These days, even what counts as positive local news about fentanyl is pretty grim.
For example: Last year, 555 people died in Orange County after ingesting the powerful, synthetic opiate, some after they knowingly took a drug they’d been told was fentanyl and many others because they took a street version of a different drug – anything from Adderall to Xanax – that happened to have a lethal amount of fentanyl in it.
The positive spin? The 2022 death count was about 14% less than the 647 people who died locally of fentanyl in 2021. That was the first year-to-year decline in the nine years that fentanyl deaths have been tracked locally; in the four years prior to 2021, the county saw a five-fold jump in fentanyl deaths.
Such numbers – and a collective belief that even after the recent dip fentanyl is likely to keep killing locals of all ages races and ethnic backgrounds – have prompted Orange County to join a public awareness campaign called “Fentanyl is Forever.” All five county supervisors and several county health officials gathered in a conference center at the Santa Ana Civic Center on Tuesday, Oct. 10, to talk up the campaign, which includes a multilingual website, live town halls and efforts to boost availability of different versions of the anti-overdose drug naloxone.
Some also offered increasingly personal messages about their contact – and frustration – with the scourge posed by illicit fentanyl.
“The entire board is deeply troubled by the threat fentanyl poses,” said Third District Supervisor Don Wagner.
“The attraction… to users is because it is cheaper,” said First District Supervisor Andrew Do.
“Among Latinos, in California, there was an 85% increase in overdose deaths in 2021 from the year before, and it was the same in 2022,” said Second District Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento. “We know the impacts fall heaviest on people of color.”
“Fentanyl has, forever, taken one of my son’s friends,” said Fifth…
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