Brown County holds news conference on status of Fentanyl Awareness Campaign

The Fentanyl Awareness Campaign launched last September
Fentanyl billboards set up in Brown County
Published: Jan. 26, 2023 at 3:18 PM CST

BROWN COUNTY, Wis. (WBAY) - Brown County declared fentanyl a community health crisis and launched a public awareness campaign back in September. They held a news conference at the Brown County Public Library addressing the status of the campaign.

Since the campaign’s launch four months ago, Brown County officials have put up several billboards, social media ads, and sent mailers to thousands of homes to raise awareness of just how dangerous this drug can be.

Fentanyl is more powerful, more addictive, and more deadly than any other opioid. It’s cheap to produce and can be easily added to pills, heroin, cocaine, meth and other drugs.

The awareness strategies are based off a successful campaign in Waukesha. Brown County Executive, Troy Streckenbach, says an important part of the campaign is to get more parents to have conversations with their children about the dangers of fentanyl.

The next step of the campaign is to send flyers home with students in an effort to spark that discussion.

“Twelve, fifteen years ago, oftentimes, overdoses were overlooked as just a natural death,” said Streckenbach. “It wasn’t until we started seeing the problems with opiates, meth, and heroin that law enforcement, the district attorneys office, police chiefs, started saying ‘hey we need to start doing more in depth autopsies so we can maybe go after the person who sold the stuff’.”

Brown County officials also emphasize that fentanyl issue is not just within brown county; it’s a problem across our entire state.