U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent visits Questa
Agency focus is on education around counterfeit pills
Questa village officials and community organizers welcomed representatives from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Monday evening (Aug. 22). About a dozen residents gathered in the Vida del Norte Coalition building to discuss substance use issues, with a focus on how to mitigate illicit drug use and opioid overdoses among young adults.
Scott Garland, assistant special agent in charge of the El Paso Division of the DEA based in Albuquerque, is responsible for the agency’s law enforcement activities in Northern New Mexico. His presentation reflected the DEA’s recent nationwide effort to raise awareness in communities about the dangers posed by fentanyl and fentanyl-containing counterfeit pills, which he said are are now relatively accessible through social media.
“We’re coming at this from a different perspective than you might expect,” Garland said. “I think we have a reputation for working cartels and international drug traffickers — and it’s still about that — but we’ve got this poison just permeating our society. I don’t know why everyone isn’t up in arms about this. This is a public health issue.”
Other guests included Questa Police Chief Ronald Montes, who was officially hired on Monday, a legislative aide from U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez’s office, Taos County Undersheriff Steve Miera and Miles Bonny, co-manager and youth empowerment coordinator for Taos Alive.
After introducing the village’s new police chief, Questa Mayor John Ortega said illicit drug use was to blame for a spike in property crime last winter. The village has been without a standalone police department since a mass resignation effectively closed it in 2020. The village has relied on Taos County Sheriff’s Office deputies to provide law enforcement in the intervening years.
“We look forward to future work with the sheriff’s office and continuing to make our community safe and drug free,” he said. “I don’t know if we can ever be completely drug free, but we can do our best to minimize some of the drug problems that are going on. That’s the whole purpose of [Vida del Norte Coalition], is trying to end the cycle of drug and alcohol use that has plagued our community for years and years.”
Miera told the DEA representatives that it’s almost impossible for Taos County law enforcement to build a prosecutable case against a drug trafficker or dealer.
“We here all understand our state criminal justice system is broken,” Miera said. “Therefore we automatically lean on the federal system. And we’ve sent cases to DEA and other federal agencies but they kick em back to us, saying, ‘those don’t meet the thresholds’” for prosecution.
Garland responded that the U.S. District Attorney decides which cases are prosecuted,
acknowledging that “for a while they were demanding Class A cases, which [involve a minimum of] 400 grams of fentanyl. Or, one thing we started to do in Albuquerque, and I would encourage you to follow up on these, is overdose deaths. There’s a couple things we need to do an investigation but if there’s a death resulting, we get a little more attention from the U.S. attorney’s office.”
Garland added that Alexander Uballez, the new U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico, “is focusing on violent crime,” not drug crimes, “which means we’re getting even less attention.”
Bonny said he receives data every month from Taos County EMS about drug- and alcoholrelated calls.
“For every one drug response there are four alcohol-related responses,” he said, but added that fentanyl-related overdoses and medical emergencies are becoming increasingly common.
Bonny said that when he gives educational presentations to middle school and high school students, he frames his conversation about substance use in terms of “self care” rather than language along the lines of the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaigns. This week at Taos Middle School he focused on raising students’ “perception of risk” associated with high-powered THC concentrates and nicotine vape products.
DEA Public Information Officer Carlos Briano told the audience that a recent survey showed that 75 percent of teenagers “feel pot is harmless.”
“When you do have high concentrates — dabs, shatter, those kinds of things — it can spawn psychosis for some people,” Bonny said, adding that by framing the conversation in a way that allows children to understand the possible health and mental health ramifications of substance use, it allows kids to make informed decisions about abstinence.
“It’s not bad to be curious, but you have to be curious enough to learn the skills to make the right decisions and to know what to stay
away from,” Bonny said.
By far the topic of most concern was counterfeit pharmaceutical pills.
Because so many pills currently found on the black market are manufactured — usually in Mexico — without regulatory oversight using ingredients smuggled from China or India, they can contain inconsistent amounts of fentanyl, which, for first-time users who don’t have any tolerance to opiates, poses a heightened risk. Fentanyl is among the world’s most potent opioids, and is typically prescribed to late-stage cancer patients or in hospital settings where patients are experiencing the very highest levels of pain. For example, fentanyl is often given by first responders to people who sustain serious injuries in car accidents as they are being transported from the scene.
Garland noted that the prevalence of fentanyl-containing counterfeit Adderall (an amphetamine) tablets, counterfeit Xanax (a benzodiazepine) and counterfeit Vicodin (oxycodone) is vastly outpacing the DEA and other law enforcement organization’s efforts to arrest and interdict drug manufacturers and sellers. In addition to counterfeit pills, fentanyl is reportedly sometimes being found in cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin purchased on the street, presenting a heightened risk for cocaine and meth users who are not habitual opioid users. Even for daily heroin users, a sudden spike in the potency of their drug of choice can prove fatal.
“This was the first month that I saw ‘blue pill’ as the identified drug” in an EMS report concerning an overdose,” Bonny said, referring to fake pills containing fentanyl that are replicas of 30-milligram Mylan brand oxycodone tablets. “Even in our county, a couple of months ago, someone that thought they were using cocaine died of a fentanyl overdose because there was fentanyl in the cocaine.”
School-aged children and adults “might not know what they’re being presented with sometimes,” Bonny said. “Delaying the age of first-use of any drug, alcohol or otherwise — 90 percent of people with a substance-use disorder started using substances before they were 18” years-old.
Bonny noted that Narcan, the opioid overdose-reversal drug, is widely available now without a prescription. “If any of you want Narcan, for your homes, for your friends, for your family, the community or your businesses — anything, there’s no boundaries — I can do free trainings on how to recognize the signs of an overdose.”
But Garland said the DEA’s focus has shifted somewhat to trying to prevent first-time drug users from consuming counterfeit pills or obtaining unregulated vape pens that reportedly now occasionally may contain fentanyl, some of which Gonzales said had been reported in nearby Pueblo, Colorado.
“That’s what was deterring kids from the vapes when I was talking to them,” Gonzales said. “It was the fact that there was fentanyl being found in the vapes. That’s what stopped them from using vapes in the school district.”
“It’s not habitual users who are dying, although some of them are dying too, but it’s our kids, brothers and sisters who are dying from this,” Garland said. “It’s true that one pill can kill.”
So rather than kicking down doors or asking students to inform on relatives who may be involved in the drug trade, Garland said his mission in Questa this week was to educate and encourage community members to have difficult discussions.
“If you are getting a pill from an unknown source and not from a pharmacy, it can kill you,” he added. “We gotta get the word out on this. I’ve sat with families that their daughter took a pill from a friend, thought it was a Tylenol, and she’s dead. It’s horrifying.”
Maria Gonzales, Vida del Norte executive director, said the stigma attached to substance use disorders, overdoses and drug-related involvement with the justice system, presents the greatest obstacle to preventing overdose deaths and opening up conversations about substance use.
“That’s the big elephant in the room,” Gonzales said. “Nobody wants to be stigmatized as the family that has someone with an opioid problem.
“But,” she continued, “it’s here guys. I have a nephew in the hospital right now who’s coming off fentanyl because my niece couldn’t stop using while she was pregnant. It’s in our families. It’s in our community. We have overdoses happening, and we need to be talking about it.
“Is it an uncomfortable conversion? Yes,” Gonzales added, picking up a box of Narcan nasal spray from a shelf. “But we need to have these conversations. I have Narcan right here for anybody who ever needs it. Everybody should be educated and able to administer Narcan.”
For more information about Narcan, overdose prevention and drug education in Questa and Taos County, visit vidadelnorte.com and taosalive.org.