A California father who lost his 20-year-old daughter to accidental fentanyl poisoning is moving to get legislation passed that would charge drug dealers with murder if their distribution of the deadly drug results in death.
Matt Capelouto's daughter was found dead in her bedroom after suffering from a fentanyl overdose in 2019. At Capelouto's initiative, Alexandra's Law - a bill named for his daughter - was introduced to strengthen the penalties for fentanyl dealers. California state Democrats struck down the legislation in April, but the grieving father said drug dealers will continue to "get away with murder" until law enforcement starts treating fentanyl overdoses as homicides to hold the "death dealers" accountable.
"It really starts at the local level. When law enforcement shows up at one of these drug deaths, the very first thing that needs to be done, is it needs to be treated as a crime, treated, a crime scene, needs to be sealed off and treated as and investigated as a homicide," Capelouto said Wednesday on "America Reports."
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"The first thing is, is recognizing that there’s a crime here, somebody delivered a poison that resulted in somebody’s death. And then on top of that most of our states, California leading the way, have terrible laws in terms of holding these death dealers accountable. So we need better laws to back up law enforcement and we need law enforcement to investigate the cases criminally so we can go after the death dealers and get them off the streets."
Capelouto lost his daughter in 2019 during her college winter break in Southern California after she took a fentanyl-laced Oxycodone pill. Alexandra was studying on a full academic scholarship at Arizona State University.
Capelouto is hoping to get the bill passed during the current legislative session to spare other families from suffering the same tragic fate. Support from California Attorney General Rob Bonta is critical in moving the legislation forward, but the Democrat turned down an invitation to meet with fathers of fentanyl poisoning victims last month and has yet to support any legislation that raises penalties for drug dealers in the state, Capelouto said.
"We are trying to get him to support Alexandra’s Law. The majority of our district attorneys across our state see this as a valuable tool," he said. "It's still possible for our law to get passed in this year’s legislative session and we think we would have a greater chance of it passed if the attorney general in California would come out in support of it. To date, he has not come out in support of a single piece of legislation that holds these drug dealers accountable for the deaths they are causing."
Capelouto said his daughter was just one victim of fentanyl being sourced from China and distributed by Mexican drug cartels, calling the crackdown on U.S. open border policies "absolutely critical."
"But," he added, "that’s just one link in the chain. If we can’t even stop the drug dealers right here in our own communities, how do we expect to deal with China and Mexico for their role in this?
"People have this misconception that we are locking up all these drug dealers yet we still have all the drug deaths. Really nothing can be further from the truth. Less than 1% of all drug deaths result in the conviction of a drug dealer," he continued. "So, literally we are letting these drug dealers get away with murder and if they are dealing fentanyl, we have allowed them to become serial killers. They’ll continue dealing and taking lives of innocent victims, just like my daughter."
Over 200,000 Americans have overdosed and died from synthetic opioids like fentanyl since 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Wednesday, the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on the Border held a hearing on fighting the flow of fentanyl into the United States and examined the role of cartels responsible for the staggering rate of American deaths.
