Drug Reaction

Authorities on a campaign to crush the booming trade in illegal drugs from Mexico swept through an Orange County swap meet on Saturday and cited six vendors.

The operation is the latest step in a countywide effort to staunch the flow of illegal pharmaceuticals across the border, drugs such as those linked to the deaths of two toddlers and a teenager in the last two years.

“We hope the word spreads throughout Orange County,” said Lt. Ron Smith of the Costa Mesa Police Department.

Law enforcement officers swept through more than 200 booths at the weekend swap meet at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, looking for banned drugs, prescription medicines and other pharmaceuticals in a collaborative effort by Costa Mesa and Santa Ana police departments, the county district attorney’s office and the state health department.

When officers converged on a booth minded by Eloise Ruiz, she started screaming at them in Spanish. “Why are you doing this to us?” she asked. “We don’t sell drugs here. You may as well put us out of business.”

At Ruiz’s booth and four others, police seized hundreds of medicines, including steroid eye drops, penicillin lotions, anti-fungal creams, lice shampoos and birth control pills.

Pharmacist Ray Wilson, who works for the state health department, said most of these medicines pose only minor dangers.

But self-diagnosis of medical conditions and a lack of monitoring could lead to inappropriate treatments or potentially dangerous side effects. For example, an allergic reaction to penicillin could cause a rash or hives, or even choking.

Noticeably absent were the more dangerous injections and controlled substances, such as Valium or codeine, that also cross the border.

If anyone had offered to inject an officer, felony charges could have been filed, authorities said.

The six vendors cited face possible misdemeanor charges, punishable by a maximum fine of $2,000 and one year in County Jail. The district attorney’s office could file additional charges later.

The college also will ban the vendors from returning to the swap meet, a move that police say will serve as a deterrent to others.

Police hope the investigation will lead them to the larger players who bring the drugs into the country. “That’s the big hope--that it leads to the suppliers,” Smith said.

Swap meets, dress shops and other businesses in Southern California have long served as illicit pharmacies where shoppers can buy everything from penicillin injections to birth control.

Aside from being illegal, these back-room clinics are dangerous, authorities say. The safety of the drugs is questionable, as is the treatment received from unlicensed practitioners who act as medical professionals.

Two Orange County toddlers died in the last two years after receiving back-room injections, and a 15-year-old boy died in 1997 after treatment with medicine that also was allegedly obtained illegally.

The availability of the drugs, which often come from Mexico, has spurred Orange County government agencies and public health groups to tackle the problem in a number of ways, from advertising campaigns to multilingual, toll-free hotlines.

The suspects cited Saturday probably knew they were selling illegal products, but they may not have realized the inherent dangers, Smith said. And the customers who buy the pharmaceuticals at swap meets or back-room clinics often bought medicine that way in their homeland, where such sales are the cultural norm.

In Mexico, “the pharmacias are the ones that help you find out how to take care of yourself and your family,” he said. “But here, it’s illegal.”