Fentanyl Is Silently Killing California’s Youth as Epidemic Spreads Across America

Fentanyl is silently killing thousands of youth and young adults as California lawmakers struggle to pass laws preventing teens and adults from accessing the drug easily.

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that is often laced with other drugs, resulting in users unknowingly consuming it, leading to dangerous situations of addiction or overdose, leading to death.

Drug traffickers lace fentanyl in other drugs like cocaine, heroin, and prescription drugs. And many drug dealers are selling these drugs through social media platforms like Snapchat to youth.

“Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered,” USDEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement.

“Fentanyl is everywhere. No community is safe from this poison, from large metropolitan areas to rural America. We must take every opportunity to spread the word to prevent fentanyl-related overdose death and poisonings from claiming scores of American lives every day.”

According to a California Health Policy Strategies (CHPS) Fatal Overdoes report (pdf), Fentanyl-related deaths have increased by 1,027 percent since 2017, from 537 to 6,054 deaths in 2021. There are now 11 times as many fentanyl deaths in at least 55 percent of all fatal overdoses.

‘He Took One Pill’

Perla Mendoza, founder of Project Eli project, lost her only child to fentanyl poisoning.

“My beautiful, precious, loving boy was 20 years old when he went to heaven. The day that Elijah died, he went to work and talked to his boss about his plans for his 21st birthday,” Mendoza said during a Zoom meeting with other local parents who lost their children to fentanyl.

“He had dinner with his grandma, then, later that evening, he reached out to someone he thought he could trust and asked if he could buy what he thought was a legitimate prescription pain pill. He took one pill. The next day he was found unresponsive by his grandmother in his bedroom.”

Mendoza knew the person who provided the substance to her son and warned him that his products were tainted, assuming that he had no idea. But the dealer kept dealing with fentanyl drugs to others.

“I reported him on Snapchat and to law enforcement,” Mendoza said. “The Feds arrested my son’s perpetrator, and he had enough fentanyl in his possession to kill over 250,000 people. He was federally indicted and is currently in custody.”

But California lawmakers have not been passing many bills to dress the issue despite proposing they combat the fentanyl crisis and prosecute drug dealers.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office for comment but didn’t receive a response before publication.

Assemblyman Bill Essayli met with local parents who lost their children to fentanyl during a Zoom meeting on May 25, and said fentanyl needs to be seriously addressed.

“When I look at this issue, it’s really an epidemic. We have so many kids and healthy young people dying from fentanyl, and lawmakers don’t treat it with the attention and seriousness it deserves,” Essayli said during the meeting.

‘I Felt Abandoned’

Sandra Martinez is another parent who lost her child to fentanyl after her daughter suffered a traumatic event.

“My daughter, Karina, was killed when she was 29. She started off having emotional disorders from losing her child,” Martinez said during the meeting with Essayli. “It started creating an unhealthy gut issue, which doctors prescribe her opioids to help her manage this illness.”

Marinez’s daughter eventually became addicted to heroin to combat that illness and the pain.

“In a year and a half, she became highly addicted to heroin. She had been human trafficked, drugged, and used in various traumatic situations, in and out of a few detoxification facilities,” Martinez said.

Marinez’s daughter went missing for three months. Marinez said she filed multiple missing person reports, desperately trying to find her daughter.

“None of the police would do anything about the drug dealers that I told them where and when they were selling. I felt abandoned by them,” Martinez said.

Essayli is among the few lawmakers supporting Alexandra’s Law (SB44).

“It says dealing drugs is inherently dangerous, and a drug can be lethal laced with fentanyl. And if you deal again and somebody dies, we can charge you with murder. So it’s meant to be a deterrent so you wouldn’t do it again,” Essalyli explained of the law.

Lawmakers have passed some fentanyl-related bills, such as AB 19, which requires schools to keep Narcan available on campus, and HB 33, which created a fentanyl addiction and overdose prevention task force.

Essayli believes that even though these measures will help, it’s not enough.

“Lawmakers will not pass any bill that results in more prison time,” Essayli said.

Some lawmakers believe education and rehab are suitable approaches to helping stop the fentanyl crisis. But a lot of people dying are not addicted to drugs—they are experimenting with recreational drug use.

“We have to have zero tolerance because people are dying from one single pill one single time. We have to change our whole approach to this to this crisis. Look at how we changed our whole society for COVID,” Essayli said.

Essayli says fentanyl is also a federal issue relating to a secure border.

“A lot of fentanyl is easily coming across the border. China manufactures fentanyl, imports or exports it to Mexico, and then ships and then distributes the drugs across the states. So the federal government needs to do more to crack down on the border and prevent China from exporting it,” Essayli said.