The California Senate’s Public Safety Committee shot down a bill Jan. 11 that sought to crack down on the state’s years-long fentanyl epidemic by targeting drug traffickers. Senate Bill 75, a bipartisan bill introduced by Sen. Patricia Bates (R-Laguna Niguel) and sponsored by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, would add fentanyl to the category of illicit drugs that carry an increased sentence if a person is convicted of possessing an amount of the drug with an intent to sell. Fatal fentanyl poisonings have skyrocketed across the county and the United States, with Orange County seeing a 1,067 percent increase in deaths from 2016 to 2020, with the number continuing to grow in 2021, Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said. Fentanyl is extremely dangerous due to its potency, given that it is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Just two milligrams can be enough to kill a person. The drug …