The event follows a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which estimated that more than 100,000 Americans — including about 10,000 in California — died of drug overdoses during the year-long period that ended April 2021. The surge in deaths has been driven in part by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid being sold on the streets that is 50 times stronger than heroin.
The town hall features Sen. Dodd; Attorney General Rob Bonta; Mona Leonardi, co-founder of the Napa-based fentanyl awareness nonprofit named for her son; Michael Leonardi, who died from fentanyl poisoning; Dr. Mario San Bartolome, medical director of Social Determinants of Health Center for Innovation and board member of the California Society of Addiction Medicine; Dr. Tauheed Zaman, addiction psychiatrist at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center and assistant professor of psychiatry at University of California San Francisco.