Carson, California, is a city of roughly 93,000 people, just north of Long Beach.1 As one of the many smaller cities scattered through Los Angeles County, Carson has easy access to Los Angeles, beautiful beaches, and great opportunities, but the area also struggles with opioid abuse, and increasingly, fentanyl is becoming a huge problem in the area.
Since 2012, a new wave of illicit fentanyl has led to a spike in opioid overdose deaths around the United States.2 This powerful opioid was originally designed for prescription use in people with severe, chronic pain who had developed a tolerance to other opioid drugs. However, clandestine labs in other countries have begun to manufacture this synthetic opioid on the cheap and ship it to the US. It is cheaper than heroin, cocaine, and even methamphetamine, so the drug is being added to these other drugs without the knowledge of the person struggling with addiction.3 This has caused thousands of people to overdose. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that, in part because of an increase in illicit fentanyl, 115 people die from opioid overdoses in the U.S. every day.4
Los Angeles County did not have a problem with fentanyl for a few years, but now the drug is entering Southern California as an unknown additive in cocaine and meth. Any kind of drug abuse is dangerous, but with fentanyl appearing in many other illegal drugs, getting treatment to prevent overdose and death is necessary. Call us today to get started on the path to that treatment.
[1] Data.io: Carson, CA.
[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2018). CDC Newsroom: U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Continue to Rise; Increase Fueled by Synthetic Opioids.
[3] Officer.com. (2018). Fentanyl Starting to Show Up in Cocaine and Meth.
[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Understanding the Epidemic.
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