Opioid use is a crisis across income and ages, so much so that a middle school in Traverse City produced a documentary about it.
The digital media class from Traverse City East Middle School reached out to a family in the community. The family was hosting an event to raise money for the funeral of their son who died from an opioid overdose.
Jody Mackey is the digital media instructor. She said students wanted to do more than just fundraise. They wanted to raise awareness, So they created a small documentary called “Predator and Prey”
“We want kids to not use these drugs. I mean just just what it boils down to. And then it was just heartbreaking because two days after that even another on of my former students died of a heroin overdose Sunday night. Unfortunately, I wish we didn't have to do this story. That's the honest to god truth.”
Mackey said every opioid death affects the community more and more.
She says she feels the documentary gives people permission to speak about the issue and raise awareness.
“It's not like I want to give our town a bad name, but if we don't start talking about this, it doesn't get addressed. It feels like since we have done this event and realized this issue, that its almost all we are seeing on the news now. And it doesn't help that we had three overdose deaths last week.”
She also said she feels the documentary has sparked awareness in local media.
“Our media wasn’t reporting it. It's almost like the Grizelle family and this documentary gave our community permission to say it here. We’re this tourist community, I don't know if that has anything to play into it. But it's like we knew people were dying from heroin before this, and we knew that we had heroin her but you didn't see it in the record eagle.”
Click HERE to watch documentary.