Little Phoenix Castro was just three months old when she was pronounced dead on the morning of May 13 by San Jose (California) paramedics called in urgently by her father. In the kitchen of the apartment, investigators found a mess of glass pipes and various drugs among the baby bottles. The autopsy established that the baby had succumbed to an overdose of methamphetamine and fentanyl. Traces of this synthetic opiate were detected "all over her floral pajamas," investigators detailed.

The father, David Castro, 38, who already has two other children aged three and four, was charged in October with child abuse. The mother, Emily De La Creda, 39, was not. Four months after her baby's death, she succumbed to a fentanyl overdose in the same apartment.

With her flowery pajamas, Phoenix Castro has become the emblem of the current phase of the fentanyl epidemic in the United States that is also affecting young children. From Kentucky to Oklahoma, US media have reported examples of children falling victim to the opioid, even before they are old enough to grasp any object or food by themselves. In New York, one-year-old Nicholas Dominici succumbed to an overdose at the end of September, while taking a nap at daycare. The fentanyl was stored under a mattress. In Milwaukee (Wisconsin), a 29-year-old mother was charged in mid-November for the death of her 10-month-old daughter – the seventh fentanyl-related death of a child under five in that city. Blood tests on her three other children also revealed the presence of fentanyl.

In the late 1980s, crack cocaine wreaked havoc among newborn babies. Exposed to the drug in the womb, "crack babies" were often born prematurely, sometimes weighing as little as one kilo. Fentanyl babies die directly from overdose, without caregivers knowing exactly how they came into contact with the opioid particles in their environment. By 2021, 10 children under the age of five had overdosed in Missouri. By 2022, the number had doubled.

Despite the authorities' hard-hitting operations to arrest drug dealers, despite the distribution of Narcan – the drug that counteracts the effect of opioids on the body – despite the diplomatic pressure exerted on China by the Biden administration to curb the illegal import of precursor chemicals, year-end statistics showed no improvement in California, the state with the highest number of overdose deaths each year (7,000 by 2022). Yet fentanyl seizures rose by 594% and the budget devoted to the crisis reached $1 billion.

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