DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – The Drug Enforcement Administration held a Detroit Family Summit on Drug Poisoning and Overdoses on Wednesday for more than 40 families affected by the rising opioid crisis. 

“My sons got fake Percocet that were 100% fentanyl and they died alongside 17-year-old Sophia Harris,” activist Rebecca Kiessling said.  

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The more than 40 different families connected to the tragedy of drug overdose included law-enforcement officials, grassroot organizers, and family members according to Channel 3 News. 

Another attendee, Jim Rauh, who is a member of Families Against Fentanyl shared his personal story. 

“My son Tom was killed by acetyl fentanyl in 2015,” Rauh said. 

Statistics from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reveal that between January and September of 2022, there were approximately 1900 overdose deaths in the state of Michigan.  This denotes a downward trend in Michigan from its roughly 2,700 deaths in 2020 and nearly 3,100 deaths in 2021.  

The summit was meant to create an environment for conversation, education, and idea development to combat the rising opioid epidemic, especially due to the rise of fatal fentanyl incidents. 

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“Hearing these stories, meeting with these people and them sharing, really sort of centers us back to where we need to be, and how we prioritize what it is we do,” Orville Greene, special agent in charge of DEA Detroit Field Division said. 

One mother, whose sons died from Percocet that was actually 100% fentanyl, Rebecca Kiessling declared the need for more resources for those families affected. 

“There needs to be resources for families, that when there is contact with the police, that the police will warn you, sheriff’s deputies will warn you, here’s everything you need to know. Here’s a link on our website, here’s what you need to know about fentanyl, about Narcan, here’s resources to get medical rehab,” Kiessling said.

Drug overdoses are killing Americans at an unprecedented rate, with an estimated 110,000 lives lost in 2022, according to the event organizers. 

Senator Sean McCann (D-Kalamazoo) attended the event and shared his Senate Bill 133 which includes the creation of an Overdose Fatality Review Team in the state to investigate overdose-related deaths. 

“The idea is to sort of identify trends, or if there is a way to predict a trending new synthetic drug or something that’s being laced in with other drugs that are making it more deadly,”  Senator McCann said.

The summit comes shy of two months after the U.S. Congress heard testimony from Kiessling who was seeking to raise awareness and a solution to the growing crisis. 

“I lost my two sons, Caleb was age 20, and Kyler was age 18, on July 29, of 2020,” Kiessling said before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee hearing, “It was absolutely a perfect storm, there was also a 17 year old girl, Sophia Harris, who died along with them.” 

She later testified that the drug dealer was spared, after being sentenced to 8 to 15 years for killing three people, and that the drugs had come from Mexico.