Ventura County tackles fentanyl deaths, discusses plans at town hall

The fentanyl crisis is personal for Vanesha Flores. Her 22-year-old son died early last year after taking the powerful drug.

Nor was the Port Hueneme woman afraid to show the human cost as she attended a town hall meeting Wednesday on the drug tied to a surging number of overdose deaths. She held Junior Angel Gonzalez’s senior picture, the image showing a youth smiling broadly and wearing a tuxedo.

“I’m angry about the drug and what it’s doing to our community,” she said in a brief interview after the event in Camarillo.

“Kids are just experimenting and dying,” said the woman who plans to start a nonprofit organization in his name.

Others who had lost children also turned out for the town hall that drew more than 150 people, including police, probation officers and health care and education officials. Accidental overdose deaths from fentanyl in the county have increased eight-fold over the last six years, shooting up to 181 last year. They stood at 22 in 2017.

Methamphetamine overdose deaths had more than doubled to 126 over the same time period, while deaths tied to a class of depressant drugs that includes Xanax and Valium flattened to roughly 50. Heroin and cocaine deaths fell to relatively negligible levels.

The "Facing Down Fentanyl" town hall focused on illicit forms of the opioid versus fentanyl properly given for medical uses. Physicians prescribe fentanyl to control pain and anesthesiologists use it in surgery, but the deaths are largely tied to the illicit forms being created in labs in Mexico before being smuggled across the border.

Health officials are alarmed not just about the danger presented by the drug on its own but because it is incorporated into other illicit drugs.

Dr. Christopher Young, Ventura County's chief medical examiner, told the audience the number of deaths is staggering. He said anybody could be a victim, discounting misperceptions that it's limited to homeless people and heavy drug users.

"It is all socioeconomic levels," he said. "It is all ages. These are people that many times have jobs, homes, (they're) people in our community."

More than half of the 181 people who died last year from accidental fentanyl overdoses in the county were age 31 to 50, statistics show.

District Attorney Erik Nasarenko told the group that fentanyl is in every street drug as well as illicit pharmaceutical drugs. He said many people grew up in a climate where they could take experimental and recreational drugs, but that fentanyl has changed the picture.

"In 2023, recreational and experimental drugs have to be presumed to contain fentanyl," he said.

Although drug crises are not new, it takes very little fentanyl to kill a person and can do so with the first dose, said Dr. Robert Levin, the county's public health officer.

The physician said some users have been able to live for years and still take heroin, but that fentanyl is a different player.

"Now we're seeing people take fentanyl and die after the first dose," he said.

An opioid suppression task force called COAST hosted the event to educate the public about the threat as well as what county agencies are doing to fight it. County law enforcement and health care officials answered written questions the audience submitted on index cards. The audience could also pick up test kits that show the presence of fentanyl and an antidote called naloxone free of charge.

The town hall is part of an effort to fight the spread of the drug and deaths through education, treatment, prevention and law enforcement programs.

A day before on Tuesday, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors agreed to spend $3.7 million from legal settlements and local tax dollars.

About $2.8 million in settlement dollars went to remedial programs, such as startup money for a men's residential program, staff training and funding for a withdrawal program. The board ponied up another $875,000 from the county general fund for law enforcement and investigative costs. Included are the cost of a prosecutor that for the first time will be exclusively dedicated to fentanyl cases, an additional death investigator in the medical examiner's office and crime lab costs.

"What we see is a vast and sophisticated network of drug couriers, dispatchers and drug stash houses," Nasarenko said in an interview after the board's vote. "This operates throughout Southern California. Our law enforcement priority is to dismantle these networks as much as we can through surveillance, strong interdiction and aggressive prosecution."

The $2.8 million represents a small chunk of the funds expected to go toward reversing the problem. Ventura County sued several opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies in 2019, seeking damages for harm from opioids. At the time, officials cited traditional opioid drugs such as OxyContin and codeine, but the focus now is heavily on the large surge of fentanyl use beginning in 2020.

About $8 million in settlement funds have arrived in Ventura County to date, with perhaps $43 million expected over 18 years from distributors and a manufacturer. The settlement dollars can only be spent on remedial programs such as treatment and prevention, not law enforcement, which appears to be a restriction set by the state of California.

Officials on the town hall panel said they are making progress.

Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said a group called VC FOCUS is bringing in the strengths of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Behavioral Health administrator Raena West pointed to improvements in treatment and expanded coverage by the state Medi-Cal program, including residential care.

Kathleen Wilson covers courts, crime and local government issues. Reach her at kathleen.wilson@vcstar.com or 805-437-0271.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Fentanyl overdose deaths discussed at Ventura County town hall