It isn’t car crashes, it isn’t guns, and it isn’t suicide: Fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45. It’s a statistic Janel Rodriguez has surely cited more times than she can count.
“Years ago, it was much safer, if still inadvisable, to experiment with drugs. You just can’t experiment anymore,” Rodriguez asserts.
In August, Rodriguez and Brandon Dunn of Buda, Texas, lost their 15-year-old son Noah to fentanyl poisoning.
But Noah, an honor roll student and athlete from a Christian household, didn’t know the pill he took contained eight milligrams of fentanyl — equivalent to four lethal doses. Though it appeared to be Percocet, the pill did not contain any substance other than fentanyl.
Rodriguez contends that in Noah’s tragic case, and in the cases of so many others, the word “overdose” simply doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation, nor the nature of the crisis.
Overdose, Rodriguez explained, is accurate only when someone takes too much of a drug they knowingly consume — not when they’re deceived into taking a substance they had no intention of ingesting.
One of her most cherished pictures of Noah is from the San Antonio riverwalk. It was taken in December 2019, as attested to by the Christmas tree in the background and the Johnson High School 2019-20 shirt he wore.
Dunn and Rodriguez loved how the picture showed off his smile. They chuckled while reminiscing because, unlike in more recent photos, he didn’t have a mask hanging around his neck thanks to COVID.
Rodriguez glowingly recounted the months leading up to her son’s passing, telling The Daily Wire that it was the best summer they’d had together.
She confided in us that months before losing her son, he’d experimented with an illegal drug for the first time. He spent several days in the ICU after having a bad reaction. “What happened? You promised us,” Rodriguez said, describing the pain and confusion that she grappled with in the wake of her loss.
Her pain, her grief, her sorrow, all of which can’t truly be expressed in words, was perhaps encapsulated most clearly when, between tears, she cried “I’d do anything for one last hug.”
Now, just nine months after their loss, Rodriguez and Dunn work to ensure that other parents never have to experience the grief they’ve had to endure. Through their non-profit organization, the Forever 15 Project, the two raise awareness about the fentanyl crisis, warning of the dangers and ubiquity of the deadly drug that’s coming up through our southern border.
Dunn even testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Southern Border, pleading with lawmakers to secure the southern border. “This is not a topic that is usually addressed by us in our public speaking, interviews, or other media,” Dunn said of the border before remarking, it is the “elephant in the room that no one wants to address.”
“The United States government has simply not gone far enough in policing and shutting down the main route of this product into the country. That is via the southern border,” he added before asserting “This is not a political issue. It is about life and death.”
While record breaking fentanyl seizures have been made at points of entry along the southern border, Dunn points out that drug smugglers with any sense do everything they can to evade designated points of entry, which are manned by authorities. It is impossible to truly measure the amount of fentanyl that’s made it into America, Dunn argues.
Back in Texas, the two are hard at work spreading awareness about the fentanyl crisis and make frequent presentations on the dangers of the drug at middle and high schools.
Just before their sit-down interview with The Daily Wire, Dunn and Rodriguez were at a school giving the same presentation they have many times before, but this instance was especially heart wrenching. They’d been at Noah’s old high school. Presenting to the sophomores, Noah’s class, was the hardest. “Those were his friends,” she recalled.
The day before, she was at Noah’s middle school. “Noah was such a teacher’s pet,” Rodriguez recounted. “Every teacher, every coach, the principal, they came up to me and shared a memory about Noah.” She added, “Seeing his football coach bawling his eyes out was very touching.”
“It’s hard but it’s healing,” Rodriguez said of the presentations. The assemblies are working. Now, staff members in the Hays Consolidated Independent School District carry Narcan. “We’ve had at least 12 or so revived at school,” Dunn tells The Daily Wire.
But the true number of lives the Forever Fifteen Project has saved is undoubtedly much higher. “We’ll never know how many kids we stopped from taking a pill” or how many kids have declined or forfeited tainted drugs after hearing their presentation, Dunn remarked.
“Noah touched a lot of lives,” Rodriguez reminisced. In his memory, the two are touching and saving many others.
Janel Rodriguez’s and Brandon Dunn’s interviews will be featured in an upcoming mini-documentary from The Daily Wire, which will be posted on our YouTube channel.