Luke Tomsha, founder of The Perfectly Flawed Foundation, to speak at IVCC

The Perfectly Flawed Foundation founder Luke Tomsha will present drug facts and overdose response techniques in a presentation at noon Friday, Nov. 1, in the Dr. Mary Margaret Weeg Cultural Center, Illinois Valley Community College said in a news release.

The presentation, part of IVCC’s Student Wellness Week activities, is free and open to the public and also will be viewable via Zoom. Visit ivcc.edu/studentsuccess/events.php to register for the Zoom meeting and access the link.

Tomsha, who is a native of the Illinois Valley, will review local overdose prevention services, try to combat misinformation regarding drug use and provide response procedures for overdose situations, according to the release.

The Perfectly Flawed Foundation is a nonprofit in La Salle that offers harm reduction, overdose prevention and peer support services.

According to the release, drug overdose deaths decreased slightly in 2023 for the first time in several years, although they consistently outpace traffic accidents as a leading cause of death for young people.

Tomsha said he is encouraged by the decrease and believes his organization’s awareness and harm reduction efforts are having a lifesaving influence locally.

He said in a news release that, overall, the region is not seeing the fatalities. People might be overdosing, but not fatally.

“College-aged adults are likely to have encountered drug use, either in their own experimentation or from being around friends and acquaintances, or exposed at concerts and other venues where it occurs,” Tomsha said in the release. “There’s so much stigma surrounding it. Putting knowledge into their hands that they can spread to friends and their network is really important, as is having tools to know how to respond [to an overdose].”

He said he wants the presentation to be a safe place to share experiences, as well as be informative.

“This will be a casual event – a safe space to ask questions without judgment. I bring lived experience as someone who has used drugs,” he said.

Tomsha said in the release that he will address drug-use myths, noting that usage is a spectrum that includes experimentation, recreational use and prescription use – and does not automatically equal addiction.

“Trusting other misinformation about the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl or good Samaritan laws can impede responses to drug crises – and delays of even minutes cost lives,” he said.