SELMA, Texas – “One pill kills” -- that’s just one of the messages behind a new billboard on I-35 northbound in Selma that was put up by a group of mothers who lost their children to fentanyl.
The billboard is made up of 10 faces of people from Bexar County, Guadalupe County and one from Tennessee.
All of them died from fentanyl overdoses.
“We’re hoping by this billboard, it will at least save a life in the future, and then our child didn’t die in vain,” Libby Pender, a mother of a fentanyl victim said.
More than 100,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses in 2021. Overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, which includes fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, increased by over 56% from 2019 to 2020, according to the CDC.
Narcan is a life-saving antidote to fentanyl and can be acquired for free.
The antidote is recommended to have on hand for anyone who comes in contact with fentanyl, whether prescribed or not. Click here for more details on how to get and use Narcan.
The billboard is set to circulate throughout San Antonio in the coming days.
Watch the latest KSAT Explains episode in the player below to learn more about fentanyl.