Health security

Cluster of California fentanyl overdoses alarms authorities

Overdoses by synthetic opioids were up 44 percent in California in 2017, the last year for which data was available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 536 synthetic opioid deaths reported in California that year, according to the CDC. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) reports that 429 of those were blamed on fentanyl.

"We were lower than the national average on any metric, but fentanyl deaths are up steadily year over year," said Dr. Dan Ciccarone, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has been conducting research on heroin and fentanyl use. "There's something abuzz that has me worried."

Fentanyl is regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule II narcotic, which means it has limited uses in hospital settings and can be used legally as an anesthetic.

"It will make people stop breathing or have very diminished breathing," said Dr. Patil Armenian, a UCSF-Fresno emergency physician and medical toxicologist who treated the Jan. 7 victims. "It is so potent, the concern is that even with one exposure it could be enough to make someone stop breathing and die."