Awareness campaign to stress dangers of opioids

ALBANY — The Dougherty County Coroner’s Office, in partnership with a number of other county and city of Albany departments, will host an Opioid Awareness campaign for local students in seventh through 12th grades at the Albany Civic Center at 10 a.m. April 17. The campaign will stress the dangers of the addictive classification of drugs/medicine.

“Before the kids get out for summer, we wanted to address the issues with these powerful drugs that are often found in your medicine cabinet,” Dougherty County Coroner Michael Fowler said. “There are also some new, even more dangerous drugs out there that we want kids to be aware of as well.”

According to Fowler, a new drug on the street called “gray death,” which is a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, can be lethal just by touching the drug or the bag that the drug was in.

“You can die from just touching the bag this stuff was in,” the coroner said. “It is absorbed through the skin. Too many people are dying from these drugs. I had an overdose this morning.”

The awareness campaign, according to Fowler, aims to bring together multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Albany Police Department, the Dougherty County Police Department and the Albany-Dougherty Drug Unit, as well as Dougherty County EMS, the county School System and local religious leaders with the coroner’s office in an effort to inform students and, ultimately, reduce and/or prevent further overdose deaths within the community.

“The whole idea is to raise awareness about how dangerous these drugs can be,” Fowler said. “So we have planned a re-enactment to be performed down in the main area of the civic center. Basically, the actors will be having a party, they are going to sell some drugs, the police are going to come in and they will be arrested. There will also be some overdoses.

“It is very similar to what law enforcement agencies have done in the past with drunk driving, but our focus will be opioids.”

For more information, contact the coroner’s office at (229) 438-3974.

Rolle, Phyllis