Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday he wants almost $300 million in federal funding to fight “rainbow fentanyl” — highly-addictive pills that look like candy and could have a devastating effect on young people.
The $290 million in funds would be used to sustain 61 Overdose Response Strategy teams that would help try to curb fentanyl, including the new “rainbow” kind, the New York Democrat said at a press conference.
“This is fentanyl, this is a Sweetart — you tell me the difference,” Schumer said while holding up pictures of both the deadly pills and the tangy sweets. “Halloween is coming up… this is really worrisome and really dangerous.”
Sep. 21—WASHINGTON, D.C. — Patricia Drewes joined anti-fentanyl advocates from across the country Saturday to demand greater effort from the federal government in addressing the ongoing fentanyl crisis.
Drewes co-founded Forgotten Victims of Vance, Granville, Franklin and Warren Counties, which last month held a similar rally in Raleigh.
‘It was a poisoning’: Parents say son died after taking just one pill
CNN’s Kate Bolduan profiles Ed and Mary Ternan, who run Song for Charlie, a non-profit dedicated to awareness of counterfeit prescription pills sold online.
Families devastated by fentanyl deaths rally near the White House
April Babcock and Virginia Krieger both lost children to the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl and have pleaded with lawmakers and officials to ramp up enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border to stop the flow of illicit drugs.
On Saturday, the mothers built a kind of wall.
Fifty banners stretched for about 400 feet, nearly spanning the width of the National Mall. They featured faces of nearly 3,500 people who lost their lives to fentanyl. Many were young, even teenagers. Some wore their high school jerseys or graduation caps. They smiled, forever frozen in time on the banners, which Babcock said represented the thousands of people who have died of opioid use.
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