With drug overdose and deaths rising alarmingly among youth, King County has launched a new fentanyl overdose prevention campaign, targeted specifically to reach young people between the ages of 14 to 18 years old. Called Laced & Lethal (www.lacedandlethal.com), the campaign is designed to teach teens about the risk of buying pills and powders potentially laced with fentanyl, a powerful and often deadly drug. A campaign focused on adults will follow later this year.

“There is an urgent need to bring to light the danger of fentanyl in our community, and particularly to making sure local teens and their families know that fentanyl-laced substances are being sold in our area, with tragic results,” said Kelli Nomura, director of the King County Behavioral Health and Recovery Division (BHRD), the primary funder of the campaign. “This campaign reaches out to educate young people on overdose prevention and how medications like naloxone can reverse fentanyl overdose and save lives.”

King County is seeing more and more substances laced with fentanyl, especially counterfeit pills. Between 2018-2020, King County saw a 167 percent increase in the number of fentanyl-involved deaths. Extremely troubling is the fact that 18 local youth died of fatal overdose in 2020.

The above is a press release from King County HHS. The Auburn Examiner has not independently verified its contents and encourages our readers to personally verify any information they find may be overly biased or questionable. The publication of this press release does not indicate an endorsement of its content.