With teens dying at alarming numbers from fentanyl overdoses, the News4 I-Team devoted last week to investigating the depths of the problem and has since heard from parents touched by the fight against fentanyl, including Virginia’s first lady, Suzanne Youngkin. She met with Investigative Reporter Ted Oberg and the News4 I-Team after watching the series.
This report is part of News4 and Telemundo 44’s Fighting Fentanyl series. Go here for full coverage.
Like so many parents we've met, first lady Suzanne Youngkin admits she didn't know enough about fentanyl until tragedy struck.
“My interest in fentanyl was really born out of grief," Youngkin told the I-Team during a visit to the NBC Washington studios.
In 2020, before her husband, Glenn, was elected Virginia's governor, Greyson Mazich, a close family friend, died of fentanyl poisoning. Mazich was just 21 years old.
“I had a lot of learning to do. I didn't really understand the fentanyl crisis,” Youngkin said. “We see across the commonwealth that very few communities are immune from this issue."
In January 2024, the first lady launched the It Only One Takes One initiative. She has traveled Virginia sounding the alarm just one pill with a few specs of fentanyl can kill even a first-time user. As she met with the I-Team, Youngkin noted how similar stories of tragedy can be.
“I watched the series that NBC and Telemundo were doing on fentanyl. I was just torn up inside about the family whose young son had graduated and yet his diploma was delivered to them instead of him."
That young man is Malcolm Kent, he was just 17 when he died of fentanyl poisoning.
"When I went in to check on him the next morning,” his father, Absolon Kent, told News4’s Tracee Wilkins, “that's when we found out that he had passed away during the night."
His mother Thurraya said, "He never saw his diploma. They came and presented it to us."
“These sorts of stories, I hope, will motivate people to take action, will motivate people to talk to their young people about this problem," Youngkin said.
Youngkin talked to her own college-age son about the risks of fentanyl. She reminded him 7 of 10 pills of any kind seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration contain fentanyl, and she’s doing more.
Youngkin knows, even with a slight dip in Virginia’s fentanyl overdose deaths, it's still too hard for families to get help. She's adding her powerful voice to the chorus of people pushing for more.
“I don't think we can keep up with the demand [for treatment]. I'm being perfectly honest,” Youngkin told News4. “One of the things that practitioners tell us all of the time is that they are semi-designed for substance use disorder among 16, 17, and 18-year-olds. Never before have they seen demand for 10, 11 and 12-year-olds. That's what we're experiencing in Virginia. We've got to do a much, much better job of figuring out how we can meet the needs of young people where they are, with the right help at the right time."
We've added a link to Youngkin’s It Only Takes One initiative to our resources page on fentanyl and families. We know finding help can be hard. We've collected resources from across the DMV hoping to at least make the first step a little easier.
