Sheriff Warns of “Enormous” Increase in Fentynal

Sheriff David O. Livingston

Program Co-Chair Steve Astrachan, President Patt Mayer, Assistant District Attorney Mary Knox, and Luncheon Chair Julie Lynch

President Patt Mayer and Patty Marty, Northern California representative for Turning Point USA

Contra Costa County Sheriff David O. Livingston gave an overview of his department at the General Luncheon Meeting of Lamorinda Republican Women Federated yesterday at Zio Fraedo’s in Pleasant HIll.  He also told the 97 members and guests that the county is seeing “an enormous increase in fentanyl.”

The sheriff explained that increasingly “young people are purchasing narcotics and not realizing it’s fentanyl.”  Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, meaning it is made in a laboratory but acts on the same receptors in the brain that painkillers, like oxycodone or morphine, and heroin, do. Fentanyl, however, is far more powerful. It’s 50-100 times stronger than heroin or morphine, meaning even a small dosage can be deadly. And most of it is being brought into the county across the open southern border by Mexican cartels.

Its potency also means that it is profitable for dealers as well as dangerous for those who use it, intentionally or unintentionally. Increasingly heroin is being mixed with fentanyl so someone who uses what they think is heroin may in fact be getting a mixture with — or even pure — fentanyl. More recently, pills made to look like the painkiller oxycodone or the anxiety medication Xanax are actually fentanyl. This deception is proving fatal.