‘Fentanyl Project’ details growing crisis and fatalities in Sarasota

Actress and director KT Curran has addressed some serious issues in fictional plays, short films and features that deal with the dangerous impact of bullying, the ripple effects of stress on emergency workers and how young people navigate decisions about first-time sex and fears of diseases.

But she didn’t want to take time to create a story to deal with the fentanyl crisis that has claimed tens of thousands of lives across the United States. Her latest film, “The Fentanyl Project,” which was recently shown at the Sarasota Film Festival, is a documentary with a focus on the impact of the synthetic drug in Sarasota County and two families dealing with the unexpected loss of a child and sibling after taking fentanyl.

The film, produced by Curran’s Wingspan Productions, will be screened on WEDU PBS at 9 p.m. May 16 and is available for viewing anytime on WEDU.org. Curran said Sarasota County school leaders are working to show the film to students in the district because of the dangers of the drug.

“The biggest problem is that there are people who don’t know they’re taking it,” Curran said. “The whole fentanyl story is so multi-layered. You could focus on the border. Is China trying to destabilize our country by flooding the country with cheap fentanyl? I’m focusing on the kids who don’t know they’re ingesting fentanyl. It’s flooding college campuses. Kids are going to a party and taking a pill someone gives them and they don’t know they’re going to die."

As Sarasota Police Sgt. Jamie Morrison notes, “It comes in everything you can imagine, from where it looks like candy as a pressed pill, to where they’re selling it as cocaine.”

According to Drug Enforcement Agency records, 112,000 people died from fentanyl overdoses last year.

Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman says in the film that the synthetic opioid is “100 times stronger than morphine. In my 34-year career, I’ve never seen another drug that has the devastating impact that fentanyl has.”

Fentanyl is regularly used in hospitals. “They gave fentanyl to my mother when she had heart surgery. Doctors like fentanyl because it’s fast-acting,” Curran said. “It can be a life-saving drug that gets you out of pain immediately, but it’s incredibly addictive.”

But its use has extended far beyond hospital emergency rooms.

Curran said she first learned about the extent of the danger after talking to a friend, Matthew Craft, whose younger sister Nicolette Arecco died after ingesting fentanyl. He is interviewed with his mother Nanette Cobb and older sister Brittany Yauslin Hansche.

“The misconception is that they’re drug users, people who used drugs a long time,” Cobb says in the film, fighting back tears. “It doesn’t have to be. It could be their first and last time. The fentanyl that took Nicolette’s life was given to her by a friend to help her mourning, to help her grieving for my mother. She thought it was Xanax.”

As difficult as it was to be filmed talking about her daughter’s death, Cobb said, “If just one person is saved from this, it’s one person.”

Elaine Finn, also interviewed in the film, lost one of her three sons, William Sean Thomas, to the drug. The family said at around age 22 he was having some mental health issues and was taking Xanax.

His brother, Kevin said he took more and more Xanax. “It kind of clouded his mind to make him feel he didn’t have a problem, mentally and physically.” He said Sean learned how to find the pills online. “One time I saw his Xanax bottle. It was from Mexico or some Spanish company, because it was Spanish pharmacy all over it.”

Sarasota Police Chief Rex Troche said because fentanyl is so inexpensive “it has become the drug for a lot of the cartel. A small amount is so potent,” he said. “For their bottom line, it makes a lot of sense.”

Authorities and medical experts worry about people buying drugs outside traditional pharmacies who don’t know what they’re getting in the pills they’re taking.

The problem isn’t with prescription drugs, but rather with the way fentanyl is regularly added to other medications, like Xanax or Adderall, that people get online or in pharmacies in Mexico and elsewhere.

“UCLA bought all these pills and tested them and 70 percent of the pills were fentanyl or meth or both,” Curran said. “They’re putting it in candy boxes. I had so many people telling me they have a family member who had fentanyl poisoning. It is everywhere and we all need to know that and talk about what we can do.”

The Sarasota City Police Department is providing Narcan, a drug that can counter the dangerous effects of fentanyl if administered quickly, she said.

“You can get Narcan at Publix or CVS and you often can get it free of charge. If you have a child you may be concerned about, I would definitely want to have it in the medicine cabinet,” Curran said. “Schools are looking at having it for school nurses and police officers have it in their pocket.”

Fentanyl is extremely fast-acting. “They can’t get to people fast enough,” she said.

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Paul Grove, the president and CEO of WEDU, said he bribed his four sons, ages 19 to 25, with pizza to watch the 26-minute film.

“I think it’s extremely important for everybody to watch this documentary,” he said. “It really opened my eyes. This has to be a movement so that people will stop it in its tracks, that we will not have this anymore.”

WEDU also is working with other PBS stations in Florida to distribute it as widely as possible. Even though the film’s focus is on the city of Sarasota and Sarasota County, “good storytelling translates no matter where you watch it,” Grove said. “This is not a problem that’s Sarasota-specific. It’s just a story everybody can say, ‘I can’t believe that mom and kids went through that. That translates to anybody in the world.”

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Documentary looks at growing problem of fentanyl deaths in Sarasota