TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - Walker Funeral Home is hoping to bring awareness to the heroin epidemic plaguing Lucas County.
If you've taken the Anthony Wayne Trail to Downtown Toledo, you may have seen a billboard encouraging parents to talk to their kids about heroin. Walker Funeral Home is behind the campaign.
"We've just seen so many families wrecked with these deaths from heroin that are unnecessary that we wanted to do something, so we thought we would take some of our media budget and put it towards this," said Keith Walker, President of Walker Funeral.
He says in the last couple of years they've seen the heroin epidemic increase. He says that's what pushed them towards the awareness campaign.
"We've seen just a tremendous amount of people in their 20s and 30s that have tried to get clean, relapse into it and then maybe taken too large of a dose that they were maybe used to taking before, and then overdosing and dying. And it's just been getting near epidemic proportions," said Walker.
Walker hopes that when people pass their billboards, they see there is a place where they can get help.
"Either contacting us or any of the other agencies that we're partnering with, Zepf Center, Renewed Minds, and then we've also been working with Teen Recovery, which is great group of people that are recovering addicts," said Walker.
