People USA — August 21, 2017

HEROIN

USERS FIRST

ABUSED

PRESCRIPTION

DRUGS

IN

45

tanyl [a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more

potent than morphine, often mixed with heroin

on the street] and it goes airborne and they inhale

it, then they can overdose also.”

As more parents become addicted, people

working in the nation’s foster-care system try to

protect the epidemic’s youngest victims. “When

family members can’t get

the drugs they need, they get

angry and are fighting with

each other, and the kids are

in the middle,” says Bette

Hoxie, executive director

of Adoptive & Foster Fam-

ilies of Maine. “There are

domestic-violence issues.

Sometimes these kids are

losing both parents as a

result of this.” In Septem-

ber 2016 police in East Liv-

erpool, Ohio, in an effort to raise public awareness,

took the extreme step of releasing a photo (previ-

ous page) of an unconscious couple who had both

overdosed in a car while the woman’s 4-year-old

grandchild was in the back in his car seat. Said East

Liverpool police chief John Lane in a statement:

“We feel it necessary to show the other side of this

horrible drug.”

To help curtail the rising tide of death and

destruction, many people who are all too familiar

with the pain and heartbreak of opioid addiction

are finding ways to help. Bill Schmincke, 52, of Egg

Harbor Township, N.J., watched his son Steven

spiral from occasional marijuana use into severe

opioid addiction that landed him in rehab several

times. “He was a good kid; the drugs just got him,”

says Schmincke. “It changed his life and priorities.

Once the stuff gets a hold of you, it doesn’t let go.”

By 2016 Steven was a father of two, but he still

couldn’t kick the habit—nor could his girlfriend,

who is currently in a drug-treatment program.

“If we hadn’t heard from Steven in a few weeks,

we’d go out and bust down doors trying to find

him and his girlfriend in the middle of the night,”

Schmincke recalls. “We’d literally go through

doors. It was horrific.” After Steven died of an

overdose in March 2016, Schmincke and his wife,

Tammy, began Stop the Heroin (stoptheheroin

.org), a nonprofit that helps people transition from

rehab to sober living. “We’re about awareness now,”

says Schmincke. “We’d like to bring light to people

who don’t understand addiction. They think these

people out there are junkies and drug addicts,

‘IT’SNURSES,

TEACHERS,

EVERYBODY.

THERE

SHOULD BE

NO STIGMA’

—POLICE CHIEF

JAMES BATELLI

TAKING

ACTION

“Our motivation

is to not see

other parents go

through what

we did,” says Bill

Schmincke,

founder of Stop

the Heroin.

Philadelphia

librarian Chera

Kowalski (right)

has learned to

treat overdoses.

64 August 21, 2017 PEOPLE

Phillip Baldwin, 23

Zachary Mullen, 18 Katie Golden, 17 William Piekanski, 30 Christopher Sansing, 38 Gregory Sipos, 22 Jacklyn Mastromauro, 29 Luke Johnson, 22

William Godwin II, 47 Dylan Dismang, 24 Robert Tavares, 25 Stevie Waggoner, 33 Dane Grayson, 25 Chelcee Allen, 25