SEATTLE — Hundreds of people passed by Sean Gahagan’s photograph on Friday as they gathered in downtown Seattle to raise awareness about drug addiction among young people.
Gahagan, 17, died of a drug overdose in 2008 at his family’s Mukilteo home.
Since then, his father, John Gahagan, has turned his grief into action.
Gahagan was instrumental in getting federal legislation passed to allow for community-based prescription drug take-back programs, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., said Friday at an annual fundraiser for the Science and Management of Addictions Foundation.
Gahagan has become involved with the Seattle-based foundation and now serves on its board of directors. The foundation provides resources for drug-addicted youths and their families. They organization focuses on research, education and treatment, recognizing that drug addiction is a disease.
More than 700 people attended the luncheon and heard from key speaker former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, who is the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Drug addiction “is truly an international issue,” Kerlikowske said.
The research is clear that drug addiction is a brain disease, he said. Prevention and intervention are key, he added.
Along with Gahagan and his wife, some other Snohomish County people were in the audience Friday, including Snohomish County Sheriff John Lovick and Pat Slack, the commander of the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force.
Last year, the foundation recognized a Snohomish County partnership, made up of the sheriff’s office, task force and health district for establishing a prescription drug take-back program.
Police, health and environmental officials here began the pilot program in 2009 to collect unused medications drugs. Drop-off boxes are located in the county’s police stations. The program has collected hundreds of pounds of unused medicines, including highly addictive painkillers.
Gahagan and addictions management foundation now are pushing to pass a state bill that would require pharmaceutical companies to bear the costs of take-back programs. The state Senate needs to act on the bill by Monday for it to have a chance to become law.
Young people often first experiment with what they find in their parents’ medicine cabinet, Slack said.
“Those little pills are just as dangerous as the .357 (gun) in the night stand,” he said.
People in Washington are now more likely to die of an accidental drug overdose than be killed in a car crash, the foundation’s executive director Gina Grappone said Friday.
“Prescription drug abuse has reached near epidemic levels,” she said.
The foundation’s public service award went to Dr. Russell Carlisle, the medical director for Swedish Hospital’s Cherry Hill Emergency Department. Carlisle helped create new guidelines that barred doctors from writing prescriptions for powerful pain killers at the emergency rooms at Swedish’s Cherry Hill and First Hill locations.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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