Scotland, Marlboro counties’ sheriff’s offices join forces to spread drug awareness

MAXTON — Valentine’s Day in Laurel Hill became a frightening day.

According to the Scotland County Sheriff’s Office, 12 students at Carver Middle School ingested gummies, laced with THC, a compound found in marijuana. The students were hospitalized and received treatment for non-life-threatening injuries Scotland County Sheriff Ralph Kersey said at the time.

Clio, South Carolina resident, Eva McRae, was taken aback by the news because some of the young people who attend her church, Piney Grove United Methodist Church in Maxton, attend Carver Middle School. She reached out to the Marlboro County Sheriff’s Office to bring its KNOW Opioids workshop to the church.

Last month, the MCSO launched a workshop to teach the community about the effects of drugs in the community how easy it is for young people to purchase illicit items, and how dangerous street drugs are.

The traveling series has been set up in different locations around Marlboro County to present tips, provide tools, and give a platform for open conversation regarding the ongoing opioid epidemic. This is the second year MCSO has hosted the series.

After McRae reached out to Interim Marlboro County Sheriff Larry McNeil, he teamed up with the SCSO to bring the message of the dangers of drugs to the church.

SCSO Major Roger Alford said this is a very important topic.

“This is a very touchy subject. It’s drugs out there now that are so powerful that you will die from being around them,” he said. “We had a drug overdose on the way here. It’s an everyday thing. Every day it’s a drug overdose. We had one last week where a brother and sister died at the same time. Both of them were in the house and people saw them and thought, oh, they’re on drugs and they just passed out. The next morning, they realized they were dead. It affects everybody. It doesn’t matter what race you are, how much money you make.”

Alford said during the crack epidemic, people associated that drug with poor people and minorities, but the drugs killing people now reach into every community.

SCSO Narcotics Lt. Haywood (first name not given due to the nature of his work with the sheriff’s office) said in his 14 years of working in narcotics, he’s seen a lot of deaths due to drugs, but in the last few years, he’s seen many more because of the new drug epidemic.

“You got heroin, fentanyl, purple heroin, we got things that you don’t know what it is about,” he said. “We were working a case in Scotland County in Laurel Hill at Carver Middle School where you had some young kid, who was 13 years old bringing gummy bears and 12 students had to go to the hospital. It’s not the user that I want to get my hands on, it’s the person who’s selling the narcotics. Our job is to try and help the user.”

Haywood said community trust is important to combat the issues caused by drug use and partnerships like he has in Scotland County helped to bust a dealer who had $1 million in drug money and enough raw fentanyl that could’ve killed 300,000 people.

“The guy we busted, I’ve chased him since 2016 and finally got him. Now he’s being turned over to the federal government for prosecution,” Haywood said.

Another issue Haywood is seeing is that many drug dealers are using juveniles to sell drugs because, in North Carolina, juvenile laws have changed. The consequences for younger offenders aren’t punished as harshly as adults.

“It’s our job to make sure we know what’s going on in the community,” he said.

Not knowing what’s in drugs that are being sold, can have deadly consequences, Haywood said. “When you have drug dealers who are actually telling you to bust people who are selling fentanyl, that’s a problem.”

McNeil said this fight is all about, “what can we do as a community to come together and work together.”

“We need to talk about this and we need to listen. You young people need to listen, death is permanent. Death is real,” he said. “Know what you’re doing. You can have fun without getting high. I do it every day.”