![\"Orange](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/RPE-L-VIRUS-JAILSICK-0513-01-2.jpg\")
Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes. (Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register\/SCNG)<\/p>\nThe number of people dying in Orange County from fentanyl had its sharpest drop since the crisis with that opioid began about a decade ago, mirroring a regional trend, statistics from the Orange County Sheriff\u2019s Department show.<\/p>\n
The 407 deaths in 2024 was a 34% drop from the year before \u2014 and 43% less than the worst year, 2021 \u2014 when fentanyl killed 717.<\/p>\n
\u201cFentanyl is impacting everybody equally,\u201d Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said in an interview with the Southern California News Group. \u201cSocioeconomic status doesn\u2019t matter. Race doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n
Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes. (Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register\/SCNG)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just doesn\u2019t pick,\u201d he said. \u201cIt goes and just gets everybody equally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes, people don\u2019t know they are taking fentanyl.<\/p>\n
Pills can be stamped to make them look like Xanax or OxyContin, the sheriff said, \u201c(but) there\u2019s no pharmaceutical quality in that pill. It\u2019s 100% fentanyl.\u201d<\/p>\n
County officials credit a strong partnership between the Sheriff\u2019s Department and the Orange County Healthcare Agency with helping to reduce fentanyl deaths through education, town hall meetings and encouraging sobriety over incarceration.<\/p>\n
The health agency has targeted homeless populations for education \u2014 including how to administer Narcan, a nasal spray that can rapidly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, said its director, Veronica Kelley. The agency has also started using Kloxxado, which delivers double the amount of naloxone per dose.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have outreach and engagement teams that carpet the county and get to know people who are living out there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Both agencies also run Above the Influence, a six-week program for fifth and six graders on the dangers of addictive substances and how poor choices early in life can lead to a long-term struggle with addiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to stop adding new addicts to the roster,\u201d the sheriff said. \u201cThat\u2019s how we\u2019re going to win this long term.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s supply and demand,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we take the demand side out, which means not having more addicts or getting that number reduced, the supply naturally wanes because there\u2019s nobody to feed it to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The passage of Proposition 36, a tougher-on-crime law that placed stricter punishments on repeat drug and theft offenders, has given both agencies more opportunities to try to help those in custody suffering from drug addiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saturate them with service offerings,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cWhen people are in our care and they\u2019re leaving us, we can sign them up for Cal Optima in Orange County, or Medi-Cal services.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when they walk out the back door, they\u2019re already connected back to health care to hopefully go and continue their options rather than walking out without anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said Kelley, \u201cWe are assisting there so that we can get everyone the (medicated-assisted treatment) they need. And then when everyone leaves, we give them an overdose-prevention kit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 2017, the Sheriff\u2019s Department has sent out homicide investigators to every overdose death, Barnes said. They try to get the evidence necessary to track back to the narcotics dealer, who could be charged with second-degree murder if evidence exists that they knew they were selling fentanyl and it led to a user\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
In Los Angeles County, such prosecutions have been key in bringing down overdose deaths, L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said. In 2024, fentanyl deaths there declined 37% to 1,263.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we take our eye off the ball, those numbers can very easily reverse,\u201d Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said.<\/p>\n
Hochman equated the dealers, \u201cfentanyl poisoners,\u201d to a silent assassin using a rife to pick off people on the 405 Freeway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would venture to say we would stop a whole lot of stuff we were doing until we found that one sniper,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Authorities urged diligence, especially for parents with their children.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we take our eye off the ball, those numbers can very easily reverse,\u201d Los Angeles police Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said.<\/p>\n
Barnes, Orange County\u2019s sheriff, called on parents to \u201cget uncomfortable\u201d \u2014 have difficult conversations with their children and keep tabs on their belongings.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to get uncomfortable and have the difficult conversations,\u201d Barnes said, \u201cbecause the one thing I don\u2019t want to hear \u2026 is a parent looking at me and saying a very simple sentence: \u2018If I only knew. If I only knew what my kid was doing in the room. If I only knew it was in their backpack, I would have done parenting differently.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Sierra van der Brug contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Orange County fentanyl deaths by year<\/p>\n
2024<\/strong>\u00a0407<\/p>\n 2023<\/strong>\u00a0613<\/p>\n 2022<\/strong>\u00a0676<\/p>\n 2021<\/strong>\u00a0717<\/p>\n 2020<\/strong>\u00a0433<\/p>\n 2019<\/strong>\u00a0147<\/p>\n 2018<\/strong>\u00a0107<\/p>\n 2017<\/strong>\u00a056<\/p>\n 2016<\/strong>\u00a037<\/p>\n 2015<\/strong>\u00a020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of people dying in Orange County from fentanyl had its sharpest drop since the crisis with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":362938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,4219,5295,2961,224,5337,50,1036,5292,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-362937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-orange-county","17":"tag-public-safety","18":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115510284643739374","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}