LAKE WORTH BEACH, Fla. — Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50-100 times stronger than heroin and morphine.
It’s also linked to nearly 70% of overdoses in the U.S.
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration is calling it the single deadliest drug threat our country has ever encountered.
A Lake Worth Beach mother lost her daughter, Jenny, to the deadly drug in April 2020.
"They said there was a little trace of cocaine in her system but a whole lot of fentanyl," said Karen Esposito-Sherman. "She had a friend that had turned her on to bad drugs when she was really depressed, and she got hooked on them and scared. That’s not an overdose, that’s murder in my book."
Now, two years later, Esposito-Sherman said the pain never goes away.
"It’s hard to go through something like this, it changes how you view everything," said Esposito-Sherman. "She was my only daughter. We were very close, and she didn’t deserve to die."
On Saturday, a rally was held in Washington D.C. raising awareness of the fentanyl crisis in the nation, in the hopes the Biden administration will do more to stop it.
"I think all the kids out there need to know about it," said Esposito-Sherman. "They need to fear it, they need to understand that it’s killing people."
Now Esposito-Sherman’s hope is to continue living in her daughter’s memory.
"Two weeks, as coincidence would have it before Jenny passed away, she put on Facebook, 'I want my legacy to be that I care because I want to help others,' and that’s what I want to do," said Esposito-Sherman.