his mother, dr. winestock and his uncle congressman ted deutch of florida join us now. and under horrible circumstances, but i do admire taking a tragedy and trying to turn it into something positive. we have some people on our staff that have lost kids to cancer and are trying to be active in trying to help other future kids. so let me start with you. your son eli was a sophomore here in washington at american university when he died. tell us a little bit about eli and what you know of what led to the overdose. well, eli was a sophomore at american. and he was doing great. he had a 3.7 gpa. he interned at the spanish education development center here in washington. and he was on his way. he had just joined a fraternity. and the circumstances are rather unclear to us at this point. we know that he had fentanyl in his body when he died. he died suddenly in the shower one night when he was getting ready to go out with some
in our national lead, america s drug czar opening up today about the nation s worsening drug epidemic. today he spoke wither dr. sanjay gupta about the skyrocketing drug overdose death rate in the united states. we have to look at this as an unacceptable number. it s unprecedented. and we must have a response that matches that historic number. in terms of saving lives. from april 2020 to april 2021, more than 100,000 americans died of drug overdoses. and three quarters of those were fentanyl deaths. 20-year-old eli winestock is part of this devastating record. in march he died after taking a legal, unregulated herbal drug that was, though he did not know it, laced with fentanyl.