Photography by Kimarie Martin Photography

On March 3, 2021, Eli Weinstock collapsed and died in his off-campus apartment at American University. His family—mom Beth, father Michael, and his siblings Olivia (24), Theo (19), and Annie (15)—didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

He was twenty-years old, a marketing and communications major on his way to a meaningful life. Two months before he died, he was interviewed during a fraternity rush event (the fraternity brothers kindly sent the audio recording to his family), and when asked to describe an ideal Saturday evening, he told them, more than anything, he would want to be hanging out with his friends from Bexley.

As a young boy, Eli showed a surprising talent for hip-hop dancing, Lego-building, and filmmaking. He graduated from Bexley High School in 2019, and two years later at his memorial service in the Weinstocks’ backyard, his family heard from the community that he was “a friend to so many”, that “he brought people together” and “made everyone laugh.”

The world lost a bright and mischievous light, and Bexley lost a community member. Three months after his death, the coroner in Washington, DC, reported that the cause was an accidental ingestion of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid implicated in nearly 80% of drug-related deaths in America. Eli became one of over 108,000 Americans who died in 2021 from a drug-related fatality, and sadly this story continues to repeat itself in homes, schools and college apartments across our country. Nearly 250 people PER DAY are dying from a drug-related fatality in America, and the CDC reports that the leading cause of death for all Americans age 18-45 is fentanyl. Fentanyl alone.

Eli didn’t intend to die; he didn’t intend to take fentanyl. This is the alarming nature of the drug landscape now; a young person may believe they are taking a ‘Xanax’ or ‘Adderall’ or ‘oxycodone’, but fake pills are pressed to look like real pharmaceutical pills and so often laced with potent and often-deadly fentanyl.

We’ve reached a cultural pivot point. Eli and countless others are part of the ‘fentanyl generation.’ This rapid escalation of fatalities has hit every corner of American life. From the student who tries a presumed Adderall, to the young professional who tries a line of cocaine, to the teen who takes Xanax (which isn’t ‘Xanax’ at all, but rather a counterfeit pressed with fentanyl), our young people are dying.

The scale of this tragedy is incomprehensible; to allow the ‘108,000’ to sink in, consider that the Vietnam War Memorial Wall holds 58,318 names for a war that lasted ten years. Consider that in 1995, at the peak of the AIDS epidemic, fatalities totaled about 42,000 lives. And, while no demographic is untouched, the fastest rise in fatalities is now seen in ages 15-24.

Six months after Eli died, Beth (a physician) and Olivia launched BirdieLight, an educational initiative with the sole mission to educate young people age 14-25 about the dangers of drug adulteration. Since September 2021, they have reached over 30,000 students in person in Ohio and across the country, and countless others through their social media reach. They’ve also created a BirdieBox curriculum which enables an educator to present a data-driven and engaging lesson plan to their class. BirdieLight has been featured on multiple podcasts as well as on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper

Beth and Olivia and their team believe three things need to happen to end this crisis: First, they want to reduce stigma and move the fentanyl conversation out into the open, and make the discussion of fentanyl safety accessible to all high school and college students in the same way they are educated about alcohol and tobacco safety. This curriculum should be required. Knowledge alone is a quick and commonsense measure to save lives. Only half of the students they surveyed in the last year were aware that fentanyl can be present in cocaine (and it is present right now in about 18% of the cocaine in Ohio).

Second, life-saving tools, like fentanyl test strips and naloxone (Narcan), should be readily available. These tools don’t encourage kids to try drugs, just like condom distribution didn’t encourage sex in the 1980s. We made a cultural shift then; we can do it again now with these harm-reduction tools.

And lastly, they believe this fentanyl crisis needs to be prioritized—both with aggressive funding and with educational standards. There is no arguing that this is the thing that is killing people, and we need to acknowledge that we don’t have a ‘somewhere-out-there’ problem; we have an American problem.

Eli Weinstock had an extraordinary sensitivity to the world, which can be both a blessing and a curse. He would get upset about an argument on the Cassingham playground, and he seemed to know every emotional complexity of the cast of “Lost” which he watched start to finish at least twice. He loved his siblings deeply, and made them laugh all the time, often at the most inappropriate or inopportune times. He wrote the longest letters home from summer camp, often wondering why he had been abandoned there, and then ended up loving camp more than anyone else. In short, he was a human being, who left his mark on the world. He didn’t want to die. He didn't make a quick decision in the moment, thinking it would be fatal, just like many of us did at his age. He was a human being who would smile, or maybe be annoyed—or both—that his family has chosen to honor him in this way, by preventing further needless suffering.

More than anything, his family believes Eli would thank Bexley for his magical childhood—for the bike rides and the parades, the sledding on Miller’s Hill, KiddieKamp, summer walks to Graeter’s, FunFest, and the myriad of ways Bexley makes a kid feel like a kid.

Please visit BirdieLight.org to learn more and to donate, or email beth@birdielight.org.