At NGA’s 2024 Winter Meeting, the nation’s First Spouses joined together in a session to raise awareness about overdose prevention initiatives and to receive training on how to use naloxone, with the participating First Spouses leaving the meeting with the overdose reversal medication in-hand.
Utah First Lady Abby Cox hosted the session, and NGA Program Director Marianne Gibson moderated a discussion spotlighting state and federal initiatives to increase fentanyl awareness and improve behavioral health.
During the session, First Spouses heard from Ms. Delaine Mazich, a Virginia resident who lost her son Greyson in 2020 to fentanyl poisoning during his senior year of college. Ms. Mazich pointed out the public’s lack of awareness about fentanyl at the time of her son’s death. Overdose deaths among adolescents 10-19 years old increased 109% between 2019 and 2021, with many tied to the increased availability of counterfeit pills that appear to be prescription drugs but in fact contain fentanyl. It is not coincidental that this increase in overdose deaths parallels the worsening mental health among youth at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Young people are known to take risks, but there has never been a more dangerous time to purchase pills on the illicit drug market.
Virginia First Lady Suzanne Youngkin discussed…
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