Much has changed in drug addiction since Luke Tomsha got clean and set about creating a local support network, but one of the biggest changes is the arrival of fentanyl.

Tomsha was keynote speaker Wednesday at Illinois Valley Community College’s virtual forum, “One Book, One College,” and he warned while opiates are well known to the public, fentanyl is less well known but increasingly prevalent and deadly.

“It’s much stronger than heroin and it’s much more dangerous than heroin,” Tomsha said.

Tomsha overcame a 14-year addiction and then, in 2017, established the Perfectly Flawed Foundation in hopes of providing resources to those for whom there was no local help.

Tomsha advocates harm reduction: Extending resources to help struggling people address what issues drove them to alcohol and drugs in the first place.

“It isn’t really about the drugs,” he said. “It’s about a lot of other complex issues. When people become addicted there’s a reason they’ve become addicted: There’s an unhappiness within them.”

He added later, “We’re not here to fix people. We’re here to empower people to be in charge of their own lives.”

Harm reduction is gaining ground, but drugs of abuse and attempts to curb them have evolved, as well. At one time opiates were fastest-rising, thanks to oversubscribing and false marketing by Big Pharma.

Government intervention and regulation brought about a downside. Tomsha cited a local example where a local physician was arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned but his patients, many of whom were drug-dependent, were left with nowhere to go.

“People who couldn’t get their prescriptions moved to the street,” he said.

Now, fentanyl is rapidly expanding, thanks to its profitability as well as its potency. Small quantities of fentanyl can be easily transported across national borders and be cut with substances to produce handsome profits for drug dealers.

Fentanyl, too, is increasingly responsible for fatal overdoses. Tomsha said overdose deaths hit 100,000 in a 12-month span — a larger sum than the U.S. forces killed in the Vietnam War — and “three quarters of the 100,000 from illicit fentanyl, not from opiates.”

And addiction has increased an estimated 30% during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, depression and boredom are just a few of the causes that have fueled rising addiction rates.

With overdose deaths are at an all-time high, he said, it’s time to look to countries, such as Portugal, that are diverting government resources from enforcement to treatment. Incarceration is necessary for traffickers, he allowed, but much more diverse options are needed to treat suspects battling addiction.

“We have to put moralism aside,” he said. “We have to really take bold moves.”

One Book, One College pairs regional speakers to discuss topics raised in books of note. In this case, the tandem publication was “Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic” by Eric Eyre.

For information visit www.ivcc.edu/onebook and perfectlyflawed.org.