FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Zach Creighton was headed to bed the night of Dec. 12, after a long day of work. Unreachable all the next day, his parents rushed from their Boynton Beach home to Creighton’s place in West Palm Beach.
There, they discovered their son, 31, had died from a fentanyl overdose — becoming part of a staggering, and growing, number of deaths across Florida and the rest of the nation.
In the weeks since, Mary Beth Creighton has been grieving the loss of her son, and become an advocate for combating the scourge of fentanyl.
Zach Creighton’s death has put her face to face with local, state and federal elected officials and their aides as she implores them to take action.
She has been in Tallahassee recently, pushing the state Legislature to legalize test strips that can detect the presence of fentanyl, something she — and many experts — believe would save lives.
Enormous problem
Fentanyl is widespread, and deadly.
“The lethality of fentanyl is very hard to overstate,” Wilton Manors Police Officer Kevin Loughran said at a late January event in Miami. “Fentanyl poisoning is happening more frequently than I think anyone realizes.”
Loughran has received commendations for saving lives by administering naloxone, an antidote, to counteract the effects of an opioid overdose. But he said when he was asked to appear at the event with Gov. Ron DeSantis, “I couldn’t even recall the exact situations or the details of the situations because there’s been so many of these lifesaving interventions. It’s hard to keep track of them.”
Dr. Kenneth Scheppke, a deputy secretary of the Florida Department of Health, said Friday at an event in Destin that the death rate from fentanyl has increased almost 800% since 2015.
State statistics for 2021, the most recent year available, show that fentanyl caused 5,791 deaths in Florida, a 9% increase from 2020 — and a 77% increase from 2019.
Reports from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission shows fentanyl was responsible for more than double the deaths caused by cocaine, the cause of the second-highest number of drug-related deaths, in 2020 and 2021.
In South Florida, there are dozens of fentanyl overdoses every day. In both 2000 and 2021, there was more than one fentanyl-caused death every six hours in the region. In 2021, there were a total of 568 deaths in Broward, 479 in Palm Beach County and 299 in Miami-Dade County.
Fentanyl deaths can happen in many, many ways, experts said. Often, someone using a recreational drug or supplement — a teen who pops what they think is an ADHD pill from a friend, a student who uses marijuana, an adult who takes cocaine — can die if the drug has been laced with fentanyl unbeknownst to them.
“No one takes fentanyl itself. They take other drugs, and die from fentanyl they never knew was in the drug,” said Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg.
Speaking Friday in Destin as he discussed ways Florida would spend its share of the national settlement with opioid distributors and manufacturers, DeSantis said, “You can have a teenager using some type of drug and not even know that there’s fentanyl in it. And this is a lot different than what people were doing in the 1960s. You have fentanyl laced in all kinds of stuff that can be deadly.”
Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife, expounded on that warning Friday.
“We have to tell our children that when they think they’re taking something like a Xanax, you don’t recommend, but if they are doing that and it’s laced with fentanyl, that’s it. That’s the end of their life. There’s no do-overs,” she said.
Test strips
Test strips are available for $1 or $2 on Amazon, and in many states they’re distributed by health departments and social service agencies.
But in Florida they’re considered illegal drug paraphernalia.
Bills sponsored by state Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat who represents Broward and Palm Beach counties, and state Rep. Christine Hunschofsky, a Democrat who represents northwest Broward, would decriminalize use of the test strips in Florida.
Aronberg, Hunschofsky and Polsky said people who would never knowingly take fentanyl could have their lives saved through the use of a test strip. A person could use the strip to test the drug, and if it contains fentanyl, not take it.
Senate Bill 164 received unanimous approval last week from the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. House Bill 165 is scheduled to go before the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Thursday.
Hunschofsky said availability of test strips would not encourage drug use. “Doing this will not stop people from doing drugs, and it will not encourage people to do drugs,” she said. “What it will do is stop people from dying from drugs. It’s one more tool in that harm-reduction toolbox.”
Aronberg said the idea that it would condone or encourage drug use is “an old-school way of thinking, an outdated way of thinking.”
He said that view stems from the time when people believed that substance abuse was caused by a moral failing. “To believe that someone battling substance abuse disorder should be given the death penalty because of their brain disease is an outdated and morally repugnant way of thinking.”
Positive signs
There are positive signs for the legislation. It received support from Republican and Democratic senators in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
In both the House and the Senate, the legislation wasn’t assigned to a large number of committees, giving it a better chance of making it to floor votes in each chamber. If legislative leaders want to doom a proposal without officially doing so, it can get assigned to so many committees that passage is effectively impossible.
The legislation is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the Florida Public Defenders Association and the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as well as the R Street Institute, a center-right libertarian leaning organization.
The state association of police chiefs said by email it didn’t have a position. And spokespeople for several South Florida police chiefs and sheriffs said their bosses either didn’t have a position or didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Florida Senate approved similar legislation in 2022, but the change was rejected by Republicans who controlled the Florida House.
Aronberg, a former member of the Florida Senate, said the 2022 outcome “was tragic. And I rarely use that word when it comes to legislation. The bill’s failure led to unnecessary deaths from fentanyl overdoses that could easily be prevented.”
Before approving test-strip legislation, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee approved a different measure to make it easier to prosecute for first-degree murder for a death caused by unlawful distribution of a controlled substance. The new standard would be that the substance was a “substantial factor” in causing the death, which proponents said was an easier standard to meet than the current “proximate” cause of death.
“We’re trying to save lives with a one-two punch,” said state Sen. Jonathan Martin, a Lee County Republican, who chairs the committee.
“We want you to stop but we’re not going to criminalize testing strips for fentanyl anymore,” he said. “Secondly, if you’re putting that poison in the drugs you’re selling we’re coming after you. We want the death penalty on the table. You kill too many people. And I don’t care what got you to that point in your life where you’re a drug dealer. But we’re coming after you.”
Politics
Among national politicians — or people like DeSantis, who is expected to seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — discussion of fentanyl often involves political blame.
DeSantis, along with many Washington Republicans, faults President Joe Biden. They argue that under Biden the southern U.S. border is less secure, and that has allowed the fentanyl crisis to balloon.
Democrats counter with data showing fentanyl is interdicted at legal border crossings, where legal U.S. residents or citizens attempt to smuggle it into the country.
Fentanyl, generally made in Mexico and formed into pills from chemicals manufactured in China, is smuggled into the U.S., according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and testimony from others at congressional hearings.
The DEA says that drug dealers mix fentanyl with other drugs, including heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine, because of its potency and low cost. The combination increases the chance of a fatal interaction, and the drug users would likely not know the drug is in the mix.
Overdoses can cause respiratory failure leading to death. Just a few grains are lethal.
Creighton said elected officials need to do everything they can to stop the problem. She isn’t interested in the politics of it. “There’s a big division in this country, but maybe this crisis is one thing where they can put it aside. I’m hoping.”
“It is so multifaceted. We need security. We need to stop the flow of fentanyl. We need criminal penalties to deal with the criminality of it, and we need better treatment programs,” she said in an interview. “Right now, to save lives immediately, I feel the fentanyl testing strips could save lives.”
Case not unusual
Creighton said her son was severely injured years ago in a snowboarding accident, and required reconstructive surgery, after which he became addicted and started buying prescription pain medications on the street, and ultimately snorting heroin.
Zach Creighton had been in recovery. “He had been doing so well,” she said. He was an appliance technician with multiple certifications. “My son had this job that he was loving, just signed the lease on his condo,” she said.
In the condo, police found two little capsules, and one was open. Creighton said the medical examiner ruled Zach’s death was an accidental death due to fentanyl.
“The craving overcame his common sense,” she said.
“He was not a partyer. He was a contributing member of society, who unfortunately became addicted to prescription drugs, oxy’s,” she said. “He is not just a statistic. He is the face of tens of thousands dying in this country.”
Aronberg said the opioid epidemic “was a man-made epidemic, where individuals with workplace or sports injuries went to a doctor to be given pills that they were told were safe and nonaddictive.
Aronberg said the problem is so severe that it calls for implementing every possible solution.
“The only way to solve the problem is to take a holistic approach,” he said. “And that includes a strong law enforcement response, which we have. But it also includes harm reduction. You can’t arrest your way out of an opioid epidemic.”
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