U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized over 15,000 such fentanyl pills at a border crossing on Aug. 17.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment.
Many times, drug users are not aware of how deadly the drug they are taking is, and then it’s too late, said Maltz.
Because teens and young adults predominately use social media over other sources of news, Maltz believes there must be a concrete social media anti-drug campaign to warn young people and their parents about the dangers of these new influxes of hard drugs.
“They’re all on the social media apps, so we have to get role models, influencers, professional athletes, and celebrities to start putting out the warnings,“ he said. ”The kids are just not paying attention.”
Maltz wants to warn parents to be aware of how pervasive fentanyl is and all the forms it can take, so they can talk to their children about the dangers of taking unknown substances.
“They’re finding their kids dead in their bedrooms as young as 13 years old, and what I’m finding out is they never even heard of fentanyl,“ he said. ”So it’s a total lack of education on the current drug crisis.”