Thread by @OCDAToddSpitzer

May 10 is National Fentanyl Awareness Day. If you don’t know what fentanyl is, you should. It’s killing Americans at alarming rates.

Drug related deaths among high school-aged US teens have more than tripled since 2019 – and surged fivefold among Black teens, driven by a rise in the deadly opioid fentanyl.

Teenagers are falling victim to the flood of counterfeit pills, which look exactly like real oxycodone or Xanax tablets, but actually contain fentanyl, a synthetic opioid so potent that one counterfeit pill is enough to kill you.

More than 40 percent of street drugs are estimated to contain deadly amounts of fentanyl. These fake pills are being smuggled into the country and are circulating in the illicit drug market, meaning that teens often ingest the deadly drug unknowingly.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer is aggressively holding drug dealers accountable, recently announcing he is cross designating an OCDA prosecutor as a federal prosecutor to prosecute fentanyl dealers federally when they sell drugs that results in someone’s death.

Read the OC Register here on the Orange County District Attorney’s efforts to hold fentanyl dealers accountable and save lives.
bit.ly/3w105JX

Last year alone, Orange County had 923 drug-related deaths and 695 of those involved fentanyl – that’s 75 percent of all deaths in Orange County were as a result of fentanyl.

“People are dying because they’re being poisoned by drug dealers. It’s not an overdose,” Spitzer said. “It’s 20 years mandatory minimum under federal law. That’s going to send a powerful message.”

#NationalFentanylAwarenessDay #JustSayKNOW #onepillcankill