SAN ANTONIO — Sunday is National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day.
The day is dedicated to educating the public on the serious dangers of fentanyl poisoning from fake pills and other illicit drugs.
It's how Deb Scroggins lost her daughter Allison in March 2020. The young woman, who had dreams of becoming a lawyer, was only 21 years old.
"She took what she thought was an oxy pill and it turned out to be laced with fentanyl," said Scroggins.
Her mother admitted Allison made a mistake in taking the pill but wishes it didn't cost her her life.
"I'm on a mission to just make people aware. People need to be aware of how dangerous this is," she said.
Scroggins is still grieving her daughter's death and said it's taken her some time to figure out how to raise awareness in Allison's memory.
Recently, she attended a family summit hosted by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Attendees were families of victims lost to fentanyl poisoning.
"I left there feeling very empowered. There were people doing amazing things and I thought, 'I can do this, I can do this.' So my idea is to come back and I'm going to create a [school] program to create awareness so that we can hopefully prevent this from happening," Scroggins said.
According to the DEA, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is approximately 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. It's inexpensive, widely available, highly addictive and potentially deadly.
"Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered," said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram.
The agency reports drug traffickers are increasingly mixing fentanyl with other illicit drugs in powder and pill form to drive addiction and create repeat customers. They add many fentanyl poisoning victims are unaware that fentanyl is in the substance they are ingesting.
"She had no idea. I'm absolutely convinced that she didn't know. She didn't know," Scroggins said.
The group Facing Fentanyl is calling on the federal government to address the ongoing crisis. In a letter to President Joe Biden, the group requested his administration acknowledge illicit fentanyl as a national issue, acknowledge that transnational cartel criminals are initiating wrongful fentanyl poisonings and declare a national emergency.
Scroggins also hopes meaningful change is coming, but for now, she feels she is doing her part at the local level to spread awareness on what happened to her daughter.
"She wants us to fight and wants this [crisis] to end, and that's the goal," she said.
According to the CDC, an estimated 107,622 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses and poisonings in 2021, with 67 percent of those deaths involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl.