Rotary Club of Toccoa receives $5,000 in funding from the Georgia Opioid Crisis Abatement Trust
By Kathy Whitmire, Rotary Secretary
The Rotary Club of Toccoa was one of 100 Rotary clubs in Georgia to receive $5,000 in funding from the Georgia Opioid Crisis Abatement Trust. Toccoa Rotary will invest these funds to strengthen youth addiction prevention programs and deliver targeted, high-impact prevention education to the youth and families of Stephens County. Recently, Hope for a Drug Free Stephens Director Kathy Whitmire spoke to the student members of the Rotary’s Interact Club at Stephens County High School to provide awareness and education on the dangers of fentanyl being distributed in our community as fake prescription pills. The training also included instruction on how to administer Narcan in the case that students encounter someone experiencing overdose from one of the fake fentanyl pills. Narcan is an overdose reversal agent that was recently placed in our schools under Governor Brian Kemp’s order that was signed in 2024, Senate Bill 395, also known as “Wesley’s Law”. Wesley’s law requires all public schools in Georgia to maintain a supply of opioid antagonists (such as Narcan/naloxone) to combat the rising fentanyl-related overdose emergencies in schools.
This Rotary youth awareness campaign addresses a critical gap in Stephens County, where few dedicated resources exist for youth substance misuse prevention. The strategy is to engage the Rotary Interact Club in a highly focused, short-term project designed to help distribute critical, life-saving information about the dangers of illicit opioid contamination (specifically Fentanyl) and substance misuse to Stephens County youth, parents, and educators. Funds will cover the printing of specialized educational materials and facilitate high-visibility outreach leveraging the educational resources and key community leaders, including School Superintendent Connie Franklin and Sheriff Rusty Fulbright.
A 2025 report in Pediatrics found that among young people aged 15–24, fatal overdoses involving synthetic opioids alone rose sharply from 2018 to 2022. Data from the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) confirms that fentanyl and related synthetic opioids were the biggest driver of adolescent drug overdose deaths between 2019 and 2022, increasing by 293%.
Pictured are Stephens County School Director of Nursing, Patricia Beack, RN., Kathy Whitmire, Rotary Opioid Grant Coordinator, Russ Moore, Interact Club Sponsor, Cory Hilton, Hope for a Drug Free Stephens Peer Support Specialist, and Jason Tanner, Rotary President, and not pictured, Stacy Miller, Rotary Youth Services Chair.
