09/03/2026
Throughout my campaign, I have spoken openly about my concerns regarding illegal drugs in the communities of Nye County. For me, this issue has never been about politics. It is about protecting our children, our families, and the communities we call home.
The fentanyl crisis should concern every one of us.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has described fentanyl as the deadliest drug threat the United States has ever faced and the nation’s greatest and most urgent drug threat.
According to the DEA’s most recent information, fentanyl remains the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18–45. It is approximately 50 times more potent than he**in and 100 times more potent than morphine. As little as two milligrams—the equivalent of only a few grains of salt—can be a potentially lethal dose.
One of the greatest dangers is that people may not even realize they are taking fentanyl. Illicit fentanyl is being pressed into counterfeit pills designed to look like legitimate medications such as oxycodone, Xanax, and Percocet. It is also being mixed with drugs such as co***ne, he**in, and methamphetamine.
DEA’s enforcement numbers demonstrate the enormous scale of this threat. In 2025 alone, DEA seized more than 47 million fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills and nearly 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, representing more than 369 million potentially lethal doses. As of August 17, 2026, DEA reported that its 2026 fentanyl seizures already represented more than 239 million potentially deadly doses.
Those numbers are staggering, but we can never allow them to become just statistics.
Behind every life lost is someone’s child. Someone’s mother or father. Someone’s brother or sister. Someone’s grandchild, grandparent, spouse, friend, or neighbor. Families across this country have experienced unimaginable loss because of fentanyl, and no community—including ours—is immune from this threat.
If elected Sheriff, one of my long-term goals is to work toward getting the Scorpion Drug Task Force operational again. I understand that rebuilding our drug-enforcement capabilities will take time. It requires adequate staffing, proper training, resources, planning, and strong partnerships. I will not make promises to the citizens of Nye County that cannot realistically be accomplished overnight.
I want the Nye County Sheriff’s Office to strengthen partnerships with local, state, and federal law-enforcement agencies, including the DEA. By working together, we can share intelligence, investigative resources, training, and expertise to identify and disrupt those responsible for bringing dangerous drugs into our communities.
As staffing improves and resources allow, I would also like to rebuild our ability to utilize trained undercover officers and conduct proactive drug investigations within Nye County.
Another long-term goal, when staffing and resources make it possible, is to establish a dedicated Highway Drug Interdiction Team. Major highways are commonly used to transport illegal narcotics from source areas to communities where those drugs are ultimately distributed. A properly trained interdiction team could work to identify and intercept illegal narcotics being transported along our highways before they ever reach their destination.
The impact of that work would extend beyond Nye County. A significant seizure made here could mean dangerous narcotics never reach another Nevada community or a neighboring state. Working cooperatively with other law-enforcement agencies would allow intelligence developed from those investigations to help identify larger trafficking networks and potentially stop additional shipments.
To me, successful drug interdiction isn’t simply about how many pounds of narcotics we seize or how many arrests we make. It’s about the people who never get the opportunity to use those drugs because law enforcement stopped them first.
If we can prevent even one counterfeit fentanyl pill or another dangerous narcotic from reaching a child, parent, grandparent, friend, or neighbor, we may prevent someone’s first use from becoming their last.
But enforcement alone will never solve this problem.
Education and prevention are equally important. We need parents talking to their children, schools and law enforcement educating our youth, community organizations providing resources, and all of us looking out for one another. Sometimes a conversation with a young person about the dangers of a counterfeit pill may be the conversation that saves their life.
Our children deserve to grow up in safe communities. Parents and grandparents should never have to experience the heartbreak of losing someone they love to a pill they didn’t even know contained fentanyl.
I know we cannot eliminate the drug problem in Nye County overnight, and I will never pretend that we can. Rebuilding specialized drug enforcement capabilities will require time, staffing, training, resources, and responsible planning.
But we can have a direction and a goal.
Through a renewed drug task force, proactive investigations, undercover enforcement when appropriate, highway drug interdiction, partnerships with local, state, and federal agencies, and a strong commitment to education and prevention, I believe we can make a difference.
Together, we can make this possible.
My commitment is simple: do everything reasonably within our power to intercept dangerous drugs before they reach our streets, keep them out of our schools, and protect the families of Nye County—and wherever possible, help prevent those same drugs from reaching families in communities beyond our county as well.
Because ultimately, this isn’t just about making arrests or seizing narcotics.
It’s about saving lives.
