NEW MARTINSVILLE, W.Va. –A New Martinsville mother who lost her son to a drug overdose says the signing of a bill reclassifying fentanyl as a Schedule I drug is only the beginning of addressing the drug epidemic nationwide.
Diana Estep’s son, Drew, died of a fentanyl overdose in 2020 while he was in Indiana recovering. He was only 24.
Estep was present in Washington when the HALT (Halt All Lethal Trafficking) Fentanyl Act was signed into law by President Donald Trump last week.
Prior to the passage of this legislation, Estep said she had participated in a protest in Washington every year since 2021 with Lost Voices of Fentanyl, calling for action due to the dangerous nature of the drug.
“Fentanyl is a crisis, there are so many people that don’t even know the word fentanyl, don’t understand how deadly it is, do not understand a grain of salt, it’s odorless, it’s tasteless, you’re not going to know you get it, people are being deceived,” she said.
She said her son had struggled with anxiety and ADHD during his teenage years and had, unfortunately, turned to drugs to self-medicate.
“When you’re doing it for the reasons to self-meditate and the person beside you might be partaking in those activities as kids do sometimes, teenagers, they come out the other side of it and you find something to self-medicate it kind of becomes your breathe so to speak, and Drew used those words to us, saying that I can’t breathe without it, I can’t be inside my head,” Estep said on MetroNews Talkline last week.
The HALT Act makes permanent the temporary classification of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs as Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act. This designation places them in the most restrictive category- substances with a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use
However, Estep noted that there is still more work to be done to ensure continued progress in tackling the problem.
She said it will ultimately come down to the prosecution of individuals who deal these drugs to others.
“We all have to work together, starting with law enforcement and being able to make the arrests to use these stiffer penalties,” Estep said. “It’s kind of like a whole collaboration that everybody has to recognize how important it is to be able to prosecute, find these dealers, find them with the fentanyl to be able to make these charges.”
She said that drug convictions don’t happen very often. However, she noted that in her son’s case, the DEA office near Indiana was able to secure a conviction. Garrett Hacker, the dealer who supplied Drew with the drugs, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of dealing in a controlled substance resulting in a person’s death. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in November 2023.
She emphasized the importance of education- especially for teenagers-in preventing drug misuse and raising awareness about the dangers of substances like fentanyl.
“If parents aren’t talking to kids, if they don’t watch the news and again it’s on certain news stations more than others, some none than others but if they don’t know what it is, they need to know what risks there taking and how to stay safe,” Estep said.
Estep said she doesn’t want any more parents to experience the loss of a child to this drug because of the grief.
“Everybody grieves in their own way, until you lose a child and there’s no way to overcome that grief, there’s a hole in your heart that time can never take away,” she said. “It’s totally a horrible thing to go through and there’s so many families that are going through it and it’s just something we can’t explain to society that hasn’t suffered this.”