More than 100,000 people died from overdoses in a single year – driven primarily by one drug.

It was August 2020, and Luca Manuel, 13, was starting eighth grade the following day in Redding, California. He was excited to see his friends; his mother had bought him a stash of masks and school supplies for his first in-person school day in six months.

But the week earlier, he’d gotten a root canal, and his mouth still hurt. He sent a message on Snapchat to find marijuana for the pain. Instead, the dealer said he had something better: Percocet.

Luca didn’t know that the pill, which had been pressed to look like the real pain medication, was actually a counterfeit laced with fentanyl, a substance 30 times more potent than heroin. He died of drug poisoning that afternoon, a video game looping like a ghost across the screen in front of him. Read more at the Guardian; en español al DiarioAR.