Opioid Crisis Friday: True Stories from Missouri – MJ Issa

Douglas County

Died August 28, 2021

Trying to stop the drug trade is playing Whack-a-Mole. We have to arm our children’

MJ Issa was an accomplished athlete, a talented rapper and, his family said, a sneaker aficionado.

“When he was younger, he would buy them on eBay and various shoe sites online and then he would fix them up and resell them,” said his mother, Sandra Issa. “He also had quite a collection, most of which I still have because he had size 13 feet. So there’s not many other people who can wear his shoes.”

Football also was a big part of MJ’s life. He began playing in seventh grade, was a lineman at Lawrence High School his freshman and sophomore years and was on the Free State High School varsity team as a junior and senior, starting all four years. And he loved rapping, posting songs on SoundCloud that he had worked on with friends to produce.

But during his later high school years, another activity began consuming MJ’s life.

“He loved football,” Issa said, “but there were some concussions. There was COVID. And there was the allure of drugs. So he got ensnared in addiction.”

When the problem became evident, she said, they sent him to rehab. But he was 18 at that point, she said, and checked himself out of the facility after several days.

On Aug. 28, 2021, three months after his high school graduation, MJ died at home in Lawrence. He had fentanyl and ethanol in his system.

Since MJ’s death, Issa — a longtime educator — has become a grief group facilitator for Love in the Trenches, a nonprofit organization that offers support to families affected by addiction. She also has written a book, A Terrible and True Tale for Our Time, published in August to coincide with the second anniversary of MJ’s death. The allegorical tale gives parents, counselors and educators a way to broach conversations about the dangers of fentanyl with pre-adolescents.

Issa said the book avoids slogans like “one pill can kill” or “just say no” and addresses drug use at a deeper level, offering insight into questions about who benefits from drug use and why someone would choose to use drugs.

“When MJ passed, I spent a lot of time educating myself about fentanyl, about addiction, about the drug trade,” she said. “And my conclusion from this research is that trying to stop the drug trade is playing Whack-a-Mole. The government and law enforcement, they have to keep at it, but more importantly, I think we have to arm our children, because the drug trade is not going to stop.

“So we need to arm our kids with knowledge and we need to arm them before they’re tempted to use drugs, because once addiction kicks in, the battle is almost impossible.”

Issa said children need — and deserve — to get a fuller picture about drugs, more than just learning that “drugs are bad.”

“And the kids have to understand that they are the pawns in someone else’s game, there’s somebody behind that pill who was willing to sacrifice a kid’s health, and they’re even willing to sacrifice a kid’s life out of greed,” she said. “And this is something kids at a young age can understand. They hear stories, they watch TV shows where there are evil, greedy villains. So it’s a concept that they get, and they need to know that there are greedy evil villains that exist in real life.”

Two Lawrence men were charged in MJ’s case with distribution of a controlled substance causing death. One, Logan Morgan, was convicted in February and has yet to be sentenced. The other, Ben Mims, has a criminal history including a 2019 conviction in federal court of felony possession with the intent to distribute heroin. According to court records, that case involved six defendants who were allegedly selling heroin from a house in Kansas City, Kansas.

In September 2022, Mims was charged in Douglas County in connection with MJ’s death. But the charges were dismissed in December because the prosecution said it was having trouble scheduling a key witness for a court appearance. Prosecutors said they intended to refile the charges, but that hasn’t happened yet.

MJ’s family continues to hope for a resolution in the criminal investigation into his death.

“I’ve learned that the wheels of justice grind slowly,” Issa said. “In MJ’s case, something will happen. It just hasn’t happened yet.

” Meanwhile, Issa stays in touch with MJ’s friends, holding get-togethers like barbecues and celebrating his birthday in January.

“Growing up, he always had an ice cream cake,” she said. “So in January, his friends and I go out to the cemetery. And we shiver and we eat ice cream cake.”

#OpioidCrisisFriday, #OpioidEpidemic, #OpioidCrisis, #Awareness, #Controversy, #DrugOverdose, #Drugs, #Fentanyl, #HistoricalFacts, #InterestingFacts, #OpioidCrisis, #Tragedy, #UnitedStates, #Missouri, #DouglasCounty, #MJIssa #VintageDava