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As the opioid crisis continues, a California National Guard task force helped seize 1,542 pounds of fentanyl last month, with a street value of about $11.9 million, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday.
The national opioid crisis continues to plague California, even as counties have seen a plateau in drug overdose-related deaths.
State officials are responding by doubling staff and investing millions of dollars in a task force to remove fentanyl pills and other illegal opioids from street sales.
In October, the California National Guard’s Anti-Drug Task Force helped seize more than 1.7 million fentanyl pills. The effort comes after Newsom increased the number of military personnel from 155 to 392 earlier this year to stop fentanyl from entering the state’s ports.
“California continues its intensive efforts to remove fentanyl from our communities, with law enforcement seizures of fentanyl increasing by more than 204% last month compared to the previous month,” Newsom said in a news release Tuesday. said.
The task force was launched in 2022 and has approximately 30 military personnel stationed at the ports of entry in San Ysidro, Otay Mesa, Tecate, and Calexico. Following “initial successes,” the task force, backed by a $30 million federal investment, will help disrupt drug trafficking by transnational criminal organizations and address humanitarian and security efforts, state officials said. It is said that the size has doubled.
Last year, a task force and the California Highway Patrol were sent to San Francisco to help police and prosecutors tackle the city’s fentanyl crisis. Some said the plan lacked specificity, but others said it targeted low-income areas such as the Tenderloin. But Newsom assured critics that the partnership targets drug traffickers and suppliers, not people experiencing drug abuse.
In 2023, 810 people died from unintentional drug overdoses in San Francisco, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Approximately 540 people died from accidental overdoses in San Francisco from January to October 2024.
The drugs most commonly reported in these deaths were fentanyl, heroin, medical opioids, methamphetamine, and cocaine.
The number of deaths and injuries in Los Angeles County decreased from 3,220 in 2022 to 3,092 in 2023, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
This small decrease is thought to be partially due to the regional distribution of naloxone, a drug used to reverse the effects of opioids and stabilize breathing. As of 2022, naloxone has reversed approximately 5,000 overdoses, according to LA County Health Services.
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