It’s a scene that is growing more common. Someone slumps over in a public place, say a nightclub or a city park. They have intentionally or accidentally taken an opioid like fentanyl, which can be deadly upon first use for some people.

As their pupils constrict and they struggle to breathe, people scatter for help, call the cops or an ambulance, but the response is too late.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.