NORTH ROYALTON, Ohio — One day after a record number of overdose deaths were announced in Cuyahoga County, a North Royalton woman is fighting to end the stigma against drug addicts. Rosemary Pratt is stressing that people remember those who struggle with drug abuse are suffering from a health problem.
"It's devastating to lose a child," she told 3News.
In May 2020, she lost her son Ricky Pratt to a fentanyl overdose.
Rosemary said her son's friend, Samantha Liebhart, took him to buy what he thought was cocaine from a dealer named Gregory Miller but was instead sold pure fentanyl.
Ricky, just 28 years old, would die of an overdose, but that's not how his mom sees it.
"I don't like the term that my son died from a drug overdose," she said. "I feel my son died from fentanyl poisoning. He was poisoned. A non-opiate user who's sold fentanyl is going to die. My son had zero tolerance to any kind of opioids.”
On June 28 of this year, Miller was sentenced to prison for involuntary manslaughter for Ricky's death.
Rosemary told 3News that opioid dealers need to serve time for the overdose deaths they cause, especially with the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner announcing a record nine overdose deaths in a 24-hour period this week, driven largely by fentanyl.
“I think they should be charged to the fullest," she said. "They should be held accountable. When you are trying to pass a drug off as something else and you're selling a lethal dose of fentanyl, they should be held accountable. There's a huge stigma, where I see it all the time, and people say, just don't do drugs. In an addict's mind, there's no reality. Their brain doesn't work like that. It's not that easy to just not do drugs."
Case Western Reserve University Law Professor Michael Benza also likes to see drug dealers convicted, but at the same time wonders how much it really helps the region's fentanyl crisis.
"We have chosen for the most part to address this issue as a criminal issue," he explained. "That is a very blunt instrument to address an underlying social, medical, mental health, and other issues that don't get resolved in the criminal system. On the other hand, there is that social value when we hear that somebody has been accountable through the involuntary manslaughter for the death of a particular user. It gives us a moment of, 'ah, there's justice.' The reality, though, is it doesn't really change the underlying behavior of anybody involved.”
Gregory Miller was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Additionally, Samantha Liebert, the friend that took Ricky Pratt to buy the drugs, was also convicted. She was sentenced this month to probation for corrupting another with drugs.
