Fresno County's fentanyl awareness campaign expands following historic guilty verdict

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- A stark message is now putting everyone on notice, warning that selling fentanyl could be charged as murder.

"Our new billboard, which says, 'you sell, your cell,'" District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp said.

The campaign includes 50 billboards on streets from Firebaugh to Selma and Fresno.

They will appear in English and Spanish and reach nearly 300,000 adults per week.

"The message is do not sell fentanyl," Smittcamp said. "We are tirelessly going to continue to educate this community."

The new billboards come weeks after a county jury found Cassidy Gonzales guilty of murder for knowingly selling a deadly dose of fentanyl.

She now faces up to life in prison.

"We want to make people aware that the penalties to sell it are getting so much stronger now based on the knowledge that we have," Smittcamp said.

Billboards first warned about the dangers of using fentanyl years ago, and since then, deadly overdoses in Fresno County have fallen nearly 30 percent.

"Eventually, we'd like to get to fewer Narcan applications, fewer people addicted out in the streets," Fresno Police Chief Mindy Casto said.

The Fresno Police Department has a specialized fentanyl response team.

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The officers go to thousands of fentanyl-related calls each year, and the detectives say the fentanyl is becoming stronger, and users are developing a tolerance.

"It takes more Narcan than it ever did before in order to reverse, if we are, in fact, able to reverse (it)," Casto said.

The new billboards try to stop the flow of the drug as they target the dealers.

They will stay up until early July.

"I think we just have to keep going and keep pushing," Smittcamp said.

County prosecutors are already pursuing murder charges against another alleged dealer following the guilty verdict last month.

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