DENVER — Sunday is National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day, which is being observed by the DEA and across the country. An organization called Facing Fentanyl established the day, which is meant to honor and remember the lives lost to fentanyl poisoning.
The group organized an event in honor of Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day in Denver on Sunday. There will be several speakers there, including Mitchico Duff who flew in from North Carolina. It was the first time Duff had ever been on an airplane, and she traveled to Colorado to share her daughter's story.
"She was stolen from me, without her knowledge. She didn't know that she was taking fentanyl," Duff explained after arriving in Denver. “She was 23, and she did not want to die. She wanted to live. She has a five-year-old little girl who's turning six in three days. And we have to celebrate that without her mom being there.”
Duff said she could not believe what happened to her daughter, Michiko. She said her daughter believed she was ingesting cocaine, not fentanyl, and that her case is being investigated as a homicide.
“We heard of a drug overdose. But this fentanyl was something new that came in and took us by storm," said Duff. “I just said she was murdered by fentanyl, it was the hardest thing in my life. I wanted to say she had a stroke, she had a heart attack, because that was embarrassing.”
Duff does not believe there is enough diversity when it comes to speaking out about the dangers of illicit fentanyl.
“This thing is not about Black or white. It's about taking back our humanity. It's about saving our kids. We will have no future if this war takes over," Duff said. "I'm going to stand and I'm going to talk and I need everybody else to come and stand with me.”
Meanwhile, a booth near the Boulder Farmers Market is handing out more than 800 free naloxone kits over the weekend. Naloxone is a nasal spray that has the ability to reverse an opioid overdose.
“In Colorado, you don't need a prescription to have it, but you have to go to a pharmacy to get it. Which makes it kind of uncomfortable sometimes," said Trina Faatz, the facilitator for the Boulder County Substance Use Advisory Group, who added that naloxone is not free at a pharmacy.
Colorado Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day will be held in the Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park across the street from the State Capitol on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The public is invited to attend.
Those behind the event say Colorado is one of nearly 30 states holding events in honor of Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day on Sunday.
