San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
DRUG CZAR ANNOUNCES METH CRISIS PLAN IN S.D. VISIT
White House wants new task forces to reduce flow of drug
The director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy visited San Diego on Saturday to announce the administration’s plan to address the methamphetamine crisis, both by increasing resources for drug treatment and continuing to target cross-border smuggling operations.
San Diego continues to be a major corridor for meth trafficked from Mexico, and Dr. Rahul Gupta was given a tour of a border drug tunnel in Otay Mesa before discussing the White House plan at a news conference.
The new plan includes proposals to continue working with law enforcement agencies and governments in the United States and Mexico to reduce the amount of meth being transported across the border, creating new task forces to focus on meth usage as necessary.
Many of the proposals also address a related crisis caused by fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that has increasingly infiltrated the nation’s illicit drug supply, including meth.
From a public health standpoint, the plan also seeks to provide more access to long-term recovery treatment, test strips for individual users to check for the presence of fentanyl, and naloxone, which acts as an opioid antidote and can reverse the effects of overdoses.
As the first medical doctor to serve in the role, Gupta stressed the importance of providing health care and drug addiction recovery treatment in the fight against meth.
“When we have so many people being killed from methamphetamines, including that which is cut with fentanyl, we have to make sure that we provide help to people when and where they need it,” Gupta said.
The plan further calls to expand access to prevention interventions in schools within counties that have high rates of poverty and meth use, as well as low employment and education rates, including among tribal nations.
Nationally, Gupta said that the number of people dying from meth is rising at a very fast pace — approximately 32,000 people every 12 months.
“That leads to a life lost to methamphetamine every 16 minutes around the clock,” he said.
Between 2016 and 2020, there was a 92 percent increase in meth-related deaths in San Diego County, according to the latest San Diego Meth Strike Force report released last year. There were 722 meth-related deaths in San Diego in 2020, with nearly half of those among people ages 45 to 64.
“They’re only second to the overdose deaths from fentanyl,” said District Attorney Summer Stephan. “But the new trend that we’re seeing is that methamphetamine and fentanyl are being combined, and that is causing a new epidemic. We’re seeing both of our most dangerous substances combined.”
The amount of meth being transported across the border and seized by law enforcement agents is also on the rise. During fiscal 2021, Customs and Border Protection seized 114,000 pounds of meth along the California-mexico border, which is 63 percent of all meth seized along the southwest border. Much of it comes through the ports of entry in vehicles, according to officials.
Already in the current fiscal year, the seizure of meth at the California border is outpacing that of the previous year, with 57,900 pounds having been seized from October to March.
This includes the 1,336 pounds of methamphetamine seized by officers in Otay Mesa — estimated at a value of $2.9 million — that was disguised as onions mixed with real ones in a tractor-trailer shipment earlier this year.
The Meth Strike Force was launched more than 25 years ago, back when San Diego was the top producer of methamphetamine, said Nick Macchione, director of the county’s Health and Human Services Agency. He serves as the task force’s chair alongside Stephan and the county Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Holly Porter. Now, Mexico is the main source of the drug, made in cartel-run “superlabs.”
Despite the work the task force has accomplished, Macchione said during the news conference Saturday that there is still a long road ahead for tackling this issue.
“We’re no longer the meth capital of the world, but we still have huge problems,” he said. “We need some more help at the federal level, and I think it’s coming.”
Despite Black and Native American people making up a small portion of the population in San Diego, they make up a disproportionate portion of the deaths related to meth.
Last year’s Meth Strike Force report found that for every 100,000 San Diegans, there were 49.6 Black people and 46.2 Native Americans who died from the drug in 2020. That’s compared with 26.2 and 14.2 deaths among White and Hispanic populations, respectively.
Gupta said that these populations are seeing some of the biggest increases in meth use and related deaths, while also being among the least likely to get timely treatment for addiction. To combat that, his office is working toward bringing universal access to medication for opioid-use disorder by 2025. There is no medication currently approved to combat meth use, but the new plan supports research to develop an antidote.
“Less than one out of 10 Americans that wants to is able to access treatment, and I want to change that,” Gupta said. “That change will be very important because we have to use equity as a guiding principle moving forward.”
lauren.mapp@sduniontribune.com