Heroin Hell

If you’re a parent, what I’m about to share on BreakPoint today just might scare the heck out of you. But you need to hear it.

Elizabeth Blunt was a talented musician and athlete who attended a Christian high school and college. Gifted in foreign languages, Beth was preparing to work in international relations, perhaps in China. But she never made it. Beth died in May of an overdose of heroin laced with fentanyl—a cheap, synthetic opiate. She was not quite 23. “She never came home drunk, didn’t show signs of drug abuse,” Beth’s mother, Lisa, said. “She used to be the sweetest girl. I don’t know what happened.”

The statistics are frightening. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every day in the United States, an average of 78 people like Beth die of an opiate overdose, including 29 from heroin. Every year, the CDC reports, opiate overdoses kill more than 28,000 people, and heroin kills more than 10,500. That’s more than all those killed on U.S. highways.

And