(John Ransom, Headline USA) A group of mothers have gotten together and purchased a billboard in San Francisco that warns tourists about fentanyl, hoping to send a message that will resonate loud and clear.
The $25,000 billboard will say: “Famous the world over for our brains, beauty and now, dirt cheap fentanyl,” according to NBC Bay Area.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine.
Nearly 106,000 people died of drug overdoses in the year ending October 2021, and “two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, a stronger and faster-acting drug than natural opiates,” said CNN.
COMING SOON TO SAN FRANCISCO: This billboard calling out the city’s drug crisis
“Famous the world over for our brains, beauty and, now, dirt-cheap fentanyl.”
The group “Mothers Against Drug Deaths” is behind the campaign. The billboard will be up starting Monday in Union Square pic.twitter.com/C0cxhiURoc
— Liz Kreutz (@ABCLiz) April 2, 2022
A group called Mothers Against Drug Deaths paid for the billboard, said SFGate.
No city has been hit harder than San Francisco by the opioid crisis, in part because San Francisco leads the nation in so-called drug law reform, which has seen drug laws rarely enforced and often encouraged to be broken.
“When you walk in certain parts of the city, you can’t even walk on the sidewalk without getting permission from the people who control the sidewalk. And they are the allegedly the homeless,” former Mayor Willie Brown told ABC News 7 about the fallout from drug addiction in the city.
Open air drug markets are common in San Fransisco, with teens from the suburbs making drug runs regularly. It’s a practice that Mothers Against Drug Deaths wants to stop.
“Our greatest concern is people will come to the city where there are dirty needles and feces and people using drugs openly and leftover fentanyl and children will get a hold of it,” said Jacquee Berlinn, co-founder of Mothers Against Drug Deaths.
“My son is an addict on the streets of San Francisco,” Berlinn added.
Because of its low price, fentanyl is often mixed with other drugs like cocaine, and other opioids, in order to give users a bigger high.
