The statistics are grim and seemingly getting worse. But explaining Colorado’s fentanyl crisis in terms of numbers will never be as powerful a personal story of the drug’s destructive nature.

Sunday’s front-page column by the Sentinel’s Dale Shrull paints a picture of two lives ravaged by fentanyl intoxication. There’s the victim, 16-year-old Miah VanHouten, who died of fentanyl poisoning in May 2021. And there’s the victim’s mother, Tasha VanHouten, who’s been left emotionally drained, simultaneously fighting the stigma of her daughter’s death and sharing her story so that no other parent will have to suffer the same agonizing loss.

The numbers say parents should listen to VanHouten’s story. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, fentanyl deaths rose by 70% in Colorado from 2020 to 2021. The total count of drug overdose deaths due to synthetic opioids mentioning fentanyl in Colorado was 1,452 during both years.

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For comparison, 379 people died in 2011 from an overdose involving opioids in Colorado – about 13% involving fentanyl. But in 2021, more than 1,200 people died from an opioid overdose in Colorado, with 72.5% involving fentanyl.

A “single innocuous pill” laced with fentanyl killed Miah, raising an obvious lesson. Parents must be clear in telling their children to never trust a pill that someone hands them. Parents can’t overstate the deadly risk of swallowing a pill of unknown origin.

Fentanyl is such a problem nationwide that there’s now a bipartisan Fentanyl Prevention Caucus in Congress. Colorado’s Joe Neguse, a Democrat representing the 2nd Congressional District, is a founder. Members are doing what VanHouten does – promoting prevention and awareness to better understand the threat of fentanyl in communities across America.

VanHouten is a fentanyl “awareness ambassador.” When she has the emotional energy and encounters someone “who needs to hear the story,” she’ll go into “awareness mode” and share all the pertinent details, facts and statistics, including two important points she believes could have saved her daughter’s life.

The first is Colorado’s 911 Good Samaritan Law. It protects a person from criminal prosecution when they report “in good faith” an emergency drug or alcohol overdose – even if they had something to do with facilitating the overdose.

The second is the availability of naloxone, a medication that reverses an opioid overdose. It’s branded as Narcan by one pharmaceutical manufacturer. In March, the U.S. Food and Drug administration approved Narcan for over-the-counter non-prescription use, though it could take months to become available.

Drug overdose persists as a major public health issue in the United States, with more than 101,750 reported fatal overdoses occurring in the 12-month period ending in October 2022, primarily driven by synthetic opioids like illicit fentanyl, according to the FDA.

It’s never easy to talk about losing a child. VanHouten left Grand Junction after Miah’s death. Yet she does what she can to expose how and why fentanyl has come to be known as a scourge. We applaud her for trying to make a difference.

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel Editorial Board

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