U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., stopped in at Centra Lynchburg General Hospital on Wednesday to meet with local law enforcement and first responders, area school superintendents, medical professionals and nonprofit leaders for a conversation about the opioid and fentanyl epidemic. Local stakeholders told their senator about what they’re battling in the community, and what they need from lawmakers.
Campbell County Sheriff Whit Clark said he’s been in law enforcement long enough to remember when crack cocaine first arrived in the area: “that’s nothing compared to what we’re dealing with today.”
“... I’ve been out on the street for over 40 years, and I see the depression that comes with this, we see the suicides, we see the overdoses,” Clark said.
“From my standpoint, sir, we need resources. No one knows my county like my deputies and knows what’s out there. So, what I would ask, sir, is if you could try to work to give us resources from a federal level to come to the state so I can put more people out on the road to combat this.”
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According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine; fentanyl and other synthetic opioids are the most common drugs involved in overdose deaths.
Melissa Lucy, CEO of Horizon Behavioral Health, told Warner about trends the regional provider is experiencing with intakes.
“The biggest thing we’re seeing is that, especially in kids, they don’t realize they’re taking fentanyl at all, and so I do think we have to do a better job of educating our kids, of making them aware that it can be in gummy worms, it can be in gummy bears … then they get hooked on it and they start using it because they like the high,” Luce said.
Powdered fentanyl is often mixed with other drugs to create pills that are made to resemble other prescription opioids, according to the CDC.
In December, five fourth graders at Amherst County’s Central Elementary School were hospitalized after officials said the students ingested gummies from a bag containing residue that tested positive for fentanyl. Two Amherst County residents have been charged in connection with the incident.
According to a statewide report from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH), there were 15 fatal overdoses from fentanyl in the City of Lynchburg in the first three quarters of 2023. VDH reported 17 overdose deaths from the drug in Lynchburg in 2022 and 23 fatal fentanyl overdoses in 2021. Deaths from fentanyl account for the majority of all fatal opioid overdoses in the city over the same time period.
Warner noted that with other drugs, users often have to repeat a drug experience multiple times before overdosing.
“Here, you could mistakenly take one laced pill and that’s lights out,” he told reporters after the event.
“And that means that puts more pressure on law enforcement, that means we need to do more in terms of shutting down the flow at the border. We need a stronger border bill, but we also need the ability to interdict these drugs that come over — not on undocumented immigrants coming in — but come in actually at ports of entry, on trucks.”
Warner also said law enforcement needs more tools to “declare the drug gangs in Mexico as terrorist groups and bring the same kind of power we brought to some of those groups in the Middle East against some of these drug cartels.
“But it is going to take the whole community.”
Emma Martin, (434) 385-5556