Heroin addiction takes quite a toll on the lives of people and their families, and this was demonstrated by a set of graphic photos released by the city of Ohio.
In the photos, a child is sitting in the back of a car, while two adults are passed out in the front.
The decision to depict the harsh reality of the other side of heroin was explained as necessary on the Facebook page of the city of East Liverpool. They feel like they need to be the voice for the kids caught up in this awful mess.
The Traffic Stop
The city government posted the photographs on its Facebook page along with a graphic warning. They were taken by the police during a traffic stop Wednesday.
Kevin Thompson is the Police Officer who approached James Acord, the driver. According to an affidavit, the driver was weaving erratically between lanes, speaking nearly unintelligible and bobbing his head back and forth.
He desperately tried to tell the police Officer that he was taking Rhonda Pasek, the passed-out woman in the front seat, to a hospital. However, he too lost consciousness. The police Officer saw a little boy sitting in the back.
Ohio, the city of East Liverpool, said it’s attempting to warn people about the heroin dangers. The Facebook post explains that the kid in this car can’t speak for himself, but hopefully, it can prevent another user from injecting the drug while having a kid in his/her custody.
Effects of Overdose
The little boy in the car was the driver’s 4-year-old son. Thompson saw the woman was beginning to turn blue, so he called the emergency medical technicians. They gave her an opiate reversal agent called Narcan, which can save the life in case of acute drug overdose.
The driver pleaded no contest to driving a vehicle while impaired, simultaneously endangering the life of a child. His sentence was the 3-year suspension of his driver’s license, 360 days in jail, and a $475 fine. As CNN affiliate WTOV-TV in Steubenville, Ohio, reported, the woman pleaded not guilty to endangering the life of a child, public intoxication, and disorderly conduct. Her pretrial hearing is scheduled for the next week in East Liverpool Municipal Court. She was given a $150,000 bond.
The Photographs
The city government apologized if someone got offended by the photographs, but their purpose was to show the non-drug-using public what they are dealing with every day. They state offending few people with the photographs is nothing when it comes to the fight against the heroin problem not only in their community. They are willing to fight since heroin has already taken a strong grip on many communities.
Via CNN