More SLO County residents are dying after taking fake drugs. What’s driving the spike?
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Fentanyl’s toll
The Tribune’s ongoing series on the impact of opioids in SLO County
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Editor’s note: This is the first in an ongoing series of stories examining how opioids — especially fentanyl — are killing San Luis Obispo County residents.
Emilio Velci of Atascadero had been complaining to his mother about wisdom tooth pain for most of the week.
On March 8, 2020, the 19-year-old took what he thought was a Percocet pill he had purchased from a coworker to help relieve the pain. Then, he settled in for the evening in his usual spot on the couch to play video games.
His roommate found his body on the couch the next morning. It turned out that what Emilio took wasn’t Percocet after all, but actually fentanyl.
The coworker who sold Emilio the counterfeit fentanyl pill was charged with second-degree murder.
“He tried something once, and he paid the ultimate price,” said Emilio’s mother, Cammie Velci.
She said the death of Emilio, her youngest of four, has devastated her entire family. “He took a pill for a toothache and he died.”
Counterfeit prescription pills laced with fentanyl are driving a surge in drug poisoning deaths in San Luis Obispo County, which has been grappling with the opioid epidemic for years, experts said. The synthetic opioid can be deadly even in small quantities.
In 2020, the rate of opioid-related deaths in San Luis Obispo County was 55% higher than the state rate — 20.5 vs. 13.1 deaths per 100,000 people — according to data from the California Public Health Department.
Last year alone, 55 people died from taking opioids, more than double the number of deaths in 2019, according to local public health data.
The problem has become so severe that last month, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency issued a warning to the public about the prevalence of fake prescription drugs containing methamphetamine and illegal fentanyl.
“Over the past several years, fentanyl, which is a fully synthetic opioid, and then different fentanyl analogs, became more and more popular,” said Jenn Rhoads, coordinator of the San Luis Obispo County Opioid Safety Coalition. “We started to see heroin cut with fentanyl. We saw a lot of meth being cut with fentanyl and ... a lot of counterfeit pills.”
Counterfeit pills purchased on Snapchat
Fake prescription pills containing fentanyl are commonly sold on social media platforms, the DEA said in its statement, which makes them particularly accessible to minors and young adults.
The Velcis are not the only Atascadero family who’ve been impacted by this crisis.
Last year, Cindy Cruz-Sarantos, an Atascadero resident and emergency room nurse, said her son, Dylan, died after taking a pill containing fentanyl that he purchased on Snapchat.
“I didn’t know this was going on,” Cruz-Sarantos said. “You just don’t think that someone is going to deliver drugs to your child’s home, like Uber.”
In June, Velci, Cruz-Sarantos and other parents whose children died from fentanyl-poisoned pills purchased on Snapchat rallied in front of the company’s Santa Monica headquarters to demand accountability.
Cruz-Sarantos said the parents asked Snapchat officials to post warnings in the app that “one pill can kill” and that drugs sold on their platform could be counterfeit. But those requests didn’t go anywhere, she said.
“This is what’s going on in our community and what’s going on in our country,” Velci said. “Kids are being deceived into thinking (something) is a prescription drug, and they’re all counterfeit.”
How fentanyl is impacting SLO County residents
Rhoads, whose coalition is part of the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department, said the full magnitude of the fentanyl problem in the county hit home when her clients started talking about the amount of fentanyl laced in the local drug supply.
“I was hearing ... clients that are regular drug users talking about the fact that you can’t get anything around here that doesn’t have fentanyl in it,” Rhoads said. “It’s really integrated into the entire illicit drug supply.”
While the pharmaceutical-grade painkiller is commonly used for therapeutic applications when prescribed by a physician, the same chemicals can be used to produce fentanyl and other synthetic opiates for recreational drug use.
Fentanyl is fairly inexpensive to make, highly addictive and very potent, Rhoads said.
Those may be some of the reasons why black market drug manufacturers are creating fake versions of prescription drugs and other illegal narcotics that actually contain fentanyl and fillers, Rhoads said.
Fentanyl most often shows up in counterfeit versions of prescription drugs including amphetamines such as Adderall and Ritalin; pain relievers such as Vicodin, Oxycontin and Percocet, and anti-anxiety drugs including Xanax, according to Rhoads and the DEA.
But illegal drug manufacturers aren’t only using it to create convincing knock-off prescription drugs.
Illegal drugs that are not opioid-based, such as cocaine, crack cocaine and ecstasy, also can be cut with fentanyl, increasing the risk of opiate dependency and overdoses, Rhoads explained.
“I think the scary thing about the pills is that we’re starting to see more people who aren’t intending to use opioids taking substances that have a very strong opioid in them,” Rhoads said. “I think that that is part of what is driving the increase in overdoses and overdose deaths in our county.”
Who is dying from fentanyl in SLO County?
Ingesting even a small amount of fentanyl can be fatal, and people who are not habitual opioid users are the most impacted, Rhoads said.
That was the case with Emilio Velci, who died at his Atascadero home after taking what he was told was a Percocet pill.
The 19-year-old did not use drugs for recreation but had been experiencing intense pain from his wisdom teeth, his mother said.
Instead of ingesting prescription medicine, however, Velci actually took a fentapill, or a pill that contains only fetanyl, Cammie Velci said.
Tim Wolfe of Templeton was arrested and charged with murder in connection with Velci’s death on March 8, 2020, according to the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office. Wolfe is accused of selling the counterfeit drug that resulted in Velci’s death.
“I believe in his thinking, he thought this was the pharmaceutical-grade Percocet that his coworker who sold it to him was telling him it was,” Velci said. “In reality, it was a counterfeit pill. It was a street pill.”
The crisis is disproportionately impacting young people.
Local public health data shows that roughly 80% of the people under 30 who died from opioid overdoses in the county in 2020 — 13 out of 16 — died from taking a substance containing fentanyl.
Dylan Kai Sarantos, who grew up in Atascadero, was just a month past his 18 birthday when he took a capsule he thought contained methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), a drug similar to ecstasy, his mother said.
The capsule, which Sarantos purchased from a supplier on Snapchat, was actually cut with fentanyl, Cindy Cruz-Sarantos said.
Her son died on May 8, 2020, at his father’s home in Los Angeles.
At the time of his death, Dylan was in recovery for drug dependency and was making great strides, Cruz-Sarantos said.
According to his mother, he wrote down each day he was sober on his calendar and was enrolled in drug and alcohol counseling as well as nine hours of weekly intensive outpatient therapy. He was also finishing his high school equivalency and starting to pursue his passion project — designing a clothing line.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic happened.
“That was the worst thing to do for someone that needs to be busy all the time,” Cruz-Sarantos said. She said that many of the resources Dylan depended on for his recovery and mental health were shut down during state and county shelter-in-place orders, leaving him with less structure to his days.
“We had done so much for it to just be thrown away with fentanyl — with a pill,” Cruz-Sarantos said. “Recovery is supposed to be a process. You’re supposed to have more chances.”
Rhoads said the increase in drugs cut with fentanyl is likely driving the recent surge in overdose deaths in San Luis Obispo County.
After her son died, Cruz-Sarantos posted on his Instagram and Snapchat accounts repeatedly about the dangers of buying drugs through social media that might be counterfeit and contain fentanyl.
Many people reached out to share their grief. She recalled one friend from Atascadero sending a text message to Dylan’s phone after his death, just to say how much she missed him.
“Now they’re both gone,” Cruz-Sarantos said.
In February, less than a year later, that friend also died from fentanyl poisoning after purchasing drugs on Snapchat, Cruz-Sarantos said.
Just 12 days prior to that death, a different friend of Dylan’s from Atascadero also died from fentanyl poisoning.
Public Health Department urges drug users to carry Naloxone
More than half of overdose deaths in the county are related to opioids, according to 2020 data from the San Luis Obispo County Coroner’s Office cited by the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department.
Expanding access to the prescription medicine NARCAN — also known by its generic name, naloxone — can help prevent many of these overdose deaths, Rhoads said.
Naloxone is a nasal spray or injection that can reverse opioid overdoses with little to no side effects, and it has no addictive properties, according to the Public Health Department.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that opioid users or people who know opioid users carry naloxone to prevent overdose deaths. County public health officials in San Luis Obispo County are taking that advice a step further by advising all illegal drug users have naloxone on hand.
“We’re trying to kind of get the message out that really anybody using any type of substance should have naloxone on hand, just in case,” Rhoads said. “If you’re allergic to peanuts, you have an EpiPen. If you’re in a kitchen, there should be a fire extinguisher. You’re not planning to use it, but if you have to use it, you want it to be there.”
How to get help
There are resources for people in the community who need support for drug and alcohol dependency and pain management.
The SLO Bangers program is open 5:30 to 8:15 p.m. Wednesdays and is located at 2191 Johnson Ave. in the San Luis Obispo County public health department offices.
The program distributes naloxone and harm-reduction materials including sterile water, tourniquets, cotton, cookers, antibacterial ointment, alcohol pads and condoms. More information is available at slobangers.com.
People living in San Luis Obispo County can safely dispose of unwanted prescription drugs with the Integrated Waste Management Authority. For details, go to iwma.com/guide/medicine-prescription-drugs.
There’s also help for residents dealing with chronic pain looking for alternative treatments. The Public Health Department provides a list of complementary treatment providers in the county, including acupuncturists, chiropractors, physical therapists and more.
If you are in crisis, please call the Central Coast Hotline at 800-783-0607. You may also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text HELLO to 741-741.
This story was originally published October 14, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
