‘It’s devastating’: how fentanyl is unfolding as one of America’s greatest tragedies | Opioids crisis | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/22/fentanyl-deaths-spike-us-tragedy
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3a1c87db221e352ae5dcf1ef3536b6e96b96f609/0_174_5220_3132/master/5220.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
It was August 2020, and Luca Manuel, 13, was starting eighth grade the following day in Redding, California. He was excited to see his friends; his mother had bought him a stash of masks and school supplies for his first in-person school day in six months.
But the week earlier, he’d gotten a root canal, and his mouth still hurt. He sent a message on Snapchat to find marijuana for the pain. Instead, the dealer said he had something better: Percocet.
Luca didn’t know that the pill, which had been pressed to look like the real pain medication, was actually a counterfeit laced with fentanyl, a substance 30 times more potent than heroin. He died of drug poisoning that afternoon, a video game looping like a ghost across the screen in front of him.