OHIO — Earlier this year a college sophomore by the name of Eli Weinstock died from fentanyl poisoning.
His family said he took a legal herbal supplement and unbeknownst to him, it was laced with the synthetic opioid.
Now, his family has taken on the charge of educating young people about the dangers of fentanyl through an organization they started called BirdieLight.
What You Need To Know
- Over 100,000 people died from an overdose between May 2020 and April 2021
- Eli Weinstock died in 2021 from fentanyl poisoning
- BirdieLight wants to continue educating young people ages 15-24 about fentanyl and how to test for it
Eli’s mom Beth Weinstock, is one of the co-founders of the organization.
Numbers from the CDC and the National Health Center for Statistics, show more than 100,000 people died from an overdose between May 2020 and April 2021. Weinstock said it was tough to recognize that her son would be included in this number.
“It was devastating as you can imagine. No one should have to lose a child for any reason. And then, of course, when we found out what the cause was … it was doubly devastating in the sense that no young people should be poisoned unintentionally by fentanyl. Eli did not intend to die and he did not know that what he was taking had fentanyl in it. So, we were devastated. It’s hard to even describe. So, you know, six months later we decided to do something about it. And that’s when we founded BirdieLight.”
Since then, BirdieLight has evolved and now the Weinstock’s are working to make sure other young people are educated about the drug.
“So the fastest rising age demographic of people who are dying from unintentional fentanyl ingestion, and we prefer not to say the word overdose because this is essentially a poisoning. We are targeting the age demographic 15 to 24. And what we’re doing is getting in front of younger people and educating them about fentanyl, where it is, how to avoid it and if you’re going to ingest something how to test for it with a fentanyl test strip. My daughter, Olivia, and I decided to do this because we thought Eli would be honored to have us fighting for other kids in this generational crisis is what we’re calling it.”
Educating young people has become a way to not only educate young people but to save lives beyond the state of Ohio.
“We’d like to take this national. We want fentanyl conversations and test strips to become as common as, for example, condom conversations became in the 80s and 90s during the AIDS epidemic. We feel that what we want children or young adults to realize is that everything they take could have fentanyl in it. And if they’re going to ingest, smoke, inject anything … you have to test it before you use it with a fentanyl test strip. Ideally, no one would be ingesting anything, but we know that the numbers don’t lie. And our goal is to have every kid talking about fentanyl and testing for fentanyl. We want this to be as commonplace … for example, in a college dorm room or a bathroom as a condom distribution. Or, even something like a dispenser on the wall where everyone can get a test room.”
