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Advocates for Action Guest Post: Turning Tragedy into Purpose

Summary: 
Jan, Mike, and Daniel Rozga have been selected as 2013 ONDCP Advocates for Action for their work in prevention and education on synthetic drugs. Read more about the Rozgas' story and how they're making a difference to improve the health and safety of their community.

At the time our son David died in June 2010 after smoking K2, virtually no one had heard of this synthetic drug.  There was literally no information from the scientific community available—it was just too new. We made a decision very early on that we needed to do something; we needed to share our story in the hope that we could prevent this from happening to another family.

We came across many terrible stories while searching for answers, but no one seemed to be connecting the dots concerning these synthetic cannabinoids. With an abundance of people pushing their drugs online and no place for parents and kids to go for the truth, we thought it was important to launch www.k2drugfacts.com.  Through this site, we started collecting stories from all over the country and gave families the opportunity to share their experiences.

Working through our Iowa Office of Drug Control Policy and local coalitions, we continue to speak at many high schools, colleges, church groups, EMS providers, and anyone else who will listen to us on the dangers of these drugs.  We have done multiple interviews with every local and many national media outlets to help get our message out. This has been a slow, difficult, and painful process, but we know we are making a difference.

We are excited to be working with The Partnership at Drugfree.org and their PACT360 program to continue advocating for action on synthetic drugs—preventing other families from experiencing the tragedy we suffered.