FOR THE COUNCIL MEETING OF MAY 7, 2024
COUNCIL AGENDA REPORT
TO: City Council
FROM: Interim City Manager Alex Posada
SUBJECT: Proclamation – “Fentanyl Awareness Day” – May 9, 2024
Present a Proclamation recognizing May 9 th, 2024, as “Fentanyl Awareness Day” in the City of Santa Maria to raise awareness and prevent overdose caused by fentanyl.
BACKGROUND:
“Fentanyl Awareness Day” is a day of education to raise public awareness that people are dying at alarming rates due to illicitly manufactured drugs mixed with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, to increase potency, and pressed into pills made to look like legi timate pharmaceutical drugs.
DISCUSSION:
Fentanyl is odorless, tasteless, cheap, and extremely potent, 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more tenant than morphine. The number of opioid -related deaths involving fentanyl specifically increased from 12 in 2019 to 115 overdose deaths in 2022.
It is becoming more common for individuals to use drugs without knowing it contains fentanyl and overdose as a result.
Attachment: Proclamation