Snapchat, Fake Pills, and the Truth No One Told Us

The silent epidemic of counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl is claiming thousands of young lives across America, and most parents have no idea until it's too late. 

When Laura's 17-year-old son Zach purchased what he thought was a Percocet on Snapchat, she couldn't have known it would end his life. A straight-A student with college acceptance letters to multiple UC schools including UCLA, Zach had his entire future ahead of him. His story demolishes the stereotype of who fentanyl victims are - they're often not addicts but unwitting first-time users deceived by deadly counterfeits.

Host Lisa Carole, who recently lost her own son to fentanyl poisoning, creates a powerful space for Laura to share Zach's story - from his musical talents and academic achievements to the devastating moment she returned home to find paramedics and neighbors outside her house. The raw emotion of this mother's experience serves as an urgent warning for families everywhere: the drug paradigm has changed dramatically, and experimentation that might have been survivable in previous generations can now be instantly fatal.

Most disturbing is how this crisis remains largely invisible in mainstream conversation. Both mothers emphasize the critical need for public awareness campaigns, accurate media reporting that doesn't stigmatize victims with terms like "overdose," and school curricula specifically addressing counterfeit pills. As Laura poignantly notes, "If it can happen to Zach, it truly can happen to any kid who thinks they might just dabble or experiment one time. Well, that one time could be the last."

This episode isn't just heartbreaking - it's essential listening for anyone with children or young adults in their lives. Knowledge truly is power in this fight, and understanding the fatal facts of fentanyl could save someone you love. Subscribe to join this critical conversation and learn how you can help prevent these senseless tragedies in your community.

The Fatal Facts of Fentanyl podcast is dedicated to raising Awareness to the illicit FENTANYL crisis hitting the USA.

The goal is to SAVE LIVES and families from this travesty.

Awareness and Education are the Key.
Knowledge is Power!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Fatal Facts of Fentanyl
• 11:03 The Deadly Reality of Fake Pills
• 13:16 Laura Shares Zach's Story
• 21:56 The Tragic Day Everything Changed
• 31:39 Fighting for Awareness and Education
• 36:33 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Lisa: 4:04

Welcome to the Fatal Facts of Fentanyl. This is dedicated to raising awareness of the illicit fentanyl crisis hitting the USA. It is killing tens of thousands of people who suffer from substance abuse disorders and first-time users. There are no boundaries. No boundaries. It is straight across the board, with the number of deaths, without any regard to race, sex, socioeconomics, age, education, religious background or location. It is in every community within our country. The fentanyl crisis is deadlier than ever before for various reasons. It is time to address the many issues surrounding this crisis. It is time to listen and learn from experts. It is time to hear the many stories from people who have lost their loved ones due to death by deception. Change begins with each of us as individuals and collaboration with others towards this positive transformation. The goal is to save lives and families from this travesty. Awareness and education are the key. Knowledge is power.

Lisa: 5:34

I am your host, Lisa Carole, an educator and advocate to help bring awareness to the fentanyl crisis touching every facet of our society. I am a mother who recently lost her son to fentanyl poisoning. I know firsthand the pain of grief surrounding the loss of my firstborn son. I created this podcast in hopes of channeling my heartbreak and put my energy into trying to prevent similar tragedies. I find solace and strength in working to spare other families a similar grief and any person battling this addiction. Tragedy has a way of being something powerful. This is in honor of my beautiful son's life forever 32.

Lisa: 6:31

Right here on Fatal Facts of Fentanyl. You will learn from experts on the front line combating the many issues surrounding fentanyl. You will hear personal stories from families and friends who have lost their loved ones and have taken their grief and pain to turn it around, to make positive changes and bring awareness and education. You will also listen to people who have struggled with an opioid addiction and are still struggling and are now in active recovery. All of us share a common bond. We are all here to make a difference. We are all here to bring you the fatal facts of fentanyl.

Lisa: 7:23

One pill can kill. People who knowingly peddle illicit fentanyl, who knowingly cut it into or substitute it for street or party drugs, or knowingly press it into counterfeit, fake pills. They know that their deceitful products can and will kill. So what does that make them? What kind of people do this? Yet many in our society want to blame the unwitting consumer who does not know they are being deceived. Many of these consumers are kids who have not been warned that the drug paradigm has changed. They have not been told that deadly illicit fentanyl is everywhere and will kill in minutes. Imagine this nightmare.

Lisa: 8:18

This mother was blindsided two days after Christmas Day of 2020. Two days after Christmas Day of 2020. After her beautiful son, zach, 17 years of age, died after buying what he thought was a Percocet on Snapchat, but instead a fake fentanyl pill, she cries every day for her wonderful son and for the life that was stolen from him. She cries every day because she did not know that these counterfeit, illicit pills even existed and could be easily accessed on social media. So how could she have protected and warned her son? Think about that. By the grace of god, this mother is here today to bring awareness and she will not rest until everyone knows what she now knows about the fatal facts of fentanyl and until everyone stops blaming the victims of this disgusting crime of death by deception. Please open your minds and hearts and listen and learn from this mom. Laura. Welcome, laura.

Laura: 9:43

Thank you, Lisa, for having me. I wish it was obviously under different circumstances, but I appreciate your desire to spread awareness.

Lisa: 9:54

You are so welcome. Thank you for being here, laura. Please describe your beautiful and talented son, zach, to our audience. Certainly, zach, as our audience?

Laura: 10:05

Certainly. Zach, as you mentioned, was 17. He was a high school senior, set to graduate. Of course, he passed away six months before that could happen. He was just a bright, shining light. He loved music. He was a self-taught musician. He played piano every day and taught himself just beautiful renditions of songs, filling our home with music all the time. He also performed. He had starred in the school musical right before the lockdowns had happened. He was the male lead. He played Troy Bolton in High School Musical, the school's production of that.

Laura: 10:48

He was on the track team so he was a hurdler and he had just had his sophomore season. He wasn't able to have one junior year because of the lockdowns, but he was just really on track to have an incredible season, improving all his times with every track meet. He was a straight A student since elementary school. He loved school. He was beloved by all of his friends, the outpouring, since his passing, of friends that I knew and friends of his that I didn't know. You know coming out and messaging me and telling me how special Zach was, what a great friend he was, how encouraging he always was of his friends. He loved um, his siblings, his big sister and his big brother. They all three had a very, very tight bond and a lot of interesting conversations and he just was a super super guy and he loved his family. He adored my mom and dad and his other grandma who, tragically, she passed away only nine days after him. I think her heart was broken and otherwise she was in really really good health. So we got a double whammy right right there at the same time and it was just. We're still reeling it's. You know, it's been six months.

Laura: 12:13

He, he just filled our hearts and our home and our family with so much love and so much, um much positivity and energy and music. And so even he was on track to become an Eagle Scout. He was very involved in his scout troop. He had all his badges. He just had to get his project signed off on and start that. But all of that had gotten sidelined because of COVID and so he was getting restless about, you know, needing to get that done before age 18, but it was hard because those are group projects, the Eagle projects, and when you're dealing with COVID restrictions it made it really hard for him to progress to get that Eagle. They did. His troop was very kind. They did award him that after he passed posthumously. And yeah, he's just a super, super kid.

Lisa: 13:14

Well, he sounds like a beautiful child and like throughout his whole life, and I know this was quite a shock, to say the least, but you said I know he was 17. He was a senior. What were Zach's plans for his future?

Laura: 13:34

very set to go away to school. We knew that had been his goal. He was working really, really hard. He and his friends, they were all really smart students and really driven kids and they all had kind of friendly competitions and you know about who had the higher grades or who did the best on the SAT and you know Zach had gotten a nearly perfect score on the SAT, um, you know Zach had gotten a nearly perfect score on the SAT he had done in his AP classes. He'd gotten all the top score, which is a five um on his AP tests that he took and so he was incredibly competitive for school. So three weeks before he died, uh, we're in California. So our university of California system is system is very rigorous and very tough to get into the campuses. But he knew he was really competitive. So three weeks before he passed away, right at the desk where he ended up dying, I helped him finalize his applications for the UC schools and he got in.

Laura: 14:40

Three months after he died we got his acceptance letters for UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara, uc San Diego, which is where I went, and UCLA, um and UCLA, which was a real accomplishment because we had been finding out from his friends that, um, as strong of candidates as even all of them were, um, the best that a couple of his friends had gotten was to be wait-listed at UCLA, and Zach was the only one in his tight friend group that got in. And so I really pictured him there because of his love for the arts and he thought he maybe might go into performing because he fell in love with the theater and when he played Troy Bolton his junior year he just his acting was so natural and so good and he really loved um. You know every part of that experience. I just I really pictured that that's where he would end up, though he still hadn't. Um about maybe 10 days or so after he died was when his application would have been due for the Ivy League schools and his penultimate dream school would have been Stanford University out here. If he had been able to get into Stanford he probably couldn't have turned that down, but he knew it was a real, real long shot to get into Stanford, so we thought it was probably more likely he'd end up at UCLA. So I just pictured this whole future. I have a twin brother. He went to UCLA and he lives right next to the campus and I had this whole future envisioned. Zach would go to UCLA. I'd come down, stay with my brother, my, my brother and my son would bond over being you know Bruins together and and it's, and then, in one you know tragic incident, it's all taken away and he just really had this incredible, incredible future.

Laura: 16:58

He didn't know exactly what he wanted to do. He he applied as a psychology major because he was really interested in the way people think and form their ideas and and um, and how they take that into the world. Um, so he put psychology for his major. But he, I think if he had been able to make it into acting and and into the arts or performing piano or things like that, um, that's really where his passion, you know, was Um. But the one thing he always said to to his family, to his beloved girlfriend he had a beautiful girlfriend for a year, wonderful young lady. He would always tell all of us I'm not exactly sure what I want to do, but I know I want to help people and that's what he would say and he did that. He did that in his life and I believe he would want us to continue that legacy of helping.

Lisa: 17:58

Laura, my heart breaks for you. You know that I empathize with you so much. I'm so sorry, and Zach is helping people and he's helping them through you. Okay, I want you to know that, if you will, please reenact that most painful day as you described it to me, only in hopes that our audience will have empathy. And also, I know a lot of people are wondering how does this happen? Like, how does tell me? Like, how did he get get Percocet on Snapchat? Like, can you explain that? Because we're here to educate people. A majority of people in our country just are not aware of this, and so I think that's what our job is to do is to help people, bring awareness and to educate. So, if you don't mind, can you reenact that day for us, honey, sure.

Laura: 18:57

It was, as you mentioned, two days after Christmas and, um, I was not in the house at the time. I had let. I was, um, on a, on a run with friends. I was doing a virtual half marathon, so you know it takes several, several hours to do that. So I was, I was out doing that.

Laura: 19:16

Um, it was not uncommon for Zach to sleep in because of COVID and not able to do a lot of things with friends in person at all. Often he and his friends would stay up late on their computers playing Minecraft, their headphones on and building worlds together and socializing virtually that way. So it wasn't uncommon that you know he would be up late doing that and and and sleep in. So I got the call from my daughter and she just said mom, you need to get home, you need to get home right now. She kind of let it slip about Zach. I don't think she meant to, because then, as I probed her more about it on my drive to the house, she kind of pulled back and said no, mom, just get here. The paramedics are here, just get here here, just get here. But as soon as I arrived and I saw no ambulance and my um, you know every. You know there were neighbors, there were first responders you know my family there and then that's when Zach's dad, chris um, just said our baby is gone.

Laura: 20:34

So I guess you know, shortly before I got the call he had gone to um, you know, check on Zach. It was around lunchtime so you know it wasn't uncommon, when he did wake up, to get on the phone with his girlfriend first or whatever, before you know, coming to the kitchen for food. So he went to you know, see if Zach's ready for some lunch and and Zach um wouldn't answer the door and the door was locked. So two of our kids share a bathroom it's a Jack and Jill bathroom. So he was able to access Zach's room through the bathroom and it just looked like Zach had put his head down on his desk, um, and so he probably was playing his video game when he ingested the fentanyl and just laid his head down and he died right there on his desk. So Chris knew it didn't look good but he tried CPR and our 22-year-old, who'd been studying remote from home, assisted and called 911. And paramedics came and tried to see.

Laura: 21:43

But it was pretty clear from what they described to me it was pretty clear that there was no hope, you know, for Zach. So, um, that's when they sent everybody you know outside. That's why everybody was outside when I got there, um, so they could investigate. You know what could have ended the life of this really healthy you know 17 year old high school senior? Um, they quickly ruled out any self-harm, which we never would have believed that anyway, because he was living an incredible, incredibly happy life. But they could see no injury to him. There were no drugs in his room. There was no um clear evidence as to what ended his life until, um, when the people from the coroner's office um, first time we heard the word fentanyl was when they said we are going to suspect that this is probably a fentanyl poisoning death, because they'd been seeing a rise in these types of deaths in our county and we had no idea about that. But they just said you know, we'll have to obviously do an autopsy and the toxicology report, but we'll.

Laura: 23:04

Close friends and neighbors were asking do you have any idea what happened? And we were sharing with them. Well, they're saying maybe it's this fentanyl stuff. We never had heard of it. And none of our, you know, zach was our youngest, our other two kids neither of them had ever had drug issues or tried drugs or you know anything like that. This was not anything that was you know, even in our immediate family or extended family or friend group. You know, this was not any kind of situation we had been exposed to in an intimate way.

Laura: 23:52

So we started diving into the research of how could our son get fentanyl, how could he get enough of it to kill him. Well, of course, that's when we found out how minuscule of an amount of fentanyl you need to be lethal and that's why it is everywhere, because it's cheap and it goes a long way. And but we didn't know any of this. And so as soon as we were talking to our neighbors and friends and they were just dumbfounded and said, oh my gosh, I need to talk to my kids about this. I didn't know what was going on. And so Chris and I made the decision that once it was confirmed and once the event, the investigation, um, they were, they. They were pretty clear quickly through evidence on Zach's phone, um, what had transpired with Zach getting this deadly pill, and they had asked, you know, for us to not, to not talk about it until an arrest was made. So once those things happened. Then we said, you know, we need, we need to warn our community, we need to to warn other parents and other kids about this, because the drug paradigm is not what it was.

Laura: 25:09

You know, when we were growing up, when people in their twenties and thirties were growing up, you could experiment or occasionally recreate, or you know these types of things without it ending your life. But now it's like a mind field out there. Fentanyl has been inserted deceitfully into all of these, um, you know, recreational drugs, harder drugs, and now these counterfeit pills and that's that's what ended Zach's life was one of these counterfeit pills and so many people don't understand, especially the kids. You know they think they're getting a Xanax or a Percocet or an Adderall or something that they are assuming is safe to experiment with. You know, because they they might have even gotten Percocet for a surgery they have had, had had, or they're um might have a friend that's on Xanax for anxiety, and so these are recognizable names to them and they think it's. You know it's a safer way to to experiment, test boundaries, that type of thing. So he did get it. Uh, what he thought was a Percocet pill through a dealer that was um conducting business on Snapchat.

Laura: 26:32

But none of this was anything we knew until our son was was in a morgue. It's just, and that's the way it is for most families who lose a child to this is they don't know, um um, that this danger is out there and it's hard to go public. I mean, we have talked to so many parents who struggle with that, because there is such a stigma, there is such a misunderstanding. People want to blame the user, they want to think about it in the old drug paradigm and they don't know. They don't know the way fentanyl has turned everything around and it truly can happen to any family and that's why we made the decision. You know, chris and myself, that we were going to share this information in the hope of saving other people, because if it can happen to Zach, it truly can happen to any kid who thinks they might just dabble or experiment or recreate one time.

Lisa: 27:43

Well, that one time could be the last, laura, you are exactly right in everything that you just said to our audience. You are so exactly right in everything that you just said to our audience. There's no public health awareness. None of us do know, or did know, about the fentanyl crisis that keeps growing in our country. Through your pain of the grieving process, what are your hopes? What do you hope happens in our country to combat this crisis?

Laura: 28:16

Well, obviously, it's a complex issue. Fentanyl's been coming into the country since 2013 through many different channels and, for me, the immediate thing I would like to see happen is public awareness. The main, the immediate thing I would like to see happen is public awareness. I'd like to see public service announcements, billboards, things on TV, things in school. You know whether it is in health, you know class.

Laura: 28:48

There's there's several different school districts that have devised curriculum that, or curricula that has addressed this fake counterfeit pill crisis, and so there is one that is called fake and fatal and that has been put together by a school district in Oregon. It's called the Beaverton School District. There is a wonderful parent in Oregon, jen Epstein, who is spearheading, trying to get other districts to implement this program. It's being offered for free. They put the curriculum together. One is aimed toward middle school kids, one is aimed toward high school kids about this problem, because another thing that I think is incredibly important is for the media to start reporting these things accurately, because when you use the word overdose, a large segment of the population closes off their mind, because they either think I mean, hopefully they're still compassionate, but they think, well, it won't affect me, or some people are completely not compassionate and they totally close off their heart and mind. But if you are hearing the accurate information of, not high school senior overdoses on fentanyl, but you hear high school senior was deceptively given a fatal amount of fentanyl that poisoned him to death, then people like myself included if I had a story like that, I would be like wait a minute, I have a high school senior who's poisoning, who's making fake pills. What's going on? Have I talked to Zach about this issue? Does he know about this? You know and he didn't.

Laura: 30:43

So it's the public awareness thing I think has to be right away, just happening right away. But then obviously you know we have to talk about how is fentanyl getting everywhere? What's being done about that? What do we need to do about strengthening laws for people who are deceitfully dealing in fentanyl? There's so many complexities to this and right now it seems like it's grieving parents that are having to work all these fronts. Now I've got this tremendous and you're at work both a part of it, this tremendous network of grieving moms and dads who are in the front lines of this lines of this. You know whether they're trying to bring awareness to the fentanyl coming into the country or they're trying to bring awareness to you know, updating the way these cases are investigated and prosecuted and charged, or around getting the education in the schools and we, just we really need a national response need a national response.

Lisa: 32:01

I totally agree with you, laura. I totally agree. I feel like we're all being led by a much higher power to be our children's voice, and it does seem that there is a strong coalition that's growing every day of parents and loved ones who have lost their children and perhaps maybe, as we keep going and keep our faith and hope in this crisis, that perhaps our government, our media, other people will take note of that and and make some positive changes. That that's what our hope is. I know it's the same for you. Thank you, laura. I can't thank you enough.

Lisa: 32:40

You're a remarkable woman and mother. Your light and love, with grace, just radiates from you, and I hope your dreams come true in making a positive impact and the necessary changes of the fentanyl crisis in our country, and I hope justice will be served. I want you to know that Zach is loved and will never, ever be forgotten. His light still shines bright, as does yours, and I just want you to keep shining. Girl, okay, many blessings. Thank you again. I feel as you, laura. Girl, okay, many blessings. Thank you again. I feel as you, laura. Together we can make a difference for all of our beautiful children. Thank you so much, thank you.

Lisa: 33:43

To our listeners. Thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe to this weekly podcast. Visit our website, which is linked below in the description On the website. Click on the social media icons and feel free to share this podcast with others, and also please leave your reviews and ask questions that you would like for me to ask our guest For our next episode dealing with the fatal facts of fentanyl. Enjoy your week. Many blessings, thank you, you.