At any given moment this week — whether it is lunchtime, rush hour or before dawn — the Asbury Park’s heroin and opiate crisis will be the conversation piece on WWZY 107.1 FM.
On the air, the station’s regular music programming will be punctuated with conversations about the deadly crisis that has gripped the Shore area in recent years, and was detailed in a special Asbury Park Press report in October.
It was because of that report and subsequent stories that the station was spurred to action, said Rich Morena, the station’s general manager. Hundreds of people across Monmouth and Ocean counties have died of heroin or opiate overdoses in the last several years, and it hit a crisis point in 2013, when Ocean County doubled its drug overdose deaths from 2012.
Along with the continuous coverage, led by the team of the Pork Roll & Eggs Morning Show, the station has set up stationary bicycles at the three malls. For each mile peddled, the company’s chairman, Jules L. Plangere Jr., and the Jules L. Plangere Jr. Family Foundation will donate a dollar, up to $25,000, to the local nonprofit treatment centers Preferred Behavioral Health and Prevention First, said Dee Pellegrino, the company’s marketing director. The company also is accepting donations, which will go to the two organizations. The Press is offering support of the event by handing out free reprints of its heroin series, and will go on air to discuss the epidemic.
The coverage began Monday morning and continues until 5 p.m. Friday. At 7 p.m. on Thursday, each group will release 244 balloons into the air from the mall parking lots, each balloon representing an individual from Monmouth and Ocean counties who has died of a drug overdose since January 2013, Pellegrino said.
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