It’s been more than a year since Sean O’Leary’s open letter about opioid abuse in Kanata sparked the formation of a parents’ group and open war on youth overdoses.

The battle rages on. O’Leary, who had to provide opioid withdrawal treatment in his own home for his then-16 year-old daughter, still meets with the ‘We the Parents’ group. Their next gathering is Monday. He still lives in fear.

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“One of the things I have found, most people just want someone to talk to,” O’Leary says of parents who discover their child has a sudden drug problem — fentanyl can get users hooked quickly.

Kanata was the focus of media attention in the winter of 2016-17, when multiple teens suffered overdoses, including three publicized fatalities in succession.

O’Leary, a 55-year-old businessman who owns a small furniture store in Kanata, thought he had a firm grip on life. He paid his taxes. Voted Conservative. Was a proud goalie dad of a 10-year-old boy (now 11). He thought Ottawa was the best and safest place in the world to live.

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Photo by Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS

The last thing he ever expected to be was an anti-drug crusader, until he found a teenaged boy who overdosed in O’Leary’s garage (he was resuscitated). O’Leary’s daughter Paige, 17, and many of her friends have dealt with opioid addictions, playing, as he says “Russian roulette with their lives.”

Today O’Leary believes the overall situation in Kanata is less volatile, the fake Percocet run is over, yet overdoses, and deaths still happen.

Two weeks ago, Cole Nicholls, 18, died of a suspected OD. For O’Leary, that hit perilously close to home — Nicholls was O’Leary’s “wingman,” his source on the street, always sounding the alarm about kids in trouble.

Photo by Julie Oliver / Postmedia

He agonizes over the fact Nicholls could save the lives of others, but not himself.

O’Leary says there are still lots of teens dabbling in cocaine or crack, often not aware that fentanyl is in the mix, or if so, at what levels.

“Cole was doing cocaine,” O’Leary says. “You have too much fentanyl in a line of cocaine and you have a funeral like we did (on Monday).

“All the drugs now, you just don’t know when or if there is fentanyl cut in.”

O’Leary claims that there is about one death by overdose each month in the region — roughly 12 in the past year — although only five of the 12 families involved admitted their child died of an overdose. This claim is more than a guess. O’Leary documents youth deaths.

“That would not surprise me,” west-end police Sgt. Maria Keen said, about the death-per-month suggestion. “I don’t know for sure.”

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By the time a toxicology report is completed, a family has already made the decision to either admit drugs were involved, or suggest it was a “sudden” death, or a youth who “died in his sleep” (which an OD can be). Whatever a family’s position, most of these deaths to healthy young men and women are due to overdoses.

“We are not in a blip,” O’Leary says. “We are in a new reality.”

Photo by Ashley Fraser / Postmedia

The parents’ group is pleased that there are more services in the suburbs today than there were a year ago. Partly thanks to their efforts, naloxone kits, which can quickly reverse the effects of an overdose, are in every school. Brett Reynolds, associate director of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, says that fortunately none of the kits has been activated yet.

Supervised injection sites aren’t part of the equation in suburbia, and aren’t needed by young drug users of opioids, according to O’Leary and others.

“Having injection sites doesn’t help that segment,” he says.

“They’re all scared of needles.”

None of the teen overdoses and deaths involved needles, he says.

“They usually snort them or crush them and smoke them in a bong,” O’Leary says. “They’re not quick to jump into injecting drugs.”

A year ago, Kanata was hit hard by counterfeit Percocet pills — most of them containing antihistamine and fentanyl. As media reports elevated concerns about the problem in the west end, there was a police crackdown on the Percocet pills.

“Those pills have not been around for a year now,” O’Leary says. “From that aspect, things are better.”

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Still, he won’t rest until the area comes up with detox/withdrawal beds for younger teens with opioid addictions.

“To me it’s appalling,” O’Leary says. “We offer a medical service to adults, but if you’re 16 and under, go home.”

Marion Wright, executive director of Rideauwood Addiction and Family Services, concurs with O’Leary that withdrawal treatment is inadequate in this region. The Ottawa Withdrawal Management Centre on Montreal Road is the lone detox facility.

“Whether they are over 17 or under 17, we are woefully under-resourced for detox beds,” Wright says.

Youth counsellors help equip students with sound exit strategies to escape situations where pills might show up in a bowl on a table, and kids are encouraged to take one. Some teens have code words with their parents (their pet dog’s name, for example) they can text home to get a parent to pick them up. The code word indicates a drug problem requiring an escape hatch.

Telling kids to “just say no” doesn’t cut it. Most teens want the tools to be able to get escape gracefully from a pressured peer event.

Not just because they want to do the right thing.

Says Wright: “Some of them are scared they might die.”