An Indiana mother shares her tragic story of losing her son to synthetic drugs. It's a story she hopes will prevent other teens from making the same fatal decision.
"His sport was basketball he loved all sports for basketball was the one that he play played and gravitated to for many years. He also was funny, he was engaging," said Jeanine Motsay as she described her 16 year-old son Sam - who was an athlete and honor student with big plans for the future. "He had a GPA of 4.0 and on any given day you could ask him what his GPA was and he could say 4.09 or 4.12. He knew right down to the number what it was and so he was really focused on where he was going and what he was doing in his life," said Motsay.
On mothers day 2014, Sam consumed a lethal dose of the synthetic drug NBOMe. As a substitute for LSD, the drug NBOMe can be fatal in just one use depending on how it's packaged and distributed by dealers.
In the weeks following Sam's death, Jeanine began researching synthetic drugs and realized that information is limited for families, schools and teens.
In 2012, president Obama signed the Synthetic Drug Abuse and Prevention Act. The law places 26 types of synthetic drugs into schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.
"What happens is just as soon as one of these is identified and put as a schedule I, they turn around and change it by a molecule to become something else so that it can be legal. In fact, the drug that killed Sam this time last year was legal," said Motsay.
Jeanine created a website called samswatch.org where parents can access more information about synthetic drugs.