The push is being led in part by parents who say the risks of social media extend far beyond screen time and online bullying. Samuel Chapman, chief executive of Parent Collective Inc., has become an advocate for stronger social media safeguards after the death of his 16-year-old son, Sammy.

Chapman has said there were no obvious warning signs before his son died. Like many parents, he believed the greatest dangers facing his child were the visible ones — unsafe driving, street drugs or encounters with strangers outside the home. He said he stayed involved, asked questions and tried to set boundaries.

But the threat that reached his family came through a social media app. According to Chapman, a drug dealer contacted Sammy through Snapchat and delivered a counterfeit pill to the family’s home after the parents had gone to sleep. The pill contained a fatal amount of fentanyl.

His story underscores a concern increasingly shared by parents across California, including in Southern California and the Inland Empire: social media platforms give young teenagers access to fast, private and sometimes anonymous communication systems that can be difficult for adults to monitor.

Those tools can help young people stay connected, but advocates for tighter regulation say they also expose children to dangers they may not be mature enough to recognize or manage.

State lawmakers are considering Assembly Bill 1709, authored by Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, which would bar children under 16 from creating or keeping accounts on social media platforms that use addictive features. The measure would place enforcement responsibility on the platforms rather than on parents.

Supporters describe the bill as a preventive step rather than a broad restriction on internet access. The proposal would not block children from going online or looking up information. Instead, it would delay their participation in account-based social media systems that rely on personalized feeds, private messaging and engagement-driven design until they are older.

Advocates compare the approach to existing age-based safeguards for driving, alcohol, gambling and firearms, arguing that certain products carry risks that require clear limits for minors.

Parents have long been told that online dangers can be managed through privacy settings, better algorithms or close supervision at home. But critics of the current system say many platforms are built in ways that make meaningful supervision difficult, especially when private messaging, recommendations and easy contact with strangers are central features.

They also argue that the companies behind these platforms benefit financially from keeping users engaged for as long as possible, including young users.

Concerns about children’s mental health have added urgency to the debate. The U.S. Surgeon General has reported that young people who spend more than three hours a day on social media face about twice the risk of symptoms associated with depression and anxiety. Other research has linked heavy social media use among adolescents to increased depressive symptoms, poorer well-being, anxiety, loneliness and lower self-esteem.

Supporters of AB 1709 say the bill does not punish teenagers or impose fines on parents. Instead, they argue, it holds technology companies accountable for the products they design and profit from.

The measure also includes oversight provisions intended to allow the law to adjust as technology and platform features change.

California has frequently positioned itself as a national leader in consumer protection and child safety. Backers of AB 1709 say the state now has an opportunity to set clearer rules for social media platforms used by children, particularly as families continue to grapple with the consequences of online access that can move faster than parental oversight.

Original source: CalMatters

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MURRIETA, CA — A Perris resident was arrested Thursday on suspicion of murder for allegedly supplying a fatal dose of fentanyl to a 22-year-old man who died in Murrieta.

Miguel Angel Gonzalez, 19, was taken into custody following a two-month investigation by the Murrieta Police Department that began around 9:13 p.m. Feb. 20 when officers received a 911 call about a possible drug overdose in the 35000 block of Mitchell Road.

Police and Murrieta Fire & Rescue responded and found the unconscious victim. Despite life-saving measures, he was pronounced dead at the scene. His identity was not released.

It was determined the victim ingested fentanyl and died as a result of an overdose, police said.

During their investigation, police identified Gonzalez as the fentanyl supplier. Details on how law enforcement tracked the death to him were not disclosed.

After a search warrant was served Thursday at Gonzalez’s home near Redlands Boulevard and San Jacinto Avenue, he was taken into custody. Jail records show he was booked into Southwest Detention Center on suspicion of murder. He was being held in lieu of $1 million bail.

The investigation is still ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective John Ferrulli at 951-461-6827 or jferrulli@murrietaca.gov, or Sgt. Jay Elliott at 951-461-6395 or jelliott@murrietaca.gov.

Murrieta police released a statement about the dangers of fentanyl:

“Fentanyl, is a synthetic opioid that is at the heart of the most recent drug epidemic and is the leading cause of death for people ages 18-45 in the United States. This dangerously potent drug is approximately 50 times stronger than Heroin and 100 times stronger than Morphine. Fentanyl is often found mixed in with other illicit drugs including Heroin, Cocaine, and Methamphetamine. Counterfeit pills posing as Xanax or Oxycodone often contain Fentanyl because it is so cheap to make. These counterfeit pills are easy to purchase, widely available, and often contain deadly doses of fentanyl. Pills purchased outside of a licensed pharmacy are illegal, dangerous, and potentially lethal.”

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On the surface, the number of deaths is confusing: California has fewer people in jails than at any point in the last two decades. Yet between 2021 and 2023, people died at rates that exceed some of the United States’ most troubled jails, including the one on Rikers Island in New York. 

CalMatters justice reporter Nigel Duara and data reporter Jeremia Kimelman spent more than nine months looking into deaths in big jails and small jails, in rural holding cells and downtown megacomplexes. Most of the people who died were awaiting trial. 

We found that:

• Aside from natural causes, the two major causes of death were suicide, followed by overdoses, particularly related to fentanyl; 
• Even when local oversight boards suggest changes to jail policy, nothing compels sheriffs to listen to them;
• Until recently, the state’s jail oversight board was not even notified about deaths inside the county-run lockups.

A 2021 State Auditor’s report criticized the oversight board for failing to enforce its own rules and standards on mental health checks and in-cell wellness checks of inmates.

At least one member of the oversight board believes the board needs to spend more time and money investigating jails. 

• Norma Cumpian, Board of State and Community Corrections appointee: “All we’re doing is making recommendations to sheriffs.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged almost five years ago that the state would take a stronger hand to prevent deaths in the 57 jail systems run by California county sheriffs.

In every year since, more people have died in California jails than when Newsom made that pledge — hitting a high of 215 in 2022.

He has steered more money to the oversight board, allowing it to carry out surprise jail inspections. And, he recently signed laws that give the board a clear role in monitoring deaths and expand it to include additional members with expertise in health care.

CalMatters asked Newsom about the high death rates at an event in early March. He answered in the third person: “The governor just signed legislation to actually be able to create a point person specifically responsible for overseeing what’s happening in county jails, working with (Attorney General Rob Bonta), who’s also been advancing investigations.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, two strong allies who don’t always get along personally, will talk migration, fentanyl trafficking and Cuba relations on Friday.

The two leaders are in San Francisco for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, where Biden has held a series of face-to-face meetings with other leaders, including China’s President Xi Jinping and the leaders of Japan and South Korea, as he seeks to reassure the region that the U.S. and China are competitors, not zero-sum rivals.

Biden’s relationship with López Obrador is at times tense, in part because of Biden’s willingness to criticize Mexico on topics such as fentanyl production and the killing of journalists. And López Obrador isn’t afraid to snub the U.S. leader. He skipped a Los Angeles summit last year where leaders tackled the issue of migration because the U.S. didn’t invite Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuela. He also initially said he would skip this year’s APEC conference, but changed his mind.

López Obrador said he would use Friday’s meeting with Biden to take up the case for Cuba and would urge his U.S. counterpart to resume a dialogue with the island nation and end U.S. sanctions.

Biden, meanwhile, was expected to bring up migration as the U.S. continues to manage a growing number of southern border crossings. The leaders also are expected to discuss deadly fentanyl trafficking, particularly after Biden secured an agreement with Xi to curb the illicit opioid.

The issues are related. Human smuggling over the border is a part of cartel operations that also include drug trafficking into the U.S.

Mexico and China are the primary sources for synthetic fentanyl trafficked into the U.S. Nearly all the chemicals needed to make it come from China, and the drugs are then mass-produced in Mexico and trafficked via cartels into the U.S.

The powerful opioid is the deadliest drug in the U.S. today. More than 100,000 deaths a year have been linked to drug overdoses since 2020 and about two-thirds of those are related to fentanyl. The death toll is more than 10 times as in 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic.

And migration challenges facing the U.S. are growing increasingly intractable. Democratic leaders at the state and local level are begging for federal assistance to help care for migrant families living in squalid shelters and sleeping in police stations. Republicans are loudly critical of Biden’s border policies as too lax. And Congress has not passed an immigration overhaul in decades.

Biden asked for $14 billion border security funding from Congress to help manage the issue, but the temporary spending bill passed this week included no funding for the border, Ukraine aid or Israel.

There are rising numbers of migrants at the border. Arrests for illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico line were up 21% to 218,763 in September, and Biden has repeatedly said Congress should act to fix outdated immigration laws. But in the meantime, his administration has developed policies that aim to deter migrants from making a dangerous and often deadly journey while also opening up new legal immigration pathways.

Mexico’s support is critical to any push by the U.S. to clamp down at the southern border, particularly as migrants from nations as far away as Haiti are making the trek on foot up through Mexico and are not easily sent back to their home countries.

Earlier this year, Mexico agreed to continue to accept migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away at the border, and up to 100,000 people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who have family in the U.S. will be eligible to live and work there.

According to data on asylum-seekers in Mexico, people from Haiti remained at the top with 18,860 so far this year, higher than the total for the whole of 2022.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is accepting 30,000 people per month from the four nations for two years and offering them the ability to work legally, as long as they come legally, have eligible sponsors and pass vetting and background checks.

Guatemala and Colombia will open regional hubs where people can go to make asylum claims in the hope of stopping them from traveling on foot. But Mexico has so far refused to allow the U.S. to set one up.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department filed criminal charges on Friday against four Chinese companies and eight individuals for allegedly trafficking the chemicals used to make the highly addictive painkiller fentanyl in the United States and Mexico.

The three separate indictments unsealed in federal court in New York represent the first prosecutions to charge China-based chemical companies and Chinese nationals with illegally selling the chemicals used to make fentanyl, which has been blamed for a deadly overdose crisis.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy condemned the charges, accusing the U.S. government of seeking to shift the blame for its domestic drug problem.

Federal prosecutors said the companies marketed the fentanyl precursor chemicals on their websites and social media accounts, advertised that they accepted payment in cryptocurrency and shipped them to drug traffickers including Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

“When I announced in April that the Justice Department had taken significant enforcement actions against the Sinaloa Cartel, I promised that the Justice Department would never forget the victims of the fentanyl epidemic,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release.

Garland said those actions include stopping Chinese chemical companies from “supplying the cartels with the building blocks they need to manufacture deadly fentanyl.”

In a statement, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy, charged U.S. prosecutors with imposing a “long-arm jurisdiction,” adding that the move could harm counter-narcotics operations between the two countries.

“The incident was a well-planned entrapment operation by the US side, which seriously infringed upon the legitimate rights of relevant enterprises and individuals,” the spokesperson said. “China strongly condemns it.”

An indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court charges the China-based chemical company Hubei Amarvel Biotech Co. as well as three company executives with fentanyl trafficking, precursor chemical importation and money laundering.

Prosecutors said Amarvel Biotech used deceptive practices to evade authorities, such as advertising that it could disguise its products as dog food, nuts or motor oil to ensure “safe” delivery to the United States and Mexico.

Two of the Amarvel Biotech executives were arrested earlier this month and appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Honolulu. They will be brought to New York to appear in Manhattan federal court. The third has not been arrested.

Two additional indictments unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn charge five other executives or employees and three Chinese companies, identified as Anhui Rencheng Technology Co., Anhui Moker New Material Technology Co. and Hefei GSK Trade Co., with offenses including conspiracy to manufacture and distribute fentanyl and customs fraud conspiracy. None of these individuals has been arrested.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said the defendants “knowingly distributed the chemical building blocks of fentanyl to the United States and Mexico” and provided advice on “how they should be used to manufacture this dangerous drug.”

Anne Milgram, administrator of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said the companies and individuals supplied drug traffickers “with the ingredients and scientific know-how needed to make fentanyl — a drug that continues to devastate families and communities across the United States, killing Americans from all walks of life.”

Information on attorneys for the defendants was not immediately available.

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File # T222690098

Details:

On Monday, September 26, 2022, Deputies responded to the 46900 block of State Highway 74, Palm Desert, CA, Riverside County, regarding a deceased 30-year-old male. Palm Desert Station Deputies arrived and found the victim deceased from a suspected Fentanyl Poisoning. Palm Desert Station Deputies conducted the initial investigation and turned over the investigation to the SIB-Overdose Death Investigations / Narcotics team (ODIN).

Following a several months long investigation, 37-year-old Palm Desert resident Gregory Gauto was identified as the suspect. On June 6, 2023, charges were filed with the District Attorney’s Office against Gauto for second degree homicide. On June 7, 2023, Gauto was arrested in the City of Palm Desert for homicide and booked at the John Benoit Detention Center in Indio.

This investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to contact Master Investigator Cornett at 951-955-1700. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department wants to remind citizens of the dangers of illicit narcotics that contain fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine and can cause death or serious bodily harm.

For media inquiries regarding this incident please contact the Media Information Bureau.

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The United States on Tuesday sanctioned a son of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, three members of the powerful Sinaloa cartel and two Mexican-based firms, alleging they trafficked fentanyl and other drugs into the U.S.

The sanctions came the day Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador talked with President Joe Biden by phone about immigration and the fentanyl crisis. A White House readout of the call said the two presidents recognized their nations’ recent efforts to counter fentanyl and arms trafficking “by dismantling criminal networks.” The Treasury Department designated El Chapo’s son Joaquin Guzman Lopez and others for financial sanctions, including a freeze on American-owned assets and bank accounts and a ban on Americans doing business with them.

A Culiacan, Mexico, chemical and lab equipment company and a real estate business also were targeted for sanctions. The latest penalties by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control follow a set of April fentanyl trafficking charges brought against three other Guzman sons, Ovidio Guzmán López, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Sálazar, known as the Chapitos, or Little Chapos, and two dozen members of the Sinaloa cartel.

El Chapo was extradited in 2017 to the U.S., where he was convicted of a massive drug conspiracy that spread murder and mayhem for more than two decades. He was sentenced in 2019 to life in a U.S. prison. Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in the U.S. today.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 71,000 people died in the U.S. from overdosing on synthetic opioids such as fentanyl in 2021, up from about 58,000 the year before. López Obrador has denied that drug cartels make fentanyl in Mexico, although he has acknowledged that precursor chemicals and finished fentanyl are smuggled into Mexico from China, a claim China has denied. Mexico and China are the primary sources for fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked directly into the U.S., according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is tasked with combating illicit drug trafficking.

Growing tensions between the U.S. and China on multiple fronts have made efforts to stop the importation of fentanyl more difficult, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Most of the fentanyl trafficked in the United States comes from the Sinaloa cartel, the DEA says.

The Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brian Nelson, said that the department “in close coordination with the Government of Mexico and U.S. law enforcement, will continue to leverage our authorities to isolate and disrupt Los Chapitos and the Sinaloa Cartel’s operations at every juncture.” Guzman Lopez was not in custody Tuesday, and it was unclear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf about the sanctions. A lawyer for El Chapo didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — With Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán serving a life sentence, his sons steered the family business into fentanyl, establishing a network of labs churning out massive quantities of the cheap, deadly drug that they smuggled into the U.S., prosecutors revealed in a recent indictment.

Although Guzmán’s trial revolved around cocaine shipments, the case against his sons exposes the inner workings of a cartel undergoing a generational shift as it worked “to manufacture the most potent fentanyl and to sell it in the United States at the lowest price,” according to the indictment unsealed April 14 in Manhattan.

Synthetic opioids — mostly fentanyl — now kill more Americans every year than died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, feeding an argument among some politicians that the cartels should be branded terrorist organizations and prompting once-unthinkable calls for U.S. military intervention across the border.

“The problem with fentanyl, as some people at the State Department told me, has to be repositioned. It’s not a drug problem; it’s a poisoning problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst in Mexico, who died Friday. “Very few people go out deliberately looking for fentanyl.”

Hope predicted fentanyl would probably become an issue in next year’s U.S. elections, but he opposed any threat of U.S. intervention, saying “I don’t think that would be a very good way of addressing a public health issue.”

The groundwork for the U.S. fentanyl epidemic was laid more than 20 years ago, with aggressive over-prescribing of the synthetic opioid oxycodone. As U.S. authorities clamped down on its prescription, users moved to heroin, which the Sinaloa cartel happily supplied.

But making its own fentanyl — far more potent and versatile than heroin — in small, easily concealed labs was a game changer. The cartel went from its first makeshift fentanyl lab to a network of labs concentrated in the northern state of Sinaloa in less than a decade.

“These are not super labs, because they give people the illusion that they’re like pharmaceutical labs, you know, very sophisticated,” said Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. “These are nothing more than metal tubs and they use wooden paddles — even shovels — to mix the chemicals.”

A single cartel “cook” can press fentanyl into 100,000 counterfeit pills every day to fool Americans into thinking they’re taking Xanax, Percocet or oxycodone. The pills are smuggled over the border to supply what son Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar said are “streets of junkies,” the indictment said.

Fentanyl is so cheap to make that the cartel reaps massive profits even wholesaling the drug at 50 cents per pill, prosecutors said.

The drug’s potency makes it particularly dangerous. The narcotic dose of fentanyl is so close to the lethal dose that a pill meant to ensure a high for a habituated user can easily kill a less experienced person taking something they didn’t know was fentanyl.

Between August 2021 and August of last year, more than 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, most from synthetic opioids. Last year, the DEA seized more than 57 million fentanyl-laced counterfeit prescription pills, according to the New York indictment.

To protect and expand that business, the “Chapitos,” as the sons are known, have turned to grotesque violence, prosecutors said.

Enforcers Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar are the lead defendants among 23 associates charged in the New York indictment. Ovidio Guzmán López, alias “the Mouse,” who allegedly pushed the cartel into fentanyl, is charged in another indictment in the same district. Mexico arrested him in January and the U.S. government has requested extradition. Joaquín Guzmán López is charged in the Northern District of Illinois

According to the Guzmán Salazar indictment, the cartel does some lab testing on its product but conducts more grisly human testing on kidnapped rivals or addicts who are injected until they overdose.

The purity of the cartel’s fentanyl “varies greatly depending on the method and skill of the particular manufacturer,” prosecutors noted. After a user overdosed on one batch, it was still shipped to the U.S.

When the elder Guzmán and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada led the Sinaloa cartel, it operated with a certain degree of restraint. But with Guzmán serving a life sentence and Zambada believed to be suffering from health issues, the Chapitos moved aggressively to avoid a power vacuum that could fragment the cartel.

“What was really a unique advantage of the Sinaloa cartel and El Chapo was the ability to calibrate violence,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institute.

The wide-ranging New York indictment against the Guzmán Salazar brothers details their penchant for feeding enemies to their pet tigers and describes how they tortured two Mexican federal agents, ripping through one’s muscles with a corkscrew then stuffing the holes with chile peppers before shooting him.

The indictment also provides context to some recent violence in Mexico.

In August 2022, gunmen shot up Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas. Two prison inmates and nine civilians in the city were killed. U.S. prosecutors say the Chapitos’ security arm ordered their local gang associates to commit the violence, targeting a rival cartel’s businesses.

“This is not their father’s Sinaloa cartel,” Felbab-Brown said. “These guys just operate in very different mindsets than their father.”

The Guzmán Salazar indictment makes an initial attempt at disrupting the cartel’s supply chain, naming four people tied to a China-based chemical company and a broker in Guatemala who allegedly helped the cartel get the chemicals and even instructed them on the best recipes for fentanyl.

“When they talk about labs and you’re trying to focus in on labs, that’s not going to have an impact unless you get the finished product or the precursor chemicals,” Vigil said.

Mexico’s government has stumbled through the mixed messaging of its security forces playing up their decommissioning of labs even while President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has asserted that fentanyl is not being produced in Mexico.

In congressional testimony Thursday, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram was pressed about whether Mexico and China are doing enough to cooperate with U.S.

“We want the Mexicans to work with us and we want them to do more,” Milgram said, adding that the DEA wouldn’t hesitate to go after public officials in Mexico or elsewhere should it find evidence of ties to the cartels.

Experts say López Obrador is one obstacle to slowing the cartels’ fentanyl production. After U.S. prosecutors announced the concerted effort against the Sinaloa cartel, López Obrador reacted angrily. The president accused the U.S. government of “spying” and “interference,” suggesting that the case had been built on information gathered by U.S. agents in Mexico.

The president had already severely reduced Mexico’s cooperation with the DEA, experts said.

Hope, the security analyst, said a fundamental problem is that López Obrador doesn’t appear to understand fentanyl’s threat. The president rails against a deterioration of family values in the United States and paints addiction as a moral failing.

“He’s trapped in a moral universe from 50 years ago,” Hope said.

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The U.S. has named a veterinary tranquilizer as an “emerging threat” when it’s mixed with the powerful opioid fentanyl, clearing the way for more efforts to stop the spread of xylazine.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy announced the designation Wednesday, the first time the office has used it since the category for fast-growing drug dangers was created in 2019.

Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the drug policy office, said xylazine (pronounced ZAI’-luh-zeen) has become increasingly common in all regions of the country.

It was detected in about 800 drug deaths in the U.S. in 2020, most of them in the Northeast. By 2021, it was present in more than 3,000 fatalities — with the most in the South — according to a report last year from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“We cannot ignore what we’re seeing,” Gupta said. “We must act and act now.”

Xylazine was approved for veterinary use in 1971. Sometimes known as “tranq,” it has been showing up in supplies of illicit drugs used by humans in major quantities in only the last several years.

It is believed to be added to other drugs to increase profits. Officials are trying to understand how much of it is diverted from veterinary uses and how much is made illicitly.

The drug causes breathing and heart rates to slow down, sometimes to deadly levels, and causes skin abscesses and ulcers that can require amputation. Withdrawal is also painful.

While it is often used in conjunction with opioids, including fentanyl and related illicit lab-made drugs, it’s not an opioid. And there are no known antidotes.

Gupta said his office is requesting $11 million as part of its budget to develop a strategy to tackle the drug’s spread. Plans include developing an antidote, learning more about how it is introduced into illicit drug supplies so that can be disrupted, and looking into whether Congress should classify it as a controlled substance.

Gupta said it needs to be available for veterinary uses even amid crackdowns on the supply used by people. He also said systems to detect the drug and data about where it’s being used need to be improved.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a group that advocates the harm done by drugs, applauds parts of the Biden administration’s plan, including looking for antidotes to reverse overdoses and developing quick tests to determine whether xylazine is present. But the group is wary of trying to stop it through law enforcement action. It asserts that crackdowns on prescription opioids and heroin created the condition for fentanyl and now xylazine to overtake some drug markets.

“Focusing on supply-side interdiction will only dig us deeper into this crisis and inevitably result in more loss of life,” Maritza Perez Medina, director of the group’s office of federal affairs, said in a statement.

The drug is part of an overdose crisis plaguing the U.S.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 107,000 people died from overdoses in the 12 months that ended Nov. 30, 2022. Before 2020, the number of overdose deaths had never topped 100,000.

Most of the deaths were linked to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Like xylazine, they are often added to other drugs — and users don’t always know they are getting them.

___

This story has corrected the spelling name of the first name of Maritza Perez Medina, director of the Drug Policy Alliance’s office of federal affairs.

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File # MG230610004

Details:

On March 02, 2023, at about 9:47 PM, deputies from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, assigned to the Cabazon Station, responded to a parking lot in the 49000 block of Seminole Drive, Cabazon, reference a subject passing counterfeit bills. The subject fled the area in a blue Mazda with a Utah license plate. Deputies located the vehicle and detained Lennox Lupeli, a 29-year-old from the City of Riverside.

The investigation revealed, Lupeli, had a warrant for his arrest and was found to be in possession of several hundred dollars in counterfeit bills, along with suspected fentanyl. Lupeli was taken into custody for his warrant, drug possession and possession of counterfeit bills.

There are no outstanding suspects and anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to call Deputy Lloyd or Sergeant Carlberg at the Cabazon Sheriff’s Station at 951-922-7100 or the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office at 951-776-1099.

For media inquiries regarding this incident please contact the Media Information Bureau.

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