In late August of this year the Mexican Navy seized a shipment of over 51,000lbs of pure fentanyl. That’s enough lethal doses of fentanyl to kill almost the entire planet.
The worlds largest drug bust left port out of Shanghai China and landed in Culiacán, Sinaloa. Culiacán is the well known epicenter of the intensely violent drug cartel the Sinaloa Cartel.
You would think that the worlds largest fentanyl bust would have made some headlines, strangely there was almost no major news outlets that covered the story.
It is becoming harder and harder to even find heroin these days, stated the New York Times in a recent article. Heroin is harder to produce, and 50X less potent then the synthetically produced opioid Fentanyl. And the heroin that is out there, most of it is laced with fentanyl.
It’s no secret that China is the worlds biggest supplier of the dangerous opioid, fentanyl. A recent article stated that China is sentencing some recently captured fentanyl producers and dealers to death.
This public display of force and consequences towards China's fentanyl traffickers came just months after China banned all types of fentanyl. This ban is a positive step in the right direction, but buying this murderous drug can be done over the internet. "From Chinese Labs, to U.S. Streets" was a recent article done by NPR.
Few people need the stats as to how many people have died in the last two decades from opioid overdoses, as those numbers are always talked about. But let me remind you that those numbers are just the people dying from overdoses. Those numbers are not the amount of people overdosing, as many are being brought back to life with Narcan.
Being 10yrs into recovery and watching over 30 of my friends die during my 13yrs of active addiction, I'm no stranger to mess called the "opioid crisis". Let's not kid ourselves, the drugs out there are stronger then ever before. But the drugs out there are not stronger then God, and the drugs out there are not stronger then a healthy community of people that live, move, and breath like a mobile army of soldiers focused to bring hope and healing.
The addictive and relentless pursuit of a drug like fentanyl is the result of an internal pain left unaddressed. I've talked with far too many people struggling with addiction and heard their stories, most stories I hear are filled with a past of abuse, neglect, and pain.
This internal chaos is perpetuated due to a lack of healthy relationships, unaddressed trauma, and ultimately not feeling loved and accepted. Yes, people struggling with that pain and those addiction issues need to want to get well but we can be more intentional about positioning ourselves to be there with hope and healing.
Although I may not agree with everything that Johann Hari shares in this entire video, he makes some fantastic points in this 15min Ted Talk titled, "Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong."
We (probably unknowingly) have pawned this massive "drug crisis" off on law enforcement, on the medical community, the clinical community and so on. I have great friends in all these fields that are doing great work, but if they alone could have solved this problem I think it would have been done by now.
God is transforming the lives of countless addicts and alcoholics, and many of these people being set free from deadly addictions are not shy about letting everyone know it. The common theme I hear in transformation stories is that a community of people where intentional in helping them, holding them accountable in love, praying for them, and walking with them as they walk out of the pain.
Here are just a few hope filled stories that we have covered recently.
We have the choice, as this generation. We can avoid getting involved in this darkness that plagues our communities and pawn it off on the next generation, or we can consciously choose to get involved and stop letting the enemy push us around and intimidate us.
The problem is a big one, but I believe our generation can overwhelm this problem with solutions, love, and God. For too long we have been hiding and letting this problem overwhelm us, it's time we begin to overwhelm the problem. Let's create problems for this problem by staying on the offensive and bringing hope and healing to our communities.
Here are practical ways to get involved.
1- If you are in the Northeast Ohio area, contact us. We can get you plugged in somehow.
2- Search out your community services, call them today and ask how you can serve the community.
3- Call someone you know that is struggling and invite them to coffee, encourage them, let them know you love them. Let's say they don't answer, call again, and again, and again, and again, etc.
4- Pray! Don't pray general, vague, and ambiguous prayers. Get on your face and cry out to God to empower you to make a difference, and pray specific prayers that you want to see happen in your community. Then pray again, and again, and again...
5- Stop believing that this problem is bigger then God and His people. The change is already happening, and we can do this.
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