A Memphis, Tennessee, woman is now raising five grandchildren after losing two daughters to fentanyl just months apart.
“Aside from my uncle, I'm the only thing they have,” said grieving mother Brenda Diggs. said WREG of her grandchildren. “I just don't get it. It's mind-boggling.”
Her eldest daughter, Kenya Everett Wooten, 42, was trying to turn her life around when she became addicted to drugs.
Diggs said Kenya “lost her self-esteem” after becoming a mother at just 15 years old.
“And I guess she thought she could boost her self-esteem and feel better about herself by having sex with men. She just went into a vicious cycle and it was really bad,” her mother said. .
Diggs said that despite the challenges of being a teenage mother, Kenya has begun to rebuild her life after being injured on the job.
“She hurt her ankle, it was really bad. I think she actually broke it, and then they put her on some kind of medication,” her mother told the publication.
By the time the prescription was finished, Kenya was addicted to the pills.
“That's when she decided she could buy other people's prescriptions,” Diggs said.
It was on January 22, 2022, that I received the news that my daughter had passed away.
“[Kenia’s boyfriend] “Mr.,” he called me. Brenda, Kenya is dead. 'I'm like, 'What?' what are you talking about? 'I was asleep and he was like, 'She died.' She took something and died,” she recalled.
Diggs gets up and rushes to the hotel where Kenya is staying, but it's too late.
“When I got inside, I found Kenya sitting on the floor. Paramedics arrived, but she was dead on the floor.”
The cause of death was ruled to be an accidental overdose of fentanyl.
Kenya's sister, Kesha Diggs, 34, had also just been released from prison on prostitution charges.
Just three months later, she too would die of a fentanyl overdose.
On March 25, 2022, Diggs became worried when Kesha didn't come home after being out for days.
The mother checked the bedroom and realized that her daughter had not actually gone out.
“When I walked in there, I almost passed out from the smell. I was like, what is that smell?” Diggs said. “I lost it. I ran out screaming and grabbed my phone and ran down the stairs and outside. I called 911 and told them that my daughter was acting strange. She was sick. Can you send me someone you think is or something?”
“Lo and behold, they said it was fentanyl. She died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl.”
Diggs said she realized her younger daughter was on some type of drug when she saw her “nodding off” while getting her hair done.
“She was like, ‘What’s going on?’” I know in my heart that she might be on to something. ”
Diggs is tasked with repairing a shattered family after a deadly opioid takes away their two daughters.
David Fuller, an overdose prevention specialist with the Memphis Community Prevention Coalition, said stories of families who have experienced losses like this are all too common.
“I wish I could say that was the first story I heard. But that's definitely not the case,” he told WREG.
Many people don't even realize they're taking fentanyl, he explained.
“They thought they were doing heroin or something,” Fuller said. “Then what we saw was that fentanyl started to seep into the rest of the drug supply. Counterfeit pills. Counterfeit opioid prescriptions.”
“Fentanyl is so powerful that once a user becomes addicted, no other drug is effective because it's not strong enough,” he added. It is the most deadly drug,” he added. ”
tentative data From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed Approximately 107,543 people died of a fatal drug overdose in the United States in 2023. The CDC does not break down categories to accurately determine the number of fentanyl deaths, but the most recent data From 2022 show 74,000 drug overdose deaths involve synthetic opioids other than methadone, the most common of which is fentanyl.
Enough fentanyl is being seized across the country to potentially kill millions, as tens of thousands of Americans die each year from the drug.
August, Citrus County, Florida Sheriff's Office Found Breitbart News reports that there is more than 13 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill 3 million people.
In another recent Florida incidentTwo pounds of fentanyl was found washed up in Daytona Beach in September.
on the other hand, traffic stop In Roswell, Georgia, enough fentanyl was produced to kill approximately 60,000 people.
April report The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) examined the following key claims: new york times The latest book from bestselling author Peter Schweitzer, blood money — China allegedly subsidizes the production and export of fentanyl precursor chemicals and other synthetic drugs.
“Specifically, there is a Chinese gang called UBG that is widely believed to have founded the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and made them kings of fentanyl,” Schweitzer said. said FOX News in March.
“The leader of that gang is a man named Zhang Anro, who goes by the name White Wolf. It was White Wolf's job. [a] “This is the partner who wired the Biden family a $5 million loan that would have been forgiven at no interest,” the investigative journalist said. “And it was designed specifically for the family, not just Hunter. So does Joe Biden want to discuss these difficult issues? Does he want to hold China accountable? Absolutely. That's not the case, and I'm sure it's because of economic entanglements.”
