When Charlie Ternan, an employee of The Basin in Saratoga and a cousin of the restaurant’s chef Dan Nally, died in May 2020 at age 22, his death was ruled an overdose.

But his father Ed Ternan says a more accurate term would be poisoning, since Charlie died after taking a “fentapill,” a counterfeit pill made to look like Percocet but containing deadly fentanyl. He was prescribed Percocet after he had back surgery in 2018.

A change in terms, Ternan argues, would change the way such deaths are viewed by law enforcement, making them homicides.

“One cannot die from an overdose of a prescribed pill like Percocet,” says Ternan. These fake pills are not ‘laced with fentanyl’—they are fentanyl.”

Since 2013, counterfeit “prescription pills” made of fentanyl—a powerful synthetic opioid—have caused thousands of deaths in the US. Initially, fentanyl made by labs in China was easily shipped to dealers in the U.S., who made them into counterfeit pills using presses and stamps. Unlike a brick of heroin or a bag of cocaine, this synthetic stuff is undetectable by dogs and can easily be sent in the mail.

Increasingly, Mexican drug cartels have seized upon this opportunity, and are flooding the U.S. market with them. Hundreds of millions of fentapills are available, selling for $20 to $30 a pop.

Approximately 10,000 Americans died in 2020 alone after taking a single pill that they believed to be a legitimate prescription medication but was, in fact, a fentapill.

Nally says fentapill dealers dispense their deadly wares boldly and without fear. “They target high school kids and younger, with colorful popup menus on Instagram and Snapchat, offering deals on every kind of pill. They geotag college and high school kids. The transactions are done using Venmo, and the pills are delivered to a mailbox or other dark drop.”

Following the death of their son, Ed and Mary Ternan established the nonprofit foundation A Song for Charlie, named after a song written in his memory by musician Jack Syms. Its mission is to make parents aware of the dangers these poison pills pose to their children, and to make youth cognizant of the role they can play in preventing their own demise and that of their friends.

“I tell high school students, ‘This crisis is not your fault. It is not of your making. But you do own the solution, and that is to reject these fentapills,” says Ed Ternan. “Do not trust any pill that was not prescribed to you by your own doctor.”

More fundamentally, adds Ternan, youth need to rediscover non-pharmaceutical ways of coping with stress.

“My grandmother used to say, ‘Go for a walk!’ That was good advice. Get out into nature. Meditate. Exercise. Put down the device, look someone in the eye and have a face-to-face conversation.”

For more information, visit songforcharlie.org.