San Francisco Chronicle:
Mothers Rally To Stop The Fentanyl Deaths Of Their Children
Roman Vardanega has been in county jail for five months, and his mother, Tanya Tilghman stood on the steps of City Hall Sunday to beg that he be left there. “If they release my son, he will die and be one of these pictures on the steps,” Tilghman told a crowd of about 150 gathered on National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day. It also marked the first anniversary of Mothers Against Drug Deaths, a Bay Area coalition formed by women whose children are either on the streets or have died of overdoses. (Whiting, 8/21)
Reveal:
American Rehab: A Desperate Call
Reporter Shoshana Walter gets a message from a stranger: Penny Rawlings has just read one of Walter’s stories about Cenikor, a drug rehab with a facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Rawlings is desperate to learn more because her brother Tim Roe is a participant there. Rawlings helped send him to Cenikor — but didn’t realize getting him out of treatment was going to be the bigger problem. Cenikor’s model has its roots in Synanon: a revolutionary, first-of-its-kind rehab that started in the 1950s on a California beach. Its charismatic leader, Charles Dederich, mesmerized the nation by claiming to have developed a cure for drug addiction. But as it spread across the country, Dederich wanted the rehab to turn into something else: a business. (Walter, 8/20)
