Ohio ‘Families Against Fentanyl’ Launch Billboards in California

Cars merge onto the State Route 73 southern interchange from Interstate 405 in Costa Mesa, Calif., on April 21, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

A nonprofit organization dedicated to tackling the opioid epidemic initiated a billboard campaign along several Los Angeles and Orange County freeways that reads “Fentanyl is the number one cause of death for Americans 18 to 45.”

Families Against Fentanyl—the nonpartisan nonprofit behind the billboards that appeared from March 30 to April 9 in Southern California—was founded by Ohio resident Jim Rauh in 2018 to spread awareness of the deadly opioid that took the life of his 37-year-old son Thomas.

According to the organization’s website, its goal is to persuade the federal government to “have illicitly manufactured fentanyl declared a weapon of mass destruction.”

“Deaths are soaring in California and across the US and our young people are at risk. It’s time to treat this threat with the urgency it deserves,” Rauh said in a March 30 statement. “We are calling for the Biden Administration to declare illicit fentanyl, and its analogs, a weapon of mass destruction and immediately establish a White House task force dedicated to the fentanyl crisis.”

The billboards are located on four freeways in the region: the 5 in Commerce, the 57 in Placentia, the 10 in El Monte, and the 710 in Lynwood.

The campaign has already been launched on the East Coast. According to the organization it additionally chose Southern California “based on popular demand from the non-profit’s thousands of grassroots supporters.”

According to the group, it examined 2021 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and concluded that the synthetic opioid has ravaged the entire country, emerging as the primary cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.

Additionally, fentanyl-related deaths in California increased by 2,631 percent or over 27 times in the last eight years, the group found. It additionally stated that teenagers and young adults in the state accounted for a notably higher proportion of fentanyl fatalities compared to the rest of the country, highlighting the need to increase awareness.

“Americans deserve to know what is being done to save lives, and what is being done to uncover and stop the international manufacturers and traffickers of illicit fentanyl. This is the number one killer of our nation’s young adults. It is killing more and more children and young adults each year,” Rauh said in the statement.

As of April 10, the group has also garnered nearly 50,000 signatures on a petition asking the federal government to declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

Rauh Files Lawsuit Against Son’s Drug Dealer

In 2020, Rauh filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the alleged fentanyl dealer whom he believes is responsible for his son’s overdose. His son had been addicted to opioids, usually heroin, following a rollerblading accident.

According to the lawsuit, Chinese national Fujing Zheng, along with his father and accomplices, sent fentanyl to Leroy Steele, a convicted street dealer in Akron, who then sold the drug to Rauh’s son.

Steele admitted guilt to a scheme involving possession with intent to distribute the drug as well as distribution of it, and received a 20-year prison sentence in April 2017.

In August 2018, Zheng and his father were accused of running a conspiracy that involved producing and distributing lethal fentanyl and around 250 other drugs to at least 25 countries and 37 states in a 43-count indictment in the U.S. District Court in Cleveland, and along with their accomplices, have not been caught.

“As detailed in this indictment, the trail from at least two dead bodies in Akron, Ohio, leads to the Zhengs,” U.S. Attorney Herdman said in an August 2018 release. “This group has shipped deadly fentanyl analogues and other drugs around the globe for a decade. Law enforcement will follow the evidence wherever it leads, including overseas, to stop the flow of drugs that have caused so much heartbreak and destruction in Ohio.”

State Laws Cracking Down on Fentanyl Dealers Fail to Pass

California lawmakers have also attempted to crack down on the distribution of illicit fentanyl pills through bills targeting the drug dealers who sell them, but have failed.

The Senate Public Safety Committee failed to pass Senate Bill 44, also known as “Alexandra’s Law,” which would have mandated courts to caution convicted fentanyl dealers that if the drug is lethal, and if they persist in selling it and someone dies, they could be charged with murder.

The bill was named after a 20-year-old college student, Alexandra Capelouto, who died from fentanyl poisoning after taking what she believed was a Percocet pill during a holiday visit to her family in Temecula in 2019.

After opponents criticized the proposed law as being inhumane and ineffective during a March 28 committee hearing, lawmakers voted against it. Democrat Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) stated that the emphasis, instead, should be on “causation, prevention and treatment.”

The organization was not immediately available for comment by press time.