Fentanyl awareness day: The synthetic opioid fentanyl increasingly poisons young Americans
In 2023, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized 74.5 million pills containing fentanyl.[i] This record-breaking number helps to explain why so many young people are experiencing unintended fentanyl poisonings. This article explores the risks and why young people are more susceptible to the dangers of taking, and dying from, illicitly manufactured fentanyl pills. Charlie, was just 22 when he overdosed and died after taking what he thought was a Percocet that he’d bought over the internet. It turned out to be a fake pill that contained illicit fentanyl.[ii] The opioid epidemic began as a