In an effort to combat and raise awareness of accidental drug overdoses, Chattanooga parents are using billboards to spread a message: “Fentanyl steals loved ones.”
Each billboard displays an overdose victim’s photo and a message as part of the Fentanyl Awareness Campaign to observe International Overdose Awareness Day, which was Saturday.
Leah Gallant’s 19-year-old daughter, Charlotte, died in November 2022 after using what was believed to be ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic producing hallucinogenic effects, that turned out to be fentanyl.
“Charlotte … she’s a beautiful, sweet, funny girl,” Gallant said in a phone interview. “She was going through kind of a difficult time, but we were starting to get back on the right path when (she) and her boyfriend decided to try ketamine.”
Charlotte Gallant died, while her boyfriend was left with serious bodily injury, Leah Gallant said.
But Gallant said her daughter did not die from a drug overdose.
“She was poisoned,” Gallant said.
Gallant blames Jonathan Bash, the man who sold her daughter’s boyfriend illicit fentanyl without his knowledge and China for allegedly providing chemicals to the Mexican cartels that make and smuggle drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Illicit fentanyl, primarily manufactured in foreign, clandestine labs and smuggled into the U.S. through Mexico, is being distributed across the country and sold on the illegal drug market, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. There is no way to decipher whether a pill containing fentanyl contains a lethal dose, and 1 kilogram can potentially kill 500,000 people.
Charlotte Gallant’s case resulted in a federal indictment, which is usual in an overdose case, as police were able to track down Bash through the encrypted-messaging app, Telegram Messenger, the Chattanooga Times Free Press previously reported. He was sentenced in March to 21 years in prison.
Leah Gallant said the assistant district attorney who worked on her daughter’s case was excellent.
“We’re one of the lucky ones,” Gallant said. “Most of the time, police don’t even follow up.”
Gallant and her husband, Thomas Gallant III, have another daughter and two sons, but she said life without Charlotte has been devastating.
“It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through, and we miss her every day,” Gallant said. “I think about her every minute of the day, and there’s a part of our family that’s missing. We’re incomplete.”
It was important to Gallant to create a billboard in honor of her daughter’s memory.
“I don’t want my daughter forgotten, and I feel like I need to do something to try and prevent this from happening to another family,” she said.
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REGIONAL ADVOCACY
Local organizer Brenda Purcell said via email the Fentanyl Awareness Campaign and its billboards are a parent-driven effort that began in the past two weeks. Purcell said the goal is to encourage others to reach out quickly and seek help for addiction.
“When you have gone to school, church, played Little League or worked with someone, and you see their picture, it makes an impact,” she said. “Parents of children who died from fentanyl poisoning are given a platform … one that we did not ask for, but for some, after you have experienced these tragedies, you start to realize healing can come by sharing.”
Purcell became a community advocate to prevent drug overdoses and fentanyl poisoning after her son died from fentanyl poisoning in 2019 at a Nashville treatment facility. Since then, she’s served on state and community task forces related to opioid abatement funding, addiction, recovery and treatment, and worked alongside Hamilton County government leaders.
For some parents, Purcell said the decision to put their deceased loved one’s photo on a billboard is difficult. Some people may feel comfortable sharing a few years after their family member’s death, while others will never be ready.
“Parents are at different levels of their grief journeys at any given time,” she said. “Stigma causes many to not want to share what could be positive messages for others. Others realize healing comes when you help others and set out on a quest to discover their role or purpose in the loss.”
Purcell hopes surrounding counties will plan to reach the public with messages encouraging awareness, she said.
“Billboards are just one form of messaging,” she said. “It takes many modes of communication to make lasting impressions.”
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A MOTHER’S EFFORT
Gallant and her husband raised their children on Signal Mountain, where Charlotte Gallant was born and her siblings attended local schools. Leah Gallant wants the message of her daughter’s billboard to increase awareness of the subject’s gravity for community members who may recognize her daughter’s face, she said.
“Hopefully, by seeing Charlotte’s picture, they can see that if it can happen to Charlotte, it can happen to anyone,” she said.
Gallant, who attended the Washington, D.C., Fentanyl Awareness Rally in July, said she wants parents to talk to their children about drugs and how they should never take a pill unless prescribed by a doctor, even if given to them by a friend.
“Tell them that one pill can kill,” she said.
Contact Leah Hunter at lhunter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6673.