We’ve come to know Captain Lee Rosbach over the past nine seasons on Below Deck. He’s a highly accomplished yachting professional, a devoted family man, and has a knack for a pithy punch line. He truly is a reality TV gem and a seemingly upstanding individual. But sadly, the heartbreak of losing his son Josh Lee Rosbach to opioid addiction in 2019 took the sparkle out of his eye, and has haunted him ever since.
It’s something no parent should ever have to experience. And Captain Lee decided to use his platform and celebrity to push for change. He is heading to Washington D.C. to advocate for stricter fentanyl regulation and harsher punishments for those selling the substance.
Captain Lee told Entertainment Tonight that the addition of fentanyl into the pill his son ingested essentially poisoned him. “They called my son’s death an accidental overdose,” he explained, “it wasn’t. It was an accidental poisoning. He didn’t know there was fentanyl in the pill he was taking. Dealers just put it in there because it’s cheap. They manufacture pills laced with fentanyl and they don’t know what they’re doing and people end up dead.”
On October 28th, Captain Lee and Congressman John Rutherford hosted an event with the Bipartisan Addiction and Mental Health Task Force. Lee said of the event, “I think you have to start at the place where people make the laws to have any effectual change.”
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Captain Lee acknowledged the community of grieving parents that he feels he can help by putting his name behind the cause. He opined, “It’s unfortunate that moms and dads scream from the rooftops every day and nobody pays attention to them. And it takes someone with a little status to help. Yes, I lost my son, but I’m only one of hundreds of thousands. We all hurt the same way. We belong to a club nobody wants to belong to and we’ll carry that pain with us the rest of our lives.”
Captain Lee will also open a rehabilitation facility to be named after his late son. He shared the details of the project, “It’s a rehabilitation center I’ve been working on that will be on the water, on a barge, that will be not just a rehab but a vocational center. It will be able to accommodate 200 patients and when they finish the rehabilitation part of their stay—however long that takes—they will learn a skillset and leave with a vocation. The barge is already constructed, it’s just a matter of getting the funds appropriated. It’s a lot of red tape. Which is another thing. Lawmakers should do more to assist in getting these things done. Drug addiction shouldn’t be political.”
Finally, in a very touching tribute, Captain Lee shared the name of the vessel. He said, “the barge itself will be called the Joshua Lee.”
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[Photo Credit: Bravo]