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California police sounded the alarm over drug traffickers using rainbow and other candy coloring in fentanyl on Saturday.
The Monterey Police Department posted an image of a small bag of candy-colored fentanyl, saying that just a single use can be deadly for adults and even children. Just two milligrams of fentanyl is considered to be a potentially lethal dose.
“Sadly we are now seeing fentanyl in rainbow/candy coloring. We encourage parents to speak with their children about the dangers of this deadly drug. Just one use can be fatal,” the police department wrote.
Fentanyl is a leading cause of surging drug overdose deaths across the country. The synthetic opioid is many times stronger than heroin but far cheaper to produce.
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Police in Monterey, California recovered bags of fentanyl that had been dyed with rainbow colors. (Monterey Police Department)
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Drug traffickers often mix the substance with real heroin to inflate their product volume, often without announcement. The end-user is then far more likely to overdose, thinking they are taking a drug many times less powerful than it actually is.
Fentanyl was involved in 70% of drug overdoses in 2020, according to the CDC.
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Drug overdose deaths topped 100,000 in the U.S. for the first time in 2021, sitting at 107,622. It marked a sharp increase in deaths in 2020, which the CDC estimated at 91,799.
Deaths among U.S. adolescents are also on the rise, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
