Sunday marked the first-ever National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day. The inexpensive, widely available, highly addictive and potentially lethal drug is increasingly being mixed with other illicit drugs — in powder and pill form — to drive addiction and create repeat customers. Buyers are often unaware that fentanyl is in the drug they’re taking. Even more concerning, just one pill laced with fentanyl can kill. The synthetic opioid is fueling more accidental drug overdoses, which have killed thousands of New Jerseyans and more than 100,000 Americans in the past year. 

Robert Budsock, president and CEO of Integrity House, a drug treatment center in Newark, said fentanyl is one of their biggest challenges. “You would hear about one, two overdoses a year; that was it. It was really rare, and it was a combination of substances that caused that overdose. Over the past ten years, we hear about overdose deaths every day … This is a race to save lives right now, to take every tool that we have in our toolbox to keep people alive long enough to help them receive treatment.