A billboard campaign along Bay Area freeways is featuring people, as young as one-year-old, who have lost their lives to fentanyl.
Advocates said campaigns such as this are part of the reason that overdose deaths dropped by 17% nationwide from July 2023 to July 2024. In San Francisco, overdose deaths are down from nearly 23%, through the most recent data released in November.
One of the families behind the billboards has been on the frontlines of the fight against fentanyl for half a decade.
“I knew it would be hard, but it hit different. To see him on up it, he shouldn’t be there,” said Lisa Marquez. She was looking at the billboard showing a picture of her son, Fernando, who died in 2020 due to an accidental fentanyl overdose. He was only 17-years-old.
“There’s so many young people on there. These are kids,” she said through tears.
It’s part of a fentanyl awareness campaign where the pictures of 31 young people who died of overdoses are featured on a digital billboard off Highway 101 near the San Jose International Airport.