‘Mass Fentanyl Overdoses’ Reported In California

The Daily Mail is reporting one man dead and 12 more hospitalized after ‘mass overdose’ in California caused by fentanyl.

According to The Sacramento Bee, authorities arrived at a home on the 1100 block of Santana Court around 9am on Saturday after receiving a 911 call from someone inside. ” ‘Upon arrival, Chico police officers found multiple individuals in what appeared to be life-threatening overdose conditions,’ Chico Police Chief Michael O’Brien said at a news conference.”

”Every indication – talking to medical staff, talking to doctors – everything is consistent with a fentanyl or fentanyl similar-type overdose. O’Brien said police performed CPR and administered six doses of naloxone, which is used to treat and reverse the effects of narcotic overdoses.”

Most illegal fentanyl is believed to be produced in China and Homeland Security and the Post Master General have made cracking down on its import into the US a priority.

However, the problem is much broader than that, and has expanded.

People who once had legal prescriptions to intensely powerful pain killing narcotics like Oxycontin turned to street dope like heroin when they were kicked off their scripts with no option to withdraw medically.

Heroin (and in some places cocaine) is now regularly laced with the far cheaper and plentiful fentanyl.

According to The Bee, O’Brien says Chico officers began carrying naloxone (the only anti-dote to a fentanyl overdose) in 2018 but, until recently, it has been used to reverse heroin overdoses.

He says he is concerned that fentanyl may become a problem in Chico.

“We were waiting, and have been waiting unfortunately, for this to happen in the sense that we knew fentanyl had been moving west,’ O’Brien said.

‘That is changing unfortunately, and now we’ve had this mass casualty incident… likely to have been cause by fentanyl.”