Illicit Fentanyl Acutely Impacts California Children, Say Parents, Experts

Major Manning of Mountain House, California, was just 17 when he took a single Percocet pain pill—but he didn’t know it was laced with the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl.
The drug ultimately took his life in 2023, and what happened to him is becoming increasingly commonplace in California.
“It’s an epidemic,” said Rhonda Manning, the mother of fentanyl victim Major Manning.
Manning emphasized the dangers posed by taking pain pills purchased from sources unknown.
“These days you can’t take anything because everything is deadly and you don’t know what you’re taking,” she told The Epoch Times.
Counterfeit drugs are the most dangerous aspect of the fentanyl crisis affecting youth. Kids might buy what they believe is a regular drug when it is actually laced with or made from fentanyl.
Many have questioned why it has become so pervasive in the United States.
“The problem that we’re having is that the precursor chemicals are being created in China, sponsored in China … and then it is smuggled from China, into Latin America,” said Cindy De Silva, a narcotics prosecutor and deputy district attorney in San Joaquin County.
She said the chemical precursors—which are required to create the synthetic drug—are sold to Mexican drug cartels, who mix them with other forms of powder and substances to make counterfeit pills containing fentanyl. Many of these pills look like pharmaceutical-grade tablets, but many of them contain fatal doses of fentanyl, she said.
Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl is considered a likely fatal dose—a dose small enough to sit on the tip of a pencil.
“China is doing this on purpose,” De Silva said, pointing to the severely addictive nature of fentanyl, which can get users hooked immediately. “They’re purposely creating a drug that will create addicts … ensuring a customer base for life.”
“It’s not part of the problem, it is the problem,” De Silva said.
And American children are caught in the crossfire. Kids are unknowingly buying fentanyl laced drugs via social media and adults who keep drugs in the house also risk exposing small children or infants to fentanyl if pills are dropped on the floor or left within reach.
While De Silva noted that cursory accidental contamination with fentanyl can’t kill a person, breathing it or ingesting it can. A curious kid might pop a pill at a friend’s house and end up dead.
“I hate it when people call it an overdose,” said Jennifer Burruel, the mother of an aspiring pastor, Christopher, who lost his life nearly two years ago due to accidental fentanyl poisoning at age 29.
She said authorities found a mix of the anti-anxiety medication Xanax and fentanyl in her son’s system during an autopsy following his death.
“I know that the kind of work he did was a lot of pressure so I think he probably got a pill from somebody he thought he could trust,” she told The Epoch Times.
Burruel now also spends her time educating youth on the dangers of fentanyl in schools in the Stockton, California area, and putting up billboards with pictures of victims killed by the drug to raise awareness. She even holds community rallies and distributes Narcan—an emergency opioid reversal drug—for free.
“People are learning that this is not just a drug addict [who’s affected] … it’s affecting more than just a drug user; it’s affecting the families; it’s affecting small children,” she said.