Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, during a Senate Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) spoke with two parents who lost children due to the fentanyl crisis and heard testimony from experts on the importance of both raising public awareness and passing legislation to tackle the crisis head on.
Schiff heard testimony from Jamie Puerta, a Santa Clarita resident who lost his 16-year-old son to fentanyl poisoning. Puerta serves as President of Victims of Illicit Drugs (V.O.I.D), a California-based nonprofit founded to bring awareness to and urge congressional action on the dangers of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.
Watch the full conversation here.
Key Excerpts:
On education and action on the fentanyl crisis:
Schiff: […] What do you think is working in terms of educating, both families but also schools and others about how they should incorporate this into their teaching and have the supplies on hand necessary to deal with emergencies?
Puerta: At Stop the Void, our organization, along with the project Facing Fentanyl, we have a documentary called Dead on Arrival. You can find it at stopthevoid.org. It’s a 22 minute documentary that we use in junior high schools and in high schools across this nation. In California, all of Orange County high schools have done it with Amy Neville presenting the documentary. I think the education and awareness is key in evading these senseless drug deaths, because these kids just don’t know. They don’t know what they’re ingesting. They’re dying because they’ve been deceptively sold a counterfeit pill that they think is a pharmaceutical grade oxycodone, for example, and it turns out that it’s a fake pill and they end up dying, first time use. Education and awareness is working, but we’re just a small organization. We need to do this nationwide. Mr. Steve Hilson says it all the time, “With COVID-19, we all knew that we had to wash our hands and have a mask over our faces. Why on the national or on the federal level, why have we not had a PSA campaign of sorts, warning all parents and children of the impending danger of illicit or, should I say, recreational drug use?” I think that’s very key, because, again, due to the stigma of addiction and overdose, most kids and most parents don’t understand the problem of what it is. I also feel that interdiction is helping a lot, as well as naloxone. This is a three pronged approach, education, awareness, interdiction and Naloxone. Widely available Naloxone on college campuses and high schools, I think is really helping out the situation a little bit, but we need to do a lot more.
Norring: I agree, the education and awareness piece is huge. But we face roadblocks all the time with schools that don’t want us to come into their schools because they feel that we may, basically give kids the idea that it’s okay to go do these drugs. And it’s so ridiculous. We’ve shown Dead on Arrival, I’m a former member of Void, so we do that often. We also show the Come Back Home film that the Alexander Neville Foundation produced, which is told from the youth preventative side of things. And I think when you hear from the youth directly on this crisis that is so impactful. We also pride ourselves on going out into the community, doing community events, bringing the community together, doing Naloxone trainings, getting that information out there, really reducing the stigma of this crisis. Because I say poisoning, while so many say overdose. You will never hear me say that my son overdosed because my son was poisoned. I know that if my son knew that that pill was going to take his life, he would have never taken it. Like Senator Klobuchar said, all of my hopes and dreams for him and his future are gone. But not only that, his dreams, erased in the blink of an eye. And I mirror your sentiment, our government really needs to step up and start taking the handle on this, because we’re just parents out there. We’re spending a lot of money out of our pockets. Most of us don’t qualify for public grants or anything like that. Why don’t we have the campaign? Kids are dying, you would think that that would be a priority. And yet it’s us out there doing the work, and we will do it, because that means potentially, a child’s life is saved.
On federal support for fentanyl legislation:
Schiff: […] One of the concerns I heard about the bill when it was in the House was a concern that it could inhibit research. You made a comment, but you made it too quickly for me to catch about NIH’s view or others. Is there a need to have language to make sure that the research can go on? Or do you feel that is a non-issue for some reason?
Dr. Timothy Westlake: No, so this is a compromise bill. The initial language that came out was just pure scheduling language. And then when there were concerns that it could impact research negatively, the research component was added. And that was supported through the first Trump ONDCP, and then through the Biden ONDCP. The research accommodations that were reached significantly open up all Schedule I research, not just into fentanyl related substances, but into all Schedule I. So then that’s why they support it at NIH, HHS, FDA, NIDA.
Schiff: So that’s been incorporated into a new version of the bill?
Westlake: Correct in the HALT Fentanyl. Yeah, it is in the HALT Fentanyl bill.
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