Story by Susan Meeker
COLUSA COUNTY, CA (MPG) – The Colusa County Board of Supervisors has proclaimed October as Opioid Awareness Month at the request of Colusa County Behavioral Health.
Colusa County officials said there were four opioid-related deaths within the county in the past two years and enough fentanyl seized by the Colusa County Sheriff’s Office to kill the entire population of Colusa County seven times over.
October is also National Substance Abuse Awareness Month and National Recovery Month.
Colusa County Behavioral Health officials said they are focusing their efforts on raising awareness on the dangers associated with opiates, but also the use of Naloxone (Narcan) as an opiate-reversing intervention medication now that synthetic fentanyl is here to stay.
“Fentanyl is 100 times more powerful than morphine and 50 times more powerful than heroin,” said Jennifer McCallister, CCBH clinical program manager. “Because it is so powerful than morphine, it only takes a small amount to overdose, and it is highly addictive.”
Since 2021, illicit fentanyl has taken over the “drug landscape” nationally, overshadowing every other substance, McCallister said.
County officials said with the introduction of fentanyl into the street drug supply, combined with easy access, drug experimentation is more dangerous than ever before. According to the DEA, fentanyl is predominately smuggled into the U.S. by two major drug cartels in Mexico, from chemicals produced in China, and is often sold on the street in counterfeit morphine-based drugs, such as oxycodone and hydrocodone.
“The street supply of pills has been flooded with fakes,” McCallister said. “According to the DEA, 100 percent of the pills they are confiscating are fakes, and 60 percent of the pills they test are potentially deadly. You must assume that anything you get online or from a friend has fentanyl in it and is possibly deadly.”
While fentanyl is killing Americans across every age group, teenagers are particularly hard hit.
“If you had a high school kid die of an overdose in 2021, around 80 percent of those deaths involved fentanyl,” McCallister said. “And even if there were multiple substances in the bloodstream, we can almost certainly say the cause of death was fentanyl.”
According to the proclamation, approved by the board 4-0 on Sept. 12, with Chairman Kent Boes absent, Colusa County is launching a campaign to address the increasing local fentanyl crisis and fake prescription pill epidemic through a countrywide, cross agency collaborative effort.
Behavioral Health hopes to combat the chief cause of death of Americans ages 18-45 by working with local schools to host “One Pill Can Kill” assemblies, parent information nights, and putting Naloxone into local households through drive-thru Narcan events, made possible with federal funding.
McCallister said young people and parents should know the signs of an opioid overdose and administer Naloxone to anyone passed out, limp, unable to be shaken awake, breathing very slowly (or if breathing appears to have stopped), or show a bluish tint to skin, lips, or nails.
“Naloxone is the only medicine that can reverse the effects of opioid overdose,” McCallister said. “The sooner you can administer it, the better.”
Naloxone is now available without a prescription and should be in every first aid kit or medicine cabinet, officials said.
In 2022, local law enforcement administered Naloxone 28 times, saving 81 percent of individuals experiencing a life-threatening overdose, including several toddlers who were exposed to fentanyl by a parent or parents, officials said.
While the DEA said most drug overdoses involve opioids and fentanyl, they do, however, warn another synthetic drug is making its way into the street drug supply that cannot be reversed by Naloxone.
“Xylazine is making the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, fentanyl, even deadlier,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “DEA has seized xylazine and fentanyl mixtures in 48 of 50 States. The DEA Laboratory System is reporting that in 2022, approximately 23% of fentanyl powder and 7% of fentanyl pills seized by the DEA contained xylazine.”
Xylazine is more commonly known as tranq or zombie heroin, with California reporting the highest use and deaths than any other state.