FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) \u2014\u00a0Fresno County has made major progress in the fight against fentanyl, with overdose deaths dropping to a five-year low.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re at a better place,\u201d District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp said. \u201cWe\u2019re improving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Data from the DA\u2019s office shows 66 fentanyl deaths in 2025, down 42% from the all-time high of 114 in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think at that time, we just wanted to stop it,\u201d Smittcamp said. \u201cWe just wanted to make sure it didn\u2019t increase.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind the overdose numbers are people like Elaine Hudson, who lost her son, Frankie DePrima, to fentanyl six years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was your basic 20-year-old kid,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n
She showed Action News the pills DePrima got hours before he died. He thought it was Xanax, but one was laced with fentanyl.<\/p>\n
\u201cFentanyl doesn\u2019t (care) if you\u2019re educated, not educated, rich, poor, (or) what neighborhood you live in,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n
His death came at the start of the pandemic, as overdoses surged.<\/p>\n
The crisis sparked a public awareness campaign, prompting officials to erect billboards across the county.<\/p>\n
They put Frankie\u2019s face on one of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that seeing a local face on that billboard had more of an impact,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are faces to individuals that have succumbed to fentanyl overdoses,\u201d Senior Deputy District Attorney Kendall Reynolds said.<\/p>\n
Reynolds prosecuted the county\u2019s first fentanyl murder case last year, when a jury agreed that knowingly selling a deadly dose of fentanyl is murder.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt in my mind that this conviction has had an effect on the decreasing numbers,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cWe could never prove it. It\u2019s certainly anecdotal, but it means something in this community.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conviction led to a new phase of the campaign, shifting from warnings about fentanyl to consequences.<\/p>\n
The message even reached the courtroom, where the judge referenced it during sentencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe made a comment that everybody, pretty much, in the courtroom had seen the billboards,\u201d Reynolds said. \u201cIt saturated Fresno County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Work on the second fentanyl murder case is already underway, and Smittcamp says she is motivated to reach zero overdose deaths.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t take our foot off the pedal,\u201d Smittcamp said. \u201cWe can\u2019t just say, \u2018Oh, well, hey, great, we\u2019re down 42 percent.\u2019 We just have to keep grinding, and we have to keep pushing.\u201d<\/p>\n
By ABC30\u2019s Gabe Ferris<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) \u2014\u00a0Fresno County has made major progress in the fight against fentanyl, with overdose deaths…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-195514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}