Last week, Bridgeville Police found a few stamp bags of heroin lying in the parking lot of a local retail store.
The police department posted a photo to Facebook to help people recognize stamp bags in case they see one in public or if their children try to pick one up.
“I don’t think I need to highlight how bad this problem is, not just here, but everywhere,” the post read.
But what really underlined the severity of the heroin epidemic was the public reaction to the post. Nearly 900 people shared it with their own friends, and dozens of people from Bridgeville and other communities wrote about how heroin has devastated the lives of friends and loved ones.
A McDonald woman said her daughter is currently struggling with heroin addiction.
A Pittsburgh woman said that she lost four friends in two months to heroin. “Please stop. Your wife and loved ones are more important than the drug,” she wrote.
Some other commenters mentioned relatives who were dead or in prison because of heroin, while other reported spotting empty stamp bag packets in neighboring communities, including Carnegie and Dormont.
Read the full Facebook post here.