BALTIMORE, Md. — "It seems like no one cares until they've lost someone they love," April Babcock told WMAR-2 News.
Babcock lost her son Austen to fentanyl poisoning when he was 25. But today, she fights for the living.
"If we were losing 22 students a week from anything else, there would be like public service announcements, it would be on the news every day," she said, pointing to 2022 research that found an average of 22 high school-aged teens were being killed by fentanyl every week.
The Dundalk mother founded a nonprofit called "Lost Voices of Fentanyl" to raise awareness about the dangers of the man-made drug.
When she heard that Maryland, based on preliminary data, recorded 1,550 overdose deaths in 2024, a 38% decrease from the year before, her reaction was - it's still too many.
And she believes the numbers are undercounted, especially for fentanyl deaths.
"Everybody isn't being tested. One of my board members - they never tested her son's blood. Oh, he died in a known drug house. He never was tested. He's not considered part of that statistic. So how many other people are like that? You think they’re testing everybody they find on the street, homeless - they’re not. It’s a lowball number," Babcock said.
Her focus is mainly on the supply of fentanyl coming into our country.
At Charm City Care Connection in Baltimore, they focus on reaching people in the throes of addiction throughout the city.
"Right now we’re hitting like 8-10 different neighborhoods in East Baltimore," Bakari Atiba, the community leadership coordinator at the nonprofit, told WMAR-2 News. We’ve extended our outreach to hit some parts of Dundalk, where we heard through our engagement with the clients, [they] were saying there was a great need. We also recently extended and started doing some outreach in West Baltimore, which has been really hard hit by the opioid epidemic. We're seeing [an] average [of] 40 to 50 people an hour when we go to some of these places."
Atiba believes the state and city have made great strides in tackling the overdose crisis, dedicating more money and resources to the effort.
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Until this past year, Maryland hadn't seen overdose deaths fall below 2,000 since 2015.
"Another thing I've noticed is that more establishments have been saturating Narcan throughout the communities. So for instance, there's a lot of businesses in the McElderry Park area that now carry Narcan, some of the corner stores, food marts. I know there's been more Narcan that's been placed in some of the schools as well."
"Oftentimes, people think nothing's being done," Atiba said. "There's groups such as us, Charm City Care Connection, we're on the ground doing work every day."
Asked what more needs to be done, Atiba told WMAR-2 News: "Services that are being provided across agencies, I think we need to make a better effort to make it more low-barrier. There’s a lot of good services, a lot of good resources, but oftentimes the barriers prevent some of our client population from being able to access those resources."
Babcock is hopeful that President Trump’s border policies and China tariffs will help reduce the flow of fentanyl into our country. But she’s fighting for more, including in the state capitol. She’s joining other Maryland moms in advocating for a bill that targets "the distribution of heroin or fentanyl that results in death or serious bodily injury."