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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
By Trn Nguyn

Punishment or prevention: California debates fentanyl crisis

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Pamela Smith remembers vividly the last time she saw her only son alive.

It was 3:18 a.m. on July 3, 2016, in Fresno, California, and 22-year-old Jackson Smith was lying motionless on a table in an emergency room while a nurse performed chest compressions. Earlier that night, he had taken an oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl, and then he stopped breathing. Within seconds of his mother entering the emergency room, he died.

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