National Fentanyl Awareness Day, marked on Tuesday, May 9, underscores the deadly public health crisis afflicting the nation, New York City and The Bronx. According to law enforcement, local prosecutors and health officials, fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, such as xylazine, are widely distributed in mixtures and quantities that significantly raise the risk of overdose deaths. In New York City, Bronx County has the highest rate of overdose deaths, and is also a main distribution hub for illegal drugs, according to law enforcement officials.

CONCOURSE, the Bronx (PIX11) — A man is now behind bars, facing up to life in prison if he’s found guilty of the felonies he’s charged with, after agents say they found a massive cache of fentanyl hidden in his gas tank.

The opioid crisis has only intensified as more illicit drugs have entered the market. Drug overdose deaths reached a record high in 2021, with more than 100,000 people lost to the continuing epidemic, fueled by the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl.

The first time Reneé Jones overdosed on drugs last year, she was at her daughter’s Bronx apartment and had gotten up to get one of her seven grandchildren a cup of water. The next thing she knew, a paramedic was jolting her back to life with a defibrillator.

PHILADELPHIA — Over a matter of weeks, Tracey McCann watched in horror as the bruises she was accustomed to getting from injecting fentanyl began hardening into an armor of crusty, blackened tissue. Something must have gotten into the supply.

Sandra Pippa woke in a panic in the middle of the night six years ago — anxious her son still wasn’t home from celebrating his 29th birthday.

Fentanyl’s catastrophic surge came after the Drug Enforcement Administration cracked down on the excesses of the U.S. opioid industry. Millions of Americans who had become addicted to prescription pain pills suddenly found them difficult or impossible to get.

An Ozone Park man on Oct. 26 was sentenced to 12 years in prison on narcotics and gun possession charges, according to the city’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor.

Days after federal officials announced the largest rainbow fentanyl seizure in New York City history, an even greater quantity of the highly addictive substance has been found, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Following his death on Monday at the age of 88, members of the New York legal community remembered Senior U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. of the Eastern District of New York for his mentorship, commitment to justice and trailblazing career as a Black prosecutor and judge.

Just weeks before Halloween, law enforcement officials are warning about a deadly drug packaged in pills that “look like candy.”

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Six men have been charged in connection with a large-scale heroin and fentanyl packaging mill in the Bronx, worth around $5 million, that the city’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s office said Monday was destined for distribution throughout New York City and in Massachusetts.