Virginia
Virginia First Lady and Attorney General launch fentanyl awareness campaign
ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – First lady Suzanne Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares came to Roanoke to launch a new campaign to tackle the fentanyl and opioid crisis. It aims to bring awareness to the dangers of fentanyl.
The campaign is focusing on fentanyl prevention in Roanoke, because Roanoke has the highest concentration of overdose deaths of metropolitan areas in Virginia, according to the first lady.
“Families and communities are being rocked by fentanyl,” first lady Youngkin said.
The Virginia Department of Health reports more than 7,000 people in Virginia have died from a fentanyl overdose since 2020. That accounts for 75% of all overdoses during that time.
Deaths from fentanyl have increased 12% each year since 2020. In Virginia, among teens and young adults, more people died from fentanyl overdoses than car crashes in 2022.
In the Roanoke and Salem area, about 64 people die every year from an overdose.
Christine Wright is an overdose survivor and now works to help others in active recovery.
“I did not want to raise my hand and say when I grow up, I want to be a drug addict,” Wright said. “However that’s exactly what my reality became.”
Wright sees first hand how deadly fentanyl is, claiming at least 1,500 lives in Virginia every year, and how easy it is for young children to come in contact with it.
“I think you start age appropriate education and increase that knowledge as they increase in age,” Wright said. “It takes brutal honesty and vulnerability to really speak about the truth of the situation of addiction and fentanyl.”
The campaign, ‘It Only Takes One’, is about educating parents and caregivers on the deadly drug. Attorney General Miyares explained talking with your kids is the best prevention tool.
“Don’t just talk to your child about their school day or their favorite sports team, talk to them about this because it literally could save a life,” Attorney General Miyares said.
The campaign also provides prevention and recovery resources to schools and community partners. First lady Youngkin plans to work with Roanoke leaders once a month for the next six months to stop fentanyl from taking more lives.
“Bring it out in the open, tell people about the dangers and have more people come along with us on this journey of care and compassion so that we can turn those numbers around and make sure that fewer Virginians are dying of fentanyl,” first lady Youngkin said.
This awareness campaign is the first of its kind in Virginia, and while it’s starting in Roanoke, it’s message is going throughout the entire state.
The Virginia Department of Health is also working with this campaign to make life saving drugs, like naloxone and Narcan, available in the Commonwealth.
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SOUTH BOSTON, Va. (WSET) — A manufacturing company in South Boston is now in contact with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality after an oil spill this week.
A Hitachi Energy spokesperson says that because of heavy rainfall and a pump failure, a small amount of transformer mineral oil spilled.
The manufacturing company makes power transformers. The spokesperson told ABC 13 that an employee noticed oil in a secondary containment area.
SEE ALSO: Virginia measles cases climb as outbreak hits Buckingham County, officials say
The company says the material was tested and found to be non-toxic. They say the oil stayed on company property with no harm to the community or environment.
ABC 13 reached out to the Department of Environmental Quality, and we are waiting to hear back.
New Virginia laws banning the sale and transfer of assault weapons go into effect in about five weeks. But at least five conservative prosecutors say they won’t enforce them.
Spotsylvania County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ryan Mehaffey said he believes the laws violate the Constitution.
“The Second Amendment is alive and well in Spotsylvania County,” he told News4.
The commonwealth will ban the sale and manufacture of certain semi-automatic weapons, shifting gun laws to more closely align with states such as California and Illinois. But as Virginia teeters from purple to blue and back again, some elected officials are making clear that the new laws won’t be enforced in their counties.
Attorney General Jay Jones said in a statement: “Commonwealth’s Attorneys are elected to enforce our laws, which is what we expect them to do when these laws take effect on July 1.”
The law will make it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for people to buy, sell, transfer, import, or manufacture an assault firearm.
Mehaffey said the law is in direct conflict with the Second Amendment.
“It’s fundamentally opposed to a free society, a society where liberty reigns. And this is the moment in time where the Second Amendment was drafted and enacted, where the government couldn’t take the right of the people to defend themselves away,” he said.
Eleven other states and D.C. already have versions of their own assault weapons ban. The details and laws vary and they’ve been challenged in the courts. In fact, several lawsuits have already been filed against Virginia’s new ban.
“Every assault weapons ban that has gone before a federal court in this country has been upheld, including, most importantly, Maryland’s,” said Mary Kenah of Everytown for Gun Safety.
She said Maryland’s ban is considered more restrictive than Virginia’s and was upheld by the same court that presides over Virginia. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up this case, so Maryland’s assault weapon ban remains in place.
“The people of Virginia showed that their priority is gun-violence prevention. They elected a former Moms Demand Action volunteer as their governor,” Kenah said.
In places such a Spotsylvania County, they’ve elected Mehaffey as their prosecutor. It’s a county that surprised a lot of people in November when it voted blue, in favor of Gov. Abigail Spanberger.
Despite that shift, Mehaffey said he’s confident that his position against the new assault weapons ban is what his constituents want.
Other prosecutors who have said they won’t enforce Virginia’s assault weapons ban are from Powhatan, Pulaski, Scott and Smyth counties.
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