COLUMBIA — Heather Brinkler never thought she would outlive her child.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I ever thought I’d be going through this,” Brinkler said.
Brinkler lost her 16-year-old son, Connor Swaim, to fentanyl poisoning in July. Now, she advocates for fentanyl awareness and other drug overdose preventions.
“I do this now to try to prevent another parent going through what I’m going through,” Brinkler said.
So far this year, Columbia saw a more than 50% drop in drug and narcotic violations compared to 2022. Now, a pre-filed bill created by teenagers aims to continue that decrease.
House Bill 1852 would require Missouri public middle and high schools to be equipped with automated external defibrillators (AEDs), as well as Narcan. It would also require districts to train staff and students on how to properly use the equipment.
The bill was originally created by a group of teenagers from the St. James area who make up the Opioid Affected Youth Initiative, a federal grant-funded program administered by the Meramec Regional Planning Commission.
Members of the group were inspired to write the bill from personal experiences of substance abuse.
Rep. Tara Peters (R-Rolla) helped guide the teens in the legislation process of the bill.
“They’ve never written a bill before. So basically, the thing that they created started with bullet points,” Peters said, “[We] took that bill, took what the kids had in bullet points, and that obviously wrote the legislation that we have come to know now is House Bill 1852.”
While some critics say the requirement, especially in middle schools, is unnecessary, Peters said research illustrates something different.
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“Opioids is not selective to high schoolers, right? We have kids in junior high that are using it. We have babies born every day that are addicted because of parents using it,” Peters said.
Columbia/Boone County Public Health and Human Services Department is no amateur when it comes to drug prevention. The department has held a monthly Save-A-Life Naloxone training since October 2022.
The department started these monthly events after the Boone County Overdose Response Coalition (BOARD) wanted more people to be trained with the equipment.
“Fentanyl can really appear anywhere, pretty much any illicit drug,” Ryan Sheehan, the department’s public information specialist, said. “It’s just something that I think we all should be mindful of regardless of where we live or what we do.”
Sheehan said the purpose of the trainings is to prepare anyone to be ready to save an individual dealing with a drug overdose, at anytime.
“We hope by pretty much any potential person could save a life and that’s why we kind of call it save a Life,” Sheehan said.
For the next steps of the bill, Peters said she will send a letter to the Speaker of the House asking the bill to be heard. Then a committee will be picked that the bill is to be heard on.
Peters said the group of teens will help take on that process.
“We’re hoping that students will come up [to the Capitol] and they will testify on behalf of that bill to show how important it is that we have that in the state of Missouri,” Peters said.
As for carrying on the legacy of her son, Brinkler plans to hold a mouse race in February to raise money. She plans to use the funds to put a billboard up for “Connor’s Avengers,” a Facebook group she started after her son’s death, where she continues to advocate about the dangers of fentanyl.