Fentanyl awareness and prevention efforts discussed in Starr County
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Starr County officials are working to stay one step ahead of fentanyl in their community.
As the president of South Texas College’s Criminal Justice Club in the Rio Grande City campus, 22-year-old Margarita Reyna helped organize a Wednesday fentanyl forum for county leaders.
“We just wanted to bring out the awareness,” Reyna said.
A goal of the forum was to show what the fentanyl problem looked like in Starr County. Another goal was prevention.
Starr County District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez says they’ve had one confirmed fentanyl death in the last year, but he doesn't believe that number is an accurate reflection.
“Unless you have an autopsy done and a toxicology done on the person, then you're not going to know for sure that whether or not it's fentanyl related or not,” Ramirez said.
READ MORE: 12 overdoses, eight deaths reported in Cameron County fentanyl outbreak
Ramirez sits on the board for the South Texas division of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, which works to fight drug trafficking.
HIDTA is working on a new way to properly track fentanyl deaths, Ramirez said. The HIDTA board is asking local law enforcement to take a closer look at deaths that could be fentanyl related and report it to properly track those deaths.
“Overdose mapping can also help us identify the dealer and the organization that is selling the fentanyl,” Ramirez said.
The fight to prevent fentanyl overdoses will be a long one, but Reyna said the next generation is willing to take it on.
“We would always want for us to be in a safe environment,” Reyna said.
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