The fentanyl overdose rate in San Joaquin County in 2021 was more than 20 times higher than it was in 2018.

And the San Joaquin County District Attorney’s Office is now launching a campaign to try and lower that number – hoping that education about the wide-availability of the incredibly strong synthetic opioid and its presence in nearly all illicit drugs that are being sold on the streets today will save lives.

This week the agency, headed by District Attorney Ron Freitas, announced a public relations blitz across the county centering on the fact that “One Pill Can Kill” – that a single counterfeit pill laced with an unknown amount of fentanyl can be enough to lead to an overdose that can the live of even somebody with a tolerance for that class of drugs.

According to Freitas, the time has come to try to do more to prevent that number from increasing even more.

“You’re going to see our messaging pop up all across the county, in a variety of channels, from Billboards, to Social Media to your TV Screens,” Freitas said about the upcoming campaign. “Far too many people are finding availability to purchase pills that are laced with fentanyl.”

According to the DA’s office, 48 people died of overdoses of fentanyl in 2021 – a number that has been trending up across the country as the illicit and incredibly potent drug becomes cheaper and even more available on American streets.

The drugs are often manufactured in places like Mexico and imported into the United States through legal points of entry stashed in legitimate cargo – a problem that has long existed but becomes even more serious given the amount of fentanyl that can be deadly.

While people often mistakenly ingest lethal amounts of fentanyl because they didn’t know it was contained in the substance they thought they were taking, smugglers and manufacturers have only gotten better at making pills that look exactly the same as the pharmaceutical pills that are often diverted and sold on the street.

“The trend now is to lace black-market prescription drugs with fentanyl with a buyer unknowingly ingesting this deadly substance,” Freitas said. “One of every four pills contained a deadly amount, so a kilo of fentanyl has the capability of killing 100,000+ people.”

Last month the FDA approved naloxone – the active ingredient in a popular opiate-blocking nasal spray commonly known by the trade name Narcan – to be sold over the counter so that individual residents can have it on hand in the event of an overdose. That development came after public safety organizations around the country authorized first responders to carry naloxone nasal spray on their person – showing the escalating response to what has become a public health emergency.

For additional information about the campaign, or for more facts about fentanyl and it’s prevalence in the community visit https://sjgov.org/da/onepill.

To contact Bulletin reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.