The federal Drug Enforcement Administration invited Alaskans at this week's Elders and Youth Conference in Anchorage to share ideas for preventing drug trafficking and overdose deaths in the state.
Marcus Pickett, a community outreach specialist for the DEA, helped run the workshop on Monday and shared information about the risk of addiction and death from fentanyl.
"Drug traffickers and drug dealers don't care what happens to you and your families," he said after sharing stories about how overdose deaths have affected him and his family. "They just want to make money."
Almost 50 people attended the presentation and discussion, where the DEA and U.S. Attorney for Alaska Michael Heyman fielded questions and comments from Elders and youth attending the conference.
That included a comment from Rose Okpealuk, a school bus driver living in Anchorage, who said she has suspected kids of using fentanyl on her bus before.
"I would hear the name 'fentanyl,' and I know that people have been making that a pill," she said. "I've been so scared that I don't want that to be offered to my grandkids that I want to be involved in helping."
Darren Muller Jr., from the village Ouzinkie in Kodiak Island Borough, also shared his thoughts. He said he wanted to understand how people can keep drugs from coming into rural Alaska communities.
"I travel by the Marine Highway System," he said. "And I know that it just seems to me that the state, our state, could do a lot more at that point, where we could maybe try to catch more people with the task force."
He was encouraged to hear in the presentation that the state recently trained about 80 village public safety officers on up-to-date information on how to intercept drug trafficking.
