Daniel Joseph Puerta-Johnson, 16, logged onto Snap Chat, searched the hashtag #oxycodone, and bought a little blue pill. He took only half.
The next morning, his father found him dead in his Santa Clarita bedroom. And so it went for Alex Neville, 14, of Aliso Viejo, and Alexandra Capelouto, 20, of Temecula, and thousands of other smart, young, curious kids, who sought real pharmaceuticals but wound up with fakes packed with deadly fentanyl.
“At least two others have died from this dealer – one before, and one after,” said Amy Neville, Alex’s mother. “So where is this drug dealer now? Because of existing laws, he’s free, living his life, still selling drugs, while my son is in an urn on a shelf in his bedroom.
“I know that none of this will bring back my child,” she added. “But at least it’s the start of saving yours.”
In what portends to be an unprecedented, tri-pronged counterattack, fentanyl laws and awareness are moving forward on several fronts.
In Sacramento, several new bills take aim at fentanyl dealers. In Washington, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has launched a new effort to battle the synthetic opioid, which is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. And in communities around the country, parents are taking to streets and classrooms to warn kids of fentanyl’s dangers, and to convince authorities that their childrens’ deaths were poisonings, not overdoses, and should be treated as such under the law.
“I found him dead, something no parent should have to see, ever,” said Jaime Puerta, Daniel’s father, breaking down on a video press conference on Tuesday, March 9, about the new bills. “I don’t condone my son’s wanting to try drugs. But he didn’t deserve to die for it.”
Law enforcement simply doesn’t have the tools it needs to prosecute the dealers selling this poison, Puerta said. “They’re walking the streets today. I don’t understand how this can be true.”
But it is — and the bills pending in Sacramento aim to change that.
Toughen state laws
In the eyes of the law, fentanyl is not considered a serious “Schedule I” drug, even though two grains can kill in a matter of minutes.
“California’s criminal code treats fentanyl less seriously than heroin and cocaine,” said Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach. “This just does not make any sense. It has created perverse and deadly incentives, leading to a huge increase in fentanyl coming across our borders.”
Right now, dealers can get extra time and higher fines for peddling heroin and cocaine than they face for peddling fentanyl. Working across the aisle, Petrie-Norris and Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, have introduced complementary bills that would bump fentanyl up from its spot as a less-threatening Schedule II drug to what they say is its rightful place as a dangerous Schedule I drug.
“Fentanyl is not marijuana, it’s not heroin, it’s not cocaine,” Bates said. “It’s a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and can kill in just 2 minutes after ingestion. The California legislature must act and treat fentanyl as the exceptionally dangerous drug it is.”
Officials have been trying to do this for six years. “Today we need to act once and for all,” Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said Tuesday. “The greatest travesty would be that we have three new parents next year telling the same story.”
Another bill, by Sen. Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, would require the court to issue warnings to first-time offenders convicted of selling or distributing controlled substances, explicitly warning that such actions could result in another person’s death — and that, if someone does die, they could be charged with murder.
Melendez’s bill is dubbed Alexandra’s Law, after Alexandra Capelouto. She went on Snap Chat and found someone who said they’d get her an oxy pill. It turned out to be pure fentanyl, toxic enough to kill five people, her father said.
“Today that drug dealer is still out selling drugs,” Capelouto said. “I don’t want to diminish coronavirus or school shootings — all are tragic. But the odds are, your child is more likely to die of fentanyl poisoning than anything else. And something needs to be done about this.”
The Riverside District Attorney has brought murder charges in three separate cases for fentanyl dealers, and Capelouto hopes other prosecutors follow suit.
“These need to be classified as homicides,” he said.
This year, they hope, will be the year of action. Petrie-Norris said they’d be working hard to get Melendez’s bill across the finish line, and Melendez said she was “encouraged to see a bipartisan effort to change the trajectory of the path of destruction this drug leaves behind.”
Feds get tough
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Los Angeles Field Division seized almost 120,000 counterfeit oxycodone pills in 2017. Last year, it seized 1.2 million fake pills, a 10-fold increase.
In February, the DEA launched a new initiative called “Operation Engage,” allowing local divisions to focus on the biggest drug threats and resulting violence in their areas. Fentanyl has clearly skyrocketed to the top of the list.
• Statewide, fentanyl deaths surged 1,441% between 2014 and 2019 — from 104 to 1,603, according to the California Department of Health.
• Initial data for 2020 shows a total of 1,550 fentanyl deaths in just the first half of the year.
• Fentanyl was responsible for nearly half of the drug deaths in Los Angeles last year and 42% of the deaths in Riverside, according to the DEA.
• In Orange County, fentanyl deaths jumped from 37 in 2016 to a preliminary 345 in 2020, with hundreds of cases still under investigation.
The DEA’s effort will focus on education, prevention and boosting public awareness, said DEA Special Agent in Charge Bill Bodner. It is partnering with more than 20 community groups to expand its outreach, including the California National Guard and the Los Angeles Sparks.
“We will continue to view distribution of drugs resulting in overdose death as a crime of violence,” Bodner said in a prepared statement. “However, the reality is law enforcement alone will not be able to reduce drug harm sufficiently to protect our families. We need the help of the community to increase awareness about the effects and dangers of fentanyl and other opioids and we need to educate and empower our young people so they can make intelligent, informed decisions about drug use.”
Reckoning
Parents are working with local, state and federal officials to change laws and stiffen prosecutions.
They’re speaking to kids at schools, to parents at PTA meetings, trying to wake them to the dangers.
They’re pressing tech to close the accounts dealers use to reach their customers.
“Our children are being duped through social media platforms to buy what they think is a pharmaceutical grade pill and it’s not,” said Puerta, Daniel’s father. It’s pure fentanyl and they die. If you think it can’t happen to your family, you’re sadly, sadly misinformed. This can happen to anybody.”
A spokeswoman for Snap Chat said the company is looking into the parents’ complaints.
“Our law enforcement and legislators, they took an oath to protect and to serve,” Puerta said. “We’re asking, please protect us from the scourge of fentanyl in our communities. Please serve justice.”
Staff writer Joseph Nelson contributed to this report.
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