9781422274262

1 CHAPTER

Who Uses Fentanyl? On October 2, 2018, Livermore California police issued a warning to parents about deadly drugs tainted or mixed with fentanyl. The warning came a day after the death of two teens from fentanyl-related overdoses. One of the teens was Justin Miles, the eighteen-year-old stepson of “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams. Adams immediately made a live video talking about his sorrow in losing Justin and how dangerous fentanyl was. Before Justin died, Adams hadn’t even heard of the drug. Justin’s family learned he had become addicted to counterfeit Xanax pills provided by a street dealer, and also had a fentanyl patch on his arm at the time of his death. “Fentanyl probably killed half of the 72,000 Americans who died of drug overdoses in 2017,” Adams said. Justin Miles was just one of more than 30,000 people to die of a fentanyl- related overdose since June, 2017—double the number which died from the drug in 2016.

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Who Uses Fentanyl?