Mariah Ball’s son Lucca was just one year old when he died from ingesting fentanyl.
Two years after Lucca’s death in Wichita, Kansas, Mariah, 25, says more action needs to be taken by President Biden to ensure the country doesn’t lose a generation to the lethal drug.
“I definitely think we need a president that is going to take it seriously,” Mariah told The Post.
“President Biden is not taking it seriously and I don’t know who we need up there,” she said, adding “But at this point I don’t care who it is or what political party they’re from. Something has to be done about it,”
On the day Lucca died in July of 2022, he was with his father and four year old sister for the weekend.
When Mariah woke up the next day to pick them up, she found herself rushing to the hospital.
“Lucca was gone,” she said.
Lucca died from fentanyl toxicity and had “very, very high levels of fentanyl in his brain tissue,” Mariah said.
Lucca’s father, Jordan Wayne Lien, was arrested for felony murder, was twice bailed out before eventually dying from what Mariah says was a drug overdose.
“There was really no justice,” Mariah said.
“The fact that they allow these people to bond out, It is mind blowing to me,” she added.
Lucca’s story is yet “another illustration of this administration totally disregarding this historic crisis,” former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Operations chief Derek Maltz told The Post.
“How many times do we have to see young kids less than six years old dying from poisonous fentanyl coming in from dirty, filthy labs in Mexico before the government acts appropriately and aggressively attacks these poisonous labs in Mexico,” Maltz asked.
While federal authorities are making record fentanyl seizures within the country and at the southern border, the illicit production of the drug remains “off the charts in Mexico,” continuing to perpetuate “a tsunami of these drugs all throughout our communities in every state,” said Maltz.
And now the collateral damage of that tsunami is a generation of innocent babies.
Last September, a 1-year-old was poisoned to death from exposure to fentanyl and three other toddlers were sickened at a Bronx day care center, which was being used as an undercover drug stash house.
Authorities uncovered a kilo of fentanyl from the care center’s mats that the tots slept on, according to court papers.
In April, authorities recorded a series of three overdoses, one of which was fatal, among babies in Washington state in just four days, according to local reports.
“I definitely don’t think it’s talked about enough and I almost sometimes feel like it’s ignored. There’s definitely not enough news coverage on it,” Mariah said.
The number of Americans overdosing from drugs continues to reach news highs, largely fueled by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
In 2022, 107,941 Americans died from drug overdoses that year — which is about 1% higher than overdose deaths in 2021, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
