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California Department of Public Health
Director of the California Department of Public Health
PROFILE
Karen Smith
FROM Karen Smith
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Overdoses from Fentanyl Up in California, Public Health Alert Issued A powerful drug that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin has been linked to recent overdoses across California, many of them fatal. It’s called fentanyl, and it’s a synthetic painkiller given mainly to cancer patients; but it’s also a street drug known as “China White,” “Apache,” and “TNT”, among other names. In the Sacramento area alone, illegal fentanyl has been linked to more than 50 overdoses, 11 of them fatal, since last month. That quick and troubling surge prompted the California Department of Public Health to issue a statewide alert earlier this month.
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