Skagway School hosted a special guest for its anti-drug Red Ribbon week. A mother who lost her son to fentanyl traveled 800 miles to tell the students that just one illicit pill is too many.
Sandy Snodgrass carries around a distinct business card. It’s a picture of her classically handsome, long-haired, 22-year-old son with a smile on his face. It reads: Rise Up Alaska, before It happens to you. Bruce Snodgrass Forever 22.
“I started a nonprofit, AK Fentanyl Response, a year after my son was poisoned by fentanyl in Anchorage, Alaska on Oct. 26, 2021,” Snodgrass said. “He was 22 years old and my only child. He left on a mountain bike ride on a Thursday afternoon. Never came home. The toxicology report came back about two months after he had passed, and it said the cause of death was 100% fentanyl.”
Snodgrass said she had to google fentanyl to understand the drug. What she discovered scared her.
“I had no idea how deadly it was, or that it was in Alaska, or that my 22-year-old son could get access to it,” she said.
A tiny amount is deadly – just two milligrams or what’s about two grains of salt can kill a person.
Within a year of Bruce’s death, Snodgrass started her non-profit organization to educate and save lives. She said that was her grief in action.
“I told my family I’m going to take a run at fentanyl, and those were the words,” Snodgrass said. “I’m going to take a run at it. And so I’ve been running at it ever since. And it somehow keeps Bruce with me to tell his story, to use his story to help keep other Alaskan children alive. There has to be some kind of point to my child’s death. Otherwise he’s just dead, and that’s not okay with me.”
Snodgrass is spreading the message of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s nationwide campaign, One Pill Can Kill. She’s emphasizing that with fentanyl in circulation, the days of casual drug experimentation are over.
“So I go around to any place that will have me, really,” Snodgrass said. “I love to do school assemblies. I think young people can hear the message more easily. Zero tolerance, that there’s a zero tolerance for any illicit drug. Any drug that doesn’t come from your pharmacist, with a bottle with your name on it, has to be suspected of containing fentanyl. Enough fentanyl to kill you. So young people can hear that more easily, I think, than older people that may have grown up in a time when experimenting with illegal drugs was almost a rite of passage.”
The One Pill Can Pill Campaign was embraced by the State of Alaska in May. It’s different from just a short time ago, when advocates handed out test strips so recreational drug users could test their substance for fentanyl.
“If fentanyl is the chocolate in the cookie, and you only test the dough, you get a false sense of security for whatever pill or drug or any kind of substance that you are testing,” Snodgrass said. “If you only test the dough, there still could be a lot of chocolate in there. So I don’t I don’t believe in test strips. I believe in zero tolerance.”
When asked to describe her son, Snodgrass mentions his love of rock climbing and the outdoors. She emphasizes his love of freedom.
“We’re sitting here, and there’s an eagle in the tree and the salmon creek,” she said. “It’s just such a beautiful Alaskan place. My son, Bruce, would have loved Skagway. So I still see Alaska through the filter of his eyes.”
Snodgrass doesn’t know exactly what happened the day of her son’s death. She describes it as a quote, “drug-induced homicide.”
She holds his memory close and continues to advocate across the state.
Since Bruce’s death, the need for Snodgrass’ work has only heightened. There was a 40% increase in overdose deaths in Alaska from 2022 to 2023, according to the state Department of Health. That makes Alaska the state with the highest year-increase of overdose deaths. Seventy-five percent of those deaths were attributed to fentanyl.
Snodgrass hopes to return to Skagway in the spring when roughly two thousand young workers descend on the town for the cruise ship season.
