Interview with Jamie Puerta and Steve Filson from V.O.I.D, Victims of Illicit Drugs

Featuring Jamie Puerta and Steve Filson from VOID- Victims Of Illicit Drugs.

Transcript

Jamie Puerta and Steve Filson of VOID

Wed, 4/20 3:57PM • 33:10

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

fentanyl, deaths, people, overdose, drugs, bill, opioids, children, drug, san bernardino county, addicted, year, drug dealers, cocaine, pill, ab, cannabis, sheriff, san bernardino, documentary

SPEAKERS

Steve, Jaime, Don

Don  00:07

Hello, my name is Don English director of children deserve success and executive director of the San Bernardino County Wide Gangs and Drugs Task Force. And I want to welcome you to our Children Deserve Success Podcast. Monthly we will be sending out these recordings regarding all things related to child welfare and attendance, School Attendance Review Board, foster youth services, McKinney Vento Homeless Programs in our county and the San Bernardino County Wide Gangs and Drugs Task Force. This month's focus will be an interview with treasurer Steve Filson and President Jaime Puerta for VOID V-O-I-D standing for Victims Of Illicit Drugs. Gentlemen, I'm so glad you're here today. And I look forward and and feel fortunate to be able to talk to you. So I'll start with you, Jaime, for folks who don't know tell us about VOID and how it started? 

Jaime  01:05

Well, first of all, I can't thank you enough for having us here on your podcast. It's an honor for us to be here and participate. My name is Jaime Puerta. I am the president of VOID Victims of Illicit Drugs it's a California nonprofit organization. That  came together by bereaved parents and made up of bereaved parents who have lost their children due to fentanyl poisoning. Here in the state of California, originally. Now we're a little bit and expanding on the federal in a Federal way, we become much larger, but our organization is dedicated to the education and awareness aspect of the fentanyl scourge that is plaguing our communities. And that many parents and children have no idea of especially the also the aspects of how social media has a part and propagating these drug deaths through the United States. What we'd like to and try to discern between, in our in our foundation, is really educate people on the difference between a fentanyl poisoning and a fentanyl overdose. And that's what we're trying to do. We've been very, very blessed in  I think our children in heaven, quite frankly, have opened up these amazing doors for us to participate in. We have lots of different organizations that are backing us up. We've been very fortunate also to participate in a very beautiful documentary called fentanyl, which is pretty gripping it's it's called a Dead on Arrival. And you can find that at stopthevoid.org. And we are using that documentary and schools, high schools and also different drug conferences and drug prevention conferences as well to raise awareness in our communities about this fentanyl scourge. So again, thank you so much, Mr. English for having us here on your podcast.

03:01

Absolutely. And I did get an opportunity to see the documentary called Dead on Arrival. And I'm glad you mentioned that because my next question was how did you become a part of that documentary?

03:15

That's an excellent question we our vice president Amy Neville, was contacted by Dominic Tierno and Christine Wood out of Orange County, California in which they had a project Dominic Tierno, the director of the documentary ever since he had graduated from high school had been producing and directing documentaries on on drugs and drug use from Orange County. And he became involved with the fentanyl when he started learning about all of these deaths that were happening in Southern California, mostly to children who were falling victim to it we're not what you would call the general user or habitual user of drugs, which was what really caught his attention he caught. He couldn't understand that first of why these children were passing away, especially if they were not addicted to drugs. So as he searched and looked into the issue, much more, he found us he found Amy and he found us because we've been very low vocal in our communities. And he invited us to participate in this documentary. We said yes, absolutely. We always say yes, as far as our efforts go to, again, raising it more educating and raising awareness in our community. So we flew out to Idaho where we met him beautiful country, and we went to this beautiful home or the four of us stayed I went up there with my wife and so we were able to participate even though it was the way he directed it. It was really it was really difficult, I think on on the four of us because it was like ripping a band aid all over again. Because we talk about the true stories of what happened to us and what happened to our children and how it happened to them. And that's telling our, our stories telling, telling our personal stories, we feel is how we're going to reach the communities. And so they can understand as well, Due to the fact that there's a lot of stigma behind drug addiction and drug overdose. When people listen to our stories they think that you know, well, you know, tough on you, your kid should have never used drugs, but, and I'll let Steve talk about it a little bit more were it not for fentanyl, our children would still be alive. So there's a big thing here that people don't realize that your child does not have to be addicted to drugs to succumb to this drug. Because this is happening to children who are experimenting for the first time. Or children who are self medicating before in the old paradigm of drug use. You made a bad decision. Maybe you decided to start with marijuana, then that quickly developed into something more nefarious, maybe doing LSD, acid, mushrooms, whatever. And then maybe if you continue down that road, then maybe you would get to heroin, or methamphetamine or something like that because of the bad decisions that you made. But that's a lot many years, right? of bad decisions that would get you to that, to that point in time. What's happening nowadays, is all you need to do is make one bad decision. And you can lose your life. It's not like before where even if you became addicted to heroin or something like that, you know, you could be after your addiction, you could stay alive 10-15 years until your body just couldn't take it anymore and you finally succumb to the drug. Now. It's perfectly healthy children between the ages of 11 to 25 years of age, which we feel are the most overlooked segment of society to this drug crisis that are passing away due to fentanyl poisoning.

Don  07:04

Amazing I, if I have the data, right, I thought I saw earlier that overdoses a few years ago were 3%, fentanyl. And now they're up to 50%. Correct me if I'm wrong, did I see that data somewhere I thought I thought on the video,

Steve  07:17

It was a 3% Several years ago, but it's risen above 50%. Now it's up around, as we know, the CDC released statistics last year to where sadly, we finally breached that 100,000 deaths threshold throughout our country from illicit drug use. Of those deaths, 65%, six and a half out of 10 were as a result of fentanyl. But for fentanyl, those people would not be dead and would still be alive. And we could probably identify and hopefully, you know, treat their problems and and get on the road to recovery. But the enhancement of related deaths is attributable solely to fentanyl. And again, but for fentanyl all those people would still be here.

08:03

And then talk a little bit about and I know you probably were going to bring it up a little bit about social media and how that's contributing to to the fentanyl deaths.

08:12

I'm going to let Jaime hit that because Daniel, his son got his counterfeit pill from social media and and I let them loose.

08:21

I can speak to that. Yeah, I can speak to that as well. But I would like Mr. Filson quite frankly, to really touch upon the number of deaths in San Bernardino County. 

Don  08:29

Absolutely.

08:30

When we first got into this, this, you know, the sad state of affairs. I know in 2019 information from the coroner's office, there were 46 fentanyl related deaths in 2019. Let's move forward for the calendar year 2020. That rose from 46 to 298. 2021 last year, it rose from 298 to 403. I believe it was but the significant information from that statistic is the fact that it's not getting any better. It's getting worse. And that's where our focus is. Hopefully awareness of the danger of you know the potential of instant death from ingesting what you don't know to be fentanyl. But what is fentanyl? That knowledge will hopefully prevent and maybe begin to lower that that level of deaths. But it's the trend is upward. It's not getting any better. Correct. San Bernardino County is is sadly one of them. Correct?

Don  09:31

Yeah. You know, what was amazing. And as I kind of research and listen to you, folks, is that it could be you could be one and done.

09:39

No, that is absolutely correct. And that's what is driving these drug deaths through the roof in the United States. I mean, I can't speak specifically to San Bernardino. Steve has the numbers so that I know for example, there was a 1,500% increase in drug deaths in Orange County, LA County as well every year they just seem to double over but you know going back to that that social media aspect of this. If you look at where our commerce is, in today's day and age, a lot of commerce has gone from brick and mortar buildings to e commerce platforms, and social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Meta, you name it there there. So what's happened basically, is how this problem really started getting worse in in, in our nation is, you know, as of 2011-2012, the American, the administration at the time, came out with a bill and prescribing policies of how many opioids can be prescribed to a patient, especially to those from the Veterans Administration, because they were having at that time, there were 22 to 24 million addicted users to opioids in the United States of America. So the government, the federal government, kind of put a cap on how much they could prescribe. And what happened was, is that that left a giant void, you had 22 to 24 million Americans who are addicted to these opioids. And what happened was fentanyl started coming into the country via China. And fast forward now. In 2018, Peter Navarro went to China, they've struck a deal with the Prime Minister and the Premier, Gigi Ping where they made fentanyl a felony to continue manufacturing and in China. But what they did over there is they just, they sent over the precursor called AANP4 to organizations south of the border and taught them how to make the fentanyl and the perfect way to distribute these drugs, again, as you know, you'll find those drug dealers on the corners and the tenderloin district of San Francisco or Skid Row. But most drugs nowadays are bought off of these ecommerce platforms and social media apps like snapchat Instagram things, I have found a Snapchat has been the worst. purveyor of these of these dealings on the platform due to the features that it has on it. First and foremost, their target market is children between the ages of 11 to 25 years of age. And also that one of the features on there, well, they really strong, they're very for the privacy of the users. One and two, all the conversations if you set it up in your settings, they disappear. So drug dealers are able to communicate with your users or your child. Like my son, Daniel, you know, my son, Daniel was a great kid he, he suffered though from severe depression and an ADHD and

12:49

he unfortunately reached out to a drug dealer in the height of the pandemic, on April the first reached out to a drug dealer, the drug dealer went about approximately a block from our home, Daniel went down there, picked up the pill and consumed at some night sometime in March 31 In the evening, and when I walked into his bedroom on April, the first I found him dead. And they were able to revive him and bring him back. But he was in a deep, deep coma and we were told that there was nothing that was going to bring them back. And then so I started studying this out, you know, well first, when LA County Sheriff came and told me we're sorry, I'm very sorry, Mr. Puerta, but your son died of an overdose and I had found the pill or part of the pill on top of his dresser and I asked one of my first questions was, how does a perfectly healthy 16 and a half year old boy die from the ingestion of what he thought was a blue M30 oxycodone pill? And it takes his life. And the sheriff looked at me and goes, well, you know what, you're it's like a light bulb went off in his head. And he goes, you're right. That's it's not an overdose and then go we call. I said that should be a poisoning. It's kind of like the same thing. It's an analogy that I get from Michael Gray, a good friend of my back in 1982. In the city of Chicago, seven people went and bought extra strength Tylenol, and all seven of those people died. Why did they die? Did they die because they consumed too much extra strength Tylenol, or did they die due to the fact that the Tylenol had been tainted with potassium cyanide? This is exactly the same thing. The reason why you're seeing drug deaths in the United States and in San Bernardino County exploding is because children do not have the information on hand. They don't understand that 100% of all the opioids bought off his social media apps are counterfeits period. And these pills are made to look exactly like pharmaceutically trademark pills such as percocet, oxycodone, xanax, adderall, and vicodin. They don't understand this though. And according to Bill Bonner, special agent and I always get his Title mixed up, but he's the in charge of the DEA Los Angeles office. Four out of 10 of these pills are lethal. So he imagined that four out of 10 pills are lethal. And that's why these children are dying.

15:13

Wow. Quick question, another question for you. Is there any current or upcoming legislation that we need to be aware of as it relates to this?

15:23

Well, there's there's two, that we are our foundation. Void. Victims of Illicit Drugs are, are behind. I'll let Steve talk about the first one from your Mr. James Ramos. Assemblyman member James Ramos. I think he's a fantastic man. He's got a great bill, and I'll let Steve talk about that. And then I'll talk about the other bill.

15:43

There's two pending bills in the assembly right now authored by Assemblymember Ramos, AB 1627, which directly looks for a potential assistance in these overdose or poisoning deaths that are occurring or people that are ingesting fentanyl and suffering from respiratory arrest. And that's a narcan. naloxone is a is a antidote to an opioid overdose. It can even bring people back who have completely quit breathing and things such as that as long as it's administered, you know, within the right times. Naloxone Narcan is more commonly known as is not readily available. And AB 1627 would provide for that availability through the California Department of Public Health, it would be distributed to local entities, you know, nonprofits and the like, for distribution to local sheriff's departments with adequate training and things like that for citizenry to obtain it and use it if necessary. The other part of the bill is to also create a level of grant monies available for three southern California counties. I believe it's San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange Counties, in order to establish overdose response teams set a level of expertise amongst investigators that can actually attack and look at is there is there a certain trend going on here? You know, we just had a series of six deaths in this one geographic location, is there an issue that the public needs to be aware of, and you can immediately put out a warning to the public and things such as that, which is the biggest problem we have right now. And back we mentioned it earlier, the stigma of addiction is is is an overwhelming issue. Sometimes. I was a police officer for 31 years. I was with the sheriff's department and San Bernardino PD, retired there in 2009. And the stigma of addiction prevails amongst law enforcement, I get it I I had that stigma. You know, and until my daughter's death, you know it, that light bulb finally came on. And also attributed to fentanyl. People are being deceived. They're not overdosing on anything. They're being deceived into taking something that they don't realize is there. And when taking it, they're dying. You know, my daughter, you know, sadly made a bad decision to, you know, party with she and her boyfriend. They got some cocaine that that had fentanyl had been added to it. And my wife found him dead the next morning, while they were two of four deaths occurred in that area on that same day. And, you know, but for the efforts of the Redlands Police Department in San Bernardino Police Department, you know, that investigation probably wouldn't have occurred, it would have been looked at as just another overdose type of a death. We took that concern to the Southern California sheriff's LA, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, Imperial, San Diego, and we met with the sheriff's of each entity. We explained our concerns and without exception, every Sheriff agreed, yeah, we've got to change our thoughts. We got to look at these things a little bit different because fentanyl does change everything. And it is an issue that we need to confront San Bernardino County Sheriff McMahon at the time and carrying on by Sheriff Dicus, now has an overdose response team. And they aggressively you know, pursue the investigations to try to get to word that to the source. But again, AB 1627 will provide some additional funding for that purpose, overdose response teams. And AB 1628. is a companion bill that Assemblymember Ramos's has authored, that deals with social media, setting a standard for them publicly acknowledging illegal activities that you know, cannot occur on their websites, they're not going to, you know, tolerate it and they will take action in which to have, you know, to curb that activity. It's a complex issue. And, but through that complexity, you got to get people together and we'll figure it out.

Jaime  19:47

What most people don't understand is that you know, again, I think the central point of focus here is that children are being decieved to death. Recreational drug users who are buying, for example, cocaine on a weekend, you know, they want to you they want to ingest some cocaine and to no knowledge of their own fentanyl was added to their cocaine. And it's not because they want to be killed or they want to kill them as because they what they want is they're looking for them to get addicted, much, much sooner. So talking about bills, there's been a lot of bills that have been taken up to the California legislature. But unfortunately, almost none of them except for the one that Phil and Steve had mentioned, has passed out of committee. And I think it's very, very sad because you know, our population in general needs to be protected by, from these nefarious actors. And by the way, we now have numbers in which the minority population is being hit the hardest due to fentanyl poisoning. So I'm talking about African Americans, I'm talking about indigenous people, and I'm talking about Hispanics, we are being decimated, much more than and I hate to bring race into it. But it's something that has to be looked at. And the reason why I bring race up is because there's that dueling conflict where our legislature up in California feels that due to incarceration reform, racial and social justice, they feel like if they put any punitive measures up, you know, in front to tackle this problem of these nefarious drug dealers who are willingly and knowingly selling illicit fentanyl, to our children, you know, they feel like they're going to be unjustly, you know, incarcerated. Well, I, myself am Hispanic, I'm Colombian American. And I feel that if I'm knowingly and willingly selling a counterfeit opioid made to mimic or look exactly like a pharmaceutical pharmaceutically trademarked pill, or if I'm adding fentanyl into my cocaine, and somebody dies because of it. Well, I strongly believe that that person needs to be held accountable, regardless of their race, regardless of their color, regardless of their economics, economic status or anything like that. So there's another bill that just today right now it's probably being discussed, and that's why I had to turn my phone off just because we're probably gonna get bombarded. AB 2246 is a bill brought forward by Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris out of Orange County, AB 2246 aims to make it a felony if you are in possession of two grams of fentanyl of illicit fentanyl or more. Now you must understand that just one gram of fentanyl is enough to kill 1500 people. So two grams of fentanyl is enough to kill 3000 people. So for those people who thinks well, it's only a gram, it's only a two, you cannot equate it to a gram of cocaine or a gram of, of heroin. You know, fentanyl changes everything. And this just if anybody's holding two grams or more fentanyl, you know that it's not for personal use. So first and foremost, AB 2246 does not go after the addicts. It does not go after the people within the substance use community. It goes after the drug dealers who are selling this poison first and foremost. So they're making to make doing that a felony. It also goes after the social media aspect that it has enhanced penalties if you're selling this poison through social media apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, and all the other ones and also further enhances the penalties if fentanyl is being sold in around in or around playgrounds, schools, elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, if it's anywhere around children, so it enhances the penalties as well. So we're hoping that these bills can come out of committees we don't know. But unfortunately, we're very skeptical because we have poured our heart and souls into a lot of these bills, only to be crushed. When they don't pass.

Don  24:29

Your comparison is kind of like comparing a six shooter to a machine gun as it related to the drugs and I do get it. And the other thing I'm understanding the common thread here is that we're not talking about an overdose we're talking about really a targeted I don't want to say murder but mean kind of sounds like this, what it could be considered. In any event. Let's move forward I want to the next question I want to ask is about dispensaries and we're talking about really laced in other drugs is marijuana regulated to ensure that is not laced with fentanyl since we since the legalization of marijuana?

Jaime  25:10

That's a great question. Go ahead.

Steve  25:12

Well, licensed retail outlets for cannabis. Yeah, they receive their products from licensed distributors where you know, the the THC content and anything else in how its manufactured and distributed is regulated. The concern you have is when we have the the block the black market element that's out there to where people still go buy it off the streets or they go buy it from a non regulated dispensary, or I mean, or I call it dispensary anymore read a non regulated retail outlet for cannabis. You know, the whole situation there is you don't know what's in it. You don't know what some rogue person out there is doing. You know who, who says, you know, cannabis has we have had certain incidents associated with fentanyl being put into cannabis products? You know, it's not widespread yet, but give me a break. It will be eventually once they find out that there's going to be a market for it. 

Jaime  26:04

Yeah, and the biggest problem about that no, we're finding is that the cannabis industry in the state of California due to the fact that it was made legal. Unfortunately, they the state has put onerous, you know, policy guidelines that these legal licensed dispensaries have to jump through, they have to jump through hoops. 

Steve  26:32

Biggest problem is the taxation 

Jaime  26:34

and then the taxation on top of that as well, which means that their products and their cannabis is just going to be much more expensive than buying it off the street. So what we're finding is, is that there's a lot of people that instead of going to a licensed dispensary, are going to go to the black market, which is not regulated. And quite frankly, you know, you don't know what's in that cannabis. We've heard a vapes being contaminated with fentanyl we've heard of, of these gummy bears as well. We've heard of some other things. And we're, quite frankly, it scares us to death because we know that there are a lot of people that use cannabis products for a wide variety, variety of reasons, whether it be recreational or because they have health issues that that helps them alleviate pain or psychiatric or psychological symptoms. And we have no problem with that. Well, we do have a problem with this the unregulated marijuana that's out there. And if there's a lot of people start consuming that, you know, and there is fentanyl in it, then it can take their lives as well.

Steve  27:36

Look, the whole the whole synthetic narcotic industry has changed the narrative. You know, there's no plant based stuff anymore. Like with the you know, cocaine comes from the, you know, the poppy plant and everything like that it's manufactured process turned into cocaine and then distributed. Fentanyl and other synthetics are made in the laboratory. And it's ever evolving on a daily basis. You got these chemists throughout the world that are trying to find, you know, further highly addictive products to put out there on the market. And as you have people that are involved in that distribution, there's going to be different market levels. And currently it's just it's fentanyl at this particular time. Is there going to be a stronger narcotic eventually. Hell yes. There's other forms of fentanyl that are stronger than the fentanyl that we see now a car fentanyl is of, you know, 100 times stronger than the fentanyl that we see distributed distributed. But synthetics are the new thing. We're not looking at plant based stuff related to cannabis is still plant based, obviously, you know, but anything else? No, we make it in laboratories now.

Don  28:38

Wow. Last question, gentlemen, as educators and community partners in education partners, what can we do in our county now? And what can we do in the future to better serve our students and families in this crisis,

Steve  28:55

We need to mandate that this message be given directly to the students to the staff at each and every one of our high schools, middle schools, and to spread that message of the danger. It's a scary subject. Our experience has been that we go to schools, we did it. I work at the Public Safety Academy. It's a charter school here in San Bernardino. We provided the assembly. We had 500 Kids almost there. We showed the documentary dead on arrival, took 20 minutes there. We opened a QandA session right after that particular time. And the kids were riveted. They were completely immersed in what the message was. And the message that they had to understand is the danger. This isn't the like the film portrays this isn't about addiction. We're far beyond that. This is about you potentially making a bad mistake. Getting something from a friend. You're not suspecting anything taken in it. It's not about getting addicted. It's about not waking up the next day. The our schools, it now needs to be spread, I don't care if it's us, give us an audience and we'll spread the message. Give us 50 minutes of your time, and we'll have your students knowledgeable of it, put us in front of the parents put us in front of the administrators put us in front of your teachers. And we'll spread that message. That's been the hardest nut for us to crack is to get into education and, and through your task force. It's, you know, the county gang and drug task force. That's the first time we've ever been able to crack that nut.

Don  30:29

Well, I noticed that you already have it as a parent, if frightening. First, I want to tell both of you that my sincere condolences, 

Jaime  30:39

thank you, 

Don  30:40

in terms of what you've gone through, but also just want to call you both champions. Because you know, you're out there, and you're really working with those who need you most. And we do need this information in our schools. I don't know that my kids who are 17 and 13 have heard about it. And they can make one mistake as you both alluded to. So I just want to thank you. And I'm just pleased to have you here.

Jaime  31:07

Thank you so much for the invitation we know we did I just want to I just want to say is that the only reason why myself, Steve, Amy, Chris Didier, or Perla Mendoza or Bridgette Norring, our staff at VOID have to do what we do is because we feel like our not you, but our state and federal legislators are not doing enough to curb the problem. And we know that that are not doing enough because we still continue to seeing these numbers almost doubling on a year to year basis. And that's what you have to really keep your eye on. When you see drug deaths in the United States, year after year, increasing by 35, 45, 45, 50% or more, you know that something is happening where the messaging is not reaching the children. And that's what needs to be done. I am with Steve Filson on that issue is that we need, you know if we can get Dead on Arrival into our schools, if we can meet with the high school principals, I don't know what the approach is. I don't know how the how this works. But if if anybody hearing this podcast, you know we do this pro bono, we don't charge for it. We show these two general assemblies, the documentary and we do question Q and A afterwards. And that's it. And

Steve  32:26

look, give us an audience we'll spread the message and knowledge is power. And that knowledge is going to give people the power to not die.

Don  32:33

Absolutely. Stephen Filson, Jaime Puerta, I want to thank you for being here today. And I want to thank you all for listening. We hope you find this information valuable. If you have any topics or questions that you would like addressed, please email them directly to cwa@sbcss.net. As always, we hope you stay well and continue to transform lives through education because the business of education are about people.

Jaime  32:33

Exactly.