part of our program. It is supported throughout.

All of our kids participate in monthly ways of staying away from drugs and alcohol. And today we're just here trying to let everybody know about our program and the Young Marines and what we do, how we support our community, and how we support veterans as well. Hi, I'm Brisa Dominguez. I'm from Aurora University and I'm 18. I'm Emily Pridemore. I'm also from Aurora University and I'm 18. And this program we have today is going to be an amazing thing for you to bring back to other people, to talk to other students, to talk to your families.

It's about drug overdose and it's not a very pleasant topic. And you're going to hear some people, some very, very interesting stories and sometimes very sad. So these are all from the Justice students. They might be new some day. So, um, we have to train them.

We have to train them. We have to train them. The students here.

This is our coordinator. This is our coordinator. Brandon is the head of the she runs it with her husband before and now is working with the Justice. She's running this and it's very, very painful for her.

To have a bunch of young people in the room is an amazing thing. In my classes, I think one of you guys asked me once, why do I teach and why do I do this? And I said, I want to change the world. And I really do want to change the world.

How we change the world is this. This changes the world. It's all of us. It's not just me.

It's every single one of you. And every single one of you bringing a message somewhere else to somebody else, maybe a little sister, a little brother, you know, and maybe it's an uncle, an aunt, somebody. So we can change the world together. It's always unity to do that together. My name is Andrew Ceznowski.

I'm a professor, proud professor at Aurora University and also Elgin Community College. We have Aurora University and Elgin Community College speakers here today, as well as some other very special guests. I want to introduce you to an organization that is really big in the Fox Valley.

And the name of that organization is the Young Marines. So I have a young man up here who's going to say a few words. tell you because you see these people in uniform and what a great sight is it not let's give them an applause what a great sight to see young people in army uniforms here this because we know we're going to be safe we know that the future of our country is in young people and they're going to tell you a little bit about their organization and what they do get to know them get to know each other Hello everyone, my name is the M Marine Sergeant Bishop.

I'm here with the Fox Valley M Marines as Mr. Senowski said and the M Marines is a national youth organization that is nonprofit profit from ages 8 to 18 Our core values are leadership, teamwork, and discipline. We focus on community service and veterans projects such as luncheons and parades. We do DDR, which is drug demand reduction, which focuses on keeping kids and people off the streets and drug free.

Thank you. And here's my friend come on up and speak and tell us a little about this is Sandra and she's one of the head of the young Marines. Hello thank you for having us. I started this program or this our unit started eight years ago and I started with the program. My son was 10 he's Andrew in the middle over there and he the success that I've watched him grow over has been amazing.

One thing that we do that's very important why we get some national funding from the Marine Corps as we do a lot about the drug demand reduction. So this year we are doing the Red Ribbon Week theme is Life is a Movie, Film Drug Free. So we have the star, some of the kids went around asked you to sign them, it's a pledge to be drug free. We're having our annual Young Marines Birthday Ball in October, on October 19th. The kids are making a drug awareness movie.

And they are going to premiere the movie at the Ball and the stars that they've collected throughout the year they're going to have displayed on the wall of all the pledges that they got to be drug-free. The kids also wear these red paracords as a pledge to be drug-free. So that's a big part of our program and throughout the year we came up our own program we did a drug-free America rocks and they've been painting rocks and on the back of the rocks they have the A picture of one of the people from the faces of fentanyl, someone who has lost their life to fentanyl and it says their age so it'll say forever 19 and their name and then also the crisis hotline national crisis hotline and we've been putting them all over America.

Our goal is to get every state by the end of the year so that is something that kids have been working on and on the front is a drug-free message. So we have stars if the kids haven't got to you if you would come up and sign. star that we can add to the wall and then also we do have some rocks if anyone wants to write a drug-free message.

So it's a wonderful program for the kids it's something that people say I've never heard of you unfortunately they say we're the best kept secret and we don't want to be that secret anymore we want to reach the youth and get out there and grow the program. So thank you for all your support. Dr. Robert Renteria is here and Dr. Renteria has a violence prevention program he's a very very big name out there in the violence prevention arena and I'm going to have him just say a few words to you if you would doctor.

Thank you. My name is Dr. Robert Renteria. I've written a bilingual book series called From the Barrio to the Boardroom, a graphic novel called Me Barrio, and an activity coloring book called Little Barrio. We have curriculum for schools that we donate that addresses critical thinking.

We have a curriculum for churches that we donate to help get our kids in the Bible so they can lead them to Christ. Teach our kids that gangbanging and violence is not a lifestyle but a death style and the ultimate weapon is not a loaded gun but an educated mind. I lost my father to heroin when I was 17 years old so this is a very special day for me because it brings back a lot of memories and I want you to know that the people here, the adults here, they're here for you and anything you need from us, ask.

You ask for help, not because you're weak, you ask for help because you have to remain strong. Thank you, God bless. Thank you Dr. Renton.

Several years ago... It's almost 10 now. I lost my nephew.

My nephew was died. Heroin overdose that was also laced with fentanyl. We still miss him.

Thank you, Andrew, for sharing that. That's never easy sharing personal stuff. But, you know, that's why we're here today, right?

Because this is a very personal type of issue that we're dealing with. How many of you have been affected or at least know somebody who's been who's passed from a heroin or opioid overdose? Several of you, yes.

And if you don't, my hope is that you never will know anybody personally, but the numbers tell me different that basically everybody in here at some point will know someone. So again my name is Rob Russell, I'm the Kane County Coroner. I have been a coroner for us for about 12 years since December 1st of 2012. When I first started, took over, you know I had a lot of issues in the office that needed to be corrected and we, through God's will and you know through a lot of hard work and some great team effort, we've been able to change a lot of that.

At the coroner's office one of the things the very first thing that I was able to change was the fact that we were not doing full post autopsies on suspected overdose deaths. Now some of you may be like well that doesn't really mean a lot to me but from many different perspectives it does. To me an autopsy is nothing more than a post life surgery and it is done very tastefully it's done very professionally and it is needed on some ...times in order to establish a cause and a manner of death.

That's why it is at my disposal to make that happen if necessary. If we don't need to do it, we don't do it, but if we need to do it, we need to do it. Now specifically when you're talking about overdose deaths, it's very important... because there's other contributing factors that could cause someone to die, right? And we don't know.

We can look through x-ray and that kind of thing unless we look inside the body. Unless we look inside the body and if there's no... nothing else that would have killed that person we can then look at the toxicology and say definitely the substance that was in it was ingested into theirs into their body killed them and that's it's important from a lot of from public policy standpoint from possible criminal charges from you know many different reasons why we need to do that we were not doing that in 2012 we had 27 at that time it was heroin deaths heroin was the big substance of the day you and we had 27 of them, 27 deaths. Now, each death has a name, so I just, when I say a number, I want you to realize that it is a number, yes, but each number also represents a name, somebody's life. And to me, that's important.

I take that stuff seriously. Because why? Because this is what I do, number one. And number two, I have a family. I'm the last of eight kids, you know.

I have four children of my own. I got four grandchildren. I understand people care about their families, and if they care half as much, much as I do then it's any amount that is needed to make that correct needs to happen that you know so it's not just a financial issue for me but I want to talk about a story first of all a story I heard long long time ago it was some people were walking along the side of a beach and they saw all of these starfish everywhere I mean just over and there was a guy walking along and he'd pick one up and he'd throw it into the ocean millions of them I don't know tens of thousands of them Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of them. I don't know. But he was walking around picking them up and throwing them back in.

So the people are like, what is he doing? Why is he doing that? And, you know, so they walked up to him and said, sir, you know, what are you doing? He said, well, I'm picking them up because if I don't, they're going to dry out and they're going to die. And they're like.

Did you see how many are out here? How are you going to be able to handle all of these and save all of these starfish? And he said, he stopped, he bent over, picked another one up, threw it into the ocean, and said it made a difference to that one. That's the way.

we have to look at this drug thing. It is something that it seems like it's so overwhelming to many of us. But you know what? We can't solve the macro problem, but we can help that one person.

we can do that maybe have that one conversation maybe have that extra bit of Narcan that we can have in our cars or that we carry along with us and maybe save a life so maybe that person someday can get into treatment because guess what? If they wind up in my office there's no more treatment. Treatment's not available anymore.

So we have to look at this not only from a macro sense but also from a micro sense that we do what we can do and if we continue to do that I think collectively if we all had that mentality, I think that we will make a difference. And I can tell you that, you know, like I said, heroin was the drug of the day back in 2012. Today, about 2015, fentanyl hit the scene because actually our enforcement agencies and our... Convictions and everything started to make an effect on the actual heroin, which is a plant that comes from Afghanistan and, you know, traffic through Mexico, comes from everywhere, but mainly through Mexico. So the enforcement agencies were having some success with the actual heroin as a substance, but then when they figured out that they could buy the stuff called fentanyl or the compounds that make fentanyl and are able to make it and make it very cheaply. And the drug cartels went to that and ordered it from China, came to them, you know, from China to Mexico, where they continued to have their, already have their operations.

It was a lot cheaper. It was much more, again, they were able to circumnavigate through the channels that were there as far as enforcement. And it just exploded onto the scene in about 2015 to the point to where that 27 that we had in 2012, in 2021. that number was 78 deaths that we had. So from 12 to 78. The next year in 2022, we had an additional 78 lives.

Again, not just a number. Those are people's names. Just think of them that way. I give you a number because that's the only way I can represent to you.

many and how big the problem is but that each and every one of those numbers is a name is a family member is somebody that a life that was not fully lived so last year in 23 we had We had 71, so we went down six. I'm hoping and praying that this year we go down again because we have really stepped up our efforts with trying to do this kind of thing, talk to people, to try to express how... important it is that if you think you might need help, you know, ask for it. Or if you think you know of somebody who might need help, there's plenty of, there's many.

I mean, we can never do enough, but we are doing some things. Let's pick up that starfish and throw it in there. You know what I mean? That's what we need to do.

I think that's all we can do. I mean, I remember I played football back in college, okay? And I remember, you know, everybody would always thought about wins and losses, right?

I can't control the wins and losses. I was a lineman. I mean, I didn't even touch the ball hardly.

I don't think ever. But what I can control is the next play. And I can control how I use my foot and how I step and how low I get and how quick I come off the ball. That I can control.

I can't control wins and losses. But if we look at ourselves as a player in this system, we cannot control the outcome of the game. We can only control what we can do. And I ask you and I implore you to please do what you can do. Now, what is that?

What we've done. We've got lots of Narcan that's going out all over the place. It's not a saw ball.

It's not a panacea. It's not a silver bullet. It's not.

I'm going to be honest with you. But it's something that we can do. We can get that out.

We can keep that with us. We already have stories of people that have been saved from Narcan that has come from my office. Now, that's pretty ironic, isn't it, that the people are being saved through the coroner's office? It's kind of ironic, I think.

But it's happening. And I think my job is not just to process the dead, although that is my primary function. It is what I'm elected to do. I am also a law enforcement professional. That is what it says in the statutes that I am.

I am a law enforcement officer that has the same powers as sheriff. That's verbatim from the law. Now, I don't go around, you know, pulling people over and writing tickets because that's not my primary function.

But I do have police power. in that sense. So, but I do stick to what my primary mission is, but also a conservator of the peace, they call it. And that's really what our sheriff is and what our law enforcement professionals are. They're conservators of the peace.

They're peace officers. And the way that I can keep peace is to help keep people alive. I would like to do that, and I'm doing that, and I'm going to continue to do that as long as God allows me to be the coroner here.

Now, whether that be through handing out Narcan or whether that be working with Dr. Renteria, getting his books out and speaking to our troubled youth who are, you know, God knows today they're confused with all kinds of different things that the world is telling them. We have youth that need, I guess the proper word is love. They need to be loved. And how you be loved, how they can be loved is by showing the care, simply.

Just show them that you care. You know, hey, here's a book, you know, is there anything I can do to help you? Is there anything that we can do to, um, move forward and help you. There's some people that I know that I know can help you. There's a guy by the name of Dr. Renteria who has been through some of the things that you've been through and may be able to help you, you know.

I'm just I'm really excited about the partnership that we're gonna have. because he's experienced things that I'll never, I'll never experience. And I've experienced things he never has. But that's the beauty and power of building a team. When you have a team, you don't have to know it all.

You just have to have somebody and know somebody who's been through something. Because two things that I've learned. Number one, you got two ears and one mouth. right? Use them proportionally.

Parents always said that. Listen twice as much as you speak. And maybe some of you are saying, Robbie, I do that now.

But the second thing is you don't have to learn from your own experiences. Your own experience is not the best teacher, actually. The best teacher is other people's experience.

You know, a great, I guess, example of that is when we were going through, when I was a cop and we were going through taser training, they're like, well, you have to get the taser. You have to get tasered in order to be certified. And we're like, why? Well, because you have to experience it in order to know that it works. I'm like, really?

Do I have to get shot too? No, other people's experiences are a better teacher than your own. Now, not to say that there are going to be some bad things and some experiences you're going to have. Use them, of course. But you don't have to be the primary source of your experience.

You can learn and utilize. Other people's experience and do better. And if you remember nothing else, remember that.

Two ears and one mouth and other people's experience is just as good, if not better, it's better actually, than your own. I'm here today because I care about each and every one of you guys and I care about the people. And the families that are going to pass away in 2025 and the rest of 2024, and I want to help thwart some of those dots.

I think it's important. I mean, two universal things. Number one is we are all...

are born and we all die. I share with everybody the fact that I was born and that someday I'm going to die. The good news is most of us, and hopefully everybody here, will live long, healthy lives.

live way into their 70s, 80s, 90s, have a great life, get married if they want to, have kids if they want to, have an awesome career if they want to, whatever it is that they choose. That is the facts. But some of us here will know some people that won't have that privilege of living into their later years.

So it is our responsibility, I think, as those individuals who share those experiences of life and death, to try to help if we can. And that's why I'm here today. because I care about each and every one of you guys.

We've handed out over 1,000 cartons of Narcan in the last two months. So we're really upping our game with this. And again, it is not a panacea.

Don't get me wrong. It will not solve the problem, but it will help that one starfish, and that starfish has value. That one has value. You can get it basically anywhere.

You can buy it if you can't get it for free somewhere. You can get it in any pharmacy. But we offer it for free.

There's an organization called Live for Lolly. And it was founded by a girl whose brother, Albert Laliberte, Alex Laliberte, who, you know, passed from a drug overdose. So she founded this organization.

She was able to get these, those ones that you were talking about. They actually talked to you. You pulled it out and said, okay, you know, put it on somebody's leg and hold it for 10 seconds. And it was kind of like the pens, the EpiPens.

It was kind of like that. And it actually talked to you. I was able to get, I forget how many, two, three thousand of them, gave them to the health department.

So at that point, because we didn't really have as much, but through my connections with Live for Lolly, we were able to get some to the health department, and some of it went out, most of it went out to there. And then the nasal became available, it became much cheaper, and so we started using the nasal. The nasal, there's two per pack, you get a little box, and there's two per pack, and it has a little plunger.

It just kind of looks like this. the thing to put your nose in it put your nose in it and push that thing hard and then wait and see most the time that people come around and now with the fentanyl today it's very strong so you might have to might have to use two but use the one call 9-1-1 after you do the first one that's the very important step you know in between and as the rescue squad is coming if you see them still not coming around you can use the other one up the other nostril and hopefully that will be enough to bring them around. Get to know Coroner Russell. He's got a lot of good things to say.

And the good news for you, the question we had from the audience about the Narcan is we are going to be trained today in using Narcan. So we do have the health department coming and everybody who leaves here today will go home with some Narcan. So they're going to give out free Narcan today and they're going to show you how to administer that.

And it is life-saving like the coroner did say. It is one of those drugs that is only available to those who have a cancer. only used for opioids. So if somebody's using, overdosing on another drug, it's not going to work. But opioids are very, very strong today, very, very utilized in many of the drug communities.

And it would work if somebody's overdosing on the opioids. Oh, yeah. The other thing is about the law.

So if you are using this and you administer it incorrectly, there's what's called the Good Samaritan Law. You're not going to get sued. You're not going to get in a situation where where you will have civil liability for doing something wrong. So if you are trying to help someone, it's called the Good Samaritan Law, and you're not gonna get any kind of legal liability as a result of that, which is a great thing because it encourages people then to try to help.

If you're saying, well, I don't know how to use this, it's like CPR, well, I don't know how to use this. If you're administering CPR or any kind of life-saving principles, and you do it in- correctly, you're not going to have any civil liability and, of course, no criminal liability. So without any further ado, I'm going to have another speaker to tell you some things today. It's a friend of mine as well who I got to know.

Through an organization called My Child's Life Matters. Her name is Kathy Zander and I had the privilege of speaking at her event or maybe a month and a half or so ago in DuPage County. You know if we can plant the seed with you and you can bring it out to somewhere else we are saving lives by doing this. You never know what's going to happen and if any of you in this this area here today want to have another training or do something else I know some people are Aurora University, some are Elgin Community College.

We can also do more work for you there. This is not the end, this is the beginning. My name is Kathy Zander, as you said.

Our organization is My Child's Life Matters because every child's life matters and it is always someone's child regardless of the circumstances. Back in 2016, my son made a choice to snort a line of coke. cocaine, which his best friend had spiked with fentanyl.

And I will say that again, his best friend spiked it with fentanyl. His best friend went on to kill two other people that we know of. So when you lose your child, one of the things that you do is you have have to go through a timeline and you have to try to figure out what happened and it takes years and years and years to happen and you find out who were better detectives than sometimes the detectives themselves are because that emotional bond you have to figure out what happened.

Back in 1989 the state of Illinois passed a law for a drug-induced homicide where if I was to hand you something whether you injected it, inhaled it, snorted it, however you took it, if you were to die from it I would go to jail for a drug-induced homicide. We don't use that law. So this kid right now is out in Carbondale Illinois in a college campus and that's where he is still doing the same thing repeatedly over and over and over.

We have fought effortlessly in DuPage County to try to make a difference. Unfortunately this is everywhere. Politics have become more important than people more important than human life.

I'm not alone where I want to stay this so the thing that people don't understand and I was telling John this earlier is that when you lose your child or someone close to you, the ripple effects that it does to the families afterwards is devastating. Marriages, you get divorced. I think that's like 93% of marriages get divorced.

Family members start fighting with each other. They're blaming each other, and it destroys the whole entire family. We missed the mark on that, and we jumped in, and we tried to help the kids that were addicted, and we weren't paying attention.

to what was going on with the families, with the moms that were committing suicide and the families that were suffering in silence. So that's what we're focused on now is we are boots on the ground, helping the families, trying to get the families to come out and talk openly and not be ashamed of what happened. Maestan made a stupid choice to snort a line of cocaine, and I can stand here at the age of 54 and tell you, when I was in my 20s, I snorted a line of cocaine. It shouldn't be a death sentence. He should have learned from his mistake.

He didn't have to die from that. and everybody needs to understand their worth. So you might feel kind of, ugh, one day, but you're not. I mean, there's someone that loves you, and there's someone that does care about you, and if you don't feel that way, then find someone else that will. You know, that will make you feel that way.

Just so everyone knows, this is a lethal dose of illicit fentanyl. So it's like two grains of salt, depending on the weight of somebody, could kill you. Last year at the DEA Family Summit, summit, Ann Milgram, the head of the DEA in Washington, D.C., told us that our children died from China making illicit fentanyl from less than a penny.

So our children in America are dying for less than a penny in the beginning start of it. When we lost John in 2016, we were losing 124 a day. That number has jumped to 307. As Ann Milgram stated, that is a plane crash every single day coming.

down on American soil and nobody is talking about it. The stigma that goes with this needs to get kicked out of under the carpet rather than the addicted ones getting kicked out of the carpet. 95% of these kids nowadays, they're not addicted. They're going on Snapchat and they're buying an Adderall or a Percocet or a Xanax online and it's pressed with fentanyl and that's what's killing them. So this number has changed.

It used to be four out of ten. Now it's every seven out of every ten. So the fentanyl test strips that they give out, I'm not a fan. I'm just going to say that honestly, because if you break open a pill and if that little piece right there had fentanyl in it and that was the piece that you took, you're gone. That's it.

So just I know that's the saying, you know, just don't do drugs. Just it's not worth it. It's not one high is not worth getting, it's not worth losing your life.

Like the head say of the state, we do a motorcycle ride every year, we ride for all the kids that we have lost. We do this nationally. We rode for about 8,000 kids.

and that park was covered in faces. I'm a very firm believer that we have to put faces and humanize what fentanyl has really done to our country. There's babies in there that have touched this. There are 20 year olds, 30, 40, 50, 60 year olds.

It doesn't discriminate. It doesn't discriminate by your age, by your race, by your financial status. It doesn't discriminate.

McHenry is a red county, and they had the biggest fentanyl seizure in McHenry. And I said to her on My Child's Life Matters, I said, that's astounding, and I'm so happy that law enforcement was able to seize all that fentanyl. But now I'm really paranoid about what they haven't seized.

And we should all be thinking about that. about that. We should fear what we don't know. We don't know what's here and we don't know who's here in King County. And so, you know, she's been fighting this battle in DuPage County for the last eight years since her son passed away.

And she's now a resident here. I feel a lot safer having somebody like Kathy in my backyard now who's going out there to educate and to embolden people pushing back on this issue. There should be that bag filled with all those victims.

We were gonna put a few of the pictures up and she said no Linda because I don't want another mom. see someone else's kid up there and not have their child displayed because their life mattered too. And so she's absolutely right to, you know, even though we don't know these people, they are our brothers and sisters and we are tasked here on earth to be our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper. And so if there's one thing that you do in life, I think it is to get involved and to show your humanity to somebody else.

And one other thing I wanted to point out. point out too when we were talking I met Kathy out in March and she sat down with me and her late husband she just lost her husband Rob. Rob was a fierce fierce fighter for the for drug-induced homicide to go out and change the world and I think he did. I really think that he changed a lot of people's hearts and minds and got people motivated and activated and I think that Rob's probably now looking down at you Kathy in heaven. And he's giving you a round of applause because this is something, this is the fight of your lifetime.

And now you're taking this on on your own. But we just want you to know that you're not alone because we're going to be with you, okay? I will tell you that my husband said fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction. And unfortunately, we do not call it an overdose. We call it a poison.

So these kids are being poisoned for less than a penny. I don't really know how to say this the right way. The only way that I could say it is the cases are cherry-picked on which ones they're going to charge. So if it's going to take some effort, it's going to take a lot of investigation. They're just going to be accidental overdose, done, close the case, we're done.

So I will tell you that probably 90% of the moms that I talk to, they know who the drug dealers are, and they follow them, and they know where they're at, and they're still doing the same thing. And this is eight years later. So if he would have been stopped, that starfish would have, one starfish would have been, you know, thrown in jail.

Two other families would have their kids still right now. So like you've been... See you.

So the day I got everything from one of my son's friends in text messages, I sent it to the sergeant of Glendale Heights Police Department. And I got a phone call back the next day telling me that he was really sorry that the statute of limitations is up for a drug-induced homicide. Statute of limitations in Illinois is for three years.

I had the house rep get a bill on the floor to try to lift that because if it's homicide, there should be no statute of limitations. But unfortunately, there is. And then COVID.

It hit that bill got kicked to the curb and I cannot get anyone to talk to me about it ever since. If it's prescribed, no, anything from the streets. I wouldn't trust anything from the streets. Yeah, everything's being pressed.

There's pill presses now. You can find everything out on the DEA website as well. We have some information on our Facebook page as well, but there's pill presses. And they can press just a little bit of that fentanyl in there, and that's it.

The goal is to get them addicted because once the withdrawals, I mean he can attest, once the next day when the withdrawals start coming, they're going to want more. And then they're addicted. So, but they're not pharmacists, they're not doctors, and they don't, they don't know the person's weight, they don't know their tolerance. They don't have to worry about a reoccurring client. I mean, there's, we're in America, I mean, we can never get enough of anything, you know.

This lunch crowd, they think maybe they make a batch of a lunch like me. ...like not necessarily taking a drug and being affected by fentanyl. The people that I've known, their babies had touched the table or their grandkids have touched the table and then they put their hands in their mouth. Sure, go ahead.

Thank you all for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kathy, for coming out and sharing your story.

And let me follow up a few things on this that I've heard. Number one, you know, again, we have young people in this crowd. I can't impress upon any of you enough that this is a dangerous world we're living in. You heard things that actual drugs that you're thinking just to get you high recreationally can kill you. And if you think it's fake, it's not.

You hear the statistics, it's growing. You know, and here's the sad part about that is, as Kathy said, a lot of these drug manufacturer street people who are pushers have pill mills that they can actually press these and make them look like the actual drug itself. So it looks like you're getting a drug from a pharmacist when, in fact, on the street you're getting something that's been manufactured and laced with something that's going to kill you.

Now, again, it's not purposeful, but that's a really big, strong message. You know, back when I was younger, back when I was probably your age, most of the young people here was in 1980. You know, that's when I was your age, in 1980. And at that time we had Ronald Reagan was president. And his wife was the drug person that actually did stuff and she said, just say no.

You know, and that didn't work because just saying no was not enough to make people stop using drugs. But in many ways, today where we're living, that message has to resonate again. These messages that the young Marines are sending out to make yourself drug-free, those are going to save your life.

So even if you're thinking you're using something recreationally just for fun, it can kill you. And it truly is. And it's not something to scare you, but this is the reality that's going on.

You've heard from the coroner. You've heard from a lady who lost her son. You're going to hear from law enforcement. The other thing I'm going to tell you from a perspective as a prosecutor, I'm a former prosecutor as many of you know were my students and not.

They are very, very difficult cases to prosecute. You know, drug-induced homicides are hard because who is the one that's giving the drug? Sometimes you don't know it. And Kathy's right.

A lot of prosecutors, which I hope I would not be one of them. will cherry pick their cases. You know, we used to say that sometimes a prosecutor wants to see it on tape.

They want to have it like the smoking gun, somebody standing with the gun on a videotape before they do it. Sometimes in prosecution you have to be... aggressive and you have to go after individuals and take your punches and take your kicks and take your licks to stand up for the victims of crime.

And if that happened more often, maybe we would scare the people who are doing this into a situation where they're not doing that. They're not going to come to our communities. They're not going to push this poison in our communities.

So again, that's a message that I want you to bring home with you. The just say no message is still strong, but it's hard. to hear but understand that that message is coming back because people are dying. A friend of mine, Dr. Todd Rameljack, who is a former sergeant with the Elgin Police Department and he'll give you some law enforcement perspective on this problem as well.

Thank you. Thanks Drew for having me today. I'd just like to say a couple thank yous. First off to Drew for having me out here today on this such important topic. When Drew asked me to come out, I was coming out no matter what.

So I really appreciate it. We do have a great team here with the coroner here also. I really am appreciative of what the coroner has done for our program at Elgin Community College. We want to have a strong criminal justice.

community and the coroner does everything he can for our criminal justice program. He lets us come there and view autopsies unfortunately but it's great experience for the students, people who want to get into this type of career. I know the office is always open to us so thank you, coroner. One thing, Drew, I want to mention what he's done and how committed he is to the criminal justice area and these programs is that he was nice enough to initiate scholarship at the Elgin Community College, the first one we've ever had for criminal justice.

So with his generosity we've been able to start our first ever scholarship. So thank you Drew, appreciate it. So I want to spend, Drew asked me today to come in to talk for a few minutes about you know my perspective when I was a law enforcement in Elgin at the City of Elgin and things that we were seeing in the area of overdoses and it is very prevalent. It's every day. Drugs are in everything.

And one of the things I was thinking about as the coroner was giving us some of the timelines with heroin and whatnot. I remember when Narcan came out, I mentioned it that, you know, we were trained on it to shoot it through the nose, and then we were given the shots in the leg to if people, if we suspected an overdose. And I will tell you, it was an amazing effect that it brought people. right back out of their overhose.

I mean they literally snapped right out of it. You would give somebody the the shot through the nose and within a minute they were up and around and alert and they were it had started to reverse the effects of the Narcan. It was so amazing that we started to give some of our officers life-saving awards because they were saving lives.

They were out there. I remember the first one first time we used it the officer went out there gave the person the Narcan. They Came out of their OD and they were fine.

I mean the paramedics still show up and we gave that officer a life-saving award. But then we started doing it two times a day and then we were starting to give the Narcan several times a day, multiple times a week and now it's just become an everyday thing that we at law enforcement does and uses because of the seriousness of the drug use. And if there's anything we can do here, I appreciate Kathy for sharing her story. Those are the ones that...

You know, they're tough to hear and she has the strength to come here and tell us all about it to make us better and get us back out in the community. The story that the coroner mentioned about the starfish, that must be a law enforcement thing because I remember that back in the day, Mr. Coroner. I know that story real well. When you go into law enforcement, you can't have this attitude of, well, I don't know the person, I'll do whatever I can.

I mean, you are doing that for the family. You have to be in there and you have to give it everything that you can in order to help families in closure with some of these things. There are some horrible stories. I mean, I have plenty of stories where, unfortunately, someone has died with the needle in their arm. You know when we get there, as soon as we show up, they have the needle in their arm and they're having difficulty breathing.

They're just about dead and their body is just trying to get any oxygen that it can. And I remember one vividly, the gentleman was on his couch and his roommate had called us in and I got there first. Paramedics were right behind me and he was on the chair and his head was going back and forth and he was just trying to get any oxygen that he could but his body was already shutting down.

overdose from heroin. We were talking about the Narcan. You know we want to use that Narcan to save someone's life and give them another chance at life.

What we were finding out when Narcan was first coming out in the next couple of years is they were having Narcan parties. What they would do is kind of like the designated driver. They would have one person who wasn't going to shoot heroin, but everybody else was shooting heroin. And if somebody was going into, they were ODing. that person would come in and give him a shot of the Narcan.

So that was, you know, that's not what we, that's not, you know, I mean, we saved a life, but that wasn't the purpose of the Narcan, you know what I mean? Not to have somebody be the designated Narcan person for this. There's just so many tragic stories.

You know, one of the things we try to do as law enforcement, you know, we want to help. A lot of times people don't call us because when it comes to drugs, they're afraid that they're going to get in trouble. I don't know the year of this law, but I know that it had changed back. If you OD'd and you had a needle with drugs in it, law enforcement would prosecute you.

You'd be a felony. Any type of heroin, cocaine, you would be prosecuted. Well, the law changed because we wanted people to call us when they were OD'd so that nobody would get arrested. The law changed so no one would get arrested.

If... You know, we get there and they have a syringe full of heroin or something or whatever they have because we wanted people to call and call the paramedics just so that we could make sure that we try to help someone's life. One of the tragic stories that I know of is we had a young lady and she was passed out.

She OD'd in the bathroom of a... In a mini mall in a convenience store. So we get there, the paramedics get there, they bring her to the hospital.

I go to talk to her. Her name is Elaine. I'm a supervisor at the time.

Just try to talk to Elaine, you know, see what happens, make sure everything's okay. You know, she says she's fine. We get there, or we're at the hospital.

Two hours later, two to three hours later, the hospital releases her. You know, I don't know much about the treatment. After an OD, I guess they, you know, maybe check to make sure your vital signs and so the hospital does their thing She's doing fine. She leaves what she ends up doing is she goes to Chicago She prostitutes herself to get more money to buy more drugs.

She buys more drugs She ODs in the bathtub in her house when she was back at her house So that's the second time in one day Come go back there paramedics bring her back to the Bring her back to the hospital. They go through their protocol again the treater they treat her for her OD She goes back. She goes back to Chicago.

She prostitutes herself again comes back in with more and this third time is when her body had enough and she had passed. She had passed in her bedroom. She went into her bedroom, her parents went to check on her, and she had been deceased, you know, with it. So just a tragic story, three times in one day.

You know, we can make a difference with everything that we're doing here. There are struggles in the law enforcement community because, as I had mentioned, drugs and the law enforcement community, you know, they're not, you know, they don't talk to us. That's why it's so important for friends and family to keep and stay involved in people's lives who might be at risk for trying drugs even for one time. I have a friend of mine, her daughter is 11, and she wanted to do a... A project on vaping.

She was in fifth grade. She wanted to do it on vaping. So she asked me to get her a vape.

So I checked with mom and everything and it was all good. I had some fake one, you know, there was just the shell of it. So I give it to her and she does a project. She gets an A on the project because she had a prop and everything like that. Well, we're FaceTiming one day.

And I noticed she has it in her fingers and she's twirling it around. And I'm like, I'll tell you right now, that thing better be in the garbage in less than 10 seconds or else we're going to have a problem with this. You know, she thought it was cool. And a lot of times the younger people, when they go, they think it's cool. You know, they want to try it.

Maybe they're friends, they get peer pressure from it and whatnot. And you have to stay on top of it. You know, as a big brother, big sister, as a parent, you know, an aunt, uncle, friend, whoever it is. You know you need to stay if children especially the young children you know I have too many stories of young people dying with needles in their arms. We had another gentleman who had been deceased for several years, not years, several weeks and when you're shooting up as much as you are your veins can't take it you can only shoot up so much so he had died and he had probably been deceased about three weeks he had the needle in his foot you know because that was where just a spot where he was able to inject it.

A lot of times we talk, I don't know the city offhand, but it's in the Pacific Northwest. They had legalized, decriminalized small amounts of heroin and cocaine. They call for personal use.

I think they were kind of figuring, hey, maybe if we know it's going out there, we know who's buying it or whatever. Well, that was about two years ago. They found that their overdose rate has really skyrocketed, so now they're changing their laws back to criminalizing the small amounts of personal use, those hardcore drugs, with it.

One of the things that I wanted to mention when I teach in my classes about, you know, we talk about the laws and things that have changed and sometimes drug use is looked at as a victimless crime. And I think when we talk about today the things that the stories that we have and the hands that went up when we all asked you know do we know someone or we have someone in our lives that you know have been affected by the use of drugs you know it's not a victimless crime and when we get that mentality out of you know whoever it is politicians minds or you know we come down on these drug dealers that are doing this stuff and we have you know great people in our community like the The coroner and Mr. Sosnowski, you know, fighting for these types of things, when we realize that it's not just a victimless crime, it's not just somebody, it's their choice to go do the drugs, you know, I think we can really make, you know, make more strides to making sure things and stories like this don't happen again. You know, there are some great stories with the Narcan where we did save someone's life and they did change their life around. You know, they realized that they got a second chance at life.

because of all the Narcan that's out there being able to help people with it. Those are the great stories. You know, those are the ones that we want to tell more of so that we can, you know, spread the word out there, hopefully prevent someone from doing it or repeating it like Elaine in my previous story. I don't know, does anybody have any questions for me as a police officer? I've been retired a couple years so, but go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, there's, I mean, we can only, so the question is, you know, how do we help someone, you know, who doesn't want our help? You know, we as the police, we have resources, you know, we're first responders, so we can bring them to the hospital, you know, we can, you know, provide them. literature, we can connect them with services at the police department, through social workers, through the social services division, you know, we can get them into rehab.

There's only so much I can do, you know, I mean, if I see them again on the street, you know, I maybe would try to talk to them again. And, you know, you keep fighting that fight, you know, you don't give up. Unfortunately, you know, sometimes you don't see them again, you know, I mean, it's a big world. But if I see them again, or we deal with it again.

If I have to, if there's an arrestable offense in there to get them into rehab once they get into the county jail with it, that might be an avenue. I mean, I'm not arresting people just to arrest them. Obviously, it's just if there's probable cause.

But I will do anything I have to if it means, you know, me personally as law enforcement, you know, I would see somebody down the street and I would see them before. I would try to, you know, maybe stop and just say, you know. Hey Joe, how are you? You know, what's going on?

I think it depends on what their relationship with law enforcement was. Sometimes they didn't like the police. Sometimes they could care less.

They didn't want me anywhere near them. They wouldn't talk to me at all. You know, other times, you know, maybe somebody would have a few words and if there was something, I'd say, hey listen, if there's anything I could do for you, let me know. Hopefully I answered your question.

There was somebody else. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean we do the best we can. There's several homeless shelters within the cities and their social service networks. And, you know, we don't treat them.

You know, like, so if there was an OD situation, an overdose situation, we would call the paramedics. The paramedics would treat them, more than likely transport them to the hospital, you know, for treatment. You know, after that, if there was a scenario where maybe it was something just on the street, you know, I can't force anyone.

You know, I can't arrest someone for being homeless, you know, to help them, to bring them into, you know, a shelter. I could offer, we would offer them rides, you know, to whatever homeless shelter there was. Sometimes the shelters had rules. Where you couldn't be intoxicated or under the influence of drugs because it caused problems in the homeless shelters themselves. You know, but if it's a dangerous situation, you know, we would do the best we can, you know, with what we have.

Unfortunately, sometimes they didn't want our help, you know. Did I answer your question? Yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah, well, we don't know what that's about, you know, offhand. So we don't know the whole story.

I mean, you know, if the police officers are putting them in handcuffs, could anyone, you know, could be they're under arrest. Maybe there's a weapon around or something along those lines temporarily. you know, so we don't know the whole story.

But I wouldn't put handcuffs on somebody to transport them to the homeless shelter, you know, necessarily. So, but like the Algin Police, I mean, I know them really, really well. We would do whatever we can to help the homeless. I mean, there was a gentleman, you know, I mean, he was, you know, he was out.

You saw him in the community. There were several homeless camps in the community, and it was his way of life. It's what he liked.

He liked it. Not, you know, not for any other reason that he wanted to live free that way, you know, and he didn't want to do anything else. You know, that was what he wanted to do.

So we're always there to help, you know, if we can. Sometimes they just don't want, you know, and on top of it, You know, sometimes the police are not the best people because people see the police, they think of handcuffs and this, that, or the other. That's why we need, you know, great people like all the groups that are here to talk to someone and try to convince them to come in. Somebody sees me as the police coming along and I'm trying to...

talk to them it all depends on what their relationship with the police is as I mentioned before you know so if they don't like the police I'm not going to be able to get through to them at all but maybe somebody here could okay great question anybody else go ahead Yeah, I'm not sure how the hospital handles that offhand. You know, I know the hospitals around, you know, I mean all hospitals and people in emergency rooms, emergency room doctors and nurses and paramedics and whatnot, they do whatever they can regardless of whether or not someone can pay the bill or not. I don't know how the hospitals handle that. I don't know if it goes through some public aid.

I'm really not sure how to answer that question. But I do know one thing is that it doesn't matter whether you can pay the bill or not. Those doctors and nurses and paramedics and everybody in the emergency care system there for the ODs and the homeless individuals are they're giving it 110% for them.

Great question. Anybody else? Go ahead. The question is, while I was in law enforcement, when I saw so many of the overdoses, did it ever affect me personally? Absolutely it does because that person has a family.

you know, as we were mentioning earlier, that person has a family. When I would go in there, you know, I never looked at people as just kind of like, huh, well, you know, thank goodness it's none of my family. That's not how it was.

That person has a mom, has a dad, has a brother, maybe has kids, you know, has family members who care about them, you know, and maybe that's what they needed in their life, you know, and I may be that first person. Who cares about them? And I did care. You know, they, as the, you know, the, the coroner had mentioned, you know, he, he had mentioned some numbers. Those are just numbers to make it easy.

Their names, their people, you know, they have, they have lives. They were, they were in, you know, people cared about them and I'm sure they cared about some other people, you know, in their life. It did affect me all the time.

The children, anyone, you know, to be quite honest. I mean, it didn't matter if they were older, younger or anything. It does hurt you because you see them, you know.

Oh, they're deceased now because of the OD. You know, you see them with that needle in their arm. It's just like, what made you do that? You know, why did you put that needle in your arm? I, you know, I just couldn't understand why somebody would do that.

I have, there was a gentleman, his name was Robert. I probably arrested, I was at another police department. for five years prior to Elgin and I had probably arrested Robert 20 times myself you know and I was a newer officer and I said to him one day I said Robert I said aren't you tired of getting arrested arrested.

You know, I mean, I mean, it would be, it got down to the point that I didn't handcuff him anymore for some, cause I arrested him so many times. I'd be like, just, you know, come on in Robert, you got a stolen car, you know, you can't have a stone. So we bring him in and he says, I just can't stop smoking crack. He goes, I just can't do it. He goes, I go through rehab.

And when he came out of rehab, so the only thing he knew how to do was he called himself a body and fender guy doing, uh, he would, um, fix up cars, you know, that were in. car crashes. And he says, I don't know what it is.

He says, but when I smell the fumes from the, you know, from the chemicals for the paint for the car, he says, I associate that with crack, smoking crack. And he goes, I just go right back to smoking crack. He goes, but I don't know anything else to do. So it was a vicious circle for him, you know, with some of that stuff. That was sad to see.

He had died, not from, I don't exactly know what his cause of death was, but I had heard he had passed on. a few years later after I left, but they all hurt me, you know, because, you know, maybe, you know, some of them, or we mentioned earlier, someone had a question about, you know, you see the homeless person or whatnot. Like I see the homeless person who might have a drug addiction also.

And, you know, there's somebody in the community and next thing you know, you hear that they, they passed on, you know, and you had dealt with them and you wonder if there was something I could have done more. Could I have said something differently to maybe get. them in for the first time into rehab. So those are rough. That is really kind of a rough thing.

Go ahead. I'm glad. A lot of these people, you've seen any of your officers or yourself get physically hurt by some of that stuff. Is there any dangers in this profession? I'm glad.

I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad.

I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad.

I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad.

I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad.

I'm glad. Well, yeah, I mean the fentanyl thing is real. We saw that picture of how much can affect you and, you know, we have the stories from the corner about how little it was, you know, for some of these cases.

I mean, it is a real... a real threat. It is a real, you have to worry about it when you're on the job. You know, if we ever, you know, when we thought that there was fentanyl involved or anything, gloved up, double gloved up, you know, did whatever we had to in order to protect ourselves, you know, with it. Cause we don't want to bring that home.

And I think one of the stories was, you know, they got brought home and a baby touched it. And that's a real thing with the fentanyl. You know, I mean, that's, that's, that's not just people, you know, stories here. That is that how sensitive that, um, and potent that drug is. That's for sure.

The needles, you always had to worry about getting stuck with the needles. The officers always had, when we were patting people down or checking things in their car, you know searching cars, we always had to worry about getting poked by a needle. So that was a that was a real big concern.

You know, one of the things I wanted to mention with the drug-induced homicides, I was a detective for a long time and we had talked about, you know, these types of situations and as Drew had mentioned, they are very hard to investigate and just like any other of these, you know, when it's a, you know, a homicide, murder and I remember one specifically where it was a drug house. And someone called us anonymously and said that there was someone who had OD'd in this apartment. So we had gone in this apartment. Now this house was well known for dealing drugs.

People were coming in and out of it. We would make stops whenever we could. Officers, you know, watched the foot traffic in there, but we couldn't be there 24 hours a day.

And we go into the house and the gentleman, he's probably in his early 40s, and he's on the couch and he's been deceased for a few, several hours already. I'd say several hours. I'm not an expert at it. Just by guessing, several hours. But the one thing that I know when we went in there is that the house or the apartment was spotless.

Just absolutely spotless. And you could smell the bleach. Somebody had cleaned up in there.

So when we were trying to investigate this, we contacted, we knew. We knew who the tenant was that lived there and we talked to him and you know he you know I don't know how he got there you know I leave my apartment unlocked people go in and out I had nothing to do with it I don't know who cleaned it we didn't unfortunately didn't have much to go on you know in terms of that type of case he might have overdosed on his own that's a story that we couldn't say didn't happen you know or was there someone else there with them you know so they're really hard it's really hard to um you know investigate and look into those types of things but the apartment was was spotless and that the whole place was just a pit to begin with so um you know that was one that um that was pretty tough on us not to really try to you know get down to the um what had happened there i appreciate your time and listening to my story so okay let's you know fight the fight here and keep doing what we need to do in order to make this world a better place, as Drew had mentioned. Thank you, Drew.

Isn't that amazing? You have a law enforcement officer here with that compassion, and that's what we have. And I'm seeing that a lot now in the law enforcement community.

A lot more law enforcement officers are understanding that using drugs is not a criminal activity as much as it is a societal issue, as much as it is a use problem that people... are having more than an abuse problem. And it's a matter of taking away stigma sometimes so that we can solve this problem. You heard Dr. Remmeljack talking about the laws that came out when he was in the force saying that when somebody has drugs, that if a law enforcement officer comes, they don't arrest the person because they want to get in there. Now, sometimes when I look back and when I grew up, I say, wow, that's pretty amazing.

You know, you're not going to arrest somebody and they have drugs and it's illegal. That's horrible. But as you begin to look at the problems that we're facing with this and saving people's lives and doing the right thing, those laws are protecting citizens.

And it's all about protecting citizens. It's not about locking people up necessarily. Sometimes they have to be locked up and we want to find the ones that are the most egregious offenders that are polluting our, poisoning our children and our families. But by the same token, we have to look at this as a use problem and there's people using this substance and getting, and just trying to get away with it. trying to do it for recreational purposes, whether you agree with that or not and are getting killed.

And with that in mind, I'm going to bring up Sharon Cabrera, who's a friend of mine from the health department here in Kane County, the Kane County Health Department. You've been waiting for her to speak because she has a present for all of you, and that present is Narcan. And she's going to talk about administering Narcan and how to do that properly and how to use it so that if you ever, God forbid, are in a situation where that comes up, you know how to do it.

how to do it. I have two Narcans in my cabinet at home. I have two bottles of that in my cabinet at home. And I think Sharon gave me both of those.

So she's going to let you come out of here today with one of those and she's going to tell you how to use it. So without any further ado, here is Sharon Cabrera from the Health Department. Good afternoon everyone my name is Sharon Cabrera like Andrew said I'm with the King County Health Department I'm their substance use prevention specialist and pretty much what that means is that I run the state granted opioid prevention program that through opioid settlement funds from all the lawsuits, they use that money to give back to local governments and nonprofits to give out free Narcan for all the state of Illinois. So it's really nice.

other things too. Now I'm gonna be doing the Narcan training. Now normally it would be like in a classroom setting or like a presentation setting with a with the board and everything but since we don't have that I'm just gonna probably read the slides.

Alright so some learning objectives are to understand the opioid crisis predominantly from King County I have statistics for but if you go online for DuPage County and everything like that they have everything or or like Will County. And then learning how to identify and respond to an opioid overdose. And then learning how to administer naloxone.

But the brand that we carry at the health department is Narcan just because we think nasal is just easier for everyone and it's so much faster. So opioids are natural or synthetic substances that act on the brain. Historically they were prescribed by medical professionals but throughout the years people realized that they felt good off these medications and unfortunately the more illicit use and then the illegal manufacturing started.

Opioids are normally risky because if you feel those positive feelings of like relief of pain and everything you're at a higher risk for misuse or dependency. Now some common examples of opioids that are prescribed daily to people are codeine, oxycontin, Vicodin. morphine heroin not heroin fentanyl methadone and the list goes on now heroin is one of those synthetic opioids that are normally made in labs and stuff like that fun fact morphine is considered the purest form of opioid and that's one of the strongest ones.

One that we always tell people to be most careful about because it's so potent. Now, fentanyl is actually 100 times more potent than morphine. And then there's other types of these synthetic opioids. Now, carfentanils, those are about 50 times more potent than fentanyl. So just think about it.

It's all these synthetic drugs are really... intense. This opioid epidemic kind of started, well opioids have been around forever, but it really spiked around the 90s and early 2000s when there was like this huge boom. They were really prescribing especially Oxycontin to everyone for any type of ailment when they really didn't need that potent of a medication. And so people slowly started to realize that a lot of people were coming back to the doctor's office.

being like, hey, I need more medication. Like, I still don't feel good. I don't feel good without the medication either now. And doctors weren't aware, so they just kept prescribing.

But then around mid-2000s, that's when doctors were finally like, oh my gosh, all our patients are pretty much hooked on these medications. So that's when they started cutting back, cutting down, not prescribing as much. But the problem then was that everyone that was already on these medications got immediately shut down so a lot of them unfortunately had to go out onto streets or find other ways to find these drugs and most of the time they're illegally manufactured out there and then around 2014 15 16 that's when fentanyl really became popular it was showing up everywhere and then that's when you see rates of heroin Heroin use actually started going down because people started finding easier ways to get high and then unfortunately now in this era, fentanyl is probably at an all-time high.

The rate of fentanyl use doesn't really seem to be going down in more recent trends and graphs unfortunately. But yes, heroin is at an all-time low right now. Unfortunately, we don't know what it'll look like in the next couple years because of how everything is evolving.

So for Illinois, in 2022, there were 3,261 fatalities in Illinois due to opioids. That's an 8.2% increase from 2021 and a 3,341% increase from 2013. And And synthetic opioids, specifically fentanyl, pretty much in these cases, where people die, 92% of those cases where fentanyl was the reason for death. So for Kane County, unfortunately the data that we have most up to date is up to 2022. So for 2022, from 2018 to 2022 there were 350... three opioid related deaths. The average age of death in Kane County was 42 years old, which is another thing I want to hit.

A lot of people always think, oh this is like a young person problem, this doesn't affect people that are like older or anything. but the statistics show it's people that are midlife, just working. In Kane County, there were 2,223 opioid-related deaths, overdoses, not deaths, treated in Kane County facilities. And then in 2023, 54% of overdoses happened at home, which is another important thing, because if Narcan wasn't there, potentially 54% of those people. could have just died then and there.

From those statistics, 86% of those overdoses were successfully reversed. Eight percent unfortunately did not survive and then six percent we're not too sure of what happens. We're very fortunate enough here in King County that most of the police departments are really helpful with this and they're really trying to help this problem so we give all the police departments in the Narcan and then when they use it they actually report it back to us and let us know if it was successful or not just to just know this important information. So an opioid overdose normally occurs when opioids overwhelm the receptors in your brain and this causes you to kind of stop breathing because your muscles get so relaxed your body just can't do it anymore. Overdoses used to take about one to three hours to happen but now with fentanyl out and all these other synthetic opioids you pretty much see it almost instantaneously, within seconds you can literally see them okay and then their eyes shut down and they just drop.

And then normally opioid overdoses are caused by taking more opioids than prescribed, mixing them with other substances such as alcohol. Alcohol actually speeds up overdose process, fun fact. Most of the overdoses that we get, like about 95% of them are also co-occurring with alcohol.

And then taking more opioids than a person can tolerate. Things that increase risk of opioid overdose, things that people don't really realize or know unless you're like in law enforcement world, is like mainly like in Kane County you see the recent release from a detoxification program, like a rehab or something, or a jail. Most of these people unfortunately when they go in a jail they'll be taking a certain amount.

And then they'll spend like let's say three months and then in those three months they don't touch anything. They pretty much are weaned off the substance but then when they get released they go and try to do that same amount that they were before and then that's how normally they end up overdosing and passing away unfortunately. And then another one is a discharge from the emergency room or yeah after an opioid overdose like the officer said unfortunately a lot of people Right after they get out of the emergency room, they almost immediately use again. And sometimes they can't get to the same person or they just take too much and that's how they normally overdose.

So some ways to prevent opioid death, what we tell people with prescriptions is to just take them as prescribed. talk with your medical provider. There's always alternatives to opioids.

And then for people who don't use prescriptions or are just using it illicitly, we always tell them to seek substance use treatment for the disorder because it's really bad right now. And then we always reiterate to not mix it with alcohol and then know where to find Narcan. either where you live or where you work it's always important to know just in case this emergency happens.

So distinguishing between someone who's really high versus overdosing it can be kind of hard to tell the difference when that's going on just because some a lot of the times a lot of overdoses look very similar I know a lot of people normally will think someone's overdosing but they're just like very high off of like xanax or something like that now the way you'll know if someone's overdosing is that if you pinch them if you try to do sternal rubs if you try to like scream and shake them and everything and they're not responding at all they're overdosing most likely because even if you're really high and you pinch someone they'll still go like stop if they're trying to brush you off and stop um they're most likely not overdosing but if you're not sure The beauty of Narcan is that it doesn't affect anyone. It doesn't hurt you. People always say it's pretty much as safe as water, so you can administer that with no problem. We've had people administer it to people that were just passed out because of dialysis, thinking that it was an overdose, but it was just that and they were fine.

And then always call 911 also if you're unsure because you never know what that person took. Narcan only works on opioids. So if you were to Narcan someone that didn't take an opioid and they're overdosing that would be bad.

So always take them to see a medical professional. So the steps of responding to an overdose. Step one is recognizing the overdose.

Signs are gurgling and snoring, blue lips, fingers. It's really easy to tell an overdose. Me explaining it is not doing it justice, but you'll just know. They can't breathe most of the time.

There's like almost no pulse at that point. So those are normally indicators to look out for. Step two is attempting to arouse, sternal rubs, earlobe pinches, anything that will get a reaction, even shaking them, screaming their name, don't slap people.

And then step three and four are pretty much the same, calling 911 and administering naloxone, whichever one you can do the quickest. And then step five, which is actually really important and a lot of people don't do, is staying until those emergency responders arrive. Just because Sometimes they'll need information or just need to know what happened or if you know anything and it's and also for the person overdosing sometimes they don't even realize that they overdosed so it's just important to just be there for the person too. Why use naloxone?

It's pretty effective like I said it reverses the effects of opioid overdoses and the beauty of it is that anyone in Illinois can be trained to use it. and can train others to use it too. So right now since I'm training you guys technically you can go out and train a group of 200 people right now and they would technically all be certified to use naloxone. And it's pretty safe. There's no potential for misuse or addiction with it which is really nice because it's a it's an antagonist so it it blocks stuff.

And then it's it's like I said it's safe it's as safe as water. It can be used on children. women pregnant women and even dogs I know our King County Sheriff's Office is always Narcanning the police dogs because they're always having to sniff for narcotics and then it won't hurt anyone who hasn't taken opioids like I said before if it's even if it's a different type of medical emergency it won't affect them Narcan binds on your brain to your opioid receptors It's pretty interesting, but yeah, when it enters your brain it binds onto there and it pretty much bumps the opioids off your receptors. And normally it takes two to three minutes for Narcan to do that in your brain. So that's why we tell people when you give Narcan, wait two to three minutes to see if they have a reaction.

Now, the thing is though, Narcan only lasts for about 30 minutes to 120 minutes. So that's why we tell people to always go to the hospital or seek emergency treatment because you can potentially fall back into an overdose. And that's what a lot of people don't know.

And then, like I said earlier, unfortunately Narcan only works on opioids. So if someone's overdosing on like cocaine or methamphetamine, I don't even know if you can really do that, but it won't reverse it unless it has fentanyl in it like that. Ignore the video part, but now I'll show you how to use Narcan.

The new revamped Narcan that they're making now for the general public that you'll see around distributed is looks like this. It's a really big box but inside there's two of these type of plungers in there. And the nice thing about it is that if you do decide to keep your Narcan in the box, all the instructions are on the back on how to use it and how to respond to that opioid emergency.

Now, if you don't have the box anymore and you only have the plungers with you, the really nice thing about these is that they also come with instructions on the inside. So they... They guide you through it. There's also pictures on there so if someone can't read they can at least like see the pictures and know what to do or how to respond to that, which I think is amazing because people need to know. Now when you're in that opioid emergency, let's pretend there's someone laying right here and they're not responding.

They're they're looking blue. they're making gurgling or snoring sounds. They're not responding to you doing the sternal rubs, the shakes, everything. So if they're not already on the ground, you want to make sure they're lying flat on their back. Now you'll open up that first plunger in the pack.

And then you'll put it up their nose up to when your finger is touching their nostril and their lip, as far as you can get it. And then it's one firm spray. You don't want to prime it because then you use all the product.

It's just one spray like that. And then it's a mist. And then after you spray that, of course, wait two to three minutes to see if there's some type of reaction or response. If there isn't, go ahead and open up that second nozzle and spray it in the other nostril just in case.

if there's anything blocking and then after that if they do respond you want to make sure you put them into the recovery position now the recovery position is just two arms like that under the neck and then the leg that's facing the sky goes over so it looks like they're just tucked in like that and that position pretty much helps them avoid choking on their vomit just just to help them breathe a little bit better but if they don't respond to those two doses of course sorry important thing hopefully Hopefully there's two people when you're in this emergency because someone should be calling 911 regardless if you're administering naloxone or not. You don't need the police per se. If you can drive the person, if you know the person, you can drive them to the emergency care, do that, or just call the ambulance to take them.

But if they don't respond, we normally don't recommend people to just keep giving Narcan because... It shoots people straight into withdrawal and they can potentially get a little bit aggressive with people and or get really sick. But you do save a life. But there is no law against giving nonstop Narcan. You can do that too, but just letting you know people won't be happy.

So if none of that works, EMS is taking a really long time, no one's showing up. So if you guys don't know CPR yet, I highly recommend... recommend you guys to take a CPR call. They are free throughout the county. They're always happening at the hospitals, at the libraries.

A lot of places offer them for free, just so you know. Because if they don't respond to that and it's taking a really long time, we recommend people to start CPR. Now, you don't have to do rescue breathing because a lot of CPR classes show that if you keep pumping, oxygen keeps flowing through for about 13 more minutes. after the emergency starts so that'll give it a little bit more time but if you know the person go ahead and give them rescue breathing especially if you don't have another person because doing compressions for a long time is very draining so after administering naloxone like I said earlier try to stay as long as possible or until help arrives at least if the person is responsive they'll most likely be confused and not even possibly remember overdosing.

All we can really do is just explain to them what happened especially if you if you saw it happen or if you just found them just let them know what's going on where they are. The person will be most likely experiencing withdrawal symptoms depending on who it is. One morning we always get people because of that, like I said earlier, a lot of people when you bring them back unfortunately will be swinging, fighting, or even throwing up. So when we tell people to actually, when we put them in the recovery position, face them away from you just in case that happens. All we can really do also is just discourage them from taking more drugs and try to comfort their person.

And one of the things that I feel like a lot of people don't, thank you, that a lot of people don't. don't want to carry Narcan or don't want to help because they're scared of liability issues or what if this person tries to sue me or gets mad and comes after me. We're luckily protected.

Illinois has a lot of... really good laws that protect us from a lot of, from helping people just in general. So it's not on here, but the drug overdose prevention program law actually is the whole reason why organizations. and the general public and so many people can just go ahead and just start administering naloxone and caring and training and stuff like that. So you're protected under that law.

I know that there's new laws. I can't remember if it's like Alex's law or something. It's relating to this, but we'll just call it General Illinois Good Samaritan Law.

Because when I asked my police officer friends, they also don't remember. But it pretty much states, and especially for people, for younger people or just people that are afraid of the police. If someone calls. 911 or takes a person to an emergency room for a potentially fatal OD, they can't be prosecuted or charged for having drugs, drug paraphernalia, or being under the influence of those said drugs. And that same protection applies.

to the overdose victim. Now the law does not protect against people who decide to drive while under the influence of those drugs so we always tell people don't drive. Call an Uber, call someone else to the ambulance at least to get the person to help to get help because unfortunately a lot of people just get dumped at hospitals and then medical staff doesn't know what to do with them and then they'll treat them for something completely unrelated and then by that that point they unfortunately pass away because they don't know what's going on. Now the possession amounts for people who may be taking the person who's overdosing. They're only allowed less than three grams of heroin, less than three grams of morphine, and then fewer than 40 grams of prescription opioids.

So it gives them a lot of leeway and most of the time these are just written out laws just to have something on paper. I know in Kane County they They won't prosecute you. I don't even think they really look. They just care that you bring the person in, that you save a life, which is awesome.

So storage instructions for the Narcan. Other things that I always get, can you keep Narcan in your car? We have found that Narcan leaks sometimes, but since we get it for free here in the U.S., we're going to keep it in our car. Illinois I always just tell people if it leaks or if it's not if you notice that it looks wonky just go get another one from a local health department or another nonprofit organization or even here in King County we have the coroner's office also has it.

Most of our government buildings have them. We tell people to try to store it in its original packaging just to keep it away from the sunlight or if you can't just keep it in a bag. And then they normally say to store it below 77 degrees to keep it at its optimal peak, keep it preserved for ever temperature. But you are allowed to bring it out in the cold and in the heat just as long as it's not constantly in those temperatures it's fine. Narcan nowadays, all the new batches that are coming out now, despite this one saying that it expires January 2027, they just released a protocol that says that they extended the shelf life for two years.

So this one actually expires in 2029, which is really cool. So it has a really long shelf life. But the beauty of Narcan too is that since it has that great shelf life, there has actually been studies on Narcan from 1999 and it is still 90% effective today.

So even if you only have expired Narcan on you, you can keep giving it. Use it because it'll still work. But the only thing that we tell people is that since we don't really know how it works in the plastic, you may just need more doses of Narcan in case of that emergency.

And then we just actually created this new website called www.overdoseinfo.org and I think it's amazing. It has every single resource that you could ever... like want to find for opioids. It has it has every single treatment center in the county. It has stuff for not just like people who are using opioids to get help but also for medical professionals.

We have a whole page for police officers, how to deal with it, help for everyone. It's amazing. Information, local data. There's this great new thing that we launched called Atlas. You can actually see.

where not hot spots but like where overdoses are happening just like really important information about what's going on in the county and also I'm gonna plug this too because there's this new program called MAR Now that started through the state and a lot of people don't know about it. It's not on here. I should have brought it but if you call them, it's under the Illinois helpline.

But if you call them, they will set you up with a doctor and a prescription for buprenorphine that day and it only takes 15 minutes and they set you up. They pretty much link you up with everyone like any help that you need they pretty much help you and that same helpline is they also offer those lines where like if you're gonna use and you think that you have a bad supply but you just addiction is so serious like people will still use despite. Knowing that it's bad.

So if you call that line and you keep them on the line you can use with them and if they feel like you're overdosing already they will call 9-1-1 for you to have them help you and everything. So there's there's a lot of things now that are really coming out that are just made like it's it's still hard to find treatment but it's not anymore because it's it's becoming really like. available so that's a great resource. That's also on the website if you go on there we have it linked if you press the button it takes you immediately to that helpline website and that's for all of Illinois.

The program is called MAR Now medically assisted recovery now but it's under the Illinois helpline. Oh yes I also do trainings in Spanish I'm bilingual so If you ever want anything or know anyone that would want a training in Spanish, I can offer that too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then I also brought flyers. I'll hand them out if you guys want. That also have this PowerPoint.

We have it linked on the website. It takes you to a YouTube video and everything. And then I also brought free Narcan for everyone too, if everyone needs it.

But we offer fentanyl test strips, xylosine test strips, syringe clippers. medication disposal kits. And yeah, that's about it at the health department for free for anyone that needs it. So, and it's in our lobby. So does the coroner's office, believe the sheriff's office too, just everywhere with everyone pretty much gives them out.

So one huge thing right now is stigmatizing language. And just the fact that unfortunately a lot of people associate opioid use with just heroin and they'll be like they'll use the normal slang terms you know like junkie or addict or or abuser or something like that when it's in reality a lot of these people are just hooked get hooked from like medications that they got from a back surgery or something like that and unfortunately it just spirals out of control So we just want to like de-stigmatize everything. We don't want to say like, oh that person's an addict.

We say that person's a person who's using substances. We don't say substance abuse anymore, we just say like substance use disorder. So yeah, just de-stigmatizing all of that stuff slowly.

And just to help also not only the user but families too. Unfortunately a lot of families won't. Come out and get help or are just afraid to speak out on anything because they're scared that they're gonna get judged over something that sometimes is out of their control and we just want to show that it's it it affects everyone it affects everyone to some degree and everyone at least knows someone or if you don't know someone you know someone that knows someone.