I appreciated this magazine’s willingness to dive headfirst into the fentanyl crisis in our February issue [“He Did Not Intend to Die,” February 2023]. The significance is magnified further as I pen this month’s column, on the 2-year anniversary of the death of my 22-year-old niece who died of fentanyl poisoning. Claire was in her final semester at USC when she purchased a widely prescribed prescription pill from an unknown street source. As we later learned, the pill was laced with a lethal amount of fentanyl. For my family, and thousands of others, One Pill Kills, is not a slogan, it’s reality.
This year I decided to redirect my pain into purpose when a friend told me about Song for Charlie (SFC), a national family-led nonprofit working to raise awareness and encourage young people to choose healthy coping strategies over self-medication. The organization was founded in 2020 by Ed and Mary Ternan, who lost their 22-year-old son Charlie when he purchased a Percocet on Snapchat, which turned out to be a fentapill.
Since the organization’s inception in December of 2020, SFC has developed a three-point strategy for reaching youths ages 13 to 23: Go where they are (social media), speak their language (short videos) and get them talking (empowering messages). With key relationships with government agencies including the DEA, DOE, CDA, FDA and appearances on CNN, the Today Show, NPR, NBC Nightly News and more, SFC endeavors to equip young people with reliable and actionable information to help them manage stress and make informed decisions about drugs.
With a mission of reaching teens and young adults directly, the Ternans formed key partnerships with social media giants including Snap, Meta (Instagram/Facebook), Alphabet (Google/YouTube) and others. The alliances enable the organization to communicate with young people on their terms and at the places where they digest content—promoting a mindset shift from “just say no” to “just say know.”
In a piece that ran on NPR on National Grief Awareness Day, Ternan spoke about the importance of presenting messaging in a way that appeals to teenagers’ strong social bonds, having found that telling teens to warn their friends about fentanyl is more impactful than stoking fear of their own harm. He also discussed how much of the drug-education in schools across the country is ad-hoc, not standardized and oftentimes outdated, and that the ever-growing fentanyl crisis requires a new approach to how families and educators talk to students about drugs. “We need to revive drug education in America,” said Ternan. “In a way, we need to Narcan drug education—we need to breathe life into it, bring it back.” Narcan is the brand name for naloxone, a medicine that can quickly reverse an opioid overdose, and rapidly restore normal breathing to a person whose beathing has slowed or stopped due to an opioid overdose.
This spring Song for Charlie commissioned research firm Breakwater Strategy to conduct online interviews about Californians’ perceptions of pills and fentanyl, which revealed that four in 10 Californian young adults and half their teen counterparts aren’t knowledgeable about the misuse of prescription pills. (The study was funded by the California Department of Health Care Services, which partnered with SFC to better educate and inform parents about the risk factors.) Of the youth surveyed, 75% of teens and 83% of young adults said they would consider taking prescription pills without a prescription from a doctor to help cope with stress and anxiety. When those same youth were asked about discussing the use of prescription pills without a prescription with their parents, only 30% of teens and 31% of young adults felt comfortable doing so.
In a National Survey of Drug Use and Health conducted in 2021, only 60% of surveyed 12-17-year-olds self-reported that they saw or heard drug or alcohol prevention messaging in school. Since the launch of a series of awareness campaigns in 2021, SFC has reached hundreds of schools, collaborated with the Department of Education on fentanyl awareness webinars, and co-developed a fentanyl awareness program with SADD that is offered to 5000 student led clubs at high schools and colleges.
The partnership between SFC and the DHCS culminated in August with the launch of The New Drug Talk Connect to Protect educational web platform and documentary, that equips families with knowledge and tools to bring this critical conversation into the home. The content leverages the expertise of professionals in youth mental health, addiction science, and medicine and drug education and features free tools, videos, learning materials, and an arsenal of information and talking points to open up the conversation. Governor Newsom said in a release, “Opioids are killing our kids. Song for Charlie was born out of loss and devastation. Charlie’s parents have turned that loss into action, working to warn families about the risks of fentanyl and laced substances often being sold on social media.”
In our family, we have had to have very frank conversations about fentanyl with our young children. As they age, that messaging will change, dive deeper, reveal the stark realities in more detail, and hopefully the school systems will have joined the crusade in educating students about the dangers of prescription medication bought from unknown sources. Part of my work in volunteering with SFC is to help raise awareness in our Napa and Sonoma County communities, school districts, and business sector. If you are interested in bringing fentanyl awareness presentations to your community, school or business, please reach out to me at tinajulian@yahoo.com.
