History of Imperial Valley’s Century-Long Drug Crisis

HEROIN WASN’T BORN YESTERDAY –

July 10, 2023 – n 1944, Baja California governor, Gen. Juan Felipe Rico declared open war on opium trafficking after another massive amount of narcotics destined for California was seized in the Valley’s sister city of Mexicali.

On April 23, 1952, standing before the Kiwanis Club at Hotel De Anza, Customs Agent Rae V. Vader would share that the answer to the rapidly increasing use of narcotics among local teenagers was “not new laws, but education.”

In 1962, Detective Sergeant Joe Sutton ran for County Sheriff because of the rising threat of youth drug addiction and cited the 400% increase in juvenile arrests for drug possession over the previous decade.

In 1970, Dr. Thomas Hindle and several teenage addicts made a public plea before the Imperial County Board of Supervisors on the local need for treatment and rehabilitation services. One month later, while home on leave, Calexico’s 18-year old Navy seaman Dale Brundy would be found dead from an accidental overdose. His tragic death, the first from a local prominent family, spurred agencies countywide to take action.

Drugs and addiction were not just isolated to the Valley’s southern border, the 1977 annual local Methadone Report would refer to East-Side Brawley as the “heroin capital of the World.”