Millburn, NJ, June 22, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MILLBURN — Medical and law enforcement leaders will examine the impact of fentanyl on New
Jersey’s opioid epidemic in the next webinar of Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day Learning Series, presented
by the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey (PDFNJ) and the Office of the New Jersey Coordinator of
Addiction Responses and Enforcement Strategies (NJ CARES), which is responsible for overseeing
addiction-fighting efforts across the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General.
The webinar, “Fentanyl: What You Need to Know Today,” will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday, June 28. The
presentation will feature Dr. Mehruba Anwar Parris, a board-certified emergency physician and medical
toxicologist at Rutgers University New Jersey Medical School, University Hospital and NJ Poison
Information and Education System; Special Agent Timothy P. McMahon of the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) – New Jersey Division; and Marlon Williams, a forensic epidemiologist with the
DEA’s New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) and the Office of the Chief
State Medical Examiner in New Jersey.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid prescribed for severe pain that is about 50 times stronger than heroin and
100 times more potent than morphine. It has become the primary cause of drug overdose deaths and has
been driving the opioid epidemic in recent years. Synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, accounted for
more than 60 percent of the nearly 92,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2020, the most
recent year
“An opioid epidemic that has ravaged New Jersey and the country over the past two decades was greatly
exacerbated by the emergence of fentanyl in the past few years,” PDFNJ Executive Director Angelo
Valente said. “As deaths due to prescription opioids and heroin decreased or plateaued over the past five
years, the number of deaths attributed to fentanyl has skyrocketed. This webinar will provide vital
information on fentanyl and provide necessary insight into what New Jersey residents and communities
can do to fight this continuing crisis.”
This webinar will be the seventh in the 2022 Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day Learning Series. In 2021,
PDFNJ and NJ CARES collaborated on 10 webinars as part of the series. The organizations first
combined efforts on the series in 2020 as a strategy to provide education on the opioid crisis in the midst
of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The series is a branch of Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day, which has been held in New Jersey on October 6
each year since 2016. The statewide single-day initiative is organized by PDFNJ and The Community
Coalition for a Safe & Healthy Morris, in cooperation with the New Jersey Division of Mental Health and
Addiction Services and the Governor’s Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. The goal of the day is to
mobilize the prevention and treatment communities, community leaders and concerned citizens to raise
awareness of the potential for dependency on prescribed pain medicine, as well as their link to heroin and
fentanyl use in the state.
In 2021, more than 3,000 people in New Jersey died from suspected drug overdoses, a vast majority of
which involved some form of opioid including prescription painkillers, heroin and synthetic opioids, such
as fentanyl.
The next webinar, “The Role of Medication for Opioid Use Disorder in Fighting the Opioid Crisis,” will
be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, July 14. To learn more about the Knock Out Opioid Abuse Day and to
register for this and future webinars, please visit knockoutday.drugfreenj.org.
###
Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey: Best known for its statewide substance use prevention advertising
campaign, the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey is a private not-for-profit coalition of professionals from the
communications, corporate and government communities whose collective mission is to reduce demand for illicit
drugs in New Jersey through media communication. To date, more than $200 million in broadcast time and print
space has been donated to the Partnership’s New Jersey campaign, making it the largest public service advertising
campaign in New Jersey’s history. Since its inception, the Partnership has garnered 211 advertising and public
relations awards from national, regional and statewide media organizations.
