CLEVELAND — 275 pairs of shoes sat in several neat rows on Cleveland’s Public Square Friday afternoon. The collection of sandals, boots, loafers and sneakers represent the number of people killed by drug overdoses in the U.S. on an average day.
“That’s a lot of phone calls people are getting, a lot of knocks on the door in the middle of the night, and that’s leaving a lot of family members behind and friends behind,” said Melinda Gamez.
The Lakewood mother lost her son, Miles, in November.
“He was a very outgoing, very high-spirited, fun person, had a lot of friends,” Gamez said.
The 19-year-old fatally overdosed when a drug he took was laced with fentanyl.
“I don’t think of myself as naive. I work with teenagers. I have four kids of my own. I know what goes on and what teenagers like to do. And I had no idea that fentanyl was as prevalent as it is,” Gamez explained.
A Harm Reduction Ohio study found the amount of fentanyl in Ohio’s illegal drug market reached a new high in 2021. The organization estimates up to 36% of the state’s drug supply, across all types, contained the highly potent opioid.
“Most parents say, ‘Not my child,’” Willoughby Hills mother Cathy Lawley said. “This is happening across every drug you could imagine, including pot.”
Her son, Michael Biello, died in March 2020 because a drug he took was unknowingly made with Carfentanil. The synthetic opioid is 100 times more potent than fentanyl, which itself is 50 times stronger than heroin.
“You’d walk into a room and he’d be hugging you and just give the best hugs. [He was] just so sweet and kind and personable and lively,” Lawley said of her son. “It’s turmoil [losing him].”
Following her son’s death, Lawley formed the Association of People Against Lethal Drugs (APALD). Friday afternoon it joined another Northeast Ohio organization, Families Against Fentanyl, in a rally calling for fentanyl to be named a weapon of mass destruction.
“We’re proposing a weapon of mass destruction designation so that we can interdict the supply before it gets here, seize the money in the accounts of the perpetrators and end the blight that’s being done to our country,” said Jim Rauh, the founder of Families Against Fentanyl.
Rauh’s son Tom died in 2015, when he unknowingly injected acetyl fentanyl into his body. The Akron father is now pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit in Summit County against the Chinese drug supplier believed to be responsible for Tom’s death.
RELATED: Akron man hopes to get fentanyl declared as a weapon of mass destruction
According to his organization’s analysis of CDC data, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death in 18-45 year-olds.
“It’s not only costing us a trillion dollars a year, but it’s costing us all these lives, all this grief, all these things that will never come back,” Rauh said.
During Friday’s rally, U.S. Representative Tim Ryan (D - OH 13th District) announced plans to call on Congress to classify fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, saying details would come out next week.
Proponents believe the distinction would give federal agencies new ways to help stem the flow of the deadly drug into the country.
“This is being done on purpose, with malice. It’s a 21st century opium war that’s been pulled back on us,” Rauh said.
While families look for national policy change, many are also calling for stricter state and local penalties for the people creating and dealing the contaminated drugs.
Lawley said the person convicted of selling her son carfentanil may receive a plea deal that would limit prison time to 1-3 years.
“Why would we let him out? Why wouldn’t we hold him accountable for a homicide, which some states do?” she said.
She and others also believe there’s a need for more awareness about the dangers and prevalence of fentanyl, the warning signs of a drug overdose and the need to carry overdose reversal drug naloxone.
“We want to prevent this from happening to somebody else,” Lawely said.
RELATED: There was enough fentanyl in an Ohio drug bust to kill every person in the state
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