Town hall set to discuss deadly effects of fentanyl in St. Johns County – News – The St. Augustine Record

Bridget Hennessy was a junior in high school when her brother Matthew died of a drug overdose. She said it was a while before her parents shared with her exactly how he died.

“It was very hush-hush. The stigma was huge,” Hennessy said in a phone interview on Friday.

Hennessy, now the director of PACT Prevention Coalition, a nonprofit that focuses on drug and alcohol prevention for St. Johns County’s youth, said one goal of the town hall scheduled for May 15 at The Armory in St. Augustine is to drop the stigma of addiction. The other goal is to talk about the deadly effects of fentanyl.

“Fentanyl is so powerful it could kill you in seconds,” Hennessy said. “This is a very scary drug.”

According to Hennessy, there were 39 overdose deaths in St. Johns County in 2017, the most recent data available, though it’s not clear how many of those deaths were caused by fentanyl.

“For St. Johns County, that number is just shocking to me,” Hennessy said.

And those numbers might be even higher, Hennessy added, because in some cases drug users from St. Johns County are going to Duval County to get drugs and, in some cases, dying of overdoses there.

“There’s no secret that we do have these issues in St. Johns County,” Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Chuck Mulligan said on Friday. “Unfortunately, we do respond to overdoses on a regular basis.”

In 2016, there were 46 overdose deaths, according to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.

Mulligan said that although the sheriff’s office has seen a decrease in pill-related overdose deaths in recent years, there has been a rise in heroin and other injectable drugs such as fentanyl, which can be up to 100 times stronger than heroin. There were more than 18,000 deaths attributed to fentanyl in 2016 nationwide, according to the CDC.

Mulligan and Hennessy said that fentanyl is not just popping up in opiods and heroin, but in some cases it is being found mixed in with cocaine and marijuana which puts teenagers at risk.

“What we want to focus on is hope,” Hennessy said. “What can we do to prevent death from happening? What can we do to prevent people from abusing medication that might be helpful for them at first but then leads them down a path that they never expected?”

One solution is NARCAN, a narcotic nasal spray that can treat overdoses in an emergency situation. It is currently used by law enforcement, and Hennessy said her group will be offering training in the coming weeks at a St. Johns County library for local citizens so they can understand how to use it if needed.

“It works,” Hennessy said of NARCAN. “It has saved lives all across the country and in our county.”

The upcoming town hall will also feature panelists from Flager Hospital, EPIC Behavioral Healthcare and the St. Johns County School District.

“Now, it’s amazing that we are getting the conversation started and people are being more open about it,” Hennessy said. “I think that it doesn’t affect others if they think that addiction is not a disease. Hopefully through the town hall, the stigma will be further dropped.”

The town hall begins at 6 p.m. at the National Guard Armory at 190 San Marco Ave. and will be moderated by Mike Davis.