Council issues proclamation condemning fentanyl, raising awareness

The Maricopa City Council on Tuesday issued a proclamation condemning fentanyl use and trafficking, hoping to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of the lethal drug in the community.

The proclamation set Sunday, Aug. 21, as National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day in Maricopa and called upon all residents to join in the special observation.

“Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered,” said Lucinda Boyd, co-founder of local non-profit The Streets Don’t Love You Back. “Fentanyl is everywhere. From large metropolitan areas to rural America, no community is safe from this poison. We must take every opportunity to spread the word to prevent fentanyl-related poisoning and overdose deaths from claiming scores of American lives every day. We must stop the stigma, the stereotype the drug user assumptions and misconceptions that fentanyl poisonings occur only with addicted users. Anyone can die, most are not drug addicts! Fentanyl poisoning is real, and our children are dying!”

Boyd also cited several shocking statistics about fentanyl including:

• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 107,375 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses and drug poisonings in the 12-month period ending in January 2022; 67 percent of those deaths involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
• Some of these deaths were attributed to fentanyl mixed with other illicit drugs, many users unaware they were taking fentanyl.
• Illicit fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin.
• Just two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a potentially lethal dose.
• Fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death for adults aged 18-45 in the U.S., surpassing suicide, gun violence and car accidents. A fentanyl-related death occurs approximately every nine minutes.
• Teen deaths are up 94% in one year, and enough fentanyl has been seized in the U.S. in one year to kill 6.9 million people.

While Boyd highlighted the broad issues with fentanyl poisoning nationally, Maricopa resident Lisa Tyler brought a personal perspective during the Aug. 16 City Council meeting.

“I’m not here to share statistics with you guys,” she said.  “This is my son, his name is Tyler (Champagne), he was 27 years old. I am here to create awareness because I don’t want anybody have to have the pain that I go through. I found my son on May 10 at 3 p.m. in his bed. If you guys don’t educate yourselves and your family, you’ll either be at a cemetery or you’ll be holding an urn at the funeral.

“I was the first one to hold him and I was the last one,” Tyler continued. “He’ll never get a chance to marry, have children, finish school. His life was ended that quick, and in the meantime, it destroyed my whole family. My kids will never have the parents back that they had, my husband will never have his wife back. So just please, please, please, pay attention. These social media (sites), they literally deliver it right to their door, and they use emojis on snapchat.”

Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb said citizens have to become more aware of the dangers of fentanyl and how widespread the problem has become.

My heart goes out to the Tyler for the loss of their son Tyler Champagne,” Lamb said. “This is happening way too often. What do I say as a Sheriff when I show up at their house, or what does the (Maricopa Police) Chief say when he shows up at their house? That we didn’t stop it? That we could have stopped it, but we didn’t stop it? I have to deal with this on a daily basis.”

Lamb said that Pinal County typically has about 750 overdoses a year and growing – incidents he prefers to call “poisonings.” He said in Arizona there have been 33 children die of fentanyl this year, seven of them under the age of 1.

“That alone should wake us up,” he said. “I’m grateful to Lucinda and Rob for doing this and I’m grateful to the city of Maricopa for and the city council for recognizing a problem that exists and not being afraid to address it.

“When this becomes the leading cause of death in America, with over 100,000 lives lost in a year, it should be on the front page of every newspaper, on every news station and every politician’s mouth, but unfortunately, it’s not. It’s going unspoken of, and its left for us to clean up the mess.”