Mother Posts Heartbreaking Open Letter To Her Late Daughter’s Drug Dealer

Earlier this month, on what would have been her daughter Ashley's birthday, Tina Wells Louden posted a poignant message to the Facebook page Heroin KILLS You. It was addressed to Ashley's drug dealer. "To my daughter's drug dealer, this is how I spend my daughter's birthday now," Louden began her letter, which she posted alongside a photo of herself posing with Ashley's ashes. "How do you live with yourself??? That's all I wanna kno," she continued. Louden ended her letter with a call to action for the rest of the page's followers: "I don't normally post pics like this but let's make this go viral so all the drug dealers see what they are doing to our families." Ashley passed away due to a heroin overdose in 2013, after five years of using and struggling to get clean. "I know Ashley took the drugs, but I still believe the dealer should be somewhat responsible," Louden told news station KSDK. It isn't known whether her post has reached the dealer, but, with more than 250,000 shares at the time of writing, it has clearly touched many others already. According to the CDC, 47,055 people died from drug overdoses in 2014, making this the leading cause of accidental death. More specifically, heroin overdoses among women tripled between 2010 and 2013. Louden's story is one of many, but it makes an important point about drug-related deaths: They leave lasting, devastating effects on the people who are left behind. "Every day, we live with this pain," Louden told KSDK. "Part of our heart is gone." Read Louden's full post below.