“How can you focus on the theoretical rights of criminals over the rights of our children?” Erin Rachwal, whose 19-year-old son died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021, asked members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance.
“This could happen to your family,” she said. “Fentanyl does not discriminate. It is a poison.”
Rachwal’s emotional testimony highlighted the scope of the fentanyl problem in the United States, where the powerful opioid drug accounted for more than 100,000 deaths in 2021.
The narcotic is so potent that the lethal dose is just two milligrams, approximately equal to five grains of sand. Increasingly, fentanyl is placed in tablet form and made to resemble other drugs like Percocet and Xanax, then sold to unwitting customers like Rachwal’s son, Logan….