WASHINGTON, D.C. – Tuesday, May 10th, is National Fentanyl Awareness Day.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram calls the synthetic opioid “the deadliest drug our country has ever seen.”
And she says its many victims had no idea what they were taking.
“They didn’t know how drug traffickers mix fentanyl in cocaine, in heroin and in methamphetamine,” said Milgram. “They didn’t know that the prescription pill they bought from a dealer on social media was fake and actually contained fentanyl. And they didn’t know that just one pill can kill.”
Carol Schweigert of Mount Vernon lost her son to fentanyl after he took medication he thought would help relieve pain from an injury.
“He ended up getting a Percocet from a acquaintance and it was counterfeit,” said Schweigert. “He told his friends he was going to go to bed and he’d see them in the morning. And he took that pill and he never woke up.”
The DEA urges everyone to only take prescription pills that are prescribed and that come from a pharmacy and to take time on this first Fentanyl Awareness Day to talk about the extreme dangers of the drug with family and friends.