Streamwood residents walk for Heroin Awareness

On Saturday, July 8, Streamwood hosted a Heroin Awareness Walk for wellness. Streamwood residence walked together to promote heroin awareness and a safer, drug free community.

The group was escorted by Officer Matt Stastny and his DARE vehicle down Park Boulevard, one of the town's main streets.

The event was created by Diane Kriescher in response to the loss of young lives in her community to heroin. Kriescher created a Facebook page called Heroin Awareness Streamwood in an effort to educate herself and others about addiction and the heroin epidemic.

While administrating the page, she noticed that other communities had walks and felt the desire to bring awareness to Streamwood.

Kriescher stated she doesn't know how to stop heroin, but her talk included four key ideas to create change.

• Gloucester, Massachusetts, police department created the Angel Initiative three years ago, where any addict may walk into their police station with any drug and paraphernalia they have and ask for help. They will not be arrested, but sent to rehab. Two years ago, the Rolling Meadows police department adopted this program. This year, the Elgin Police Department has joined this initiative.

• EDI on Streamwood Boulevard provides daily AA meetings as well as HA meetings.

• This past year the life saving drug narcan has been made more available to Illinois residents. Narcan is available at the Streamwood CVS pharmacy, as well as over the counter at many Illinois Walgreens pharmacies. All five U-46 high schools have narcan, as well as trained nurses in narcan administration

• Streamwood EMT/Fire carry narcan, but Streamwood PD does not, which is important because many times the police department is the first to arrive on the scene.

The event concluded by releasing balloons in memory of those lost to addiction.

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