Fentanyl is an opioid that is up to “100 times more powerful than morphine,” and is toxic at a very low dosage, causing fatal overdoses at the smallest amounts.
“It’s very easily accessible, it’s cheaper than heroin,” Johnathon Guerino, a counselor at Insight Treatment Center, told KHTS back in August. “It has the same effect as heroin. It’s pretty much laced in everything that’s used today. It really hits the younger population.”
Nationally, fatal overdoses increased by an estimated 18% in 2020 compared to 2019. In the greater Los Angeles area alone, fentanyl was linked to just under half of all fatal overdoses.