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Man Overdoses On Fentanyl In Car With Three-Year-Old Child In Backseat

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Steve Birr Vice Reporter
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A man is accused of overdosing on fentanyl while sitting with a three-year-old child in the backseat of his car outside a South Carolina T.G.I. Fridays.

George Fredrick McClain, 31, allegedly drove off with the child after getting into a heated argument with his mother. He then went to a T.G.I. Fridays parking lot in Murrells Inlet, SC, where he snorted fentanyl. He later called his wife, who told police he “didn’t sound like himself over the phone,” WBTW reported.

After arriving in the parking lot, she got into the car with McClain, who quickly “became unresponsive and began turning a grey color.” First responders managed to revive McClain with two doses of overdose reversal drug Narcan. While receiving treatment, McClain allegedly “made the spontaneous utterance that he had snorted Fentanyl,” according to a police report.

McClain is charged with unlawful neglect of a child over the incident.

Fentanyl overtook heroin as the U.S.’s deadliest substance in 2016, claiming 19,413 lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton introduced legislation March 22, along with a number of Senate colleagues including South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham that will allow prosecutors to issue stricter prison terms for dealers of fentanyl, which Cotton called a “weapon of mass destruction.”

The bill significantly reduces the amount of fentanyl a person must have in their possession to trigger mandatory sentencing minimums for narcotics trafficking. This will be crucial for helping local law enforcement fight against the relentless efforts of fentanyl traffickers and distributors, legislators argue, giving them the legal tools to keep dealers off the streets.

Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under age 50, killing more than 64,000 people in 2016, according to the CDC.

The epidemic is contributing to declining life expectancy in the U.S., officials say. Life expectancy dropped for the second consecutive year in 2016 for the first time since influenza outbreaks in 1962 and 1963.

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