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And you can listen to my conversation with John on episode 1011 of the Behind the Shield

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podcast.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.

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As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on

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the show, author Sam Quinones.

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Now in our first conversation, which was episode 74, we talked about his book Dreamland, which

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took a deep dive into the opioid crisis in America, from the release of Oxycontin through

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to the infiltration of black tar heroin from the Mexican cartels.

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In this second conversation, we discuss his new book, The Least of Us, which takes a deep

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dive into the world of meth and fentanyl.

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So we discuss the origin stories of each of these drugs, some of the myths surrounding

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where they're coming from.

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And then to round off the conversation, as you will hear, there is a beautiful story

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of hope, where Portsmouth, Ohio, which was the subject of Dreamland, is now becoming

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a hub for recovery.

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So through community of healing groups and addiction counseling and even CrossFit gyms,

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addicts are finding their way back into the real world once more.

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Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment,

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go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and

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leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for

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others to find.

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And this is a free library of well over 1000 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so

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I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.

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So that being said, I welcome back onto the show Sam Quinones.

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Enjoy.

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Well Sam, I want to start by saying firstly, welcome back.

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The last time we spoke and I looked on my history was episode 74, which was over six

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years ago, almost seven years ago now.

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So I want to welcome you back onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.

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Well thanks so much.

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I really appreciate it James.

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Great to talk with you again.

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So where on planet Earth are we finding you this afternoon?

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Nashville Tennessee, about to go to Mexico in fact tomorrow for a meeting.

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I'm supposed to speak to a group of attorneys general from Mexican states and from US states.

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I'm looking forward to that.

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We'll see how that goes.

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Well while we're on that tangent, the first book that we discussed was Dreamland and you

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dove so deeply into not only the kind of opioid epidemic origin story of obviously the prescribed

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meds and Oxycontin, but then how the Mexican cartels took advantage of the void when that

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was shut down and then here we are.

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Since you wrote Dreamland with that area specifically when it comes to Mexico, are there any signs

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of improvement from that point of view or is it still growing like the snowball that

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we seem to see?

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It does not seem to me that there are important advances should we say and what especially

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needs to happen which is collaboration between the two countries.

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Each country has gotten used to just pointing a finger at the other guy when really this

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is a binational story.

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The last president of Mexico did not seem at all interested in dealing with this very

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important, binational problem and did not seem to be doing much about the cartels control,

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particularly the shipping lanes and ports and so on which is where they get chemicals

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to make the stuff that they inundate our country with.

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I would say that no politician, the current president, the future and last president,

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anybody has shown any interest in curtailing doing anything about the widespread sale of

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assault weapons that are part of what give the traffickers in Mexico the impunity to

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make the chemicals, I am sorry, to make the drugs that they now inundate the United States

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with and kill our people.

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They are essentially arming those bad actors down in Mexico to make the stuff that is killing

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us.

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I would say the one really nice thing that I was seeing I think when we spoke last, 2018,

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was that you were seeing a real awakening on this topic.

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I have to remind people what life was like when I was writing Dreamland because it was

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night and day.

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Nobody knew how to pronounce the word naloxone.

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If you were in a paramedic or ER, nobody knew how to pronounce that word.

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There were no lawsuits, active lawsuits against drug companies.

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Obituaries constantly didn't tell the truth about why people died.

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My publisher went around to take my story, my book proposal for Dreamland around to publishing

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houses in New York City, 15, 12, 15 or so.

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She found one publisher who wanted to publish such a book.

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That was 2012.

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So 13, 14, I am publishing it.

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When the book comes out, you begin to see what really needed to happen all along.

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The book allows for this to happen.

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I think I lived this in real life, in real time.

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All those people, particularly family members of addicted loved ones, felt now this kind

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of understanding that they were not alone.

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They had lived for years thinking they were all alone within a 10-mile radius, nobody

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but me.

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You begin to see all these people coming out of the shadows into the light, telling their

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stories in many, many different venues and ways.

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At church, on Facebook, in the newspaper, on and on and on.

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What that begins to do is ignite a nationwide awareness of what had been going on for many

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years, but it had come quiet because of people's own shame, embarrassment and all that.

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They began to lose that.

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What you begin to see is really one of the great grassroots movements of our time, except

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for that there's nobody in charge of it.

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There's no press spokesman or the president.

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It's just people coming out.

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Then you see all of these new lawsuits against drug companies, for example.

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You see all of this attention paid on.

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I lived that enormously in the years following Dreamland's release.

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I thought no one would ever read the book because nobody wanted to talk about it when

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I was writing it.

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Then it comes out and I ended up doing like 265 speeches between September of 2015 and

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when COVID hit about February 2020.

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It was a remarkable transformation.

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COVID put a damper on that, but I still think that it's part of the world.

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My book, Dreamland, subtitled as True Tales of America's Opiate Epidemic, I put opiate

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there because nobody knew back then what an opioid was.

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These are just examples of how things have changed and put this more or less on the front

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burner, although COVID really did a lot to push it in the back of this topic.

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Now of course, people are understanding that the story has dramatically changed and no

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longer are doctors and pharmaceutical companies the main sources of supply that has passed

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to traffickers in Mexico, particularly on the western side of Mexico.

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When you talk about the stigma, especially for overdose, what's sad is in the first responder

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professions, when we hear the word stigma, they're normally talking about suicide, the

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mental health element from that specific part.

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When it comes to overdose, I think there's still a huge amount of stigma, still a lot

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of guilt and shame because we're supposed to be these two-dimensional superheroes that

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never falter.

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I know just in my immediate area and where I last worked, three firefighters that died

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of an opioid overdose.

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I think sometimes in those first responder professions, you do see this idea like nobody

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should show weakness and this kind of thing.

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It's understandable and I want to say I appreciate that.

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As I'm just a member of regular society, I appreciate that people feel that way.

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It's a very strong feeling and worth acknowledging.

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It is, however, they are human beings and people need to understand that you cannot

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withstand every potent force, particularly if you are inundated with this day after day

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after day.

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That is really, I think, the big difference too between what we're seeing now in the last

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several years and what we're seeing, say, like 2010 or 2012 or 2014 when I was writing

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the book.

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I think that the overdose event is being treated and really witnessed on the street and largely

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by first responders, paramedics, firefighters, what have you, and in the ERs.

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To me, that is another way things have changed because this is no longer like someone taking

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a pill and being found dead in his bathroom.

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That happens, certainly.

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But a lot of it is going on on the street.

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You see people, paramedics, say applying dose after dose of Narcan and finally reviving

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the person five or six and then that person goes out and several hours later overdoses

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again.

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What you're finding is enormous numbers of overdoses per person, 15, 20, 30.

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That never happened before.

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That's largely because of the spread of Narcan, the availability of Narcan.

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I think it's also because we treat an overdose as something of free will.

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So we'll just let the guy go after that.

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And also I would say that a lot of it has to do with the nature of the drugs on the

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street now are illicit fentanyl, methamphetamine.

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And so the place where you're seeing it all play out is more likely on the street than

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in someone's bathroom in the suburban townhouse.

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When you mentioned about this evolution of your knowledge, when we first sat down, I

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remember on occasion kind of crossing the subject of the poppy fields, the opium fields

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in Afghanistan, and the veterans were very tight lipped.

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And I wasn't prying.

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It was just when it came up, you could just see this invisible door like slam.

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And then about four or five years ago, it was like someone just gave them free rein

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to just start talking about it.

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And we talk about all these kind of layers to this issue.

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For example, the US consumes 75% of the world's opioids, yet we make up 4% of the population.

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So supply and demand, I mean, that's why a lot of these countries are supplying us with

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this stuff.

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But also people don't realize even the war on terror, a lot of this terrorism in Afghanistan,

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the people that were trying to kill our soldiers, that was also being funded from opium.

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Right.

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I would say though, to that, I'm sure that there was an issue with folks who were stationed

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in Afghanistan getting addicted to heroin.

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However, I would say that really the heroin that was coming into this country by vast

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majority was from Mexico.

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And the reason is simply that heroin is a commodity.

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And a commodity, based on the cost of making and transporting the commodity is reflected

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in the price.

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And it's just so much cheaper for the heroin to come from Mexico than it is to come from

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10,000, 8,000 miles away or whatever Afghanistan is from across the other side of the world,

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crossing various continents and oceans and all this.

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Mexico is right here.

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Plus they have lots and lots of people who for many, many years learned how to plant,

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harvest and make opium poppies and make heroin from the goo that they harvest from it.

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And so I also have the feeling, frankly, the last few years have really kind of changed

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my mind.

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I was changing when I was writing Dreamland.

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No, I don't know if I ever told you, but I lived in Mexico for 10 years.

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I wrote my first two books before Dreamland, I wrote two books about Mexico.

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And I never wrote about drugs, but I lived down there for a long, long time, wrote about

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immigration, stuff like that.

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And when I was down there, because I didn't really deal with the drug world, because it

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was not the story it became when I was down there.

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And because I was all alone, I was a freelancer, I didn't want to get involved with drug traffickers

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and stuff like that.

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So if you had asked me back then, what is the reason we're seeing for all this?

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I would say, well, it's the demand for drugs in the United States and the supplies being

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backed by the drug.

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I no longer believe that.

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Particularly when it comes to opioids.

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Opioids, particularly, you know, beginning with the pills, the pain pills and all that,

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really was about supply inundating and creating demand.

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There are many places in the country where people were not, they were smoking marijuana,

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the kids were smoking marijuana, drinking beer at parties, and all of a sudden, boom,

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a big, big wave of pills comes.

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It never leaves.

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It's the massive prescribing.

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You see this enormous takeoff, you can say, of the supply of prescribing of these pain

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pills all across the country, like an airplane leaving the tarmac beginning about 1996.

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And it just doesn't stop.

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And that creates its own demand through inundation of supply because opioids create the kind

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of change in the brain chemistry that really other drugs do not because it really transforms

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you into an obedient servant of the dope.

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That I no longer believe that in this case, anyway, demand is sparking supply.

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I think it's quite the reverse.

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And I think absolutely with fentanyl, the same thing is true.

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Fentanyl is just a horribly more potent drug than heroin or morphine or oxycodone or hydrocodone

242
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or all the rest.

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Of course, fentanyl, I've had fentanyl in the surgery.

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Fentanyl is a magnificent surgical drug, revolutionized surgery in America in ways that the public

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really is aware, even though many people in the public have been given this during, like,

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I had a heart attack in 2017, they gave me fentanyl.

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The beauty of fentanyl, of course, and I know paramedics and firefighters know this deeply,

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is it takes you in and out very quickly of anesthesia.

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So you can manage people's pain more easily in the surgical setting and so on.

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That's exactly what makes it such a wonderful drug if you're a drug dealer and a drug trafficker

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because all of a sudden, someone who's on fentanyl has to use all day long.

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Fentanyl's no longer with heroin twice a day, maybe three times a day.

253
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No, now it's like six, eight times.

254
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You have to almost camp out near the drug dealer.

255
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And particularly if you get fentanyl in the supplies we're seeing have raised people's

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tolerances to stratospheric heights, much above, well above that heroin was able to

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do with the supplies we were seeing out of Mexico.

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And so it has transformed all that, but it's still, in my view, about supply creating demand.

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And with the supplies of fentanyl coming in, what ends up happening is people end up dying

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off fentanyl.

261
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I don't think you last more than two, three years on the street if you're using fentanyl.

262
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I think months really is the moral average lifespan.

263
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But other people are being, other addicts are being created, other customers being created.

264
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And so you see this group of people kind of dying and then others taking their place.

265
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And that's, I think, what we've seen really in the last, let's say, six, eight years since

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the Mexicans really took over production of fentanyl, I would say about 2017, roughly

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around in there, 2016, a little bit.

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You began to see this.

269
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But I really believe that the issue now is supply creating demand merely because of the

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enormous supplies we're seeing and the nature of the drug, in particular fentanyl, and before

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00:19:56,640 --> 00:19:58,960
that, of course, the prescription pain pills.

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00:19:58,960 --> 00:20:04,080
Well, as you wrote about in your first book, as they detailed, or Beth Macy detailed in

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Dopesick, what was beautiful about both of your perspectives was you have this flooding

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of this drug, but it ties in with a kind of decaying mental health in certain communities,

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especially when there was a thriving industry that was snatched from them a couple of decades

276
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prior.

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So before we dive into, because I already want to get the history of both of the drugs

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you've written about this time, talk to me about some of the common denominators that

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you've seen where this flooding of any drug is that really kind of grasping hold of these

280
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communities?

281
00:20:37,980 --> 00:20:42,600
I would say all this begins, and I was, before I started any of this, I really didn't know

282
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much about it.

283
00:20:43,600 --> 00:20:47,720
And as I was talking to people initially, they were explaining it to me and I was like,

284
00:20:47,720 --> 00:20:54,800
huh, okay, so this is about economic devastation because it hits first in Rust Belt areas,

285
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Appalachia, areas with real long term economic decline, parts of Maine, parts of New Mexico,

286
00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:03,920
you know, so on.

287
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And that is true.

288
00:21:05,160 --> 00:21:08,560
All of that is absolutely true.

289
00:21:08,560 --> 00:21:13,280
And I think the reason it starts there is because the pharmaceutical companies had data

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showing that in those areas, doctors were used to prescribing lots of pills because

291
00:21:18,600 --> 00:21:20,760
they didn't have any other solution.

292
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They were seeing people come to them with all kinds of pain.

293
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Part of it was physical.

294
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You could treat medically, theoretically you could treat it anyway.

295
00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:34,320
And but the other part was economic and emotional pain, losing your job.

296
00:21:34,320 --> 00:21:39,000
These are people that a lot of these doctors knew, sometimes given birth to, you know,

297
00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:46,520
and so you began to see as the Rust Belt phenomenon sets in, reliance on doctors for workers'

298
00:21:46,520 --> 00:21:50,600
comp coverage, all this kind of stuff.

299
00:21:50,600 --> 00:21:56,040
The doctors were about the only, you know, institution and service worker that they could

300
00:21:56,040 --> 00:21:57,720
go to.

301
00:21:57,720 --> 00:22:01,700
Doctors were reluctant to say no and toughen up and all that kind of stuff.

302
00:22:01,700 --> 00:22:04,680
And so what you began to see is a lot of doctors began to prescribe all kinds of things.

303
00:22:04,680 --> 00:22:06,680
At first, I think it was diet pills, really.

304
00:22:06,680 --> 00:22:10,960
I mean, this was before the prescription pills in some of these areas.

305
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:20,080
But then you begin to see more and more the pain pills take hold as the idea begins to

306
00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:24,320
gain traction in modern American medicine that pain was a problem.

307
00:22:24,320 --> 00:22:31,320
We had to treat it and that there was no risk of addiction if you were a pain patient.

308
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:36,800
And to me, that was one of the bizarre, more bizarre conclusions I'd ever heard.

309
00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:44,200
And I think in time, we came to realize that as a complete delusion, not that everybody

310
00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:49,520
gets addicted, but that you need to pay attention to the individual and individual stories really

311
00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:55,680
background and so on really, really matter in all this.

312
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:59,200
And so that's what you began to see.

313
00:22:59,200 --> 00:23:05,680
I would say, though, that by the time I got into this story, which was at first writing

314
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:11,720
about heroin in 2009 for the Los Angeles Times and then writing the book in about 2012, 13,

315
00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:17,840
14, it was clear that it had spread the promise spread far beyond those areas I mentioned

316
00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:24,240
really to very well to do suburbs of Indianapolis, of Charlotte, North Carolina, with its nice

317
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:31,280
new skyline and its new sports teams and suburbs of Phoenix, all these different places that

318
00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:33,480
had not had this economic problem.

319
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:39,200
And so to me, the common denominator, economic devastation was part of the story in some

320
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:40,200
areas.

321
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:44,520
But really, I think the real common denominator was that all across the country, this was

322
00:23:44,520 --> 00:23:53,840
a beginnings and a reflection of symptom of our deep isolation and loneliness as a culture,

323
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:55,640
as a people.

324
00:23:55,640 --> 00:24:01,360
And that is what you found in all those well to do areas, rust belt areas, very, very poor

325
00:24:01,360 --> 00:24:05,880
neighborhoods, rural New Mexico and so on.

326
00:24:05,880 --> 00:24:09,400
That's what you found as the common denominator.

327
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:12,400
And we kind of had this feeling like, well, we're prosperous.

328
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:13,400
We don't need other people.

329
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:16,840
It was easier to be in our homes, on our screens, et cetera, et cetera.

330
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:25,600
To me, that is where I began to really see a difference.

331
00:24:25,600 --> 00:24:29,480
It showed me that what people had told me initially was not incorrect.

332
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:30,600
It was true.

333
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:32,840
But there was a whole lot more to it.

334
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:33,840
Absolutely.

335
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:37,260
I've said this in the books that I wrote too.

336
00:24:37,260 --> 00:24:43,200
When you take a step back and look at the insanity that is someone feeling so, so lonely

337
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:46,200
yet surrounded by millions of people in a city.

338
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:48,800
I think Johan Hari said it best when he talked about addiction.

339
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:52,120
He said the opposite of addiction is not sobriety.

340
00:24:52,120 --> 00:24:54,000
The opposite of addiction is connection.

341
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:56,000
And I couldn't agree more.

342
00:24:56,000 --> 00:24:57,000
Yeah.

343
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:58,000
Right.

344
00:24:58,000 --> 00:24:59,000
Yeah.

345
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:00,000
Community.

346
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:01,540
That's the way I put it in Dreamland was it's about community.

347
00:25:01,540 --> 00:25:07,760
It's about finding the kinds of connections with people to find that kind of common denominator

348
00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:09,340
with other folks.

349
00:25:09,340 --> 00:25:17,080
And one of the things that our political polarization has really done, do I think in no small part

350
00:25:17,080 --> 00:25:25,640
to really corrosive social media, is make it seem like we have nothing in common.

351
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:27,660
And increasingly that's borne out.

352
00:25:27,660 --> 00:25:30,800
People believe it and then act on it and so on.

353
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:39,400
And I feel like part of what's going on here is that community aspect that actually existed

354
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:45,960
very strongly, particularly in many towns has been just beaten down.

355
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:46,960
Absolutely.

356
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:52,760
Well, I want to get to the origin story of each of the two drugs that we're going to

357
00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:54,880
talk about today, the two synthetic drugs.

358
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:58,720
So seeing as we talked about opioids already, let's start with fentanyl.

359
00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:01,280
It was in my drug box later in my paramedic career.

360
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:03,120
I used it as a painkiller.

361
00:26:03,120 --> 00:26:06,080
And even as you said, with the cardiac patients, it doesn't drop the blood pressure.

362
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:09,640
So it was a very safe drug for us to use from that point as well.

363
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:12,000
That's another one of the reasons why it should be used.

364
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:13,000
Absolutely.

365
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:14,720
So in its place, great drug.

366
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:19,360
So talk to me about the origin of the drug and then let's get to how it started finding

367
00:26:19,360 --> 00:26:23,600
itself on the streets and then the different synthetic versions of it.

368
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:24,600
Yeah.

369
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:29,280
I mean, it was invented by Paul Janssen, Belgian chemist, a brilliant, brilliant scientific

370
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:32,480
mind who invented many drugs that have benefited mankind.

371
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:33,960
In fact, fentanyl was one of them.

372
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:42,400
It allowed for surgeries in a much safer way, as you said, than morphine and other opioids

373
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:43,400
and so on.

374
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:50,840
And it dramatically transformed surgery and cardiac surgery in particular.

375
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:55,160
It was real, he understood how potent it was, how addictive it could be.

376
00:26:55,160 --> 00:27:00,240
But he thought that if you kept control of the supply, again, it's about supply, if you

377
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,200
kept control of supply in the operating room, it would not be a problem.

378
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:08,360
The problem was in the United States in the 70s, certainly, the supplies of fentanyl were

379
00:27:08,360 --> 00:27:09,900
not controlled.

380
00:27:09,900 --> 00:27:16,040
And so the first people to grow addicted to fentanyl were anesthesiologists in the operating

381
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:21,880
rooms because they just had easier access to it, and I interviewed two of those fellows

382
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:27,480
many years, of course, later after they were on to other careers and other specialties

383
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:29,600
and so on.

384
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:35,560
Fentanyl then, from a number of years, is kind of the purview of the wacky underground

385
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:41,200
chemist who figures out, hey, if I can make this and make a lot of money.

386
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:48,080
And so you begin to see occasional little outbreaks of fentanyl overdoses, a lot of

387
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:55,320
them emanating from Southern California, San Francisco, Orange County, et cetera.

388
00:27:55,320 --> 00:28:00,040
But that was small, and once they arrested the person, it became kind of not that hard

389
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,040
to find who it was.

390
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:07,280
Once they did, the spate of death dropped off.

391
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:12,920
In 2006, however, and this is something I read about at some great length in the least

392
00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:19,280
of us, the Sinoloid drug cartel figures out, an element of the Sinoloid drug cartel figures

393
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:24,280
out that there is such a thing as fentanyl, which they first call eroina sintetica, synthetic

394
00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:26,120
heroin.

395
00:28:26,120 --> 00:28:30,520
They're told by this, and it's produced for them by, again, one of these rogue chemists

396
00:28:30,520 --> 00:28:35,800
who produces fentanyl in San Diego for some time, goes to prison for 15 years where he

397
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:39,840
learns in federal prison, where he learns how to make fentanyl better, gets out, is

398
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:41,240
deported because he's Mexican.

399
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:44,120
He's really grown up all his life in America, but he's Mexican.

400
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:45,120
They deport him.

401
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:48,560
The Sinoloid drug cartel grabs him and hires him.

402
00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:52,900
What they really want him to make is a fedron because they feel that the Mexican government

403
00:28:52,900 --> 00:28:56,720
is about to crack down on all the supplies of a fedron that they allow to be imported

404
00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:59,720
into Mexico, which did happen.

405
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:07,840
So he goes along with this, they pay for all his fancy glassware and a place in Toluca,

406
00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:11,560
which is an industrial town not far from Mexico City.

407
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:16,360
He sets up this lookalike chemical company and he begins to make fentanyl.

408
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:20,120
They figure out that he's not making a fedron and he has to set them down and say, look,

409
00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:21,120
here's the thing.

410
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:22,120
You don't understand.

411
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:28,800
What I made for you is the most potent, profitable drug you are ever going to find.

412
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:31,000
At first they don't get it, then they get it.

413
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:32,000
Then they get it.

414
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:39,400
He begins to ship quantities, kilos, or they begin through him to ship quantities of fentanyl

415
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:40,760
to Chicago.

416
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:45,400
And Chicago then, the gangs in South Chicago begin to get it and they begin to ship it

417
00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:51,200
to St. Louis, eventually Detroit, Philadelphia, and this is where you find the first mass

418
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:52,200
die off.

419
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:54,920
Again, this is all what I wrote about in the book.

420
00:29:54,920 --> 00:30:02,160
The first mass die off to fentanyl, deaths just rise crazy in all these areas.

421
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:09,360
Then DEA and Mexican military bust his lab in spring of 2006.

422
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:17,000
So the lab is going for about, I think, like 10 months, something like that.

423
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:21,660
And he just shipped 10 kilos of the stuff just before the bust.

424
00:30:21,660 --> 00:30:22,720
They put him in prison.

425
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:24,320
They shut the lab down.

426
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:28,840
That 10 kilos works its way, continues to kill for another several months, and finally

427
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:29,840
tapers off.

428
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:36,280
But you see this very well defined death toll, beginning with the lab and then ending with

429
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:38,400
its bust.

430
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:46,440
With that, the Mexican drug cartel begins to figure out that they don't have to grow

431
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:48,120
poppies anymore.

432
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:51,640
They don't have to harvest goo from the bulbs.

433
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:56,280
They could just make this stuff, and they can make it very easily because it's not that

434
00:30:56,280 --> 00:30:57,280
hard.

435
00:30:57,280 --> 00:31:00,480
They figure out it's not that hard to make.

436
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:05,920
Several years past, this is one element of the Sinalo-Jour cartel, but soon enough, they

437
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:06,920
begin to figure it out.

438
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:14,680
And they begin to buy it from the Chinese chemical companies in China, where Paul Jansen

439
00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:20,080
in 1985 signed an agreement with the government there to allow chemical companies to make

440
00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:21,200
fentanyl.

441
00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:24,040
He wanted to make it himself, but they say, no, we're not going to allow that, but we're

442
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:25,600
going to cut you in on the profits.

443
00:31:25,600 --> 00:31:26,600
So he says, OK.

444
00:31:26,600 --> 00:31:31,840
They've been making fentanyl since 1985 in China, so people know how to do this.

445
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:37,680
And they begin to ship to Mexicans as well as other dealers in the states where the opioid

446
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:43,540
epidemic really started, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, stuff like that.

447
00:31:43,540 --> 00:31:45,480
They begin to ship fentanyl.

448
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:48,880
And then along the way, they begin to figure out, hey, you know what we really need?

449
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:50,720
We can do this all ourselves.

450
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:56,640
And they begin to get shipments of the chemicals, some of which are very, very easy to transform

451
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:59,640
into fentanyl.

452
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:09,320
And that is really when it's just China sending little packages to dope dealers in Ohio and

453
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:11,880
so on, you see fentanyl begin to hit.

454
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:15,400
And you see these horrible clusters of overdoses.

455
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:20,700
But it doesn't move beyond those areas really for a couple, three years until the Mexicans

456
00:32:20,700 --> 00:32:25,360
really get involved in making it, not just in buying it, but in making it.

457
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:30,000
And they take advantage of the fact that they have control through the corruption in Mexico.

458
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:36,120
They have control over the shipping ports where they can get this stuff and Mexico City

459
00:32:36,120 --> 00:32:37,120
Airport as well.

460
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:43,080
And so all of this stuff begins to come to a head about 2017 and 18.

461
00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:45,140
And you begin to see fentanyl.

462
00:32:45,140 --> 00:32:47,200
Now fentanyl goes nationwide.

463
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:53,440
Both coasts starts in the opioid belt, let's say, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, what's

464
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:54,920
ever what not.

465
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,200
But then really it takes off.

466
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:02,800
Once the supply explodes, as everybody figures out they can make this stuff, the demand,

467
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,120
the purchase of heroin in Mexico collapses.

468
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,240
Heroin opium poppies are in complete depression.

469
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:15,120
Most of them probably have gotten out of it by now because there's just no demand from

470
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:19,480
the trafficking world anyway for opium poppies.

471
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:25,160
And so what we begin to see is what we're seeing now, which is drug dealers understanding,

472
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:26,920
hey, you could put fentanyl in almost anything.

473
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:29,680
It's so cheap, so easy, real big boost.

474
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:34,840
Plus, plus the big, big benefit is it will create addicts.

475
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:39,600
That person who buys cocaine from you every weekend is pretty soon going to be a stone

476
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:44,280
fentanyl addict buying from you six, eight times a day if the supply continues.

477
00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:46,800
And that is kind of the recognition.

478
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:49,800
A lot of people view fentanyl as like their lottery ticket.

479
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:52,120
All of a sudden I can sell this stuff.

480
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:58,360
And if I sell methamphetamine, one woman told me my boyfriend would sell methamphetamine

481
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:02,680
without fentanyl for a certain price and he would double the price if the methamphetamine

482
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:03,680
had fentanyl in it.

483
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:05,260
So you see it is like this.

484
00:34:05,260 --> 00:34:06,260
It kills people.

485
00:34:06,260 --> 00:34:07,260
Yeah.

486
00:34:07,260 --> 00:34:11,960
But in the underworld, in the drug world, it is not the danger, the warning sign.

487
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:21,120
It is actually this enormously profitable new drug that just takes over.

488
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:24,140
Of course, people in that world don't know what they're doing.

489
00:34:24,140 --> 00:34:26,440
They don't know how to mix it very well and so on.

490
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:30,400
And so for a lot of years, you began to see people dying because of the bad mix.

491
00:34:30,400 --> 00:34:34,720
Now I think you see people dying because they still haven't figured out what's in these

492
00:34:34,720 --> 00:34:35,720
drugs.

493
00:34:35,720 --> 00:34:38,240
I think largely though that is curtailed too now.

494
00:34:38,240 --> 00:34:40,780
People know on the street.

495
00:34:40,780 --> 00:34:44,320
There's no line of cocaine in America that you could trust not to have fentanyl in it

496
00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:45,320
these days.

497
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:52,280
Any pill you get at a party or something like that, it's very likely to have fentanyl not

498
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:54,560
be a legit pharmaceutical.

499
00:34:54,560 --> 00:35:01,400
So this is very briefly the story of fentanyl as it was figured out, as it began in the

500
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:07,540
Mexican world, which is really in 2005 and 2006 as I wrote about in the book.

501
00:35:07,540 --> 00:35:12,840
With the supply and demand element, this is one of the things that I think will happen

502
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:18,600
if we are able to make a huge improvement on the mental health of Americans, is that

503
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:22,560
that demand will start dwindling and therefore it will have an impact on the crime in the

504
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:24,820
countries that supply in us.

505
00:35:24,820 --> 00:35:32,400
With these farmers now not having that need for opium poppies anymore, what are you hearing

506
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:33,400
that they're doing now?

507
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,600
Is that becoming marijuana again or is it even coffee or avocados?

508
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:37,880
I'm not sure.

509
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:39,880
I know marijuana, I don't think is.

510
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:42,680
With the legalization here, I don't think marijuana is the drug.

511
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:47,920
I think a lot of people are returning to subsistence farming maybe.

512
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:53,660
Heroin really has been in depression since well before COVID in Mexico, a couple of years

513
00:35:53,660 --> 00:35:55,960
at least before COVID.

514
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,000
Because very clearly no one wants to buy our stuff.

515
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:03,960
They just want to buy the synthetic stuff, is what they say.

516
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:10,600
I would say that fentanyl being easy to make and not terribly cumbersome to make, certainly

517
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:13,520
not you have to plant anything.

518
00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:17,680
The many, many people now are getting involved in making it and have learned how to make

519
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:18,680
it.

520
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:19,680
It's not like a difficult thing.

521
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:24,400
You can see in YouTube videos of people like it's like a backyard barbecue almost.

522
00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:30,720
So you get all of that going and you get the supply of the what really is this is about

523
00:36:30,720 --> 00:36:35,360
is the supply of ingredients just being almost unfettered.

524
00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:41,000
And again, this is due to Mexico, in my opinion, Mexico's complete unwillingness to do anything

525
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:42,000
about it.

526
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:48,480
It seems at least in certain areas of great power in the Mexican government seem unwilling

527
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:50,120
to do this.

528
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:52,800
I don't think that that's a universally held idea.

529
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,480
I think a lot of people, particularly lower levels of law enforcement would be really

530
00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,360
happy to go after this stuff.

531
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:03,560
That's my impression anyway, having known Mexican law enforcement, we paint them all

532
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:04,560
as corrupt.

533
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:05,560
I don't think that's true.

534
00:37:05,560 --> 00:37:11,280
There's a lot of folks who are really, really brave and fighting a fight that is really

535
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:12,560
remarkable.

536
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,840
But the locus of power is like, well, I don't know.

537
00:37:15,840 --> 00:37:20,800
So we're going to see now whether the current president, the new president, whether the

538
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:25,360
first woman president of Mexico is willing to do more than her predecessor.

539
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:28,020
The problem is her predecessor is kind of her mentor.

540
00:37:28,020 --> 00:37:33,280
So I think a lot of us are kind of going, oh, OK, let's see what happens here.

541
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:36,400
And then it's a big question of what Donald Trump will do as well.

542
00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:41,300
Well, this is the thing even with his VP going to be JD Vance.

543
00:37:41,300 --> 00:37:45,160
He wrote a book and there's a film made about the addiction in his family.

544
00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:49,380
But I didn't hear an ounce of that mentioned during this whole campaign.

545
00:37:49,380 --> 00:37:54,560
So I hope that he will then take up the torch and make this a very, very front and center

546
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:55,560
conversation.

547
00:37:55,560 --> 00:38:00,400
But again, Mexico, the US, we have that government corruption, too.

548
00:38:00,400 --> 00:38:02,520
Just look at the Oxycontin story.

549
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:08,960
We just had MDMA refused as a therapeutic drug for PTSD along with counseling, not prescribed

550
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:10,080
MDMA.

551
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:15,200
And yet the FDA approved Oxycontin, which created this problem in the first place.

552
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:16,200
Correct.

553
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:21,840
And fentanyl went nationwide in the first Donald Trump administration.

554
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:24,480
It got much, much worse during the Biden administration.

555
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:32,080
So by the time COVID came around in early 2020, there was fentanyl on the East Coast,

556
00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:36,520
West Coast, all throughout the country by then, as well as methamphetamine.

557
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:42,400
And then it got worse and then it got worse and on and on through the Biden administration.

558
00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:48,840
Neither one has been able to really deal with this problem in the way that it probably needs

559
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:49,840
to be.

560
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:57,080
And so my feeling is I'm going to, I guess, wait and see, because I do believe that this

561
00:38:57,080 --> 00:38:59,960
is something that we need to be addressing, needs to be.

562
00:38:59,960 --> 00:39:04,600
I did not hear anybody, neither Harris nor Trump, talk about this in the way it needs

563
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:05,600
to be.

564
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:07,640
It needs to be front and center.

565
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:13,800
And it could be a marvelous example of how the countries could actually learn to work

566
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:14,800
together.

567
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:19,300
What a concept.

568
00:39:19,300 --> 00:39:26,040
And I think could make a huge difference in the supply because the traffickers have painted

569
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:28,420
themselves into a corner.

570
00:39:28,420 --> 00:39:36,480
They now rely for their profits on a few shipping ports, a relatively small number of shipping

571
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:41,400
ports, particularly on the West Coast of Mexico, where all these chemicals come from.

572
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:47,520
Well, now, if you really set about inspecting those shipping ports and the shipments that

573
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:53,640
come in and you have the manpower and they're mobilized and they're well paid, I suspect

574
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:57,560
that you can do a whole lot about the shipments that are coming in.

575
00:39:57,560 --> 00:39:59,760
Might they ship to another country?

576
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:00,760
Yeah.

577
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:01,760
OK, so good.

578
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:04,220
Do it somewhere else.

579
00:40:04,220 --> 00:40:07,520
Make it far more difficult to get to the United States if they do that.

580
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:11,860
And it's also about every country has to take responsibility for their own, again, which

581
00:40:11,860 --> 00:40:16,800
is why I also bring up the issue of the weapons, the assault weapons that are sold so wantonly,

582
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:18,400
I think, in this country.

583
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:22,120
Almost anybody who's 18 and over could get one of these things and so many of those guns

584
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:26,480
go south into the hands of the same people who are making this stuff.

585
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:30,000
I've had a couple of ATF agents that have mentioned, I think it was with the Fast and

586
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:37,440
Furious whistleblowing element where the CIA, if I'm not mistaken, had sold a load of weapons

587
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:40,720
to people in Mexico, cartels, I believe.

588
00:40:40,720 --> 00:40:43,080
And I might be misquoting, but it was something to do with that.

589
00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:49,880
And again, you hear of stories of CIA telling people to burn one poppy field in Afghanistan,

590
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:52,120
not to burn another one in Afghanistan.

591
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:54,960
So you have to ask yourself why.

592
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:58,400
My understanding was about Fast and Furious was it was the ATF that did that.

593
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:01,720
But I don't remember and I don't want to be misquoted.

594
00:41:01,720 --> 00:41:08,600
But yeah, an agency of the US government sold those guns, I think, wanting to kind of track

595
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:10,840
where they went.

596
00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:12,000
And then it just got out of hand.

597
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:13,200
It was a sad thing.

598
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:19,520
However, I would say this, a really great person to follow on Twitter is a guy by the

599
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:22,160
name of Michael Humphries.

600
00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:30,640
He is the head of customs down in Nogales, Arizona.

601
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:35,880
And he had Michael Humphries, H-U-M-P-H-R-I-E-S.

602
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:44,480
And he puts up remarkable, remarkable tweets, posts of what they seize.

603
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:46,160
And mostly it's drugs.

604
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:51,640
It's huge, colossal numbers of pills containing only found in counterfeit pills coming from

605
00:41:51,640 --> 00:41:56,680
Mexico, and certain quantities of methamphetamine as well.

606
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:01,960
But he also, with some regularity, puts up the numbers of guns seized and pictures of

607
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:02,960
those guns.

608
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:05,560
And they're almost all assault weapons, of course, ammunition, stuff like that.

609
00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:08,160
And they're like fancy pistols, et cetera, as well.

610
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:13,800
But to me, this is a binational problem.

611
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,600
And both countries need to wise up.

612
00:42:16,600 --> 00:42:22,760
To me, I think we need to do something about those guns going south.

613
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:25,000
Really, really do something.

614
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:29,440
It is absolutely like you might as well be sending the guns to ISIS.

615
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:39,400
You're just arming these very, very nefarious, very diabolical, really, characters, damaging,

616
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:42,360
devastating to Mexico, devastating to the United States.

617
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:45,960
And we really need to understand that as well.

618
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:49,480
I'm almost certain that at least one of my guests, if not more, have mentioned as well,

619
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:55,260
that the average regular law-abiding citizen in Mexico has an extremely hard time of getting

620
00:42:55,260 --> 00:42:56,260
a weapon.

621
00:42:56,260 --> 00:42:59,680
You've got the underworld armed to the teeth, and you've got the regular people that are

622
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:02,440
extremely vulnerable by that point.

623
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:03,440
That's absolutely right.

624
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:10,040
Yeah, I think most of the guns, those guns are deemed as lawful possession only by the

625
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:15,280
Mexican military, which is another, by the way, another source of weapons to the cartels.

626
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:16,880
I think it should be noted.

627
00:43:16,880 --> 00:43:19,360
It's a very important source as well.

628
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:25,680
But I would say that we are just a remarkable source of those guns.

629
00:43:25,680 --> 00:43:29,640
Another thing I think where there's a huge disservice, I think that we do a very poor

630
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:35,200
job and you talked about that polarization of political camps, of just understanding

631
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:37,200
the origin story.

632
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:40,480
You hear the rhetoric of homelessness, I will just move them to a different jurisdiction

633
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:41,480
and addiction.

634
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:42,800
Oh, it's a waste of Narcan.

635
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:47,480
All this, supposedly a lot of these people coming from religious buildings prior to that,

636
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:48,960
which that just blows my mind.

637
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:54,280
I don't think Jesus or Buddha would talk that way personally.

638
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:58,560
When you look at immigration, it's build a wall, keep these illegals out, rapists and

639
00:43:58,560 --> 00:43:59,920
murderers.

640
00:43:59,920 --> 00:44:04,000
But no one's asking, well, why are people fleeing this country in the first place?

641
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:08,280
Some I understand might purely be economic and wanting to live in this country and the

642
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:09,280
kind of American dream.

643
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:11,180
I mean, I'm from England, that's what brought me here.

644
00:44:11,180 --> 00:44:13,200
So there's no judgment in that at all.

645
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:18,120
But there's got to also be an element of the danger that a lot of these people are in and

646
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:20,160
wanting to flee somewhere safer.

647
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:26,560
So what impact would improving the country of Mexico and empowering them to improve themselves

648
00:44:26,560 --> 00:44:30,120
have on the immigration issue we have in America?

649
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:31,520
Well, I think a lot.

650
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:32,960
I think a lot, of course.

651
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:34,440
And now that's a complicated issue.

652
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:38,080
I've written about that for a lot of years.

653
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:42,160
And immigration is a solution for the person.

654
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:47,400
It's not necessarily a solution for the area that person is leaving.

655
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:54,080
And I would say that a lot of why people are leaving now, I have them down there to report

656
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:59,720
on this, but it is definitely my strong hunch that the drug violence is a big reason why

657
00:44:59,720 --> 00:45:04,480
people are leaving from certain areas.

658
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:07,960
Michoacan, for example, Zacatecas, places like that.

659
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:11,520
I've seen Alois, certainly.

660
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:14,000
I would say that this goes back a long way.

661
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:20,040
One of the things that I realized when I was working in Mexico and writing about immigration

662
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:25,400
was how many people left because of the absence of the rule of law.

663
00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:27,440
Everybody's poor.

664
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:29,520
From certain areas, everyone's poor.

665
00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:32,080
Why do certain people leave?

666
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:34,720
Sometimes it's because they got the energy and the gumption, and they're like, hey, I'm

667
00:45:34,720 --> 00:45:39,760
not going to accept this deal that life dealt me.

668
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:45,600
Those are really motivated, energized people, the kind of immigrants who come always to

669
00:45:45,600 --> 00:45:53,520
the United States and have for many decades or centuries.

670
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:57,440
There's also a lot of people, part of that, though, is also the absence of the rule of

671
00:45:57,440 --> 00:45:58,440
law and murder.

672
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:01,920
I found so many people left.

673
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:06,280
The deciding factor of why they would leave was that someone in their family was murdered

674
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:10,840
in a family fugitive place in some small area.

675
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:17,180
As soon as you dig in deep into people's lives, you find with some remarkable regularity how

676
00:46:17,180 --> 00:46:18,840
much murder was part of the thing.

677
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:22,340
This was a lot of the reporting I was doing was long before the drug war.

678
00:46:22,340 --> 00:46:27,840
This was just family problems and absence of law of any kind in small villages and this

679
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,920
kind of thing, little ranchos.

680
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:36,200
That was definitely part of the story.

681
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:43,760
Now of course, it's just magnified enormously by the drug cartel wanton violence and of

682
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:49,880
course, the weapons that they happen to have access to, a lot of which came from here.

683
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:51,560
What about addiction itself?

684
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:57,160
Are you seeing a lot of addiction amongst the Mexican people themselves?

685
00:46:57,160 --> 00:47:01,400
I would say that I'm not sure because I haven't been down there recently.

686
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:07,520
I did think, I would say this, the Mexican government under the previous president, Andres

687
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:16,080
Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO to almost everybody, used to claim that fentanyl was

688
00:47:16,080 --> 00:47:22,320
not made in Mexico and we don't have a problem here in Mexico with fentanyl.

689
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:27,120
Then there was this very interesting story in the Los Angeles Times recounting the story

690
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:31,320
of the medical examiner of the city of Mexicali.

691
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:40,400
Actually right across from Calexico and the southern border with California and Mexico.

692
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:47,400
He decided this medical examiner, in Mexico when they take a body and the medical examiners

693
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:55,480
do not do toxicology, do not do blood studies of what's in the corpse's blood as there's

694
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:59,320
a routine here in the United States.

695
00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:03,120
At least in most counties, a lot of counties can't afford to do it, but a lot of counties,

696
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:07,160
most that I've encountered do.

697
00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:08,920
They don't do that in Mexico.

698
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:13,320
Any claim that we don't have a problem with fentanyl is ludicrous if you're not checking

699
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:15,520
for fentanyl in the corpses.

700
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:20,900
This guy did for a year, I think it was 22 to 23 or something like that.

701
00:48:20,900 --> 00:48:23,160
Maybe it's 23 to 24, I can't remember now.

702
00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:29,480
But the LA Times wrote a story about this guy and he tested everybody that he came through

703
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:37,000
his office and found that 23% of them had fentanyl in the system, which makes total

704
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:43,040
sense because if you're making it and supply is an issue, to me it made total sense.

705
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:44,660
People are going to be using what's available.

706
00:48:44,660 --> 00:48:49,360
The supply is the story.

707
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:51,300
What is the number for other cities?

708
00:48:51,300 --> 00:48:54,880
I don't know, Mexican MEs still don't have to do that.

709
00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:57,560
So I had to do those toxicology reports.

710
00:48:57,560 --> 00:49:06,160
But to me that felt like, just wise up, just admit to yourself that this is a problem and

711
00:49:06,160 --> 00:49:10,400
that the problem is, I think the problem and one of the things I'm going to have to tell

712
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:16,640
the AGs I'm going to talk to from Mexico tomorrow is that the idea is not demand creating supply.

713
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:22,880
The idea is supply creating demand and we'll see how that goes over.

714
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:28,280
Also, if you think about what they've endured, especially at the border towns, this last

715
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:33,520
couple of decades at least, you've got this supply and then as we talked about with cities

716
00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:38,280
in America that lost industry, now you've got this trauma, arguably multi-generational

717
00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:39,280
trauma.

718
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:43,440
Each of these deaths obviously creates orphans and widows and all the things.

719
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:48,440
So you've got this vicious circle of two of the known compounding elements, the reason

720
00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:51,800
to fill a void and the substance to fill that void.

721
00:49:51,800 --> 00:50:00,000
No, all of this is part of the issue and that's why more than ever we need collaboration

722
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:03,760
in deep ways that we have never achieved so far.

723
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:11,440
No president in my lifetime, going back to the mid-90s, has made Mexico the kind of priority

724
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:13,920
it needs to be made of.

725
00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:18,140
When we make Mexico a priority and that means understanding Mexico, understanding their

726
00:50:18,140 --> 00:50:24,880
constraints and their background and being a partner with Mexico instead of constantly

727
00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:32,880
stamping our feet as we would with an errant child, I think then you will find Mexicans

728
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:37,600
more likely to be willing to work with the United States.

729
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:43,800
The problem is, I would say this on both sides really, if you're not a migrant, if you don't

730
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:48,960
live on the US-Mexico border, you have complete ignorance with regard to the other country.

731
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:56,120
I would love to have a congress filled with people, filled with congressmen who can answer

732
00:50:56,120 --> 00:51:01,980
the following question, what are the six states that border, the Mexican states that border

733
00:51:01,980 --> 00:51:02,980
the United States?

734
00:51:02,980 --> 00:51:05,240
This is basic geography.

735
00:51:05,240 --> 00:51:09,280
If you find people on the border can do it, but mostly most folks don't.

736
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:10,280
That's crazy.

737
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:11,280
We have a 2,000 mile border.

738
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:15,240
We have free trade agreement so far anyway.

739
00:51:15,240 --> 00:51:22,840
We have all these problems in common and yet we have this idea that this country doesn't

740
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:23,840
matter.

741
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:27,880
We should have the same exact relationship with Mexico that we have with England, the

742
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:28,880
UK.

743
00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:38,040
It's that important to us and we and they have found all kinds of reasons why not to

744
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:39,040
do that.

745
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:43,920
I would say lately, frankly, my feeling very strongly was in the last term, presidential

746
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:50,520
term in Mexico, the president there was a major stumbling block to all this and I felt

747
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:57,600
it was outrageous what he was doing because it was his own country about which he was

748
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:03,720
lying that was suffering the most.

749
00:52:03,720 --> 00:52:09,700
So anyway, you get into, I lived in Mexico many years, wrote two books and all the time

750
00:52:09,700 --> 00:52:20,440
I'm thinking man, so many things would be resolved if there were real collaboration

751
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:26,440
between the countries that survived each presidential term, did not stop with each presidential

752
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:28,360
term.

753
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:33,280
What I've seen in my journey in the fire service is the same exact thing you're talking about

754
00:52:33,280 --> 00:52:36,980
internationally, I'm talking within counties and cities.

755
00:52:36,980 --> 00:52:43,760
So in an area where there are humble servant leaders, you will see and I'll give Anaheim,

756
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:47,600
California a great example, you will see the neighboring departments, they all interact

757
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:52,200
with each other, they train together, fire and police work together, they do drills,

758
00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:54,520
they do interagency training.

759
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:55,520
It's amazing.

760
00:52:55,520 --> 00:53:00,480
Conversely, a lot of places I've seen because I worked in four different parts of the states,

761
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:05,160
you have the opposite, city and county don't talk to each other, PD and FD don't train

762
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:09,840
together and you end up with a nightmare and then God forbid you end up with a Valdi or

763
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:11,360
something like that.

764
00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:13,360
It's no different with what we're talking about.

765
00:53:13,360 --> 00:53:18,760
I think arrogance is the enemy of cooperation and if you walk around, I'll take our country

766
00:53:18,760 --> 00:53:23,360
for example, beating your chest saying we're the greatest country in the world when A,

767
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:27,840
it's not a competition and B, we're not, then how the hell are you going to have the humility

768
00:53:27,840 --> 00:53:33,600
to learn from other countries, apply what works for them in your own country and develop

769
00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:37,840
relationships so you work together and you don't go to war?

770
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:45,320
You know, the same thing happened in Los Angeles County with regard to the gang problem.

771
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:51,400
Throughout the 80s and 90s, we got this growing and horrifying gang problem of drive-by shootings,

772
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:58,880
horrible numbers of gang homicides and during those years, during those years, you saw absolute

773
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:02,680
unwillingness of the different agencies to collaborate.

774
00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:08,160
You know, LAPD and LA County sheriffs hated each other, everybody hated the FBI, nobody

775
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:14,340
took the smaller city's police departments seriously, there was no kind of attempt at

776
00:54:14,340 --> 00:54:20,160
integrating task forces really, everyone was very jealous about who would get credit for

777
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:22,440
any bust or something like this.

778
00:54:22,440 --> 00:54:28,800
I would say, and so that gang problem continued and continued, nobody really knew who was

779
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:35,540
at the federal prosecutor's office, these people were unknown to law enforcement by

780
00:54:35,540 --> 00:54:42,600
and large and all of this silo-ization, isolation of these agencies meant that this gang problem

781
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:45,320
could be left alone to fester.

782
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:49,760
9-11 I think changed a lot of that, there was a whole lot more focus.

783
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:55,680
And I began, when I came to the LA Times, I began going to a lot of press conferences

784
00:54:55,680 --> 00:55:02,140
and you began to see all these different agencies on the podium, each would spend 15 minutes

785
00:55:02,140 --> 00:55:05,280
thanking the other, I mean, first 15 minutes of every press conference, I want to thank

786
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:10,880
my partners from here and there, this guy, I want to thank our federal partners, the

787
00:55:10,880 --> 00:55:17,240
cynical journalist in me at one point said, man, stop with the backs, you know, patting

788
00:55:17,240 --> 00:55:21,760
each other on the back and then I thought to myself, that is childish.

789
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:25,440
I really felt ashamed of that, I should not have thought that.

790
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:31,760
What they're doing is breaking down those barriers and you have to do it constantly,

791
00:55:31,760 --> 00:55:37,080
you have to constantly be thanking and recognizing the effort of this small department and this

792
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:45,160
FBI agent and this ATF and IRS and Homeland Security and LAPD detective and you have to

793
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:46,900
constantly be doing that.

794
00:55:46,900 --> 00:55:52,160
That's so important because the opposite is that people just go to their little units

795
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:54,320
and don't know anybody.

796
00:55:54,320 --> 00:55:59,960
What ended up happening was they put together a remarkable string, numerous and numerous

797
00:55:59,960 --> 00:56:06,080
RICO indictments because of this interagency collaboration, federal RICO indictments that

798
00:56:06,080 --> 00:56:10,640
sent gang members, RICO was really kind of designed for the Italian mob in New York City

799
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:16,600
and I think, but they applied it to the gang members in the streets of LA.

800
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:20,000
And now all these guys went away to prison, they didn't go to prison in Central Valley,

801
00:56:20,000 --> 00:56:24,560
California, they went to prison in South Carolina and Minnesota, their girlfriends were never

802
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:25,560
coming to see them.

803
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:32,600
And it had this really profound effect on the gang situation in Los Angeles, this alliance,

804
00:56:32,600 --> 00:56:33,600
this working together.

805
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:38,520
I don't see why the United States and Mexico can't come up with the same kind of success

806
00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:39,520
stories.

807
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:40,520
Is it difficult?

808
00:56:40,520 --> 00:56:42,120
Of course it's not easy, no.

809
00:56:42,120 --> 00:56:47,120
But it's doable and what else are you going to do?

810
00:56:47,120 --> 00:56:48,640
Sit around and blame the other guy?

811
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:50,760
I mean, come here, that's like so juvenile.

812
00:56:50,760 --> 00:56:56,160
When I think back of Compton and a lot of the really gang-ridden neighborhoods, I also

813
00:56:56,160 --> 00:57:01,120
think about the crack epidemic, which at that point obviously was really targeted at the

814
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:03,840
poorer communities.

815
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:11,000
As we sit here talking about heroin and then fentanyl and meth, what was it aside from

816
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:16,760
what you've just mentioned as far as cutting off snakeheads with the gang leaders that

817
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:23,520
stop that particular substance from ravaging neighborhoods in America?

818
00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:24,520
Which substance are you referring to?

819
00:57:24,520 --> 00:57:26,880
Crack cocaine specifically.

820
00:57:26,880 --> 00:57:34,840
I would say that the crack issue, I began my journalism, my crime reporting career in

821
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:42,560
1989 in the middle of the crack epidemic and I was a crime reporter in the town of Stockton,

822
00:57:42,560 --> 00:57:45,960
California, which was my graduate school basically for journalism.

823
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:47,120
It was a fantastic job.

824
00:57:47,120 --> 00:57:52,040
I just loved every minute of it and I wrote like crazy and left there four years later,

825
00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:58,280
just like very, very experienced and loving every minute of it.

826
00:57:58,280 --> 00:58:03,800
Crack was about violence as much as it was about drugs.

827
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:10,560
The opioid thing is really not about violence and anything remotely the same way that neighborhoods

828
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:16,000
were living through the violence created by the competition for crack.

829
00:58:16,000 --> 00:58:20,760
The violence would take place between dealer and buyer, sometimes car jackings.

830
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:29,000
That's a crime that was invented basically during the crack epidemic and then also sometimes

831
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:32,680
buyers robbing or killing their dealers.

832
00:58:32,680 --> 00:58:38,360
All of this kind of stuff, it took place first in neighborhoods in LA.

833
00:58:38,360 --> 00:58:44,280
But by the time I was in Stockton, it had migrated up the I-5 and was in all over Stockton.

834
00:58:44,280 --> 00:58:47,040
It was crazy, crazy stuff.

835
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:54,040
I think one of the things that really people focused on, and I'm talking about black and

836
00:58:54,040 --> 00:58:59,400
Latino neighborhoods, was not so much during that time about drug treatment.

837
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:05,160
This was in the early, neuroscience had not advanced very far by then and people were

838
00:59:05,160 --> 00:59:07,240
not quite clear on treatment.

839
00:59:07,240 --> 00:59:10,960
I mean, don't people believe in belonging in jail?

840
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:17,200
Certainly the problem with crack was that you had dealers and the violence, that dwarfed

841
00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:19,080
any problem with addiction.

842
00:59:19,080 --> 00:59:23,240
It was an outgrowth of addiction, but the first thing you wanted to do was get people

843
00:59:23,240 --> 00:59:25,520
off the street and into jail.

844
00:59:25,520 --> 00:59:28,440
That's because they made life intolerable.

845
00:59:28,440 --> 00:59:34,000
You wake up every morning, you hear these gunshots at night, helicopters, and now you

846
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:35,880
wake up, have bullet shells on the street.

847
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:37,320
I mean, it was just nuts.

848
00:59:37,320 --> 00:59:40,480
This was largely for black and Latino neighborhoods, certainly in Stockton.

849
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:42,840
That was absolutely what was going on.

850
00:59:42,840 --> 00:59:51,680
So I felt that there was this different approach back then, largely because people say it was

851
00:59:51,680 --> 00:59:53,480
because of race.

852
00:59:53,480 --> 01:00:01,120
I think that's true, but I have to say that there is also black neighborhoods where adamant,

853
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:05,720
adamant that people be thrown and get these kids, these people are, there are black kids

854
01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:10,520
who are doing this frequently, get these kids off the street, put them in jail.

855
01:00:10,520 --> 01:00:12,600
They're making our lives hell.

856
01:00:12,600 --> 01:00:19,440
And that is, the violence was really the main, I think, difference between the crack epidemic.

857
01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:22,520
I mean, I lived it, I covered it for years.

858
01:00:22,520 --> 01:00:27,080
There was almost no part of life in Stockton, California that was not affected by crack

859
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:28,080
cocaine.

860
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:36,040
Business, education, main street, just neighborhood life, jails, criminal justice, on and on and

861
01:00:36,040 --> 01:00:37,040
on.

862
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:38,920
It was just all about crack.

863
01:00:38,920 --> 01:00:45,400
And that was mostly because of the violence that came with it.

864
01:00:45,400 --> 01:00:52,340
When we spoke six years ago, I think I just sat down with Zhao Guolao, who was the man

865
01:00:52,340 --> 01:00:56,640
who spearheaded decriminalization of addiction in Portugal.

866
01:00:56,640 --> 01:01:00,800
And it was done very, very democratically, originally with some opposition from the right.

867
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:04,800
But when they saw the incredible success, they actually were on board as well.

868
01:01:04,800 --> 01:01:09,720
And the backstory was a lot of Portuguese military members have gone to one of their

869
01:01:09,720 --> 01:01:15,080
colonies in Africa, and then come back and again, that they were exposed to the drugs

870
01:01:15,080 --> 01:01:18,880
out there and then obviously the trauma that they obviously carried with them as well.

871
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:23,840
And so at one point, they had the worst opiate addiction of anywhere in Europe, I believe.

872
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:27,520
And in less than 10 years, they went to the lowest.

873
01:01:27,520 --> 01:01:31,160
And what was so powerful about it, they didn't legalize everything.

874
01:01:31,160 --> 01:01:34,760
So people have this misnomer that you can walk into the grocery store and buy crack

875
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:36,920
and meth and all these things.

876
01:01:36,920 --> 01:01:42,880
But if you were caught with a user's amount, you were literally given an educational conversation,

877
01:01:42,880 --> 01:01:48,920
an interview on job creation, housing, all the things to get you back on your feet so

878
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:52,780
that we can get you functioning as a member of society again.

879
01:01:52,780 --> 01:01:58,440
So for me, over this last eight years, it's interesting, even the law enforcement community,

880
01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:02,320
almost every single one is like the war on drugs is an epic failure.

881
01:02:02,320 --> 01:02:04,640
And me as a firefighter and a paramedic, I see it.

882
01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:09,020
I see the homelessness and the sex work and the overdoses and the gang membership and

883
01:02:09,020 --> 01:02:14,240
all the things that are the ripple effect of this war on drugs that we've watched for

884
01:02:14,240 --> 01:02:18,300
the last eight years, in my opinion, just not work.

885
01:02:18,300 --> 01:02:26,040
Have you shifted your opinion on decriminalizing addiction, still chasing dealers, still chasing

886
01:02:26,040 --> 01:02:28,520
the smugglers, but the addicts?

887
01:02:28,520 --> 01:02:32,280
I would say that here's the problem with the war on drugs.

888
01:02:32,280 --> 01:02:38,480
In my opinion, the war on drugs was a problem not because we use law enforcement, but because

889
01:02:38,480 --> 01:02:40,840
we only use law enforcement.

890
01:02:40,840 --> 01:02:45,920
It's trying to deal with an issue emanating from the central nervous system.

891
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:52,040
The most of our brain, the most complex mysterious organ we have, very much like the universe.

892
01:02:52,040 --> 01:02:57,480
It always seems to me like the brain and the universe are equally mystifying.

893
01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:04,020
And when you try to deal with that with one tool, you're going to run into trouble.

894
01:03:04,020 --> 01:03:11,480
So the problem is, in my view, that we have swung from drug war to, and we're going to

895
01:03:11,480 --> 01:03:15,560
rest our way out of it, to no drug war ever.

896
01:03:15,560 --> 01:03:20,980
And we're going to, law enforcement, criminal justice needs to back off and we're going

897
01:03:20,980 --> 01:03:21,980
to treat our way out.

898
01:03:21,980 --> 01:03:26,760
Well, you cannot arrest your way out of a problem dealing with the central nervous system

899
01:03:26,760 --> 01:03:27,760
of the brain.

900
01:03:27,760 --> 01:03:33,000
You cannot treat your way out of a problem dealing with the central nervous system of

901
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:34,000
the brain.

902
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:39,400
We need this community sense.

903
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:45,880
I think now actually fentanyl is making the case for the following.

904
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:51,000
It is making the case that we need to rethink parts of the criminal justice system, especially

905
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:55,940
jail to save people's lives.

906
01:03:55,940 --> 01:04:01,080
Because we've seen too many people die, 100,000 a year for the last several years, more than

907
01:04:01,080 --> 01:04:03,720
that, two years ago.

908
01:04:03,720 --> 01:04:10,120
And so that means that decriminalizing, when you decriminalize drugs in the fentanyl, in

909
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:15,440
the time of widespread fentanyl supply, which is what we're in now, what you're saying is

910
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:18,200
stay on the street.

911
01:04:18,200 --> 01:04:19,320
You know they're going to die.

912
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:20,400
They're going to die.

913
01:04:20,400 --> 01:04:25,680
And so my feeling is that we need to rethink jail so as a place of recovery, and this is

914
01:04:25,680 --> 01:04:32,080
happening, I wrote about three chapters in the least of us about a county in Kentucky

915
01:04:32,080 --> 01:04:33,080
that's doing this.

916
01:04:33,080 --> 01:04:40,800
It's absolutely, I think, the kind of continuum of care approach that's necessary, but it

917
01:04:40,800 --> 01:04:43,680
begins with an arrest.

918
01:04:43,680 --> 01:04:49,200
Then with the arrest, that person gets away from the deadly, unmerciful streets, gets

919
01:04:49,200 --> 01:04:52,200
into detox first.

920
01:04:52,200 --> 01:04:59,840
Then there's a pod in this jail in which people go through, have access to recovery.

921
01:04:59,840 --> 01:05:04,320
These are pods in jail where there's 12-step, there's education, there's classes, there's

922
01:05:04,320 --> 01:05:10,000
a recovery environment people have to opt in, volunteer in.

923
01:05:10,000 --> 01:05:14,560
There are no drugs in these pods, there are no weapons because people have opted out of

924
01:05:14,560 --> 01:05:18,320
that life, and there are very strict rules.

925
01:05:18,320 --> 01:05:20,800
If you're found with drugs, you're booted immediately.

926
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:25,140
The rest of the jail may have weapons and drugs, but not these pods.

927
01:05:25,140 --> 01:05:30,400
Then many months pass in which you are away from the drugs, you are surviving, you are

928
01:05:30,400 --> 01:05:36,320
getting healthier, your brain is allowed to heal.

929
01:05:36,320 --> 01:05:38,880
Then it's all about preparing you to leave.

930
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:47,920
Then on the outside, there's, again, a whole continuum of services and mentors and places

931
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:52,400
where you can then spend the next two or three years at drug court that makes sure that you

932
01:05:52,400 --> 01:05:53,400
are accountable.

933
01:05:53,400 --> 01:05:56,960
If you're not, then it's back to jail.

934
01:05:56,960 --> 01:06:02,600
The idea that we should not use jail, I think in Portugal, they don't buy that idea either.

935
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:09,240
The idea that you should not use jail and law enforcement is crazy.

936
01:06:09,240 --> 01:06:14,880
The problem is that you should not only use those things.

937
01:06:14,880 --> 01:06:20,120
Just as you should not only go up to people who are strung out, living in feces, beaten

938
01:06:20,120 --> 01:06:25,680
and pimped out in tent encampments and say, hey, we've got these services, would you like

939
01:06:25,680 --> 01:06:26,680
some?

940
01:06:26,680 --> 01:06:29,160
They say, no, no, I'm fine.

941
01:06:29,160 --> 01:06:30,840
No, you're not fine.

942
01:06:30,840 --> 01:06:31,840
You're about to die.

943
01:06:31,840 --> 01:06:36,720
I walk away, you take another hit of that meth pipe, which was made of that methyl,

944
01:06:36,720 --> 01:06:39,560
it had fentanyl in it, and you're going to die.

945
01:06:39,560 --> 01:06:45,600
We're leaving people at the mercy of the most potent, mind-mangling, deadly drugs we have

946
01:06:45,600 --> 01:06:50,160
ever seen on the street by simply saying, well, they're not ready for treatment.

947
01:06:50,160 --> 01:06:56,000
There's no chance those people are going to be ready for treatment in the time it takes

948
01:06:56,000 --> 01:07:02,720
for meth to drive them to insanity, to psychosis, just seeing all over the country, and fentanyl

949
01:07:02,720 --> 01:07:03,900
to kill them.

950
01:07:03,900 --> 01:07:08,760
The idea is, again, not that we should use law enforcement only or criminal justice system

951
01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:10,880
only, not that we should use treatment.

952
01:07:10,880 --> 01:07:16,880
We need to find ways of melding all of this together in a continuum of care that understands

953
01:07:16,880 --> 01:07:22,240
the enormous complexity of the organ that is being affected, that has created all those

954
01:07:22,240 --> 01:07:23,240
problems.

955
01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:31,400
And it's especially true, and especially true nowadays with this ungodly supply of fentanyl

956
01:07:31,400 --> 01:07:36,840
and ungodly supply of methamphetamine coming in from Mexico.

957
01:07:36,840 --> 01:07:41,540
It just changes everything, and you cannot leave people on the street.

958
01:07:41,540 --> 01:07:42,800
We give them Narcan.

959
01:07:42,800 --> 01:07:43,800
That's wonderful.

960
01:07:43,800 --> 01:07:45,360
Narcan is a magnificent tool.

961
01:07:45,360 --> 01:07:51,160
I carry it in my book bag and in my car all the time.

962
01:07:51,160 --> 01:07:56,760
But if all we're doing is Narcanning people into revival, those people will all die.

963
01:07:56,760 --> 01:07:58,540
That's not saving anyone's life.

964
01:07:58,540 --> 01:08:00,920
That's temporarily postponing their death.

965
01:08:00,920 --> 01:08:06,360
And repeated overdose is creating enormous, enormous brain impairment, because, of course,

966
01:08:06,360 --> 01:08:10,400
re-overdoses deprivation of oxygen to the brain.

967
01:08:10,400 --> 01:08:16,280
And so the more that happens, the more people are less able to speak correctly and think

968
01:08:16,280 --> 01:08:20,960
correctly because they've had 15 overdoses in the last year.

969
01:08:20,960 --> 01:08:24,920
And at no time did they really get a time to heal.

970
01:08:24,920 --> 01:08:31,400
And so to me, this is a rethinking that we need to do based on the fact that we have

971
01:08:31,400 --> 01:08:37,480
ungodly supplies of these two drugs, highly potent, highly deadly synthetic drugs coming

972
01:08:37,480 --> 01:08:39,160
out of Mexico and nationwide.

973
01:08:39,160 --> 01:08:41,240
Yeah, I mean, I agree.

974
01:08:41,240 --> 01:08:46,320
This is where I think I'm kind of nauseated by the, oh, we tried that in the Northwest.

975
01:08:46,320 --> 01:08:47,880
It's like, no, you didn't.

976
01:08:47,880 --> 01:08:54,000
Like you said, it was just decrim or it was telling law enforcement you can't arrest a

977
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:55,280
certain group of people anymore.

978
01:08:55,280 --> 01:08:56,280
That's not what this is about.

979
01:08:56,280 --> 01:09:01,360
If you look at Portugal, it's figuring what do these people need to get them back on their

980
01:09:01,360 --> 01:09:02,360
feet?

981
01:09:02,360 --> 01:09:06,280
What do they need to get a roof over their head and have a purpose every day?

982
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:10,520
And they freed up a lot of their law enforcement section and their criminal justice system

983
01:09:10,520 --> 01:09:13,120
to pursue the dealers and the smugglers.

984
01:09:13,120 --> 01:09:16,320
Now you're really cutting the head off the stakes so that when they go back on the streets,

985
01:09:16,320 --> 01:09:20,680
there aren't as many predators in the first place to drag them back into addiction.

986
01:09:20,680 --> 01:09:25,560
But when you look at all the money they poured into the proactive side, that's not what we

987
01:09:25,560 --> 01:09:26,560
did in America.

988
01:09:26,560 --> 01:09:29,160
It's like saying that Obamacare was the national health.

989
01:09:29,160 --> 01:09:31,120
It wasn't even close.

990
01:09:31,120 --> 01:09:35,520
And then if you really want to have a national health system in America, we've got to absolutely

991
01:09:35,520 --> 01:09:40,440
stem the horrendous obesity crisis because we're never going to be able to fund the national

992
01:09:40,440 --> 01:09:43,560
health if we have people getting fatter and sicker every year.

993
01:09:43,560 --> 01:09:48,100
So absolutely, I agree with you 100% law enforcement needs to be part of the solution.

994
01:09:48,100 --> 01:09:55,680
But you look at Norway's prison system, Bastog, for example, their prisoners go to a housing

995
01:09:55,680 --> 01:09:56,680
community.

996
01:09:56,680 --> 01:10:00,240
They've lost their freedom, but they cook, they clean, they live together, they go to

997
01:10:00,240 --> 01:10:06,120
school, they go to work, because 95% of all prisoners will move back into your street

998
01:10:06,120 --> 01:10:07,160
one day.

999
01:10:07,160 --> 01:10:08,560
So who do you want moving back?

1000
01:10:08,560 --> 01:10:13,080
Like you said, the person that found more violence and better ways to create fentanyl

1001
01:10:13,080 --> 01:10:17,280
and better way to use a shiv than when they first went in?

1002
01:10:17,280 --> 01:10:21,460
Or do you want the one that truly was rehabilitated and is now going to be a functioning member

1003
01:10:21,460 --> 01:10:23,040
of your society?

1004
01:10:23,040 --> 01:10:24,040
Yeah.

1005
01:10:24,040 --> 01:10:32,560
And all of this needs to keep in mind too that addiction to opioids is just so complicated,

1006
01:10:32,560 --> 01:10:38,600
far more than other drugs, it seems to me now.

1007
01:10:38,600 --> 01:10:43,160
It needs, you cannot use one tool.

1008
01:10:43,160 --> 01:10:50,220
One tool is, they tried that during the opioid epidemic, the idea was we are going to eradicate

1009
01:10:50,220 --> 01:10:51,800
all American pain.

1010
01:10:51,800 --> 01:10:56,840
That was kind of the missionary zeal of a lot of pain specialists during those years.

1011
01:10:56,840 --> 01:11:01,860
Pain emanates also from the central nervous system from our brain.

1012
01:11:01,860 --> 01:11:10,560
And so we're going to use one tool to eradicate all of this feeling that comes from our, we're

1013
01:11:10,560 --> 01:11:14,160
still living with the consequences of that delusional idea.

1014
01:11:14,160 --> 01:11:20,960
Pain is best treated as a holistic kind of thing, as a community of care for pain.

1015
01:11:20,960 --> 01:11:28,800
So you're seeing the VA now treat pain with yoga and physical therapy and also getting

1016
01:11:28,800 --> 01:11:35,040
people out of the house to be around other people, exercise, move, get your body going,

1017
01:11:35,040 --> 01:11:37,320
which is what our bodies need to do.

1018
01:11:37,320 --> 01:11:44,120
All of this kind of thing is kind of approaches that I think we lost sight of when we decide

1019
01:11:44,120 --> 01:11:56,120
to use one tool for an extraordinarily complicated issue emanating from reward pathways in our

1020
01:11:56,120 --> 01:11:57,120
brain.

1021
01:11:57,120 --> 01:12:03,320
And so to me, the idea too, it feels I'm tired of people going, we're going to go after the

1022
01:12:03,320 --> 01:12:04,840
big fish.

1023
01:12:04,840 --> 01:12:09,920
Look, any journalist knows, and we're not going to arrest the small fry.

1024
01:12:09,920 --> 01:12:17,440
Here's the problem, any journalist knows that all big stories come from small ones.

1025
01:12:17,440 --> 01:12:19,840
That's why it's so important to be a beat reporter.

1026
01:12:19,840 --> 01:12:26,680
Watergate came from a third rate burglary, led to the resignation of the president, we're

1027
01:12:26,680 --> 01:12:27,680
going to say.

1028
01:12:27,680 --> 01:12:34,880
If the same is absolutely true of drug investigations, you arrest some small fry, he mentioned something

1029
01:12:34,880 --> 01:12:39,360
you already know that kind of jives with what you already heard and wow, okay, well then

1030
01:12:39,360 --> 01:12:44,600
and pretty soon you're arresting one of the bigger suppliers of dope to your area.

1031
01:12:44,600 --> 01:12:46,000
That's how those things work.

1032
01:12:46,000 --> 01:12:51,120
It bothers me so much when people say, well, we're only going to go after the big fish.

1033
01:12:51,120 --> 01:12:58,920
And my feeling is that's said by either people who don't know how investigations work or

1034
01:12:58,920 --> 01:13:05,200
who kind of just want to, you know, mollify the public, you know, and my feeling is arrest

1035
01:13:05,200 --> 01:13:10,880
the small fry, get those guys off the street away from these drugs and then talk to them

1036
01:13:10,880 --> 01:13:13,880
and have them begin.

1037
01:13:13,880 --> 01:13:18,800
It may be that they're long forgotten after that arrest is, you know, the big guy is eventually

1038
01:13:18,800 --> 01:13:24,280
made, but it starts with the small stuff and all journalism is exactly the same way.

1039
01:13:24,280 --> 01:13:26,120
You think you're only going to go after the big story.

1040
01:13:26,120 --> 01:13:28,260
Well, you better start really small.

1041
01:13:28,260 --> 01:13:29,260
That's where it all happens.

1042
01:13:29,260 --> 01:13:34,560
Well, I want to get to the meth side, but just one more question with fentanyl.

1043
01:13:34,560 --> 01:13:38,040
I still hear a lot of people kind of saying it's coming from China.

1044
01:13:38,040 --> 01:13:42,080
So you mentioned earlier about the ability for China to ship.

1045
01:13:42,080 --> 01:13:48,320
Was that being done legally from the Chinese end to illegal consumers?

1046
01:13:48,320 --> 01:13:53,160
Or you know, so then what element were they doing and what are they doing as far as what's

1047
01:13:53,160 --> 01:13:57,000
the percentage of the fentanyl coming still from China into the States?

1048
01:13:57,000 --> 01:13:59,840
I don't know what it is, but it's going to be minor.

1049
01:13:59,840 --> 01:14:00,840
Why?

1050
01:14:00,840 --> 01:14:01,840
Why?

1051
01:14:01,840 --> 01:14:02,840
Ask yourself this.

1052
01:14:02,840 --> 01:14:08,200
Okay, so what they were doing was they would disguise the package.

1053
01:14:08,200 --> 01:14:12,280
They would put it in like a common ordinary manila envelope or put it in.

1054
01:14:12,280 --> 01:14:17,200
One guy said, I got used to get mine from a guy who would send it in a box of a puzzle,

1055
01:14:17,200 --> 01:14:18,200
like a household puzzle.

1056
01:14:18,200 --> 01:14:20,320
You put it on the front of your dining room table.

1057
01:14:20,320 --> 01:14:21,800
You know, it's like, does that puzzle?

1058
01:14:21,800 --> 01:14:22,800
It looks like a puzzle.

1059
01:14:22,800 --> 01:14:23,800
Okay, good.

1060
01:14:23,800 --> 01:14:25,040
Why would they do that?

1061
01:14:25,040 --> 01:14:29,820
Because they would then send it the slow snail mail and it would get lost in the millions

1062
01:14:29,820 --> 01:14:32,680
of packages that would come in from the United.

1063
01:14:32,680 --> 01:14:35,600
But you can't send kilos like that.

1064
01:14:35,600 --> 01:14:42,480
You can't send dozens of kilos like or even so you're sending usually like a quarter pound

1065
01:14:42,480 --> 01:14:44,440
small small amounts.

1066
01:14:44,440 --> 01:14:45,760
That's how much would be sent.

1067
01:14:45,760 --> 01:14:50,680
It was not they were not getting huge amounts going through the mail.

1068
01:14:50,680 --> 01:14:53,540
And so the supply was very localized.

1069
01:14:53,540 --> 01:14:57,740
It was not much beyond where these dealers were located.

1070
01:14:57,740 --> 01:15:04,680
And so you wrote about in the least of us, you know, Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Ohio

1071
01:15:04,680 --> 01:15:10,680
was a major center for this initially, like you're talking 2013, 14, 15 right in there

1072
01:15:10,680 --> 01:15:12,760
perhaps, you know.

1073
01:15:12,760 --> 01:15:19,180
And so nobody is sitting there going, you know, like, let's send 10 kilos from China.

1074
01:15:19,180 --> 01:15:21,800
That doesn't happen, you know.

1075
01:15:21,800 --> 01:15:26,760
And nor does it come over fentanyl come over in that quantity on the body of immigrants.

1076
01:15:26,760 --> 01:15:32,240
The way it gets over and you don't have to send a ton of fentanyl to make a lot of money

1077
01:15:32,240 --> 01:15:33,240
on it.

1078
01:15:33,240 --> 01:15:37,760
But nevertheless, in trucks, we have free trade.

1079
01:15:37,760 --> 01:15:39,960
We have free trade with Mexico.

1080
01:15:39,960 --> 01:15:47,160
Major parts of every product we made or assembled or many products we buy are assembled in Mexico

1081
01:15:47,160 --> 01:15:51,800
brought here and finished and then sold or something some version of that.

1082
01:15:51,800 --> 01:15:56,600
There's millions of trucks back and forth, cars back and forth.

1083
01:15:56,600 --> 01:15:58,520
All year long constantly.

1084
01:15:58,520 --> 01:16:06,160
And it's in those things that you get supplied by traffickers who have a very robust, very

1085
01:16:06,160 --> 01:16:12,380
sophisticated, very well financed operations and culture and lots of people getting into

1086
01:16:12,380 --> 01:16:14,000
it and so on.

1087
01:16:14,000 --> 01:16:18,440
And then all these trucks going north and all that.

1088
01:16:18,440 --> 01:16:21,760
That's the way it moves.

1089
01:16:21,760 --> 01:16:29,600
Now you cannot account for a nationwide coverage of any drug nationwide in the United States,

1090
01:16:29,600 --> 01:16:39,320
I mean of any drug on the person of people like in the pantyhose or whatever or the bath

1091
01:16:39,320 --> 01:16:41,900
pack or a cane of somebody crossing.

1092
01:16:41,900 --> 01:16:44,720
That just does not allow for the quantities we're talking about.

1093
01:16:44,720 --> 01:16:45,720
I'm sorry.

1094
01:16:45,720 --> 01:16:46,720
Not going to work.

1095
01:16:46,720 --> 01:16:53,680
They're being transported by vehicles in various forms and all kinds of ingenious ways.

1096
01:16:53,680 --> 01:16:59,500
And again, if you check out Michael Humphrey's Twitter feed, which I love, you could see

1097
01:16:59,500 --> 01:17:02,440
all the different ways people use.

1098
01:17:02,440 --> 01:17:08,960
And they occasionally catch people walking across the border with the drugs.

1099
01:17:08,960 --> 01:17:16,980
But that does not explain fentanyl and meth all across the United States in cheaper and

1100
01:17:16,980 --> 01:17:21,200
more prevalent than we've ever seen any drug.

1101
01:17:21,200 --> 01:17:25,960
Well I want to get to some of the incredible kind of healing that you're seeing in some

1102
01:17:25,960 --> 01:17:29,160
of the places that we talked about, including Portsmouth, Ohio.

1103
01:17:29,160 --> 01:17:32,240
But just before we do, we haven't discussed meth yet.

1104
01:17:32,240 --> 01:17:35,680
And that's something again that I obviously saw a lot in my career.

1105
01:17:35,680 --> 01:17:40,000
So talk to me about the kind of origin story of that synthetic product and then we'll kind

1106
01:17:40,000 --> 01:17:43,000
of walk through today.

1107
01:17:43,000 --> 01:17:49,400
Well I mean, methamphetamine, many, many, many, many years ago, it was used in World

1108
01:17:49,400 --> 01:17:52,280
War II by the Nazis.

1109
01:17:52,280 --> 01:17:58,560
I think also by the kamikaze pilots from Japan.

1110
01:17:58,560 --> 01:18:03,200
I think there's a great book called Blitzed by a German novelist that will take you through

1111
01:18:03,200 --> 01:18:10,200
the whole history of the Third Reich use of methamphetamine as a method of social control

1112
01:18:10,200 --> 01:18:19,420
and a method of urging the soldiers from the Nazi regime to, German soldiers to enormous

1113
01:18:19,420 --> 01:18:25,880
feats of crazed marching and so on.

1114
01:18:25,880 --> 01:18:34,040
In the United States, it's been a drug that was initially dominated by biker gangs out

1115
01:18:34,040 --> 01:18:36,800
of California, Hells Angels primarily.

1116
01:18:36,800 --> 01:18:37,960
This would be in the 60s.

1117
01:18:37,960 --> 01:18:43,780
If you watch the Altamont concert documentary by the Rolling Stones called Give Me Shelter,

1118
01:18:43,780 --> 01:18:51,280
you will see an example of methamphetamine in action as they hired for some reason the

1119
01:18:51,280 --> 01:18:57,400
Hells Angels to run security for them at this free concert in Altamont, California.

1120
01:18:57,400 --> 01:19:00,400
Anyway, they were not very good at what they did.

1121
01:19:00,400 --> 01:19:05,360
They were sloppy and you know, they're Hells Angels and they don't really know what they're

1122
01:19:05,360 --> 01:19:06,360
doing.

1123
01:19:06,360 --> 01:19:11,240
Plus they were making a very, very complicated method called the P2P method that was extraordinarily

1124
01:19:11,240 --> 01:19:16,040
stinky and difficult and so they had to do it in the pines or in the desert and stuff

1125
01:19:16,040 --> 01:19:17,040
like that.

1126
01:19:17,040 --> 01:19:21,560
And there were only a few of them that really knew well, one guy, Freewheelin' Frank from

1127
01:19:21,560 --> 01:19:26,320
the Oakland chapter, the Hells Angels was apparently like the big guru of methamphetamine

1128
01:19:26,320 --> 01:19:27,680
in his years.

1129
01:19:27,680 --> 01:19:35,000
Anyway, the Mexicans began to take that business from the bikers in the late 80s.

1130
01:19:35,000 --> 01:19:40,160
And it's a long story, actually talk about this in the least of us, but they become more

1131
01:19:40,160 --> 01:19:47,200
effective, efficient, and they use a different method, which is the ephedrine, very well

1132
01:19:47,200 --> 01:19:52,120
known now, the ephedrine method using ephedrine, which is of course the drug that you find

1133
01:19:52,120 --> 01:19:56,240
in ant decongestant, find in Sudafed and that kind of thing.

1134
01:19:56,240 --> 01:20:02,560
And so for a long time, they figured out methamphetamine as this revelation.

1135
01:20:02,560 --> 01:20:04,160
Now we don't need to grow drugs.

1136
01:20:04,160 --> 01:20:08,920
Remember, trafficking the world of Mexico is all about the land, the ranchers, the farmers,

1137
01:20:08,920 --> 01:20:14,040
and all of a sudden they figure out, hey, if it's not that hard, you can figure it out.

1138
01:20:14,040 --> 01:20:15,040
You can make methamphetamine.

1139
01:20:15,040 --> 01:20:21,320
So you begin to see methamphetamine made by Mexicans in the Central Valley and Riverside

1140
01:20:21,320 --> 01:20:24,680
and San Diego counties and like in the 80s.

1141
01:20:24,680 --> 01:20:30,920
And they're using mostly, I think, the ephedrine, they've come to use anyway, the ephedrine

1142
01:20:30,920 --> 01:20:35,880
method, which is a lot cleaner, a lot easier, a lot fewer steps.

1143
01:20:35,880 --> 01:20:38,320
Anybody could do it.

1144
01:20:38,320 --> 01:20:43,720
And so they begin gradually to just simply take the market from the Hells Angels who

1145
01:20:43,720 --> 01:20:48,200
end up saying, you know what, it's not, it's easier just to buy my meth from the Mexican

1146
01:20:48,200 --> 01:20:49,200
cats.

1147
01:20:49,200 --> 01:20:50,760
I don't want to be making this crap.

1148
01:20:50,760 --> 01:20:52,360
And so they stop.

1149
01:20:52,360 --> 01:20:58,400
And it begins to take hold in primarily California, other places.

1150
01:20:58,400 --> 01:21:04,280
Meth cooking becomes kind of a folk craft, you know, and you see it like in other parts

1151
01:21:04,280 --> 01:21:08,200
of the country, Missouri and various places around the country.

1152
01:21:08,200 --> 01:21:17,680
But then it, because I think of very assertive and consistent sustained pressure from American

1153
01:21:17,680 --> 01:21:22,280
law enforcement, especially in California, you begin to see a lot of Mexicans going back,

1154
01:21:22,280 --> 01:21:26,860
taking their meth operations back to Mexico and Tijuana, but then also like the state

1155
01:21:26,860 --> 01:21:29,520
of Michoacan was a big one.

1156
01:21:29,520 --> 01:21:34,200
The town of Apatzingan is a notorious town.

1157
01:21:34,200 --> 01:21:37,800
And when I lived in Mexico, I actually didn't dare go there because I was a freelancer on

1158
01:21:37,800 --> 01:21:44,640
my own, but became a very big deal, meth center for a long time.

1159
01:21:44,640 --> 01:21:51,000
Anyway, they began, they were making their meth from, with ephedrine and they were diverting

1160
01:21:51,000 --> 01:21:55,820
a lot of the ephedrine that was being imported by the pharmaceutical industry into Mexico

1161
01:21:55,820 --> 01:21:56,820
to make decongestants.

1162
01:21:56,820 --> 01:22:00,760
They were importing some percentage of that and it was being used to make methamphetamine.

1163
01:22:00,760 --> 01:22:05,660
And for a lot of years, they learned that this was like a magnificent way of making

1164
01:22:05,660 --> 01:22:07,520
money because you could make the drug.

1165
01:22:07,520 --> 01:22:09,640
It was here, you know, pretty easy to do.

1166
01:22:09,640 --> 01:22:16,560
You have to grow anything, no farms, no irrigation, no sun, none of that.

1167
01:22:16,560 --> 01:22:20,360
The problem was that they, not a problem, it was a good thing.

1168
01:22:20,360 --> 01:22:25,400
They couldn't get enough of the ephedrine to cover more than parts of the Western United

1169
01:22:25,400 --> 01:22:28,720
States with the drugs that they were smuggling.

1170
01:22:28,720 --> 01:22:34,200
And so a lot of the places that where meth was, it was made again by these meth cooks,

1171
01:22:34,200 --> 01:22:38,560
Ohio, Montana, whatever, you see this all across the country.

1172
01:22:38,560 --> 01:22:39,960
They made movies of it.

1173
01:22:39,960 --> 01:22:44,440
You have Breaking Bad, but you also have a very upsetting movie that I watched one time

1174
01:22:44,440 --> 01:22:47,440
that I don't think I ever want to see again called Winter's Bone.

1175
01:22:47,440 --> 01:22:50,720
Jennifer Lawrence, the first time I ever saw her in a movie, that was the movie.

1176
01:22:50,720 --> 01:22:54,040
It was about meth in Missouri and that kind of thing.

1177
01:22:54,040 --> 01:23:00,180
Anyway, they pretty much, you know, that was pretty much the market until the Mexican government

1178
01:23:00,180 --> 01:23:03,080
began to say, you know what, we understand the problem with meth now.

1179
01:23:03,080 --> 01:23:09,640
They began to cut curtailed amounts of ephedrine could be exported, imported rather into Mexico

1180
01:23:09,640 --> 01:23:13,480
from abroad from the world chemical markets.

1181
01:23:13,480 --> 01:23:16,520
And the Mexican traffickers saw this coming.

1182
01:23:16,520 --> 01:23:20,280
That's why they hired that guy to make them make whom ended up making fentanyl.

1183
01:23:20,280 --> 01:23:23,880
They hired him really to make ephedrine because they saw that they were not always going to

1184
01:23:23,880 --> 01:23:27,500
have the supplies of them had required before.

1185
01:23:27,500 --> 01:23:34,420
And so they began to fiddle around with new ways of making methamphetamine.

1186
01:23:34,420 --> 01:23:41,920
One of the chapters in the book is about the first time at least certain agents that I

1187
01:23:41,920 --> 01:23:48,360
interviewed the first time they ever saw a meth lab blow up that was using the P2P method.

1188
01:23:48,360 --> 01:23:52,040
It was in Guadalajara outside Guadalajara.

1189
01:23:52,040 --> 01:23:59,480
This would have been 2006, I believe, made probably organized by a very well known couple

1190
01:23:59,480 --> 01:24:06,640
in the Sinolojo cartel named Nacho Coronel, who later was gunned down by Mexican soldiers.

1191
01:24:06,640 --> 01:24:11,320
But his legacy was to say the future is in synthetics.

1192
01:24:11,320 --> 01:24:15,280
He understood the real profit centers were in synthetics, easier to make, all that kind

1193
01:24:15,280 --> 01:24:16,280
of stuff.

1194
01:24:16,280 --> 01:24:20,720
And around him formed a whole group of people who knew learned how to make methamphetamine

1195
01:24:20,720 --> 01:24:29,280
and they became traffickers and really the foundation of the cartel Nueva Generacion

1196
01:24:29,280 --> 01:24:34,120
that is now one of the two main cartels out of Mexico.

1197
01:24:34,120 --> 01:24:41,600
They begin to make P2P meth, which again, as I say, is complicated and smelly and all

1198
01:24:41,600 --> 01:24:42,600
that kind of stuff.

1199
01:24:42,600 --> 01:24:53,720
But what has one benefit and that benefit to them is that there's many ways of making

1200
01:24:53,720 --> 01:24:54,720
P2P.

1201
01:24:54,720 --> 01:25:00,320
So the government cannot crack down as it did on ephedrine on the making of P2P.

1202
01:25:00,320 --> 01:25:06,920
And most of these methods, there's many, many methods and most of them use legal, cheap,

1203
01:25:06,920 --> 01:25:11,160
easy to find industrial chemicals.

1204
01:25:11,160 --> 01:25:14,120
And some of them are made in Mexico, others you can get from abroad.

1205
01:25:14,120 --> 01:25:19,240
Whatever the case, they begin to make the because of this, they are able to make P2P

1206
01:25:19,240 --> 01:25:25,120
in just staggering quantities the way they never were able to find quantities of ephedrine.

1207
01:25:25,120 --> 01:25:28,680
And that means that they can now make enormous quantities of this stuff.

1208
01:25:28,680 --> 01:25:35,640
And this you begin to see, well, I would like to say kind of 2011, 12, 13, you begin to

1209
01:25:35,640 --> 01:25:39,480
see just unbelievable amounts of the stuff.

1210
01:25:39,480 --> 01:25:45,600
As the amounts of the ephedrine are curtailed, it's replaced by P2P meth and the DEA tests.

1211
01:25:45,600 --> 01:25:50,840
So this very, very, very graphically, I think.

1212
01:25:50,840 --> 01:25:55,360
And that has a couple of effects.

1213
01:25:55,360 --> 01:26:04,880
One is, again, the quantities and again, made with very, very toxic chemicals.

1214
01:26:04,880 --> 01:26:10,920
But the other thing is that it allows for people to make methamphetamine in staggering

1215
01:26:10,920 --> 01:26:15,240
potency, almost no adulterant in this stuff now.

1216
01:26:15,240 --> 01:26:19,880
And that's what also the DEA tests were showing was happening during these years.

1217
01:26:19,880 --> 01:26:25,840
You get 97% methamphetamine when you seize this thing on the border or whatever.

1218
01:26:25,840 --> 01:26:31,320
Whereas before, it would be 50%, 60%, and the rest would be adulterant.

1219
01:26:31,320 --> 01:26:35,280
It's just junk chemicals, nothing to it.

1220
01:26:35,280 --> 01:26:39,280
And so that began to happen.

1221
01:26:39,280 --> 01:26:40,760
And then it began to spread.

1222
01:26:40,760 --> 01:26:45,760
And so what you saw is it starts in the West, New Mexico, and then it goes to California

1223
01:26:45,760 --> 01:26:49,160
and Arizona, Las Vegas, et cetera, through the Midwest.

1224
01:26:49,160 --> 01:26:54,840
By the time it's running all those meth books out of business, we no longer have any meth

1225
01:26:54,840 --> 01:26:59,000
books in America because they've been run out of business.

1226
01:26:59,000 --> 01:27:04,080
If there are some, there are very, very few, and they're not serious, they're not sustainable

1227
01:27:04,080 --> 01:27:07,760
because they can't get the chemicals that the guys out of Mexico can get easy access

1228
01:27:07,760 --> 01:27:08,760
to.

1229
01:27:08,760 --> 01:27:11,880
And so then it begins to make its way up into New England.

1230
01:27:11,880 --> 01:27:16,920
Again, by the time COVID hits, meth is up in New England, not in the quantities.

1231
01:27:16,920 --> 01:27:21,280
It's in, say, Las Vegas or Oklahoma or LA, but nevertheless.

1232
01:27:21,280 --> 01:27:25,720
And you begin to see the price collapse.

1233
01:27:25,720 --> 01:27:26,720
It's an amazing idea.

1234
01:27:26,720 --> 01:27:33,000
They make so much of it that covers the country and the price drops by like 80%, 90%.

1235
01:27:33,000 --> 01:27:37,600
And along the way, the other thing that I wrote about, I think I broke the story with

1236
01:27:37,600 --> 01:27:45,720
that book, with The Least of Us, is that it brings with it staggering, rapid onset symptoms

1237
01:27:45,720 --> 01:27:47,840
of schizophrenia among the people who use it.

1238
01:27:47,840 --> 01:27:50,000
It's not like a gradual thing anymore.

1239
01:27:50,000 --> 01:27:54,120
Meths will do this to you if you use it six, five, six, seven years, gradually destroy

1240
01:27:54,120 --> 01:27:57,160
everything about you, including your brain.

1241
01:27:57,160 --> 01:27:59,420
With this method, it's like right off the cliff.

1242
01:27:59,420 --> 01:28:03,280
People are within hours, days, they're screaming at things.

1243
01:28:03,280 --> 01:28:05,840
And you begin to see this in the tent encampments.

1244
01:28:05,840 --> 01:28:12,640
And I began to really believe and see that our mental illness and our homeless problem

1245
01:28:12,640 --> 01:28:13,640
is connect.

1246
01:28:13,640 --> 01:28:19,600
A major driver of that, not the only driver, but a major driver of that are these methamphetamine,

1247
01:28:19,600 --> 01:28:25,560
certainly fentanyl too, and this enormous spread of these two drugs over these last,

1248
01:28:25,560 --> 01:28:30,320
what would it be, 10 years, something like that, 12 years, let's say 12 years, something

1249
01:28:30,320 --> 01:28:31,320
like that.

1250
01:28:31,320 --> 01:28:41,600
The psychosis that meth is creating is scary, devastating, impossible to converse with people

1251
01:28:41,600 --> 01:28:42,600
who are undergoing it.

1252
01:28:42,600 --> 01:28:47,520
I'm sure maybe this is something you saw when you were working on the streets and stuff.

1253
01:28:47,520 --> 01:28:53,080
But certainly every paramedic I've spoken to, ER doc, et cetera, nearest and so on,

1254
01:28:53,080 --> 01:28:54,880
can give me a horrifying story.

1255
01:28:54,880 --> 01:29:00,680
Every drug counselor, I spoke with a drug counselor in West Virginia, and he was saying,

1256
01:29:00,680 --> 01:29:03,280
man, and he said, we began to see this.

1257
01:29:03,280 --> 01:29:09,680
I began working here in 2016, a year later or nine months or whatever later, bam, it

1258
01:29:09,680 --> 01:29:10,680
was there.

1259
01:29:10,680 --> 01:29:14,680
And I've never seen, this is a long time methamphetamine researcher.

1260
01:29:14,680 --> 01:29:18,960
He used to work at UCLA studying the properties of methamphetamine.

1261
01:29:18,960 --> 01:29:21,760
Now he's at an addiction clinic in West Virginia.

1262
01:29:21,760 --> 01:29:25,880
And he says, within hours, people use it within hours, they're out of their minds.

1263
01:29:25,880 --> 01:29:27,880
They're babbling.

1264
01:29:27,880 --> 01:29:29,300
It's just this terrible stuff.

1265
01:29:29,300 --> 01:29:37,720
And that's what you're seeing, I think, nationwide in the country ever since.

1266
01:29:37,720 --> 01:29:42,680
And it just scandalous quantities of this stuff coming through.

1267
01:29:42,680 --> 01:29:47,240
Before we hit record, you mentioned that you thought that the reason for that was just

1268
01:29:47,240 --> 01:29:53,320
the sheer dose, the sheer magnitude of the dose that they're getting now because of the

1269
01:29:53,320 --> 01:29:57,800
quality of the product, the same way as the cartels were sending in the black tar heroin

1270
01:29:57,800 --> 01:30:00,300
last decade.

1271
01:30:00,300 --> 01:30:01,300
That's true.

1272
01:30:01,300 --> 01:30:05,440
Initially, when I wrote The Least of Us, I was stunned by this idea.

1273
01:30:05,440 --> 01:30:10,600
And I had discovered this through a friend of mine who was on this methamphetamine for

1274
01:30:10,600 --> 01:30:16,520
a while, and then he gets sober and he becomes an outreach, homeless outreach worker.

1275
01:30:16,520 --> 01:30:20,400
And while he's on this methamphetamine, the meth changes.

1276
01:30:20,400 --> 01:30:26,160
He experiences the pre-P2P meth and the post-P2P meth.

1277
01:30:26,160 --> 01:30:29,880
And for a while, it's like this party drug, and he's everybody's best friend.

1278
01:30:29,880 --> 01:30:30,880
And then all of a sudden, bam.

1279
01:30:30,880 --> 01:30:35,680
And all of a sudden, he's psychotic, and he's seeing cartel killers everywhere.

1280
01:30:35,680 --> 01:30:38,000
And it's just a very, very scary drug.

1281
01:30:38,000 --> 01:30:41,000
And then he gets sober, and he becomes a homeless outreach worker.

1282
01:30:41,000 --> 01:30:43,200
He works for the VA at the time.

1283
01:30:43,200 --> 01:30:47,000
And he's seeing the same psychosis in all the people in the tent encampments that he's

1284
01:30:47,000 --> 01:30:48,000
seeing.

1285
01:30:48,000 --> 01:30:53,040
And he saw this change, and it hit me that this was just about the time.

1286
01:30:53,040 --> 01:30:55,480
2009 is when he saw this change.

1287
01:30:55,480 --> 01:30:59,640
This was just about the time when they stopped really allowing so much of veteran in and

1288
01:30:59,640 --> 01:31:02,120
trafficking world switch to P2P.

1289
01:31:02,120 --> 01:31:06,480
Now initially, and I began to see, oh my God, this is...

1290
01:31:06,480 --> 01:31:08,040
So we're seeing this all across the country.

1291
01:31:08,040 --> 01:31:12,800
I began making phone calls all across the country, and I began to see this psychosis

1292
01:31:12,800 --> 01:31:19,320
accompanying the methamphetamine as it arrived in whatever region this meth from Mexico began

1293
01:31:19,320 --> 01:31:20,320
to arrive.

1294
01:31:20,320 --> 01:31:28,840
Along with it came this very devastating psychosis that people who are normally not psychotic

1295
01:31:28,840 --> 01:31:32,880
and not mentally ill all of a sudden were.

1296
01:31:32,880 --> 01:31:33,880
And a lot of them were homeless.

1297
01:31:33,880 --> 01:31:39,520
I wrote about a town of Clarksburg, West Virginia, a small town, rust built kind of town, no

1298
01:31:39,520 --> 01:31:43,360
problem with housing prices in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

1299
01:31:43,360 --> 01:31:49,480
And within a year of this meth arriving pretty soon, it's like 100 people or so psychotic

1300
01:31:49,480 --> 01:31:55,000
and on the street, out of their minds, all of them on methamphetamine.

1301
01:31:55,000 --> 01:31:58,160
Initially when I wrote about it, my hunch was that this had something to do with the

1302
01:31:58,160 --> 01:32:00,480
chemicals that were being used.

1303
01:32:00,480 --> 01:32:02,680
Remember, nobody's writing about this.

1304
01:32:02,680 --> 01:32:03,680
Nobody's studying this.

1305
01:32:03,680 --> 01:32:05,660
This is all like kind of new stuff.

1306
01:32:05,660 --> 01:32:10,220
So the book, The Least of Us, really is the first place where you see this explained.

1307
01:32:10,220 --> 01:32:14,040
At the time, I thought it was maybe because of the chemicals they used to make P2P.

1308
01:32:14,040 --> 01:32:24,040
I think in the years that have passed since, they came out in late 2021, I've come to another

1309
01:32:24,040 --> 01:32:31,600
idea all connected to P2P and the prolific abouts that are being made, but that it has

1310
01:32:31,600 --> 01:32:39,080
perhaps more to do with the potency because there is so much being made in Mexico, nobody's

1311
01:32:39,080 --> 01:32:40,800
cutting it when it comes out of Mexico.

1312
01:32:40,800 --> 01:32:45,480
There's no reason to cut your drugs when it's coming out of Mexico.

1313
01:32:45,480 --> 01:32:47,520
Smaller amounts are better.

1314
01:32:47,520 --> 01:32:53,920
But then when it gets here, the quantities are so huge that there's no incentive to cut

1315
01:32:53,920 --> 01:32:54,920
your dope anymore.

1316
01:32:54,920 --> 01:32:59,360
In fact, if you start cutting your dope, people buy their meth from somebody else because they're

1317
01:32:59,360 --> 01:33:00,360
not as potent.

1318
01:33:00,360 --> 01:33:06,400
So to me, that may very well have more to do with just simply that we're in the middle

1319
01:33:06,400 --> 01:33:12,720
of what might be called, you might call it like an unofficial experiment on what happens

1320
01:33:12,720 --> 01:33:21,360
to the human brain when it's sustain exposure to the most potent methamphetamine possible.

1321
01:33:21,360 --> 01:33:22,720
And I think that's what's going on.

1322
01:33:22,720 --> 01:33:30,620
And I think people who work firefighters, paramedics, ER, all that stuff, they're the

1323
01:33:30,620 --> 01:33:35,520
ones who have seen this graphically and up close.

1324
01:33:35,520 --> 01:33:37,520
And I've talked to many of them.

1325
01:33:37,520 --> 01:33:38,520
And the stories are all the same.

1326
01:33:38,520 --> 01:33:39,520
It doesn't matter where you are.

1327
01:33:39,520 --> 01:33:43,200
The stories are all very, very similar where all of a sudden people just go out of their

1328
01:33:43,200 --> 01:33:45,600
minds and then become very violent.

1329
01:33:45,600 --> 01:33:50,000
And the ERs become places that need to be protected from those folks.

1330
01:33:50,000 --> 01:33:55,000
Those folks come in and they're angry and they're seeing Martians everywhere and demons

1331
01:33:55,000 --> 01:33:59,360
and the police officer in his uniform is all of a sudden like this scary, scary killer

1332
01:33:59,360 --> 01:34:01,680
coming for me and all that kind of stuff.

1333
01:34:01,680 --> 01:34:06,600
And I think a lot of this has to do with our homeless problem and our mental illness problem

1334
01:34:06,600 --> 01:34:07,880
nationwide.

1335
01:34:07,880 --> 01:34:12,820
Not the only thing, but certainly a major driver of it.

1336
01:34:12,820 --> 01:34:17,320
One of the least discussed elements of first responder mental health is sleep deprivation.

1337
01:34:17,320 --> 01:34:21,400
We work 24 hour shifts and as you said, we're responding to the fentanyl crisis and the

1338
01:34:21,400 --> 01:34:26,320
meth crisis amongst the obesity crisis and everything else.

1339
01:34:26,320 --> 01:34:28,680
And so our men and women are working more and more.

1340
01:34:28,680 --> 01:34:30,040
There's a recruitment crisis.

1341
01:34:30,040 --> 01:34:34,560
So a lot of them are being forced to work extra shifts and we're seeing an increase

1342
01:34:34,560 --> 01:34:35,560
in addiction.

1343
01:34:35,560 --> 01:34:37,280
We're seeing an increase in suicide.

1344
01:34:37,280 --> 01:34:41,140
I wonder if when it comes to meth, knowing that it's a stimulant, knowing that these

1345
01:34:41,140 --> 01:34:45,560
men and women are up for days on end, that the sleep deprivation is another layer to

1346
01:34:45,560 --> 01:34:47,480
this psychosis puzzle.

1347
01:34:47,480 --> 01:34:49,400
I suspect it may well be.

1348
01:34:49,400 --> 01:34:51,280
I know it's another layer to the homeless thing.

1349
01:34:51,280 --> 01:34:54,040
If you use meth, you're up at night.

1350
01:34:54,040 --> 01:34:55,040
You can defend yourself.

1351
01:34:55,040 --> 01:34:56,680
You don't have your stuff stolen.

1352
01:34:56,680 --> 01:35:00,320
You can, you know, rape and tent encampments.

1353
01:35:00,320 --> 01:35:01,320
It's my understanding.

1354
01:35:01,320 --> 01:35:02,320
No one's really studied this.

1355
01:35:02,320 --> 01:35:03,900
We really should.

1356
01:35:03,900 --> 01:35:08,320
But in tent encampments, rape is just constant.

1357
01:35:08,320 --> 01:35:13,720
And so it's a way for women, it's a way of defending yourself against rape and against

1358
01:35:13,720 --> 01:35:16,520
having your stuff stolen and all that, all that stuff.

1359
01:35:16,520 --> 01:35:21,480
Because it's the idea that this is, you know, that this is the tent encampments are some

1360
01:35:21,480 --> 01:35:23,520
kind of home for people.

1361
01:35:23,520 --> 01:35:26,200
I just think that is such a strange idea.

1362
01:35:26,200 --> 01:35:30,880
This is, this is a home where everyone will stab you in the back, chance they get.

1363
01:35:30,880 --> 01:35:31,880
They don't know your name.

1364
01:35:31,880 --> 01:35:34,340
They know almost nothing about you.

1365
01:35:34,340 --> 01:35:39,080
And there's nothing homey about this.

1366
01:35:39,080 --> 01:35:43,520
And meth turns it even more so that way.

1367
01:35:43,520 --> 01:35:50,120
I had a guest on the show, Robert Banghart, who was one of the many homeless that live

1368
01:35:50,120 --> 01:35:52,600
in tunnels under Las Vegas.

1369
01:35:52,600 --> 01:35:57,160
And again, he's got an immense opioid, opioid and meth, I think it was addiction stories

1370
01:35:57,160 --> 01:35:58,700
was alcohol.

1371
01:35:58,700 --> 01:36:03,320
And now he works as an ambassador for the homeless and he's part of this nonprofit.

1372
01:36:03,320 --> 01:36:07,360
And what's beautiful about what they do ties into what we've discussed a lot.

1373
01:36:07,360 --> 01:36:11,600
They basically hold the hand of the addict metaphorically.

1374
01:36:11,600 --> 01:36:15,200
So for example, if they go to rehab, a lot of people go to rehab, but then they walk

1375
01:36:15,200 --> 01:36:17,560
out the back door and then there's nothing again.

1376
01:36:17,560 --> 01:36:22,640
So they work with these men and women, job creation, you know, home childcare, all the

1377
01:36:22,640 --> 01:36:28,000
things and they literally do not let them go until they are back on their feet, you

1378
01:36:28,000 --> 01:36:31,240
know, in a home with a job and thriving.

1379
01:36:31,240 --> 01:36:36,720
So you know, it's amazing hearing some of these people that are the most important voices

1380
01:36:36,720 --> 01:36:38,440
of the addicts that have actually been there.

1381
01:36:38,440 --> 01:36:43,640
They can storytell, like you said, the violence, the sexual predators, all the things that

1382
01:36:43,640 --> 01:36:45,080
are homeless are exposed to.

1383
01:36:45,080 --> 01:36:50,280
They're not just a nuisance on the sidewalk of your beautiful town.

1384
01:36:50,280 --> 01:36:55,080
They're men and women that were arguably giggling little toddlers once.

1385
01:36:55,080 --> 01:37:00,960
And just because your path took you to a place where you've got two kids and escalate out

1386
01:37:00,960 --> 01:37:03,640
the front, a lot of people just weren't that lucky.

1387
01:37:03,640 --> 01:37:09,600
And so by enveloping them with the resources that we've discussed and raising them up,

1388
01:37:09,600 --> 01:37:12,840
we can't save all of them, but we can save a lot of these men and women and get them

1389
01:37:12,840 --> 01:37:16,520
back into society again, just like they did in Vegas.

1390
01:37:16,520 --> 01:37:17,840
Yeah.

1391
01:37:17,840 --> 01:37:21,760
And I think what you're getting at is what I was just trying to describe with that jail

1392
01:37:21,760 --> 01:37:25,200
thing in the county in Kentucky that I wrote about.

1393
01:37:25,200 --> 01:37:29,880
And that is it's a community, a continuum of care.

1394
01:37:29,880 --> 01:37:34,400
It's this idea that you just don't let people drop off the face of the earth after they

1395
01:37:34,400 --> 01:37:36,360
leave jail, for example.

1396
01:37:36,360 --> 01:37:42,160
You are providing a continuum of services and community.

1397
01:37:42,160 --> 01:37:49,200
It's very, very important for those folks to have available.

1398
01:37:49,200 --> 01:37:51,240
Will all of them succeed?

1399
01:37:51,240 --> 01:37:52,240
No.

1400
01:37:52,240 --> 01:37:55,760
Addiction is extraordinarily complicated and it has to do with the brain.

1401
01:37:55,760 --> 01:37:59,120
And that's another, again, that's just a very complicated thing.

1402
01:37:59,120 --> 01:38:06,920
But I think people have more chance of succeeding when there is that idea of like, we've got

1403
01:38:06,920 --> 01:38:09,520
this whole continuum of care.

1404
01:38:09,520 --> 01:38:13,080
In most of medicine, continuum of care is pretty much just standard.

1405
01:38:13,080 --> 01:38:15,600
I had a heart attack 2017.

1406
01:38:15,600 --> 01:38:16,840
There's a whole continuum of care.

1407
01:38:16,840 --> 01:38:19,560
They don't just let you put your stent in and say, you're on your own.

1408
01:38:19,560 --> 01:38:22,480
No, you're meeting with cardiologists.

1409
01:38:22,480 --> 01:38:25,200
I've taken it very, very seriously in my aftercare.

1410
01:38:25,200 --> 01:38:31,680
So I started out with the help of folks, but I didn't need much help.

1411
01:38:31,680 --> 01:38:34,880
I walk, I swim, I eat much better.

1412
01:38:34,880 --> 01:38:38,280
I'm lifting weights.

1413
01:38:38,280 --> 01:38:41,680
All of that kind of stuff is part of a continuum of care.

1414
01:38:41,680 --> 01:38:49,280
It does require the individual, in my case, me, to be part of it, to be an active participant

1415
01:38:49,280 --> 01:38:51,520
and eager and aggressive about it.

1416
01:38:51,520 --> 01:38:54,640
And I am.

1417
01:38:54,640 --> 01:39:08,600
But you do need that helping hand that maybe this guy you're talking about represents.

1418
01:39:08,600 --> 01:39:11,160
I talk a lot about the environment as well.

1419
01:39:11,160 --> 01:39:13,920
You get a lot of people that look down their nose, extremely judgmental.

1420
01:39:13,920 --> 01:39:15,480
Why don't they just get a job?

1421
01:39:15,480 --> 01:39:17,620
Why don't they just snap out of it?

1422
01:39:17,620 --> 01:39:21,140
Go to rehab and sort yourself out.

1423
01:39:21,140 --> 01:39:25,920
The way I think that it's a good kind of analogy for it's a lot more difficult than just that.

1424
01:39:25,920 --> 01:39:30,480
And you touched about it on the book as far as the addiction element even of our food.

1425
01:39:30,480 --> 01:39:32,540
I grew up on a farm in England.

1426
01:39:32,540 --> 01:39:33,680
So I had an orchard.

1427
01:39:33,680 --> 01:39:34,880
I had a vegetable garden.

1428
01:39:34,880 --> 01:39:35,880
We had chickens.

1429
01:39:35,880 --> 01:39:41,240
I mean, all the things that innately taught me about food and movement, because obviously

1430
01:39:41,240 --> 01:39:43,680
I was not sitting playing video games.

1431
01:39:43,680 --> 01:39:46,280
I was mucking out stables and herding sheep and all the things.

1432
01:39:46,280 --> 01:39:49,120
So that was ingrained into me.

1433
01:39:49,120 --> 01:39:55,200
So at 50 years old, I'm still active, I still eat well, but that's because of my upbringing.

1434
01:39:55,200 --> 01:40:00,600
If I'd grown up in the Bronx and my only food source was a bodega and I couldn't even play

1435
01:40:00,600 --> 01:40:04,560
at the basketball courts because there were gangs that ruled it, my experience would be

1436
01:40:04,560 --> 01:40:06,220
very different.

1437
01:40:06,220 --> 01:40:11,360
And in this environment, if it was just about self-discipline, then 70% of Americans wouldn't

1438
01:40:11,360 --> 01:40:13,140
be obese or overweight.

1439
01:40:13,140 --> 01:40:19,020
But they are because we've created an environment where movement is minimized and we have these

1440
01:40:19,020 --> 01:40:24,560
highly caloric malnourishment foods that are making us sick.

1441
01:40:24,560 --> 01:40:26,300
So it's the same with addiction to me.

1442
01:40:26,300 --> 01:40:31,460
If you create resources for people to address all of the compounding elements that lead

1443
01:40:31,460 --> 01:40:35,400
to addiction, you will then allow most people to heal.

1444
01:40:35,400 --> 01:40:38,600
And like you said, there will be that group that sadly you cannot save, but you can't

1445
01:40:38,600 --> 01:40:39,600
focus on them.

1446
01:40:39,600 --> 01:40:42,160
You've got to focus on the masses that you can.

1447
01:40:42,160 --> 01:40:47,400
But if you create a system that puts shame and guilt around addiction and criminal records

1448
01:40:47,400 --> 01:40:51,200
and all these things, then we're going to see exactly what we see.

1449
01:40:51,200 --> 01:40:55,880
Homelessness on the streets, gangs, sex work, all the elements.

1450
01:40:55,880 --> 01:41:01,840
So if we can reframe it in a proactive way that creates an environment that allows many

1451
01:41:01,840 --> 01:41:07,100
of our addicts to actually look for help and grab that helping hand, that's how we're going

1452
01:41:07,100 --> 01:41:08,600
to move it forward.

1453
01:41:08,600 --> 01:41:12,100
Yeah, I think that could be true.

1454
01:41:12,100 --> 01:41:17,000
I would say that the problem with fentanyl and meth is that it makes it very, very unlikely

1455
01:41:17,000 --> 01:41:24,080
that people will on their own, say in a tent and camp and on the street, opt for treatment.

1456
01:41:24,080 --> 01:41:28,600
They would, yeah, that so often, you know, there's a program in LA County, I think it's

1457
01:41:28,600 --> 01:41:29,600
still working.

1458
01:41:29,600 --> 01:41:34,640
It was a couple of years ago, I heard about it called Reaching the 95.

1459
01:41:34,640 --> 01:41:35,640
What does that mean?

1460
01:41:35,640 --> 01:41:42,600
It's refers to 95% of the people that we offer treatment to say no.

1461
01:41:42,600 --> 01:41:43,600
Why?

1462
01:41:43,600 --> 01:41:47,760
Because they're on tolerances of fentanyl that are towering.

1463
01:41:47,760 --> 01:41:50,920
And so we need the ways of getting them away from that.

1464
01:41:50,920 --> 01:41:51,920
There's no readiness.

1465
01:41:51,920 --> 01:41:57,320
You're never going to find readiness for treatment when your tolerance or your terrified of the

1466
01:41:57,320 --> 01:42:00,240
withdrawal from fentanyl.

1467
01:42:00,240 --> 01:42:06,320
Even though you know, it's widely known, it's no, you know, not news to anybody, that you're

1468
01:42:06,320 --> 01:42:07,920
going to die.

1469
01:42:07,920 --> 01:42:09,360
People are going to die on the streets.

1470
01:42:09,360 --> 01:42:15,560
I've been dying for years now because of fentanyl long, you know, heroin used to be 20, 30 years,

1471
01:42:15,560 --> 01:42:17,840
you can be using heroin and still not be dead.

1472
01:42:17,840 --> 01:42:20,280
Fentanyl and that's just not the case anymore.

1473
01:42:20,280 --> 01:42:27,340
And it's really, I think we're seeing a decline in overdose deaths.

1474
01:42:27,340 --> 01:42:32,720
We will see a decline in overdose deaths.

1475
01:42:32,720 --> 01:42:37,980
I think this year, when it's all finally counted.

1476
01:42:37,980 --> 01:42:43,400
You know, it sounds ominous and there's all kinds of reasons postulated and many people

1477
01:42:43,400 --> 01:42:45,000
don't know why.

1478
01:42:45,000 --> 01:42:50,480
One reason I would say is that the most vulnerable people are all dead.

1479
01:42:50,480 --> 01:42:54,720
You know, it's just declining numbers of vulnerable folks on the street.

1480
01:42:54,720 --> 01:42:55,720
They're all dead.

1481
01:42:55,720 --> 01:42:59,280
There are hundreds of thousands of people that died because of this.

1482
01:42:59,280 --> 01:43:05,040
And I mean, that's, I hate to say it sounds grotesque to say this, but, but actually,

1483
01:43:05,040 --> 01:43:12,000
I mean, there's not many other full on reasons that make any sense to me.

1484
01:43:12,000 --> 01:43:15,280
The use of Narcan is not, is not a savior.

1485
01:43:15,280 --> 01:43:21,880
It can be if it's, if it's followed with the proper use of the proper offers of services

1486
01:43:21,880 --> 01:43:24,160
and people getting off the street and all that kind of thing.

1487
01:43:24,160 --> 01:43:27,640
But if just the way it's done now, people are given Narcan reviving them and they're

1488
01:43:27,640 --> 01:43:28,640
on their way.

1489
01:43:28,640 --> 01:43:32,720
I mean, those people are going to die, you know, and I would say this too.

1490
01:43:32,720 --> 01:43:41,240
We live this big part of the book that I wrote, as you mentioned, we live in a time where

1491
01:43:41,240 --> 01:43:47,240
our economy in our lifetimes has been transformed.

1492
01:43:47,240 --> 01:43:54,680
Portions of it, major portions of our economy been transferred into an economy of addiction.

1493
01:43:54,680 --> 01:44:00,680
And you're seeing that with fast food, soda, social media apps, forget about it, right?

1494
01:44:00,680 --> 01:44:06,320
Playing apps, video games, pornography, I mean, on and on and on, you can go, you can

1495
01:44:06,320 --> 01:44:13,240
see all these things that have a fairly, you know, kind of addictive potential dependency

1496
01:44:13,240 --> 01:44:18,520
creating potential and they are prodded and they are transformed and they are fine tuned

1497
01:44:18,520 --> 01:44:20,600
to be just blasts.

1498
01:44:20,600 --> 01:44:28,000
Hyper potent marijuana, another one, you know, and, and, and this is because the, the corporate

1499
01:44:28,000 --> 01:44:34,920
manufacturers and marketers of these things know, they know that these things can be transformed

1500
01:44:34,920 --> 01:44:43,480
to be absolutely, just craving inducing, right?

1501
01:44:43,480 --> 01:44:45,080
And that's what they're going for.

1502
01:44:45,080 --> 01:44:49,200
They're using the language of addiction all the time, cravings, you want triggers and

1503
01:44:49,200 --> 01:44:50,800
cravings, all this kind of stuff.

1504
01:44:50,800 --> 01:44:57,400
Look at the way they, the one arm bandit, the slot machine has been transformed.

1505
01:44:57,400 --> 01:45:02,740
You look at it from say a generation ago and you're pulling that lever and the cherries

1506
01:45:02,740 --> 01:45:05,000
go around and you win and don't win.

1507
01:45:05,000 --> 01:45:09,120
It takes about eight, 10 seconds for you to figure out if you won, maybe five, I don't

1508
01:45:09,120 --> 01:45:10,120
know.

1509
01:45:10,120 --> 01:45:11,120
Now it's like relentless.

1510
01:45:11,120 --> 01:45:16,640
You're, you're, you're winning or losing every second or second and a half or something

1511
01:45:16,640 --> 01:45:17,640
like that.

1512
01:45:17,640 --> 01:45:22,000
It's just, they have figured out that that's how you get people to keep playing and pouring

1513
01:45:22,000 --> 01:45:24,120
their money down that gullet.

1514
01:45:24,120 --> 01:45:25,800
Right.

1515
01:45:25,800 --> 01:45:31,400
And now we have ESPN becoming basically a sports gambling station.

1516
01:45:31,400 --> 01:45:33,440
All the time they're telling what the over under is.

1517
01:45:33,440 --> 01:45:35,040
I don't give a crap about that.

1518
01:45:35,040 --> 01:45:42,480
I wish they would stop my, you know, gambling is like this deeply, deeply disturbing evil,

1519
01:45:42,480 --> 01:45:50,080
I think activity, absolutely producing nothing but misery for the, for the, for the country.

1520
01:45:50,080 --> 01:45:54,000
But you look at it, look at Frappuccinos little cup of coffee.

1521
01:45:54,000 --> 01:46:02,320
Now it's like this enormous towering concoction of fat, sugar and caffeine, you know?

1522
01:46:02,320 --> 01:46:08,880
I mean, so we see this all throughout our economy and, and I believe it's like, it's

1523
01:46:08,880 --> 01:46:16,840
part of what prepares people, primes people for, for, for, for addiction.

1524
01:46:16,840 --> 01:46:22,600
Really when you compare it to that, the Sinhala drug cartel is a minor player, you know, the

1525
01:46:22,600 --> 01:46:27,560
new generation, Jalisco cartel in Mexico, they're minor players when you compare it

1526
01:46:27,560 --> 01:46:34,600
to Facebook like signs and, and all these other, you know, Tik Tok and, and all that

1527
01:46:34,600 --> 01:46:35,600
kind of stuff.

1528
01:46:35,600 --> 01:46:38,280
And I mean, you're talking about some Taco Bell.

1529
01:46:38,280 --> 01:46:45,200
Have you seen how they advertise the Lux cravings box for $7, which is this colossal amount

1530
01:46:45,200 --> 01:46:46,200
of food?

1531
01:46:46,200 --> 01:46:50,960
What's the, what's the one way there's several ways, of course, one way they advertise it

1532
01:46:50,960 --> 01:46:54,760
is think less is more question mark.

1533
01:46:54,760 --> 01:46:56,480
No more is more.

1534
01:46:56,480 --> 01:47:02,040
Well that's exactly the model of the drug dealer on the street, you know?

1535
01:47:02,040 --> 01:47:07,760
And we are, we are living in that now to an extent that simply was not the case like 25

1536
01:47:07,760 --> 01:47:09,360
years ago, just wasn't the case.

1537
01:47:09,360 --> 01:47:13,000
And certainly not when I was coming up, like in the seventies and eighties.

1538
01:47:13,000 --> 01:47:14,000
Yeah.

1539
01:47:14,000 --> 01:47:15,000
I couldn't agree more.

1540
01:47:15,000 --> 01:47:18,000
And even the way that our news has done is tapping into that same thing, whether you're

1541
01:47:18,000 --> 01:47:23,240
watching Fox, you know, it's that, you know, it's that tapping the gambling machine button.

1542
01:47:23,240 --> 01:47:29,520
I want to go to Portsmouth, Ohio, because that was obviously the origin story of dreamland,

1543
01:47:29,520 --> 01:47:33,240
this beautiful communal pool that brought everyone in the town together.

1544
01:47:33,240 --> 01:47:37,880
And then there's this devolution of industry and then the community is kind of fractured.

1545
01:47:37,880 --> 01:47:43,520
Talk to me how that devastated community started becoming a hub for people seeking recovery

1546
01:47:43,520 --> 01:47:46,160
and rebuilding community today.

1547
01:47:46,160 --> 01:47:51,320
Yeah, and that's what I think that's, you know, we've spoken so much about fentanyl

1548
01:47:51,320 --> 01:47:55,640
and math, the least of us I intended really.

1549
01:47:55,640 --> 01:47:57,320
And I think I achieved this.

1550
01:47:57,320 --> 01:47:59,400
I mean, I did not fail.

1551
01:47:59,400 --> 01:48:06,920
I don't believe as a book about how America moves beyond the very grave threats that I've

1552
01:48:06,920 --> 01:48:10,760
just described the last hour and a half.

1553
01:48:10,760 --> 01:48:12,300
Right.

1554
01:48:12,300 --> 01:48:19,040
And to me, it's all about strengthening community, returning, repairing community that we have

1555
01:48:19,040 --> 01:48:20,040
destroyed.

1556
01:48:20,040 --> 01:48:27,360
And Portsmouth was one place, excuse me, that I focused.

1557
01:48:27,360 --> 01:48:32,160
And Portsmouth, Ohio was, you know, it was the place where dreamland pool once existed.

1558
01:48:32,160 --> 01:48:34,680
It was a big part of the dreamland book.

1559
01:48:34,680 --> 01:48:43,240
They had a very, you know, a big town of a lot of working class jobs and Main Street,

1560
01:48:43,240 --> 01:48:46,200
locally owned stores, a lot of people in town.

1561
01:48:46,200 --> 01:48:48,720
The Cortho Restboat phenomenon sets in.

1562
01:48:48,720 --> 01:48:50,720
All the jobs go where many of the jobs go.

1563
01:48:50,720 --> 01:48:53,480
A lot of the Main Street just empties right out.

1564
01:48:53,480 --> 01:48:54,960
A lot of people leave.

1565
01:48:54,960 --> 01:49:02,440
And finally, they can no longer keep the great jewel of the community, the thing that people

1566
01:49:02,440 --> 01:49:07,640
interacted in community more than anything, any other place was this enormous pool called

1567
01:49:07,640 --> 01:49:09,720
dreamland.

1568
01:49:09,720 --> 01:49:14,240
And finally, with the Rest Belt syndrome, a place they really cannot keep the pool open,

1569
01:49:14,240 --> 01:49:16,240
it closes.

1570
01:49:16,240 --> 01:49:19,480
That land is now a strip mall.

1571
01:49:19,480 --> 01:49:23,600
And of course, that means that they lose this essential element that holds them together

1572
01:49:23,600 --> 01:49:28,280
and they become very, very vulnerable and the pills come through and a whole generation,

1573
01:49:28,280 --> 01:49:32,160
maybe even two, gets addicted in that town.

1574
01:49:32,160 --> 01:49:37,320
And I came towards the end of that and I began, I wrote dreamland with that in mind, with

1575
01:49:37,320 --> 01:49:42,320
all that story in mind, but then also the last chapters, the last chapter, 30 pages

1576
01:49:42,320 --> 01:49:46,600
or so, the longest chapter in the book, was about how there was this glimmer of recovery

1577
01:49:46,600 --> 01:49:47,600
in this town.

1578
01:49:47,600 --> 01:49:50,120
I wrote that in 2015.

1579
01:49:50,120 --> 01:49:52,040
I was writing The Least of Us.

1580
01:49:52,040 --> 01:49:58,560
And so what you're finding is in Portsmouth, you found all these people kind of finding

1581
01:49:58,560 --> 01:50:04,680
AA together, all these people meeting each other, coming together and working together

1582
01:50:04,680 --> 01:50:07,520
for recovery, but in the smallest, smallest ways.

1583
01:50:07,520 --> 01:50:10,320
And it was really not clear that it would survive to me.

1584
01:50:10,320 --> 01:50:13,560
I write The Least of Us and I say, you know what, it's not about Portsmouth anymore.

1585
01:50:13,560 --> 01:50:16,400
I'm writing about fentanyl and math and all that kind of stuff.

1586
01:50:16,400 --> 01:50:20,000
But I say, maybe the good thing to do is to return to Portsmouth and see how they're doing.

1587
01:50:20,000 --> 01:50:26,360
And what I found was it just in a greatly enhanced recovery community, largely in part

1588
01:50:26,360 --> 01:50:34,600
because of the counseling center, known as the counseling center, that started a little

1589
01:50:34,600 --> 01:50:40,360
house and now it's this enormous place and it's receiving people from all over Ohio,

1590
01:50:40,360 --> 01:50:43,520
coming down to Portsmouth where many people started their addiction.

1591
01:50:43,520 --> 01:50:45,880
They're coming down to get sober.

1592
01:50:45,880 --> 01:50:50,760
And along with that, you develop a community of people in recovery and then enhanced by

1593
01:50:50,760 --> 01:50:56,520
people who are never addicted to drugs, but were eager, eager to put an end to see another

1594
01:50:56,520 --> 01:51:02,280
story told about the town, not just let's get high and steal the manhole covers.

1595
01:51:02,280 --> 01:51:09,680
And so when I got down there, I began to see all these small businesses, all these rehabbing

1596
01:51:09,680 --> 01:51:15,600
of these old, beautiful brick buildings that were blight for the city for many years, but

1597
01:51:15,600 --> 01:51:17,040
thankfully they never knocked down.

1598
01:51:17,040 --> 01:51:19,240
Now they're becoming jewels.

1599
01:51:19,240 --> 01:51:23,680
You're seeing CrossFit's four, as I remember.

1600
01:51:23,680 --> 01:51:25,520
Lately you're seeing a meeting room.

1601
01:51:25,520 --> 01:51:30,200
There's this wonderful music room called the Landing at Portsmouth where people just come

1602
01:51:30,200 --> 01:51:31,360
and play music.

1603
01:51:31,360 --> 01:51:32,360
It's mostly on weekends.

1604
01:51:32,360 --> 01:51:33,360
I take it.

1605
01:51:33,360 --> 01:51:38,680
Put up art, you know, along the, you're seeing the rebuilding of community in Portsmouth,

1606
01:51:38,680 --> 01:51:39,680
Ohio.

1607
01:51:39,680 --> 01:51:42,120
Does not mean that there's no drug problem anymore.

1608
01:51:42,120 --> 01:51:43,120
Still is there.

1609
01:51:43,120 --> 01:51:48,280
It's simply that the narrative is much different in that town than it was for many years, which

1610
01:51:48,280 --> 01:51:50,560
is just, let's all get high.

1611
01:51:50,560 --> 01:51:52,880
Portsmouth is where the pill mill was invented.

1612
01:51:52,880 --> 01:51:58,880
These kind of scandalous businesses where some doctor, some quack would be prescribing

1613
01:51:58,880 --> 01:52:04,960
long lists of opioids and you just go find a pharmacist that'll, that'll, that'll redeem,

1614
01:52:04,960 --> 01:52:08,000
that'll fill the prescription.

1615
01:52:08,000 --> 01:52:12,840
And the, the pill mill business model really begins in Portsmouth, Ohio.

1616
01:52:12,840 --> 01:52:15,920
It's been a long, those things go out of business.

1617
01:52:15,920 --> 01:52:20,960
But the idea was really to write about the smallest ways.

1618
01:52:20,960 --> 01:52:25,840
That's why the least of us, the least little effort matters, has consequences, particularly

1619
01:52:25,840 --> 01:52:28,160
when you put it together with other little efforts.

1620
01:52:28,160 --> 01:52:32,160
And then pretty soon you find the synergy and all of a sudden bigger solutions are possible

1621
01:52:32,160 --> 01:52:33,160
now.

1622
01:52:33,160 --> 01:52:35,040
That's the idea I wanted to write about.

1623
01:52:35,040 --> 01:52:39,360
And half of the book, I mean, we've spoken an hour and a half about fentanyl and meth,

1624
01:52:39,360 --> 01:52:42,280
but really half of the least of us and half.

1625
01:52:42,280 --> 01:52:50,440
And now really my central preoccupation is finding stories about people finding fulfillment

1626
01:52:50,440 --> 01:52:57,440
from within, about finding fulfillment and teamwork, working with others, finding the

1627
01:52:57,440 --> 01:53:02,920
smallest little stories, like the smallest little businesses startup, two employees,

1628
01:53:02,920 --> 01:53:04,680
one employee, whatever.

1629
01:53:04,680 --> 01:53:09,120
And but they begin to find common cause with others who are doing, doing the same.

1630
01:53:09,120 --> 01:53:16,720
And you're beginning to put together a community that is where you will find true solutions.

1631
01:53:16,720 --> 01:53:23,580
And without the unintended consequences that these kind of magic answers that we're always

1632
01:53:23,580 --> 01:53:29,040
seeming to look for, that our corporate marketers always want to convince us, every drug dealer

1633
01:53:29,040 --> 01:53:31,440
wants to convince us actually exist.

1634
01:53:31,440 --> 01:53:32,560
They don't exist.

1635
01:53:32,560 --> 01:53:36,200
These magic answers always come with unintended consequences.

1636
01:53:36,200 --> 01:53:39,720
And I'm really very much interested now.

1637
01:53:39,720 --> 01:53:46,240
And since with that book began my real interest in finding the stories of how the smallest,

1638
01:53:46,240 --> 01:53:53,280
the smallest little stories of people working hard, working hard together, finding something

1639
01:53:53,280 --> 01:54:00,040
within them that is really truly where they find, where they create for themselves the

1640
01:54:00,040 --> 01:54:05,240
kind of fulfillment, instead of trying to buy happiness from some little piece of crap,

1641
01:54:05,240 --> 01:54:14,280
you know, be it a pill, little bag of heroin, little grains of fentanyl, a frappuccino,

1642
01:54:14,280 --> 01:54:19,920
whatever, iPhone, whatever, finding, finding the fulfillment from within.

1643
01:54:19,920 --> 01:54:22,160
It's really what my next book is going to be about.

1644
01:54:22,160 --> 01:54:24,360
And, and, and I've been writing about this now.

1645
01:54:24,360 --> 01:54:29,480
I really think this is where I want to focus now.

1646
01:54:29,480 --> 01:54:38,040
It's about finding places where people are finding, are developing their own fulfillment,

1647
01:54:38,040 --> 01:54:41,960
not looking for pleasure and calling that happiness, which is what Madison Avenue always

1648
01:54:41,960 --> 01:54:44,640
wants us to believe.

1649
01:54:44,640 --> 01:54:50,120
It's finding that thing that says, wow, this is why I'm alive, you know?

1650
01:54:50,120 --> 01:54:55,080
And to me, that is really the beauty of the Portsmouth story, some other stories I've

1651
01:54:55,080 --> 01:54:58,080
told since, and the next book as well.

1652
01:54:58,080 --> 01:55:00,040
I'm so excited you're going to expand on that.

1653
01:55:00,040 --> 01:55:03,400
I think that was one of the most captivating things of the whole book was kind of like

1654
01:55:03,400 --> 01:55:07,480
rounding off with this revisit to Portsmouth and hearing that one of the CrossFit was called

1655
01:55:07,480 --> 01:55:10,160
CrossFit Dreamland, which I thought was awesome.

1656
01:55:10,160 --> 01:55:13,320
But I've watched CrossFit, you know, do so much.

1657
01:55:13,320 --> 01:55:17,280
I'm actually going to coach a class, it's kind of like CrossFit class that I do for

1658
01:55:17,280 --> 01:55:19,760
first responders.

1659
01:55:19,760 --> 01:55:24,520
And yes, there's an exercise element, but it's the conversations that we have out there.

1660
01:55:24,520 --> 01:55:26,600
And I've had, you know, people that was actually a huge...

1661
01:55:26,600 --> 01:55:27,600
It's a community exercise.

1662
01:55:27,600 --> 01:55:28,600
Exactly.

1663
01:55:28,600 --> 01:55:32,680
It's community exercise, not doing it alone in your own home, but being with other people.

1664
01:55:32,680 --> 01:55:36,640
To me, that's what feels like such a powerful idea about CrossFit.

1665
01:55:36,640 --> 01:55:40,040
And one thing that really jumped out, I don't know if this kind of hit you when you were

1666
01:55:40,040 --> 01:55:44,560
writing it, but there was one of the stories you were talking about.

1667
01:55:44,560 --> 01:55:51,040
One of the guys was starting to refurbish a house, I think turning them into flats.

1668
01:55:51,040 --> 01:55:56,180
And he discovered that some of the attics had actually been carpenters and plumbers.

1669
01:55:56,180 --> 01:55:57,720
And that was a pigeon hole.

1670
01:55:57,720 --> 01:56:03,440
It was a label kind of epiphany because we call that person an addict, a bum, a crackhead,

1671
01:56:03,440 --> 01:56:05,400
you know, whore, whatever the label is.

1672
01:56:05,400 --> 01:56:11,520
But again, no, that was actually a mechanic until he hurt his back, was on oxycodone,

1673
01:56:11,520 --> 01:56:13,040
then ended up on black tar heroin.

1674
01:56:13,040 --> 01:56:18,120
And now he's, you know, out on the streets on fentanyl or meth or whatever it was.

1675
01:56:18,120 --> 01:56:22,780
That's a young man who was a brother and, you know, a husband at one point maybe.

1676
01:56:22,780 --> 01:56:24,160
So that's a human being.

1677
01:56:24,160 --> 01:56:29,800
And so it was refinding the actual humans, the members of your tribe, and then lifting

1678
01:56:29,800 --> 01:56:33,760
them back up to reclaim their place.

1679
01:56:33,760 --> 01:56:34,760
I think so.

1680
01:56:34,760 --> 01:56:43,200
And that's kind of where I want to focus my energies, at least in part from now on.

1681
01:56:43,200 --> 01:56:49,200
I think at least when I read about this topic, and it seems like, so I'll just tell you the

1682
01:56:49,200 --> 01:56:53,720
topic of my next book, which I just finished, and it should be out next fall.

1683
01:56:53,720 --> 01:56:54,720
It's weird.

1684
01:56:54,720 --> 01:56:55,720
It's very weird.

1685
01:56:55,720 --> 01:56:59,760
But it, but it, and you won't, and you will, I got into it because I thought it was not

1686
01:56:59,760 --> 01:57:00,760
going to be about drugs.

1687
01:57:00,760 --> 01:57:02,760
I've written about drug addiction for 12 years.

1688
01:57:02,760 --> 01:57:08,360
I want to say, you know what, I want to write about, again, people finding great fulfillment

1689
01:57:08,360 --> 01:57:13,360
from something that they create themselves, you know, that, and that very often requires

1690
01:57:13,360 --> 01:57:17,120
lots of hard work through failure, working with others, teamwork.

1691
01:57:17,120 --> 01:57:19,020
It's about community, you know.

1692
01:57:19,020 --> 01:57:27,440
And so the next book, and I'll explain why, but the next book is about the tuba and marching

1693
01:57:27,440 --> 01:57:28,440
band.

1694
01:57:28,440 --> 01:57:29,440
Right.

1695
01:57:29,440 --> 01:57:32,640
I got into this because I wanted to write about something that had nothing to do with

1696
01:57:32,640 --> 01:57:33,640
drugs.

1697
01:57:33,640 --> 01:57:36,600
And then along the way, I realized actually it's all the same.

1698
01:57:36,600 --> 01:57:41,280
It's very similar story because through the tuba, what you're doing is you're developing,

1699
01:57:41,280 --> 01:57:44,020
you nobody got rich and famous from playing the tuba.

1700
01:57:44,020 --> 01:57:45,980
You do it because you love it.

1701
01:57:45,980 --> 01:57:50,960
And you do it because one of the things about the tuba, contrary to addiction, opioid addiction

1702
01:57:50,960 --> 01:57:58,240
is the overdose is the stifling of the precious human breath, the breath of life.

1703
01:57:58,240 --> 01:58:00,200
The tuba is about the development of that.

1704
01:58:00,200 --> 01:58:02,240
It's about finding that fulfillment.

1705
01:58:02,240 --> 01:58:03,780
You get so good at it.

1706
01:58:03,780 --> 01:58:06,040
First you can barely make a noise.

1707
01:58:06,040 --> 01:58:09,040
And then a year later you're making these scales and all of a sudden you're playing

1708
01:58:09,040 --> 01:58:11,120
these very complicated pieces of music.

1709
01:58:11,120 --> 01:58:16,120
I wanted to write about people who find happiness and fulfillment more than happiness.

1710
01:58:16,120 --> 01:58:24,280
We'll call it fulfillment from this enormous effort, teamwork, postponing gratification,

1711
01:58:24,280 --> 01:58:28,920
working through failure, doing it in spite of failure and not for any promise of great

1712
01:58:28,920 --> 01:58:32,280
wealth and fame.

1713
01:58:32,280 --> 01:58:34,620
It's about so it's called the perfect tuba.

1714
01:58:34,620 --> 01:58:36,300
It's also about band directors.

1715
01:58:36,300 --> 01:58:46,440
And all of these are developing, I think, the great qualities that sustain community,

1716
01:58:46,440 --> 01:58:51,360
patience, focus, devotion, discipline, preparation.

1717
01:58:51,360 --> 01:58:58,040
All of these kinds of things are part of learning the tuba and being in marching band.

1718
01:58:58,040 --> 01:59:08,240
And they are values that help sustain the community.

1719
01:59:08,240 --> 01:59:09,680
And it's such an important thing.

1720
01:59:09,680 --> 01:59:12,760
We are surrounded by reasons to isolate.

1721
01:59:12,760 --> 01:59:17,040
We are surrounded by reasons to say I just want the easy way.

1722
01:59:17,040 --> 01:59:19,160
I'm afraid of hard work.

1723
01:59:19,160 --> 01:59:22,840
All that kind of stuff.

1724
01:59:22,840 --> 01:59:26,000
I wanted to have the term hard work in the subtile.

1725
01:59:26,000 --> 01:59:32,360
The perfect tuba, finding fulfillment from the base horn, band, hope and hard work.

1726
01:59:32,360 --> 01:59:44,000
I think there's this such a beautiful aspect to the idea that that's how human beings innovate.

1727
01:59:44,000 --> 01:59:48,240
That's how human beings become who they were meant to be.

1728
01:59:48,240 --> 01:59:50,360
It's not saying well, it's hard.

1729
01:59:50,360 --> 01:59:52,000
It's only I'm not going to do it.

1730
01:59:52,000 --> 01:59:58,760
It's saying I think I can do this and moving through the failure and moving on to great

1731
01:59:58,760 --> 01:59:59,760
things.

1732
01:59:59,760 --> 02:00:04,000
It's a bunch of stories about tuba players and band directors who are using what I believe

1733
02:00:04,000 --> 02:00:10,960
to be this approach that is really kind of the antidote to addiction and overdose in

1734
02:00:10,960 --> 02:00:12,360
America.

1735
02:00:12,360 --> 02:00:15,260
Kind of strange idea, I understand.

1736
02:00:15,260 --> 02:00:16,260
But you know what?

1737
02:00:16,260 --> 02:00:19,400
I was tired of writing about the same old, not the same old.

1738
02:00:19,400 --> 02:00:22,680
It's all fascinating stuff.

1739
02:00:22,680 --> 02:00:28,720
I was tired of writing about people whose search was for their own demise by buying

1740
02:00:28,720 --> 02:00:35,320
a piece of crap that they thought would find happiness.

1741
02:00:35,320 --> 02:00:36,320
I think it sounds amazing.

1742
02:00:36,320 --> 02:00:40,280
This is what I love about the diverse group of guests that I had on the show.

1743
02:00:40,280 --> 02:00:44,440
When you venture into different spaces, you start to see these parallels.

1744
02:00:44,440 --> 02:00:47,120
You start to see these solutions.

1745
02:00:47,120 --> 02:00:48,680
People think this is a mental health podcast.

1746
02:00:48,680 --> 02:00:49,680
It's not.

1747
02:00:49,680 --> 02:00:52,320
It's a I don't want people to suffer and die podcast.

1748
02:00:52,320 --> 02:00:54,680
I'm not suffering in a negative way.

1749
02:00:54,680 --> 02:01:01,720
But you get child soldiers from Sierra Leone and Navy SEALs and firefighters and physicians

1750
02:01:01,720 --> 02:01:03,080
and ballerinas.

1751
02:01:03,080 --> 02:01:05,760
And then you see these same through paths.

1752
02:01:05,760 --> 02:01:10,840
But that purpose, especially the people in my community and the military, a lot of them

1753
02:01:10,840 --> 02:01:14,120
fall apart when they take the uniform off because that's who I was.

1754
02:01:14,120 --> 02:01:15,640
But that's not who you were.

1755
02:01:15,640 --> 02:01:20,840
It's what you did and refinding that purpose, refining that intrinsic reward system that

1756
02:01:20,840 --> 02:01:24,680
makes you feel good is usually going to be connected with service.

1757
02:01:24,680 --> 02:01:30,960
Yeah, I don't believe that there's really long term, long term recovery from addiction

1758
02:01:30,960 --> 02:01:33,240
requires finding purpose.

1759
02:01:33,240 --> 02:01:37,640
And I wanted to write about people who had found that from something very strange.

1760
02:01:37,640 --> 02:01:40,200
People had not imagined, gee, why did you write a book about the tuba?

1761
02:01:40,200 --> 02:01:43,040
I'm like, well, nobody told said that to me.

1762
02:01:43,040 --> 02:01:45,880
I just began to interview tuba players.

1763
02:01:45,880 --> 02:01:47,920
It was a long story how I got into it.

1764
02:01:47,920 --> 02:01:49,520
It goes back a number of years.

1765
02:01:49,520 --> 02:01:50,520
And I don't play the tuba.

1766
02:01:50,520 --> 02:01:52,040
I was never in marching band.

1767
02:01:52,040 --> 02:01:56,400
But it's the idea what you say is absolutely to me, it's essential.

1768
02:01:56,400 --> 02:02:02,000
It's like you find purpose allows you to recover from addiction and mental health problems

1769
02:02:02,000 --> 02:02:03,480
as well, I believe.

1770
02:02:03,480 --> 02:02:05,840
And it allows you and you find that purpose.

1771
02:02:05,840 --> 02:02:12,840
Again, hard work, devotion, postponing gratitude, but also teamwork, working with others.

1772
02:02:12,840 --> 02:02:17,000
Collaboration, you know, all of that is so, so essential.

1773
02:02:17,000 --> 02:02:21,200
And if you look at our society today, we have gotten away from all of that.

1774
02:02:21,200 --> 02:02:22,200
Absolutely.

1775
02:02:22,200 --> 02:02:25,400
Well, Sam, it's been an amazing conversation.

1776
02:02:25,400 --> 02:02:29,840
Firstly, dreamland, The Least of Us, your other books, where are the best places to

1777
02:02:29,840 --> 02:02:32,080
find those?

1778
02:02:32,080 --> 02:02:34,960
You can go to my website, which is sandkinyonas.com.

1779
02:02:34,960 --> 02:02:39,840
There you could find my email and all I'm happy to do.

1780
02:02:39,840 --> 02:02:42,680
By the way, I do a lot of speaking engagements.

1781
02:02:42,680 --> 02:02:44,960
I'm also happy to do book groups.

1782
02:02:44,960 --> 02:02:50,280
I do them free of charge and people read their, you know, groups, classes, university classes,

1783
02:02:50,280 --> 02:02:51,280
whatever.

1784
02:02:51,280 --> 02:02:53,000
I do them all the time, free of charge.

1785
02:02:53,000 --> 02:02:56,400
I think I've probably done maybe 100, 150 of them by now.

1786
02:02:56,400 --> 02:02:57,400
Really a lot.

1787
02:02:57,400 --> 02:02:58,560
I love doing that kind of stuff.

1788
02:02:58,560 --> 02:03:04,600
But my website, just my name and dot com and you come to me and and and I'm trying to start

1789
02:03:04,600 --> 02:03:10,760
up sub stack as soon as I learn sub stack technology, I'll actually start one.

1790
02:03:10,760 --> 02:03:14,200
That's been a little bit of a problem because I'm a tech idiot.

1791
02:03:14,200 --> 02:03:18,560
But those are my website is probably the best place to find me in there.

1792
02:03:18,560 --> 02:03:21,080
You can find my my my email and all that.

1793
02:03:21,080 --> 02:03:22,080
Beautiful.

1794
02:03:22,080 --> 02:03:24,040
And where to find my books and all that too.

1795
02:03:24,040 --> 02:03:25,040
Excellent.

1796
02:03:25,040 --> 02:03:28,160
Well, firstly, I'd love to get you back in the fall when the next book comes out and

1797
02:03:28,160 --> 02:03:29,160
do another conversation.

1798
02:03:29,160 --> 02:03:31,680
I'm counting on it, man.

1799
02:03:31,680 --> 02:03:32,680
Count on it.

1800
02:03:32,680 --> 02:03:37,560
You don't I don't know how to have any clue how to sell a book about the tuba.

1801
02:03:37,560 --> 02:03:39,600
So I'm going to contact everybody.

1802
02:03:39,600 --> 02:03:40,960
Damn it.

1803
02:03:40,960 --> 02:03:41,960
Beautiful.

1804
02:03:41,960 --> 02:03:43,200
Well, I want to thank you so, so much.

1805
02:03:43,200 --> 02:03:45,280
It's been yet another incredible conversation.

1806
02:03:45,280 --> 02:03:49,440
I want to thank you for your books, because as you said, you really were a pioneer in

1807
02:03:49,440 --> 02:03:50,440
a lot of these conversations.

1808
02:03:50,440 --> 02:03:54,400
And I think now there's this kind of grand awakening, which is phenomenal, especially

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02:03:54,400 --> 02:03:58,080
because the people listening, a lot of us respond to some of these people at their last

1810
02:03:58,080 --> 02:03:59,080
moments.

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So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming on the

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Behind the Shield podcast today.

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My pleasure, James.

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Thanks for the interest.

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I appreciate the talk.