On the recordJuly 17, 2023
Last month, the district attorney of Placer County in my district secured the first-ever murder conviction in California for dealing fentanyl. This is a very important moment in the battle against the fentanyl epidemic that is taking such a tragic toll on every community across the country. As The New York Times reported: The novel prosecution in Placer, northeast of Sacramento, is being closely watched in law enforcement and legislative circles in California, which lost about 6,000 people to fentanyl and other opioids in 2021, the last year for which complete data is available. Prosecutors have been looking for ways to hold people distributing the drug accountable for the staggering death toll. Now, I would like to share the details about this case and the successful legal strategy of the district attorney, but first a word about the scale of the fentanyl crisis in the United States. Fentanyl has become the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 45, surpassing car accidents, surpassing suicides, surpassing everything. It is now the leading cause of death for young people in our country. It is affecting every community, including my own. It has been reported that 73,102 Americans died from fentanyl in the past year. That amounts to 200 deaths every day, one every 7 minutes. The reason is largely because of the lethality of fentanyl, which is unlike any other drug; 100 times more potent than morphine.…
