Sam Quinones on the Rise of Fentanyl & P2P Methamphetamine

Sam Quinones is a distinguished journalist and author who has reported on America's opioid crisis for over a decade. His 2015 book, Dreamland, examined the spread of prescription opioids and then heroin across the country. His new book, The Least of Us, focuses on the spread of fentanyl and P2P methamphetamine, and their devastating impact on people and communities. We discussed all of this, including the evolution in illicit drug networks, racial differences in drug use, Sam’s skepticism of hard reduction, and my skepticism of his policy recommendations.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Ethan Natalman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,
Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heat as

(00:23):
an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
even represent my own. And nothing contained in this show
should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use
any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. You know, we've

(00:45):
done quite a number of episodes on the issue of
the overdose epidemic in America and the role of Purdue
Farm and other firms and promoting this, and we've done
someone Mexico and drug trafficking. Today we have somebody who's
done some really cutting edge work at the intersection of
all this, and that's saying Canonists. He's been a journalist
for about thirty five years, including ten years at the

(01:05):
Los Angeles Times, well known for his reporting on Mexico
and on Mexicans in the US. About six seven years
ago he published a book called Dreamland about the opioid
crisis in the United States and it won a bunch
of awards, and just last year, the end of last year,
he came out with a new book called The Least
of Us, which really is a sequel to that book.
It traces the evolution of the opioid epidemic from the

(01:27):
days of pills into heroin, into fentonel and weave it
together with the story of meth amphetamy re emerging in
parts of the United States where it's almost never been
in really scary ways. And he sets all that in
the context of parts of America both going through the
devastation of drugs and then recovering in various ways, and

(01:50):
makes some interesting analogies to other addictions and things like
addictions plaguing American society. So, Sam, thanks so much for
joining me today on Psychoactive. Very nice to be with you.
Thanks very much for how anything. I read your latest
book intensely and I found it, I had to say,
highly engaging. I learned a lot in it. I think
you tell a wonderful story. I also had some issues

(02:12):
with the way you presented things and some of your
policy solutions and your framing. So we'll get well. I
think we'll go back and forth this, we'll mix it
up a bit. But why don't I first ask you
to say so, if you're summing up the story of
this most recent book, The Least of Us, what's your
your short version of what this book does? It? Ast
oh man, it's about how our opioid epidemic ignited the

(02:37):
creativity and the profit mode of the Mexican trafficking world,
and along the way, providing us with heroin, they discovered
button could be made in a lab. And it's the
story too of how they become really just synthetic drug
producers mostly now, and that this is extraordinarily a deadly

(02:58):
harmful thing for the country of the United States, well
Mexico to, I have to say. And at the same time, though,
along with that, I find great hope possible, because all
of this is really awakening us, I think to or
pointing us to the idea that how thoroughly we have
shredded a community in this country in many, many ways,

(03:20):
and that that's one of the most powerful forces that
we have as as human beings. We have evolved to
not find it nice to have conan but essential, crucial
and without really a substitute and we have certainly the
last forty years gone about shredding a lot of that
and isolating ourselves and leaving us vulnerable. And what that
means is that these epidemics are showing us that is

(03:42):
the great defense as community. We we really it's more powerful,
I think than dope in a lot of ways, because
we find it so essential to our survival we exist
as a species. Really because of that. The idea was
to draw out those two forces as ways of saying,
this is what we have. In this way we can
respond if we'll learn from it. Well, you know, I
have to say, because I saw some analogy in your book,

(04:03):
and you had these stories right of people sort of
descending into the depths of drug addiction and then coming
out of it and beginning to leave more wholesome and
better lives. Not everybody some crash and burn and don't
make it. And then you have a similar analogous story
around community. So I want to get to that. But
let's dig more deeply first into what's gone on with
the drug stuff, because many of our psychoactive listeners will
have some sophisticate understanding of this stuff. They'll know that

(04:26):
there was the history that heroin has parro and epidemics
going back in America multiple times, right the era of
the sixties and seventies, there's another recurrence. They've know the
story about, you know, Purdue farm and the other pharmaceutical
companies who will overpromote. They create a wonderful drug, oxy content,
which is fantastic for certain types of pain patients, but
overpromoted aggressively in ways which are really quite reprehensible and

(04:49):
where they may finally be being held to account. We
know the sort of crackdown on that. And the story
you described in your previous book, Dreamland was about, you know,
how that the Mexican traff curse saw this opportunity to
get into herowin and not they've been into heroin right
oftentimes been the number one one, but they got very sophisticated.
It distributed the networks all around America, and that's part

(05:10):
of your story, the democratization. But you picked the story
up are really around fentanyl and fentanyl you know, as
I think many of our listeners know, it's a pharmaceutical drugs.
It's a fantastic drug for pain. And in this case
we're not talking about fentanyl being diverted from legal channels
in America. We're talking about fentanyl that begins to come
out of China, and then were the supply shifts to Mexico,

(05:31):
And I wonder if you could pick up the story
right there. Well, yes, I mean our illicits quantities of
supplies of fentanyl came really in the largest supplies first
from from Chinese chemical companies who found that it was
a decent business proposition to sell it over the dark
web or the open Internet, depending on the chemical company,
and they began to do this I would say three thousand, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,

(05:54):
certainly sixteen got very into it, and they send it
through the mail mostly, you know, just the regular mail,
just sending it to in pounds or half kilos or um,
you know, a quarter kilo, smallish amounts through the mail.
And these were individual chemical companies selling this to people
who contacted them on the dark web. I would say

(06:15):
the first place that happened was in the state's hardest
by the opioid epidemic. I would say, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky,
where you first began to see these explosions of you know,
seventy overdoses in one weekend and that kind of thing.
Huntington's Cincinnati, and part of their customer base was the
trafficking world in Mexico as well, and they began to

(06:37):
send up quantities of method of continel sorry that were substantial,
though not anything like what they're doing now. The sign
that that was changing comes in about two thousand and seventeen,
where it's clear then at that point that Mexicans have
figured out or or figuring out, how to make sentinel themselves.
So let me stop you right there, because one of

(06:57):
the things that I found fascinating your analysis that you
describe one of the manufacturers, a guy named Gordon chen
j I N. And you said that one of the
things he was doing was when he would send the
fencinel right And of course it's made sense economically in
small packages because it's fifty hundred times more potent per
milligram or microgram than heroin. Is he had a real

(07:18):
bank for your book. But then when he was sending
out he would include the chemical abstract services dedicated number
that each drug in the farm of could be a has,
just like book in the library has a dedicated a number.
And also the nuclear magnetic residents n MR Spectroski test
about the purity, which I had never heard about this,

(07:39):
and that suggested that there was a level of sophistication
in the information that he was providing to the people,
the distributors in the US and ultimately you know, initially
in Mexico or Canada who were getting this from him,
and that seemed to be a piece of the international
drug trafficking pie that I had not heard much about before.

(08:00):
Level of chemical assistication. I think this was possible because
these are chemical companies. They're used to dealing with this data,
with these numbers, with this information, and I think in
some measure to the people that he was dealing with
that I wrote about, not so much, but certainly in
some measure he was dealing with people who were used
to ordering chemicals through the world chemical market legally and

(08:20):
so on, and so providing this information was actually I
think second nature and seemed to be kind of a
way of quality control. And I think that that was
a competitive benefit of dealing with him, and I think
others did this as well, though my understanding that was
not the only chemical company that provided that information. As
if the drug were a normal legal drug that you

(08:41):
would buy legally. So initially the Mexicans presumably are importing
it from China and it's shipping in and bigger things
through the distribution channels into the US. But then when
they start, you know, hiring their own chemists, many of
the Mexican chemists, some of them foreign chemists. Are they
doing the same thing that Jin did? Are they also
provided that kind of information? You know? No, they're they're
selling it kilo blocks. They're selling it through the normal

(09:05):
clandestine trafficking routes that come up through Tijuana into San Diego, Galas,
into Nogalis, Arizona, horizontal Aposto, etcetera. There smuggling it there
in clandestine ways, and and no, there's nothing to listen
about what they're doing. In some cases they're sending it
up in powder form or it just kind of kilo

(09:26):
blocks of the stuff. In two thousand and seventeen, you
begin to see the first seizures of counterfeit pills that
are designed, pressed and printed as if they were a
pharmaceutical phill. The first ones are oxycodontin eric thirty milligrams
and the press blues thirty milligram pills. It sounds me
at the beginning stages are cutting heroin with it as well.

(09:47):
It's a way to sell market is heroin and stretch it.
And then at some point to heroin disappears from the
nix and it becomes all fentinyl. Yeah, I think that
was happening more locally though, I think that was happening.
People would by fentanyl and then mix it. The the
guy that I wrote about in the book who sold
the fentanyl to Tommy Rao, who eventually the kid I
wrote about in the in the book who died, he

(10:10):
was mixing it himself. That's where the magic bullet blender
becomes part of the story, where this is myth in
the underworld that the best way to mix your fentanyl
is with a magic bullet blender. I would say, just
by way of a side that magic bullet blenders are
fantastic little instruments. We own one. It's of course abysmal,
a little machine for mixing your fentanyl. And it's that's

(10:33):
the case because it's got a blade and fentyel is
a powder. Magic bullets mixed liquid very well. They don't
mix powders at all. And but yet this idea took
hold of narcotics agents began to find the magic bullet
blender at different mixed sites that they would raid, particularly
early on in certain areas like Columbia, I think was
Sapping somewhat, but certainly Ohio, Kentucky was where you see

(10:55):
you see this thing show up because it's people who
are seeing fentanyl representing lottery like profits. The only problem
is to realize those profits, they have to mix funnel
with inert powders. Futtonnel is so potent that a few
grains the equivalent of a few grains of salt is

(11:16):
enough to kill your pain. And a couple more and
I'll kill you. And so you can't sell that on
the street. That's that's very small amount of drug. You
have to mix it to be able to commercially sell it.
You have to mix it. And this menth was the
first time I think in the in the history of
the drug trade where enormous profits are associated with the

(11:37):
ability of common, ordinary schmos to to mix this stuff
in their mom's kitchen or in their basement or their bathroom.
And this myth is perpetrated that has spread that that
this is a magnificent thing to do with a magic
bullet blender. Because I think one of the reasons was
because the magic bullet has a plastic bubble and so

(11:59):
you don't have the maybe the same inhalation of fumes
and dust that you might just mixing it in a bowl,
that kind of thing. But it gives you the idea
of how badly that wrote. Yeah, Sam, I have to
tell you something. Actually, that piece of in your book
about the Magic Philip Lenders was something I had never
heard before, and it answered a few questions for me,
and it was it was like the entire book. It

(12:20):
was the thing that much most jumped out at me
because it made the issue also about the sort of
inconsistency and supply. One of the things I've been incredibly
frustrated with is with a hundred thousand people dying of
overdoses last year overwhelmingly opioids, awhelmingly fentonel right now that
the National Student Drug Abuse seems to be devoting almost
no attention to try and to figure out doing ethnographies

(12:41):
that interviewed the dealers, the street dealers, the dealers one
level up. Or when cops are locking up huge numbers
of people, why aren't we trying to get cops or
jailers to offer people who have been locked up opportunity
to make some money by being interviewed about what they
were doing, you know, in return for not being pressed
further charges, so we can find out what that mixing
process is and are remember, you know, as cannadas started

(13:01):
to become legal and his edibles become became more common,
one of the challenges initially was how do you make
sure if you're making a Cannabi's chocolate bar that each
five grand square has the same amount of cant HC
as the other ones? And I think now they've got
that doubt and you know, obviously companies know how to
do that, but it sounds like in the whole Fentinel
area that was a real challenge. And I wonder, do

(13:23):
you know, has there been an evolution where you see
a lot less of magic blenders these days and a
lot more sophistication and eating it out The Mexicans have
done that with Yeah, I would say that the magic
bullet blender had its moment a few years there and
generally has faded. Of course, it was also it was
a magic bullet blender that stood out the narcotics say

(13:43):
it was also coffee grinders another kind of bizarre machinery
that was used to mix. But but um, But I
would say that that kind of faded, um and and
one reason it faded, I think was that, first of all,
the mix was was happening on in Mexico more they
were making it, and they were mixing it down there,
especially into these counterfeit pills that I mentioned earlier. First

(14:06):
it was thirty milligram generic oxycodons. Then it was xan
x bars and percocets lookalikes, you know, counterfeits, And so
you you don't have the same need to you just
buy these pills, you know, why do you want to
mix it? And and so I would say that the
most most of the mixing when it when it does happen,

(14:27):
is still at the local level. And I agree with you. I've,
in fact, I've done some of that ethnography to find
out but not I'm just one reporter. There's there's I'm
not sure you know, entire countries full of people who
are doing this. Now, there's many things to learn from
from folks who were sitting in jail as I've basically
used my entire career, essentially um to find this stuff out.

(14:48):
But but I would say that that a lot of
that is happening at the local level or the mid level.
I don't think it's so much happening down in Mexico anymore.
And it makes sense that that would not be the case,
because down in Mexico it makes sense to just ship
up a kilo of I mean, it's just more efficient. Yeah,
the whole story you tell, and the same thing happens

(15:09):
when we get into mith amphetamine story. It's an age
old story, right. It's the way in which we had
to shift from opium to heroin a hundred years ago.
And you have the crackdown there, the way in which
you saw the shift from opium to heroin, and East
Asia when they cracked down an opium production, they shifted
to heroin. The shift from a cannabis to cocaine in
nineteen eighties with a Caribbean crackdown, the shift from beer
and wine to hard liquor during alcohol prohibition. So it's

(15:31):
an age old story, right, of the distributors, the manufacturers
wanting to get the biggest bank for their buck, to
ship the most potent compact products, the least detectable product,
and all this thing when the stuff comes into the US.
It seems that initially it's the East coast getting hit
by fenton al parts of the East Coast more than
West coast, even midwest, Midway Midway. I would say that

(15:54):
that was the first place that I was aware of,
and also two thousand and one was a fourteen or ten.
I'm losing track now, but it's the areas that were
worst hit by the opioid epidemic in my in my view,
is really where that started. Then it goes both directions.
It goes out from Ohio and in Kentucky and Indiana,
and in Tennessee and West Virginia and those states. It

(16:16):
goes to east end and west, but I would say
ends up in the West coast. Last, the first real
problem that anyone saw with with fentanel was in in California.
Was in Chico, I think where they had nine people
was at nine or seven I can't remember. People fall
out and overdose and they saved I said, they said

(16:37):
all of them, actually, But that was the first time anyway,
and this was in rural Butte County way up north
in California, where they were just not expecting that that
at all, And so it began to spread. But I
think the first people to buy it where the folks
who figured out that they could buy it from these
Chinese companies. And then it was this, as I say,
lottery like profit were associated with it. They just had

(16:59):
to mix it, and when they mixed it, they did
a poor job of it. I think you also say
that some of them can't believe that it's fifty times
more potent than heroin. Is it's almost unbelievable that that
infintestinal amount could be getting the saying bang sing bang
for the buck. Oh, I think. I think. In fact,
if you read the book, you saw the first chapters
about the chemist in and Toluca Mexico, who was making

(17:21):
with the funding from the sinloa drug cartel, was making
the fedinl They thought he wanted They wanted him to
make a Federan. He starts making funnel. He clues them
in for the first time. That's really the first time
in the Mexican drug world. Get got windowed with this
thing called funnel. There was a substitute, synthetic substitute for heroin.
And he does these tests on his fentinyl and figures

(17:41):
out that intell actually take a fifty to one cut,
so one kilo will make fifty sailable kilos on the
streets of some city in the United States. He sends
that information with the people he gives But and my
understanding from the agents is that nobody in Chicago believed it.
It sounds like a myth, like fifty to one are

(18:02):
you people are always over selling their job. They're always saying,
oh you can, this is a five to one cut,
you can take. This is cut. Five people come in
with fifty two one and nobody believe it. So nobody
really cut it that much, and that's why you had
this massive death pull that came and went with that
one lab down in to local Mexico. The other thing
I picked up from my networks was that in the

(18:23):
early years of fentanyl coming in five, six, seven years ago,
that a lot of consumers basically they didn't like the
fentinel as much as the heroin. Initially it was a
different type of thing, and oftentimes they were getting they
were being told they were getting heroin, but it was
heroin being cut or displaced by fentonel and was actually
happened over the last four or five years as fentanyl

(18:44):
has basically displaced heroin in the United States, is that
this people now prefer fentanyl. Fentinyl has become the new
thing they like, and they get heroin, they almost go like,
what's this? Or I don't like it as much anymore.
I'm not sure i'd put it that way. I would
say they are now addicted to fentyl. You know, to me,
that's that's not a preference. That's that control of the
brain that really has nothing to do with free will

(19:04):
and the choice. The traffickers are saying, were you were
giving you funnel? And yeah, today on the streets so
many parts of America, heroin was worthless. It will not
get rid of the dope sickness. But I was just
speaking with the guy from an attict in Maine. He
was very clear he doesn't like fentanyl. He doesn't still
doesn't like finol. A few reasons for that. One is
that at first fentinal was to him and there was

(19:27):
no heroine in the area, and he just he was
strung out. So we had to use it. So we
used it, and at first it was like a massive
financial savings. But eventually, very quickly he got addicted to it,
and very quickly his use tripled because fentinel. The key
thing about funtinel, the reason it's such a great drug
for anesthesia, is what makes it a bad drug for

(19:49):
a user. It's it's quick in and quick out for
an anesthesia. That's fantastic. You can do a two hour
surgery on somebody and that person could be removed from
anesthesia and and be lucid. And I happened to me,
and it's what allowed Fountainel to revolution revolutionized surgery in
anesthesia in America. But for an addict that meets you

(20:09):
have to be constantly using it all day long. My
understanding is the highest end is nice. But the main
problem I think for a lot of people is there's
no longer like a six hour period where you're not using.
You're always This guy told told me I was using
twice a day, two grams of heroin a day, and
with fentinel it was six times a day, five six
times a day, Uh, seven grams of frontinell. I'm sorry,

(20:31):
And so you see this, Yeah, just placement. I was
in a homeless encountment in Nashville where I'm not living
about was it like around Thanksgiving? And I met a
guy and he is a longtime heroin addict, and he said,
there's some guys came by our encampment offering black dar
heroin straight up legitimate blacked our heron and I told him, man,
I can't buy that. What's that gonna do? I need frontinel.

(20:53):
Nobody is so once you get through that period where
you have survived till you're now addicted to fentanyl, at
that point heroin it's worthless. And I think that's worth
seeing that in many parts of the country. Yeah, yeah,
even though they call it here thing. I've been in
several parts of Tennessee where they say no about heroin,

(21:15):
there's no heroin in the stuff. They know there's no
heroin in it, but they still use it, use the terminology.
You know. I have to tell you. I just went
up to record an episode up at the over Those
Prevention Center, the Safe Injection side through Consumption that just
opened up in East Carolan, and they're basically the staff
working they're saying, almost everything's got fentonel in it. And
then I interviewed one of the clients there and he
was saying, oh, yeah, heroin sometimes, but it seems like

(21:37):
exactly what you're saying there. It also raises some questions
about whether the fentonel things more likely to burn itself out.
All drugs go through their phases right were able to do.
The heroin phase burns itself out, and crack particularly was
one where crack came on like crazy, first in the
New York in the big cities, and then in the
smaller cities, and then at some point it burns it
out and a younger generation turns their back on it

(21:57):
and just two forties in a blunt and maybe beating
up crackheads or something like that. And so with fent atyl,
if it's that drug which doesn't actually make people feel
as good, especially early on, and if it has to
be used repeatedly like that, it suggests fentanyl. It's taken
over for now. But maybe we'll see what But here's
the thing I mean with fentanyl. Yes, I think that's

(22:18):
that's it's certainly a possibility, and I think we'd all
welcome it. The problem is this that this is a
drug almost entirely from the from a trafficker's point of view.
It doesn't have anything to do with what the customer
wants and makes total business sense from a traffickers point
of view, as I said in the book, and and
so it doesn't matter what people switched to. We've already
seen that fentinel can be mixed with it methem fedoman.

(22:41):
There's some examples, not many, it's rare, but certainly some
examples of marijuana being adulterated with fentanyl, certainly cocaine. So
whatever you switch to. Fentanyl is so cheap, it's like
salt on food, the way we have salt on food,
and and and so you can put fentinel in anything.

(23:01):
And the key thing there is once you do that
a little bit, and pretty soon you replace that occasional
cocaine user with a daily opioid user, and that person
doesn't have the ability to choose anymore. That's a that's
a thing. One of the things I took a little
bit of issue that you said is at one point
you said the traffickers after just make creating, you know,
hiring chemists to make ever more potent substances. And I

(23:23):
don't think that's quite exactly right, because if that was right,
car fentanyl would have replaced fentanyl. By now. Car fentels
many times more powerful than fentanyl. We had that horrible
cower fentanyl outbreak in Ohio where people were dropping dead
like flies. Then it stopped and it's not spreading. So
there's a point which is not really about potency. It
is a seller's market and they're they're basically looking is
what's going to make them the most money. And ultimately,

(23:45):
when you're putting stuff out there you want with the
consumers are gonna pay for what they're gonna buy for.
You know, if you shift the incentives, It's just like
with alcohol prohibition. When that gets repealed, the taste for
harlequer becomes an every diminishing part of overall alphol consumption
because lots of people don't want that. And there's another
thing you were righting. You kept talking about marijuana, this
high potency marijuana. There is no such thing as recreational

(24:06):
drug use anymore, and I'm going, what the hell are
you talking about? Sam, of course is recreational drug use.
The vast majority people use merrihan are using recreationally. And
we know when dabbing came along, it's not like everybody
went to dabbing, which is like the crack version of marijuana. Basically,
the producers are gonna keep doing what's going to make
them the most money, and for consumers, it's gonna be
what works for them. Yeah, and with fentanyl, they've seen
that fentanyl makes them the most money when it turns

(24:29):
occasional users into fine ladder. That is what's going on now.
And so what I meant by that is that there
is no risk free recreational drug use anymore. You can
be given a pill at a party and that party,
that pill can look exactly like a purcoset and maybe
even seeing a percoset. If you use that pill from
the trusted friend, it's very likely that I'll have funnel.

(24:52):
And so the way traffickers work is the way they
make their most money is by making sure that people
get addicted to fentanyl. That's what makes them. Yeah, Sam,
you realize you just made a pretty strong argument for
legal regulation of these drugs, right. It's the greatest denjer
is this stuff being adulter and stuff like that. So
it is truly a risk. But let's shift to your
story on meth amphetamine, because I think people are where.

(25:13):
You know, meth amphetamine has been around in some parts
of the country for many decades before that. You know,
amphetamie was a common thing in the fifties and then
it shows a big time in the South, the western places.
Hawaii's had it for many decades. I remember twenty years
ago when Alison the meth craze became the big thing,
and all these mom and pop little meth labs pop
around the country and people sometimes blowing themselves up. And

(25:35):
and then we read about the Mexicans kind of like, well,
we'll take this over instead of your crappy meth, We'll
start producing high quality meth. But then there's something else
that happened, which also I knew almost nothing about until
I read about in your book, which was the evolution
from Aphedian based meth toisting pete p. Two p. So
please tell us that story, sure, and m P. Two

(25:55):
p Based meth is really an old method, Mike and
action to methem Fedoman began when I was a crime
reporter in the city of Stockton, California, and there was
a whole part of Stockton that had a lot of
methane and it was really still the biker kind of guys.
That's how you know the Hell's Angels. You see in
the Gimme Shelter, the documentary of the Rolling Stones, you
see the Hell's angels, And that's really I think most

(26:17):
Americans awakening to what methem Fedomen was. And then you
can't heat with speed kills and all that stuff. And
that's fifty years ago, basically, that's in the nineteen sixties. Yeah,
sixty nine is when Altamont took place, right exactly. But
they made it in this way that was really not
a good way to make. No one would ever choose
to make nothing fedom on the PQP method because it's

(26:38):
very messy, it stinks, it's a lot of chemicals, etcetera, etcetera.
It's it's more complicated, it's more less efficient. The Federan
method is far better if you have that opportunity. And
that's how the Mexican trafficking world industrialized. Metham Fedomen was
with their federal method for beginning in the late eighties.
Talk about it in the book. Through the nineties that
you get these kind of nodes of expertise developing, certainly

(27:00):
around Guadalajara sent a law to labs at the time,
we're like twenty poundtound labs that they would produce per
cook and that kind of thing. And time went on,
it grew and grew and and and more and more
people learned how to do it and so on. And
then in two thousand and eight, the Mexican government really

(27:21):
responding to a few pressures. One was from a scandal
that had taken place. I talked about a Chinese fellow
involved in all this as well, they put regulations on
the importation of the federan only for certain pharmaceutical companies
can possess it. And at that point there begins a
general migration away from the federal method, although it's still
used from ton of time and I think it's generally

(27:42):
the meth season in the United States tested by D. E.
A Chemists is increasingly becoming the meth that is made
with P two P. P two P has one benefit
and one benefit only over the traffic over the federal method,
and that is you can make P two P many
many different ways. It's it's not difficult to make it
with a variety of industrial chemicals that are all legal, cheap,

(28:05):
easily available, et cetera, toxic too, and they begin to
make it that way. And so whenever the government cracks
down on this batch of chemicals, well they shift to
another way of making P two But anyway, what it
allows them to do if they control the ports. Which
they do is import all these chemicals and begin to
make quantities of metal phenom and the federal never allowed
them to make, and so you begin to see an

(28:26):
explosion of producers down in Mexico. We think of these
things as cartels. I don't really, ever, really use the
term cartels down to describe what's going on down in Mexico.
That's not what they are. Cartels are like opeque, you know,
where you control, you constrict product to force price up.
The groups down to Mexico trafficing organizations down to Mexico

(28:47):
do the opposite. They charge for permission. So they charge
for permission to cook or make your drugs in their areas.
It's basically lots of fiefdoms under a general umbrella. We'll
be talking more after we hear this ad. You and

(29:17):
I have the exact same perspective on this. I always
thought the use of the phrase cartel was bullshit, right,
because they're not acting acting like opec. Right. He's a
group's competing they don't have to and and in fact,
I sometimes wonder if the reason it became popular because
we didn't used to talk about heroin cartels. I think
it became popular. This is just my speculation with cocaine
cartels because of the alliteration. Cocaine cartels had a buzz

(29:39):
to it, even though it didn't make any sense. And
then we just got caught with the word. And I'll
tell you by the way, I just found an example
of a Mexican cartrtel in the news a couple of
days ago, where they're acting like a cartel on the
control of lines. How they were taking over avocados and
alice go. It turns out there's now cartel action because
it's coming because it's an agricult true product, because it's

(30:01):
coming just from one part of Mexico, they actually can
engage in cartel behavior and they're kicking up the price.
And it's one of the first examples I see of
a Mexican cartel actually acting like a cartel. Yeah. I
just find it interesting that the DA doesn't use that
term either, by the way they use d T O
drug traffic organizations. That's a far better descriptive thing. I
would say that the Colombians were more akin to to cartels.

(30:24):
There was differences, of course, I don't want to get
too far into that. But the Mexicans have no resemblance
to what I would consider having study economics so many
years ago, decades ago, to a cartel. They are loose
confederations of fiefdoms and controls of those fiefdoms, change and
morphin are There's lots of battles for these things. Within
and without. They benefit from people producing more, not less.

(30:48):
They benefit in the following ways. They benefit by selling
permission to be able to make your drugs in their area.
They benefit by selling you the chemicals. And they also
some of them, not all of these groups, but some
of them benefit by charging polls into the United States.
Chappolzman was huge into that. That's why the tunnels and
how they would choose you. You pay thirty grand, fifty grand,

(31:09):
hundred grand, you use the tunnels and under that kind
of thing. I remember one of the theories around why
all that violence happened in Sea Atuire is about fifteen
years ago. You know, it was essentially that's one of
the one of the groups that had been just allowing
cannabis to go through and just taxing, just basically controlling
the cocaine started to crack down and no longer given
the set of free passage. So yeah, very much consistently
you're saying right there. Yeah, well, I would say in

(31:30):
in Quarras it was a little different story though. You know,
the great tragedy of Mexico is connected to the fact
that Chappolzman left prison. I have to say, I believe
that he starts the wars that start everything. He starts
the wars when he gets out with the Tijuana cartel
who who he hates. These guys are all from Santa Lo. Okay,

(31:50):
all the cartels are from Santa Look, except when you
get down to the used cartel but whatever, down to
into southern Texas, and then it becomes a whole different world,
a whole different culture of trafficking organization, which I'm happy
to talk about. Okay now, but let's let's let's stick
on the meth amphetamy thing, because you're describing this evolution
right where the pseudo federant I mean, first the US
cracks down on it, and China cracks down a sudo

(32:11):
federan and Mexico cracks down. They shift to P two
P and you're basically saying that now throughout much that
we're now seeing meth emerging all around the United states,
including in places it's never been, including in black communities
that were never that into meth using before, and of
a different sort. And so one of your claims, it's
a more provocative one, and that's hard. And then you

(32:31):
have good anecdotal evidence on But where people are wondering,
is this P two P is it something special? Is
it a new type of meth doing something differently, or
is it simply that meth amphetamy now, because it's so
cheap to produce is as you point out, it's much
more potent and much cheaper than it ever used to be,
which could also help explain why we're seeing these terrible

(32:51):
myth problems. All of that could be all of that
could be possible, I would say that. And again it's
not been studied. There's no neuroson since I said in
the book, there's no rating my studies and so all
of this stuff. But yes, it's everywhere. It's in quantities
that stagger the mind. And there's no general region any
way of the country where that where you don't find it.
And again, yes, absolutely it's in the black community now,

(33:13):
which has stunned me because I've been doing this work
for years and years dating back to Stockton, I have
never known one single Black person to ever buy, sell, use,
or know anything about methym fuddlement until the last few years.
And so it's changed. A couple of things on your question.
One is that it could very well be that this

(33:34):
is because it's just so potent and so prevalent that
it is creating or or a accompanied by whatever terminology
you want to use, very profound symptoms of mental illness
and then homelessness and then tent encountments with that. However,
I have found other people and again this is it
could be that all of this is true, right. It

(33:54):
could be that in one area they're getting methym fedoment
from gas in the Law, in another area they're getting
method fundament from Gallahara Jalisco. And there could be different
That's why they We need substantial studies on this stuff
to understand what's going on here. But I have known
and just was talking with a guy from Michigan who

(34:15):
who said that he has been in and out of
meta futomen for a number of years. He remembers distinctly
when it changed, absolutely he remembers almost The date is
late Friday in late June and two thousand and twelve
when he used it, all of a sudden it was
a party drug before he's gay. He was in the
gay community where it's a big deal, and all of

(34:35):
a sudden it became the sinister thing where all these
demons were chasing him, and it never returned to the
euphoria of and the party kind of nature of the drug.
And every time he uses it it happens. So the
idea that all these people using this a lot always
always available to them, always, and that's what drives them
to these expressions of mental illness. On the other hand,

(34:57):
I think I've remember several people now who are telling
me this is stuff that that immediately no matter how
little you use and how rare the uses, it will
immediately drive you to That's what happened to me. That's
what they're telling me. So to me, this is as
I say in the book. Yes, there's no neural science
on those. I think there is ample evidence of those.
You know, also, you used the possibility about whether there

(35:18):
might be a certain adulter rates in the p twop
that the old pseudo Federan stuff that the meth labs
they were had all kinds of crap in there. In fact,
one of the bizarre things is when is when it
shifted to Mexican production. To some respects, the Mexican myth
was made with less crap. But you had some of
the bigger method labs that were higher quality method which
interestingly were problematic as they were cheaper, but might have

(35:41):
actually presented a few less consequences for the consumer because
there was less crap. And I also tell you I
talked a couple of days ago to somebody who I
interviewed earlier on Psychoactive a few months ago, who I
think you interviewed for your bookstand ch at your own,
who's a university you CSF research And I think he
just got a grant from Nationals to the drug Abuse
to look at this P two P issue into see
was actually going on. Great. Oh really, Oh no way,

(36:03):
I had not heard that. Yeah. I will be in
touch with Dan to find out if that's what's going on,
because to me, that is that is one of the
great burning questions. And I believe that the methum feedoment
that's spread from Mexico across this country is a major
driving force, if not the driving force, behind our mental
illness that we're seeing in such an intense amounts behind

(36:24):
the tent encount mons, behind the homeless problem in so
many areas, not just by the way, in high priced,
high housing costs, cities like San Francisco, in l A,
Appalachian towns, rural New Mexico. This is everywhere that meth is. Yeah.
I will say, there have been people, you know, you
make the big argument that this meth is driving the homelessness,
and and talking to some of the researchers out there,

(36:46):
there are bits and they say, obviously it's problematic, but
in terms of causal thing. The Losso point out to
the place like West Virginia has got one of the
lowest you know, homelessness rates even though it has Oh no, yeah,
wait wait wait wait, wait, wait, time out. I read that. Okay, guys,
full of ship, go he should go to West Virginia.
Do you know the homeless problem there is through the roof.

(37:10):
Go to Clarksburg, West Virginia, Parkersburg, go to go to
wheel and go to these places where you hope see
vast Tenton campts. You will see people out of their minds.
I swear to God when I read that, I wanted.
It helps, It helps to actually go to the city
or the state that you're talking about. That is no
I'm sorry to get a little well, hold on, hold on,

(37:33):
hold on. This is you can find in West Virginia
brand new Florida expressions of homelessness that they, yes, never
had because people leave people who are from West Virginia
all over Ohio and Indiana and various places like that.
Of course, that's exactly what's going on. But nowadays, since
this methos hit those areas, you were seeing people who

(37:55):
own their houses. There's no rising housing cost problem in
West Virginia, and yet these folks are all just go there,
just go there and do some ethnography as also known
as reporting, as this guy apparently has not done. When
I read that, I was like, this guy's an idiot.
You also make the point though that even this, if
the P two P is really the way it does,
where it's knocking people out, where is the old method

(38:15):
get people up and going. They wanted to do something,
and they're always talking a mile minute and you know,
how to be taken care of stuff. That the new
myth is more almost turning them in that zombie life.
But really disconnected, dissociated, how to some extent that almost
helps people are homeless deal with being homeless. Yes, that's
the other point. That's it pushes you into homelessness and
allows you to endure the brutality of the situation in

(38:38):
which you find. And one way it does that is
from completely separating you from reality. And another way is
and I found this very ominous honestly to say, but
it really strips people of their memories, so people don't
remember major chunks of where they were. Run into this
over and over. Now, I said in the book, this
one woman told me a residential treatment center, people guys

(39:00):
coming up to her all the time, going I can't
remember why I'm here. How much of the time did
the judge give me? You know, it strips personality, Its
strips memory. I mean, if think about memory, memory is
our personality. I mean, it's a major part of what
makes us who we are as we remember things. And
this myth has stripped that also from people very scary

(39:21):
with the other thing that this myth does that really
adds to the complications of it all is that this
meth makes people seriously resist leaving the tent and can
they they feel that they've found like their community. Of course,
it's a community of a rewired brain. So it doesn't
matter how cold it gets, it doesn't matter what risk

(39:42):
it is there is to my life. I'm still gonna
stay here. I'm not gonna the offer of shelter, the
homeless shelter is like the worst place you would actually
want to be if you're on that math. Sam, let's
come back to it. Let's tie these two stories to
get in now. So what you described is basically we're
coming to a point when you finish the book two
now we're basically we see myth amphetamine being combined with fentanyl.

(40:07):
We see myth anthonetamine displacing fentanyl use. We see myth
amphetamine displacing cocaine used used being used together. Right, I
mean it really depends. I would say no, no, I
wouldn't say it's displacing fentonol use and fentanel. When it
takes over, it thinks over for good. Um, it seems
to me fentinel was being mixed into these drugs. You know,

(40:28):
it's mean makes on the cocaine. It's being mixed into
a nothing phenomen though, What is happening? I found this
over and over particularly in some of the areas where
the opioid crisis really hit how hard, like Kentucky. You
want one area and saw there's a lot is where
you find people who are using soboxing to control the
opioid cravings that they how because they went through the
whole pill the heroin problem. And just for our listeners

(40:50):
to boxing is bupernorphine, which like method on, is a
drug that's used for people trying to put a heroin
addiction behind them because it's a sort of benign, more
benign form of opioid that it doesn't have the risk
of street drugs and has less risk of overdose. So
goodhead Sam. They're using suboxon. And then because suboxon has
not been used in ways that probably it needs to be,

(41:13):
which is in conjunction with a variety of therapies that
help you repair your life, those folks remain in the
drug world just using suboxon, and that means that they
were prey to the next big drug that comes along,
and from the next for a lot of them, the
next big drug was not from feedomon because it was
so cheap. Still want to get high, still hanging out
with the wrong people, etcetera, etcetera, all that kind of stuff,

(41:33):
and so you get this change in people. So that's
also when I saw methem feedomon in the black community,
and when I saw methym fedomen taken together but not
really together with opioids, that both of those things just
shocked me. I couldn't believe I was seeing that, because
you've never really seen. When I was a young crime reporter,

(41:54):
there were two worlds in the drug world. Basically in
the Stockton one was a heroine the world and what
was the meth world, and they didn't like each other
even you would never see the mix, but you did
have always heroin and cocaine going together. I mean, the
speedball is a very common thing that's been going on
forever and ever and ever about mixing those things once
and upper ones there and they go better together in

(42:16):
that respect. And or yet people who use heroin and
then they'll smoke crack. And sometimes people describe themselves as
just being a heroin user, just being cracked, but in
fact you'd see a lot of people who are heroin
users alsius in the crack because that up down thing,
you know. I sometimes joke that my legal speedball will
be after dinner having an espresso with an after dinner drink,
a little chilling out, a little, you know, the moderate

(42:37):
legal speedball. What's interesting is this combination. It seems to
me that a few years ago, I remember somebody I
had somebody, uh, physician from Rhode Island, Jodie Rich described
in Rhode Island around twenty six fifteen sixteen, and he
described this sting where all of a sudden, a half
a dozen ordinary middle class white people, not known as

(42:57):
drug users, all of a sudden dropped dead from fed
at all. And it turned out they got in some cocaine.
They started the cocaine, and they didn't know it was
in there. It's not even clear their dealer news in there.
So it seems like a few years ago you had
more of the kind of accidental overdose of these drugs,
either the dealers accidentally putting them together or people not
knowing what they're doing. But that at this point the

(43:18):
accidental factor is becoming less and less because it's just
so on the present now, well, I would say that's true. Yes,
I think they're more people who are now just fully
addicted to funnel and they know what they're using them.
And there's a whole lot of that. On the other hand,
the pills, the counterfeit pills that are coming up from
Mexico are aimed at a market generally younger kids. Sold

(43:41):
on Snapchat, sold on Instagram. That kind of thing sold
by younger kids too. I mean it's sold by people
who are not a bunch older than the people are
selling to. Particularly during the COVID years, you see a
lot of people on their phones and there these pills
are so so on the present now and the pills
aren't combining them or they just one of the other. No,
the pills have only utonal and and their conterfeit made

(44:02):
in Mexico by the droppers down to Mexico. They're only funnel.
They look like percoset bar oxy code on generic thirty
million ground. That's what they look, perfect replicas. That's why
I say that there was no such thing as recreational drugging.
You can't just take one of these as a better
party anymore. You used it. It was not a good
idea back then, but people did it. But now they
dropped dead. And the thing is that too people are

(44:23):
buying these on the I don't know if that claim wholes.
You're right about the risk of fentiel. The argument has
been when it comes to white powdered drugs, you better
we dan careful when it comes to cannabis, or if
you're coming from a knowing supply, or if you're doing
I mean the fact that there is the vast majority
of people are using the vast majority even if these
pills without dropping dead or getting killed. But the risk
has definitely died up. Now the risk is enormous and nationwide,

(44:44):
I would say too. And that's the thing. Those these
pills are all over there's like not one area or
certain areas of a state that you're known to find
that I think these are that they've exploded. It's a
thing that that it corresponds to the structure of the
Mexican Drugs part Drug Drafting Organization world where everybody's free

(45:05):
to make whatever they want so long as they buy
the chemicals from us and pay for the permission to
do it here. And you know that kind of that
kind of thing. When we look at this broader this
hundred thousand overdose last year, of which a majority of
those now involved fentanyl, and a growing percentage of them
involved fentinyl combined in cocaine or methamphey, So we're seeing

(45:26):
the polydruig uses out there. Now we know it's even
more prominent out there. As you're saying, oftentimes people are
buying maybe cocaine and maybe it feels different because it's
got fentanyl in or as you and you're making the
claim that they're also more likely to begetting addicted to
what they think is cocaine, but it's actually developing an
opioid addiction. And so what I'm wondering with all of that,
I've asked people that when you combine fentanyl with cocaine

(45:48):
or myth amphetamy, does it make you more or less
likely to overdose? And what people have said to me
is this hard to say. On one hand, the stimulant
effect should maybe reduce so likelihood of an overdose or
to counteract the effect of the fentanyl. On the other hand,
the physical degradation that goes along with getting addicted to

(46:08):
myth amphetamine makes you more vulnerable to overdosing from the fentanyl.
So that's a kind of I would say it's a consensus,
but it seems to be a logical explanation for some
of what's going on. What are your thoughts about that? Well,
my thoughts that this is entirely the what benefits the
street dealers. The street dealers are gonna add fentanyl to
their cocaine. It doesn't matter what effect it has on you.

(46:30):
They don't give it down. They see a customer expansion
vehicle through in Fentinel, you get someone addicted to fentanyl
who was occasional cocaine user, could be two or three
times a week, could be every two weeks, and now
that person is buying from you every single day, sometimes
several times a day. Um, it doesn't matter that you

(46:51):
may risk killing a few people, because it's a there's
a long history when people in the way into the
hero own world. You know, for years of people hearing
of somebody overdosing a certain amount of heroin and going
to buy that heroin because then what they want that
big boost that they got when they first used the drug.
How it benefits you that the customer is secondary. Um,
and not say that it never is important. I'm just

(47:14):
saying that it it this, This is the thinking so
so often among dealers. It is, but I have to
say it's also dealers in a way are also a
diverse group of characters. And some of them are just
fucking bastards and mercenary and they'll sell whatever. And some
of them are just selling to people, you know, driving
up to a corner like in the old days. And

(47:35):
many dealers, though they know their customers, sometimes there are
people who are quasi friends. There may be relatives. They
may be selling, and they don't want those people to die,
not just because they're customers, but because they may actually
care about them. I mean, we know a lot of
drug dealing networks are like that, so we know there's
another human element going into all this stuff. And what
I'm trying to figure out is, with the over those
things going so high, it sounds like we've hitting this

(47:57):
kind of moment where fentanyl is pervasively out there. It's
now throughout much of the stimulant supply, and it wasn't
in a way it wasn't even a few years ago,
and it's coming in pills and other sorts of things.
On the other hand, I'm also wondering, given what you
say about P two P being a kind of undesirable
drug in terms of what it does to you and
the intensity of it, and also about FINITYL being in
a way, at least initially less better than Heroin. It's

(48:20):
suggest for the existing consuming population, we've got to see
how that plays out with all of them. But in
terms of the new users people coming in, the question
is are they really gonna want that stuff? But here's
the thing that I don't also think that what you
want is the issue. But I do think it is
because ultimately, for you, if you're selling something, you want

(48:40):
something that consumers want. If you can addict them to it,
all the better. But it's there is some there's a
supply demand interaction, and people always looking for something new.
All those kids who are buying them from Snapchat are
not buying fentonel. They don't think they're buying fentanyl. They
don't want fentonel. They're being given surreptitially given channel and

(49:01):
xan x bar and what's something they think is a
legitimate xan x bar. So to me, it's very difficult
to I think, when you have this kind of supply,
this kind of rampant immunity down in Mexico, it is
very difficult to imagine that this supply won't be used
again and again to more customers. Whether people want it

(49:23):
or not. Those kids who are buying those pills don't
want pentonel. They think they're buying xan x bar benzea
has a pin. Yeah. I just wonder though about whether
there's going to be such a big demand among those Look,
obviously there's a generation now, a younger generation whose parents
and maybe even grandparents were caught up in drugs from
broken families and are feeling desperate, and that is a

(49:45):
continuous opportunity for traffickers to sell drugs that are really
and that I think remains the market for this sort
of stuff. But let me go to this next part, Sam,
which is that one of the things where I really
liked about your book, and I agree very much, is
that not only are you lighting up produe farm of
big opioid producers with the Mexican traffickers, but you're also

(50:05):
talking about the producers of processed foods, the guys who
are combining sugar fat salt combinations in ways that have
led to an epidemic of obesity. Now that is probably
exacting greater healthcare costs in America. I think it's now
neck and neck with the cost of smoking in America.
So we're talking about a massive cost in terms of
years of life lost and stuff like that. I mean,
it's hitting people later in life. It's not messing them

(50:27):
up when they're young, in the same way cigarets don't
mess you up when you're young, but it's really messing
them up otherwise. But just I thought you were really
right onto something there about the nature of American culture, society,
the food industry, maybe the gambling industry, the social media industry.
Just say a little more about that, because I think
you were right onto it. Yeah, it's very easy to

(50:50):
vilify send a lower drug cartel, and they deserve it.
But we need to understand that there are many many
entities around our economy that that really know and spend
millions and millions of dollars using the best and most
intelligent analysts and engineers they can find to manipulate our

(51:11):
brain chemistry reward pathways. And this is why, for example,
fast food companies never changed their logos. Those logos have
become almost like triggers, and why they try to put
at every intersection, on every off ramp on the freeway
you'll find fast food, and every seven eleven and every
grocery store you'll find the mid alisles packed with sodas

(51:33):
and the just the battles for the territory is so
important because they understand that we when you haven't activated
that reward. So some people buy on impulse and it's
very hard for us to stop that. It's extraordinarily hard.
And the same with with social media. Same with chicken nuggets.
Chicken nuggets almost reminds me like a crack cocaine. You've

(51:54):
taken the chicken, which if you eat it regularly, will
not have this victman. You reduced it to fat and
saw you put it in sugar, the dip and all.
And you have taken the coca leaf that you can chew,
and you've reduced it to and you've just stripped it
of all it's it's nutrients, and it's fibre and all
that kind of stuff, and it becomes crack cocaine. That's
what to me, that's what chicken nuggets feel like, honest,

(52:15):
the gutty. Hey, you're reminded me of Chris Rock, the
comedian had a routine. I remember years ago, he goes,
I think I discovered the secret ingredient and Crispy Cream
donuts cocaine. But it was very much. Really. The place
hopened up right near my apartment on seventy seconds three
years ago, Chrispy Kreathy and walking by was just to smell.
They would they make sure the aroma came out, and

(52:35):
it just triggered something in my brain. Absolutely to me,
the idea was trying to do with the book was
to say, look, yeah, we've got tochple Gosman and we
got Minos Sambaba, we got all these these nefarious characters
down in Mexico. They're not the only ones who have
figured out this very intricate process of our reward pathways
in our brain, and that it makes a ton of
money to manipulate that and to always get better manipulating.

(52:59):
But I also felt in my own one reason was
that once I began to understand that, once I began
to think logically about it, I began to make more
liberating choices in my life. So I don't drink soda anymore.
I stopped complete almost completely. Only time I ever drink
sodas want to go to a movie theater, and I've
done that like twice the last two years. You don't
eat the crappy foods I used to eat Snickers bars,

(53:21):
and my name's constantly it was overweight. I get a
lot more exercise because it's a liberation. The more mobile
you are, the more free you are. And this is
some of the ideas I wanted to tell people about,
just kind of express I guess in my journalistic way,
you know, and say that once we know this, we
have I believe a certain defense against it, particularly surround

(53:41):
people yourself, what people who also believe that way. You know,
you're not around people who are constantly recovering from addiction.
You get away from people are still in dope. The
same thing is true a little bit when you want to,
you know, I'm gonna move away from people who are
not believing this way as as well. But overall, I
wanted to talk about how I see a continuum and
at the far end as send a lower drug cartel.

(54:02):
Closer to the center is Facebook, software engineers and check
the nugget manufacturers and software and soft and soft drink
folks and that kind of stuff very very important. I thought,
I'll tell you this another point you kept, and I
realize there's no way to square the circle of this
stuff that you can't fit all in. And so there
are ways in which you talk about drugs and community.
And one of the points you make, which is true

(54:23):
but also not true, is you'll make some broad statements
about drugs being antithetical to community, but then you give examples. Right,
We know in fact that oftentimes drugs does do some
of that. People can isolate into that. But we also
know when we look at alcohol, there's a whole drinking
culture and bars and all those sorts of things. We
know that with cannabis people like to get there. We
know that people would go to quote unquote shooting galleries
or things like that, or they go to even harm

(54:45):
reduction programs not just for the services, but for the
sense of community. Even the homeless encampments are a place
where people who are all messed up on drugs can
find kindred souls who can tolerate their eccentric behavior. So
I I don't know if I quite yes it does that.
If I'm thinking, if there's any quote unquote drug like
a thing out there in America which is promoting isolation

(55:07):
and antithetical to community more than any substance out there,
it's probably Internet based stuff exact that we're now spending
six seven, eight hours in front of our screens that
young people, they say, don't read social cues anymore. In fact,
sometimes people ask why hasn't marijuana use, Like with all
the legalization going on, we don't see adolests and marijuana
use increasing over the last eight eight nine years. And

(55:28):
I think one of the reasons that maybe marijuana use
doesn't go that well with being on the social media
all the time. It's it's not that they don't go together.
That oftentimes people want to do that stuff socially, and
if you're spending less time hanging out, you're less likely
to do that stuff. Now what one can do as
a matter of control about that, I don't really know. No,

(55:48):
I don't either, and you're you're right about that. I
would say sometimes of drug users, I'm I'm very skeptical
frequently about I'm not a big drinker. Um. I have
seen communities of drug user of alcohol drinkers very frequently
devolved into not like communities of book readers. I guess,
I don't know. I buy your point, though you're you're correct,

(56:10):
I don't dispute it. I would say, you have to
be careful how far you draw that out, because a
tent encamin of methamphetamen users. Think about what that that
encountenents about. It's about pimping, It's about living in utterly
unhygienic in the middle of winter. Uh, not caring about
anybody if that person doesn't have access to dope there

(56:32):
might be to the uninitiated. It seems to me some
kind of like communal romantic communal aspect to these encountments.
If you view them in another way, you view them
as as just basically people who are slowly trying to die.
You see him, I have to tell you, I mean
yes and no once again. Like I just interviewed Philippe Bougua,
who's in ethnography, one of the best in American he'd

(56:53):
read in a book Righteous Dolphins, and he's spent ten
years and another guy almost like spending thousands of hours
with a community indrecting drug uses, living in San Francisco
under the freeway and such, and what he found there
was some of the most reprehensible types of behavior you
could possibly imagine, and at the same time some of
the most generous. Like, you know, certain norms existed, you

(57:14):
didn't give a damn about everybody else. You're hypocritical but
if somebody was dope sick, that became a priority either
complicated or that even when they would be offered, people
would be offered. We know there's research showing that when
you offer people supportive housing, housing first programs, it helps
a lot to have that kind of availability. But we
also know that sometimes when people go into those programs
they fall into massive depressions, they missed the community, and

(57:36):
then even when some people are offering those programs, they
may go back to the homeless encampment even though was
you know, cold, miserable, dirty, everything, because of that sense
of community there. So it's a tricky thing. I would
say that that sense of community is dope and dues.
I don't believe that that is actually I think that's
a romantic view of the encampment. That is a very

(57:57):
very sinister place. It's a very scary place. It's a
place where women are constantly raped and constantly pimped. Yes,
there is a lot there's there. There may be expressions
of human kindness and human decency amid all that, But
I just don't see that that is mix up for
the harm, the massive harm that those things did. I

(58:20):
totally agreed. I'm just kind of adding complicate the variables
here to say that that these communities are there. No,
I I love it. I love it, and I'm a
reporter and I'm I'm constantly trying to complicate my own story.
I don't deal in generalities, even though you point to
something that's not where I'm living in my journalism. But okay,

(58:41):
let me press down this thing. So, in retrospect, Perdue
Farm at all those other pharmaceutical companies, others that were
massively over promoting, over advertising the opioids. Now we know
that when that was at its peak, maybe fifteen years
ago or so, that the number of over those fatalities
in the country was maybe ten or fifteen percent of
what it is now. And it raises the question in retrospect, right,

(59:06):
if policy makers hadn't really responded to that, if we
hadn't cracked down on those old peways and yes, damn
those guys, Dan Richard Sackler and all the family around,
and we did that stuff, Dan the Johnson Johnson, Damn damn,
damn damn them and let him rod and hell and
be sued up to Gazoo for everything. But from a
policy perspective, if we had never cracked down on that stuff.

(59:27):
Maybe that would have not opened the door for the
Mexican traffickers to get first into heroin and then fentanyl,
and and maybe FENTONYL might never have really emerged. Maybe
if we lived in a country where politicians didn't have
to pay attention to what is absolutely on the front
of mine, to the people who are who are at
their in their churches, or at their state legislatures or

(59:50):
all that, you might well be right. I I don't know,
but I would say that to suggest, For example, with Ohio,
people say, gee, they shouldn't have closed down those pill mills,
ghastly places, long lines, doctors are just behaving like debased
quacks selling this crep. If they had only not done that,

(01:00:12):
we wouldn't have had X, Y, a variety of other
things that came later. And my feeling is there's no
chance anybody the mayor on up to the governor of
Statable Ohio, and the senators included, and the state legislatures
could have or should have done anything else but close
those things. It was an affront everything. It was impossible

(01:00:37):
to sit by and say, you know what, ten years
from now, we're gonna have, you know, it is. What
it isn't. What it really means is that we in
the future need to understand that we need to step back,
far back from the idea that we have these magic
bullet solutions to problems. So the opioid epidemic really begins,
in my opinion, because we were proposed this idea that

(01:00:59):
you can cure human pain, you know that deals with
the central nervous system in our brains. You can deal
with this with one single pill for all human beings,
and Americans were bought into that. In fact, we pushed that.
A lot of the doctor said, hey, no, these pills,
that's probably not right for you. No, no, no, doctor,
I want to be cured. You'll give me the damn pill. God,
damn it. Let's take a break here and go to

(01:01:22):
an ad Sam if I could, there's a paragraph in
your book here and when I would go around giving
speeches that I, how do we explain the opiated academic,

(01:01:42):
and I would say, it's complicated, yes, produce farm of,
but everything else. And you have a paragraph in there
which I thought said it better than almost I've ever said.
He I can never see and I just want to
read it to our listeners. It's folly to attribute this
opiate epidemic to one drug, one company, one family, like
the Bad Guys, and some soap opera. So much more
went into it. We Americans, so many of us, demanded

(01:02:03):
convenience to be fixed, wanting miracles and unwilling to do
the work of wellness, unwilling to change what we bought
eight and drank. We insisted doctors cure all our pain.
Pills seem to fit the bill. Insurance company stopped reimbursing
for therapies that did not involve pills, leaving doctors with
fewer tools to address pain. What's more, oxycontent did provide
a Sackler Family letters later sent a statement life changing

(01:02:25):
relief from pain for many Americans. It's unconscionable that a
two common result of the opioid epidemic is that doctors
cut off patients from their pain medication when they have
used them without problem for years. But then if purdueing,
marketing OxyContin and more restrained way, we might be lining
up to praise it. And I thought it was the
most nuanced, best presentation of the complexities and the border
social cultural context that's out there. But it does lead

(01:02:48):
then to the policy answers here and so here's where
you say, I'm sympathetic to legalization, but nah, I'm sympathetic
to decriminalization. But nah. And you actually don't even mentioned
harm reduction almost at all in the book. It's all
about drug courts and pushing people in the role of
judges and punitive types of stuff. And so it is

(01:03:09):
not punive. Sorry, then that's not right. It's not punitive
to arrest someone from a tent and camera with with
syringes who was about to die and put them in
jail where they can have a place of a place
of recovery. And that's what That's what I was just arguing.
That isn't that is compassion the opposite. It's the opposite
of compassion to say we're gonna deal with you, We're
gonna meet you where you are, and then let you decide,

(01:03:31):
under the influence of these devastating drugs that you're going
to decide when you're you'd rather freeze to death then
leave the drugs. We're gonna let you decide. That's an
insane fair enough, fair enough, But you do make a
fundamental mistake I think in the book, which is that
you have an entirely uncritical view of drug courts. I've
been studying drug courts for twenty years. I gotta tell you,

(01:03:53):
for many years, a majority of drug courts would not
even offer meth, and I made it as an option.
No drug court judges were off not trained in dealing
with addiction. If people were stumbling along the way that
if somebody was smoking weed and they've got an off
heroin and cocaine, they still had to ultimately sanction them
because that was technically illegal. You had judges operating within
the setting of the criminal justice system. You had people

(01:04:14):
in imposing that twelve step The twelve step approach was
the all on the end all, even though the twelve
step approach, even though millions have benefited, doesn't work in
the vast majority of cases. Now, of course you're right,
drug court judges are changing. The new head of the
Drug Court Association is very sympathetic to harm reduction. There
are drug court judges around the country embracing needle exchange
programs at least his policy. But at the same time,

(01:04:35):
you don't talk about harm reduction programs in the book.
And it brought me back to the fact you keep
quoting people saying people aren't going to get better unless
you force the MC grab them. And it ignores the
fact that the very first, one of the very first
needle exchange programs in America, Tacoma, Washington. One of the
way it established itself and this was proven over and over,
was it landed up becoming the number one point of

(01:04:57):
reference recommendation into drug re treatment programs in the city.
And the fact of the matter is that, yes, some
people benefit by being pushed in exactly the way you're saying,
but for other people, it's not what works. For other people,
it's about being in a more human environment. Well, I'm
saying that today the drugs on the street do not
allow for that. The strugs on the street are so deadly,

(01:05:18):
they're so mind tangling and and devastating to the brain,
and the Malcolm fuddlement is creating brain damage very clearly,
and they're parting the people who work with this. This
is not compassion. It's not a way of saying, well,
you could do whatever you like and then you come
to us when you need some help. Those people are dying.
Meet them where they are. I know where they are.
I have to I have to call you out on this.

(01:05:42):
You do not use the phrase harm reduction barely in
the book. You do not visit a needle exchange your
harm reduction program once. You don't go to those places
and see how they're working or meet those people. You
talk about people using the phrase at one point very nicely,
any positive change that's trains coined by a foulader of
harm reduction. Dan Big when over those preventions to locks
on distribution, the role of harmonduction programs in this and

(01:06:03):
meeting people where they're at, you quote people working in
the system saying it's got to be any stuff. It's
incremental change, of course, but that's the fundamental idea of harmonduction.
And I didn't quite understand why it almost aunt felt
like you were giving a cold shoulder to harmonduction and
all of this. Well, because I think the drugs on
the on the street need to change. Thinking they haven't changed.
Thinking the drugs on the street are different from five

(01:06:26):
years ago. Okay, they are very different. They're very damaging,
their deadly, and that requires a different approach to wait
for people to come to the That woman who froze
to death, her mother would brought her a little The
title please, this is their child. You have this home,
you have this, all of this. This woman wouldn't be

(01:06:48):
convinced there was that's where she is at. Meeting her
where she's at, meaning she's willing to freeze their death
rather than spend time with her baby. For child to me, Sam,
I hear you. But if you haven't been there, and
you haven't gone to, if you had gone to dozens
of harm reduction problems in Ohio. Harm reduction programs are
springing up all around the state and they're dealing with
exactly the sorts of people you're talking about, and there's

(01:07:10):
a dynamic and interaction that's going on there that is
keeping people alive, saving people's lives, reducing over those, keeping
people alive until the next time. And the same thing
is true of jails, because people are coming out of
jails and one of the most likely times to dive
in over those is right when you come at And
that's why that's why the jail I talk about uses
m AT for the people who are m AT science

(01:07:31):
people are for the vitral and what have you. Of course,
there's lots of people stumbling towards solutions. But my feeling
is the drugs on the street have changed fundamentally. The
approaches and Sham and Sam, I have to tell you,
harm reduction programs around the country, in the world are
evolving to deal with the drugs are on the streets.
When I go and visit the over those preventions that

(01:07:51):
are needle exchange programs, I see people dealing with the
population using fentonel, using meth amphetamine, and doing harm reduction
in ways that are But I'm just saying I think
your book would have benefited really looking into this piece
as well, because it's one thing you talk to people
drun court judges, and they have their own angle, They
know their things, they come from theirn iology. It's good
to praise twelve step programs, but it's not the only approach.

(01:08:12):
Method on is pivially important, No, I know that. I
know that, And I think what's what's fascinating about the
world America today is how these topics are now being
debated very hotly, Whereas when I was writing Dreamline, I
don't remember any debate over them. There was no one cared.
There wasn't no debate. There was just nobody cared. So
let's go back where you don't have to get in
one of his face so much on this thing. One
of the things I did like was what you describe

(01:08:34):
really about the evolution in quote unquote white America. Right
when HIV AIDS came around and was devastating people. You know,
the notion harmoniction comes around because the old line you
have to let people bottom out before they get better.
It wasn't just more dangerous drugs like today. That's his
bodying out only makes sense. It was HIV AIDS back
in the eighties and nineties that wiped out the notion
or should have wiped out the notion of bottoed me out.

(01:08:55):
But at that time it was more affecting black people,
brown people, and people are and the white people who
saw were much more in hiding. Now as opioid juice
became much more pervasive among white people and by the
way it continued, you know, people would talk about Staten Island,
New York, which is mostly white, but they forget the
point that the over those rates in the Bronx, which
is mostly black and brown, were just as high. They

(01:09:16):
just it wasn't as new. But what you talk about
here is an evolution in quote unquote white America where
places that are coming to drug courts, which is good
for them twenty years after the fact of the other
places in the country had becoming more compassionate, and just
say something about how you encountered this kind of evolution there, sure,
And I would say that that one of the things

(01:09:37):
that struck me was that early on in this I
would say during Dreamland, in fact, I came to this idea,
saw this at work in Tennessee. In fact, with the
great drug court judge Stuff Norman out here in Nashville,
now retired, who was telling me this that you know,
once once it was their folks getting addicted. Then you
all of a sudden, I began to get phone calls
from state legislators. Those are the judge talking um saying, hey,

(01:09:59):
can you get my nephew or my my donor's sister
or whatever that kind of thing, And you began to
see that I would say that this about the opio
epidemic on rays. I would say that the opioid epidemic
was hidden. People say it only got attention once the
white population, middle class white population got it got addicted,
And I would say that's not exactly true. I covered

(01:10:20):
the crack epidemic that got huge press for years because
it was very public. You couldn't avoid the drive by
shootings and and all that stuff, the car jackings. It
was just everywhere you couldn't have been open and open yeah,
open air bazaars. I covered that all the time in
Stockton when I was there for four years. I would
say that when this opioid epidemic didn't get pressed because

(01:10:42):
it affected middle class white people, because they didn't want
it to be covered. They were from the seventies. Some
of the parents may have smoked weed or something, but
very few had ever tried heroin, and nobody wanted that public.
So you began to see very much like the early
days of the AD's epidemic, where nobody wants HIV in
their son's obituary. You begin to see died suddenly at home,

(01:11:04):
uh drive of a heart attack twenty seven years or
something like that. You begin to see that take place.
I would say too, that this dove tails almost exactly
with the golden age of neuroscience research, So now we
are learning at the same time that this is happening. Really,
I was just stayed beginning late like late nineties, certainly
into the two thousand's you're seeing huge advances in both

(01:11:27):
of the technology but also the understanding of the brain,
and and we're seeing now huge advances during these same
twenty years when this opioid epidemic has taken place. I
can tell you that when I was in Stockton, and
again this is anecdotal, is my my experience, but it
was very clear to me Stockton is one of the
most integrated cities in California, it was white six percent.
Everything else. I do not remember the very large Southeast

(01:11:50):
Asian community and Latino community, sizable black community. Nobody during
the crack epidemic, black people, Latinos, anybody wanted treatment. Nobody,
there was no constituency for that. This was two. They
wanted people thrown in jail. That's it. And so the

(01:12:11):
change that we're seeing now has absolutely something to do
with race. In my opinion, it's white people developing a
consciousness of how this must have, this feels, and how
therefore expecting some Christian charity, as I said in the book,
that they didn't express when it was another other groups

(01:12:31):
that were being more more effective than they were. But
I would also say it's important understand that we have
a revolution in neuroscience understanding in those years, there is
nothing remotely comparable in the opioid epic damach of the
street violence that was taking place in the crack of item.
So you have, you have, yes, you have this fascinating change,
particularly in red areas. I would say, it's just amazing

(01:12:54):
transformation of people's thinking because yes, it's their kids, it's
their nephews, it's their brothers and sisters and grandparents and
whatever that's getting addicted. But I would stop at generalizations
about that because there's a lot of nw ones that
we're talking about news earlier very correct. Well, well, Samuli,
I have like three at reaction. One is I mean
you and I both got into this drug issue back

(01:13:15):
in the eighties, so we both go back a long time.
And what I recall back then, it wasn't that black
people didn't want more treatment. My recollection because I was
debating Jesse Jackson, debating Charlie Wrangle on you know, the
TV shows and all this sort of stuff back then,
and what I found the difference was that those guys
they swatted the drug war, but they said, but we
also want resources and treatment and blah blah blah, and
the Republicans and others were saying, and the hell with treatment.

(01:13:37):
It was almost like lip service, So there was some
support for them, but there was also in terms of
the opioid issue, there was a kind of anti method
on sentiment back then. There was an anti harmonduction sentiment
back then, and the black community evolved more rapidly in
the white community. The second thing I'll say is that
you're right about the neuroscience that breakthroughs in all these
important ways. What's sad and disappointing is that with all
this neuroscience breakthrough there has been essentially nothing new to

(01:14:01):
emerge in terms of drug train like methanon, entrepreneurphine now
treks and I'll go back fifty years nationally a drugging.
This is board billions into it with nothing to come
out of it, which suggests that when we're looking for
the solutions to drug addiction, it may have a lot
less to do in neuroscience and a lot more to
do with the broader conditions. Part of what explains why
we see these problems much less in Europe. Because the

(01:14:21):
last thing I'll say is what really hit me what
you're saying about Red America, the white population. It was
during the Republican primaries back in sixteen fifteen, maybe a
fifteen sixteen, when all of a sudden you saw it,
like in the public forum, the opioid issue popping up
as a point of discussion in Republican communities, and we're

(01:14:42):
just saying I'm going to shut the border with Mexico
no longer was an effective selling point where people were
looking for something more. And then fast forward to eighteen
when there's no bipartisanship, but actually a relatively decent congressional
bill to do with the opioid crisis passes with bipartisans
porch and is signed by Donald truck So you see

(01:15:03):
this evolution in a way as you see it in
Mike Pett's deciding he's going to support a needle exchange
program with So there is that thing. I think there
is why when you say that what happened with this
thing is it promoted a greater sense of empathy and
a greater openness to new ideas In that type of
stuff we'd seen in urban America and on the coast

(01:15:23):
and in certain big cities back going back to the
nineties and the aughts. We now see happening in these
parts of the America and in rural America and suburban
and yeah, I mean I remember one person telling me
in a rural part of Ohio that his parents he
was a cop, but his parents could never get over
the idea that there was heron in their in their area.

(01:15:43):
This was something for Cleveland, there was something Chicago. It
was that kind of thing. And there in these areas
you began to see this. Now, is there a racist
component of that? I'm quite sure there is and no
doubt about it. On the other hand, how often do
you care when a plane goes down in Malaysia? Do
we care? No, we didn't know anybody and on that

(01:16:05):
plane in Malaysia, and so you know, it's part of
there's a company. I'm I'm reluctant to get too quickly
into these like blanket condemnations that that people want to
get into, even though I have to say, and I'm
gonna say it very immodestly, but i will say it
because if I don't defend myself, nobody else has gonna
And that is that the first person to report on

(01:16:27):
that very phenomenon was me and my book Dreamland. When
I was talking with exactly that. The judge Steth Norman
and I went to chapters about how all of a
sudden you saw white, rural, white America begin to ask
for treatment and you begin to see a change, and
all of a sudden, he's the best buddy of the
Republican Speaker of the House in Tennessee, and all this

(01:16:50):
kind of stuff. Not that I don't want to report
on that I have already. I was the first one
to do it. I believe. I would say that that
there's a lot of nuance to it too. And I
do believe that the neural science was part of it,
maybe because now we're able to see the brain in
action in a sense, see the blood flows on this
drug and on that thing, and on prayer and on
storytelling and all the rest. That's an amazing thing to work. Yeah,

(01:17:12):
But I mean it also makes the point that a
lot of things we associate with drug use, we see
I mean, it's just like the same parts light up
when you're watching a TV program or playing tennis. There
are all sorts of activities which light up parts of
the brain as do drugs. It's why, for example, gambling, right,
why gambling and gambling addictions so much resembled drug use
and drug addiction. And it's also why, as you say,
from the supplier side, the casinos as well as the

(01:17:34):
manager of lotteries, I figured out how to appeal to
the addictive personality and all this sort of stuff. So
it is that stuff. But so to bring this to
a conclusion here on the policy issue, right, so, you know,
on the legalization thing, it's funny when people ask me
because I'm so much identified as an advocate of legalization,
and I say, well, I'm not a libertarian legalizer, and
they say, what's your big greatest residency about legalization? And

(01:17:55):
my responses, Look what happened with food. It's exactly what
you know I've been saying us for years. The sugar
fats all thing to imagine big multinational corporations going to
work the way the Mexican drug traffickers are on the
underground chemists but at a level of cistication. But on
the other hand, there are steps short of legalization. And
so you now have a growing discussion, say around British
Columbian parts of Canada, around safe supply, and it's basically

(01:18:19):
making the argument, yeah, we can throw people in jail.
We could do the drug court, we can offer this
in that. But given that there are some people who
are absolutely committed to using these drugs from the black market,
aren't we better off trying to find a way to
allow these people access to the drugs that they want
in such a way that without making it available to

(01:18:39):
the broader population. So you're saying, let me ask you, though,
are you saying that we should think of ways to
providing funnel to people who wanted to me? That's a
I'm not. I don't think a lot about legalization. You
think all about it all the time. That's great for
a lot of reasons. Probably too complicated again too right now.
But my feeling is, before we do any of that, uh,

(01:19:00):
I would like to see us legalize marijuana in a
way that did not create big pot, right, which is
what we're doing right now. But that's that's the impossible,
right because I would always saying like I was one
of the key people involved in moving the country towards
legalization of marijuana with the ballot issues and all that
sort of stuff. And my line was, look, I'm not
in a favor of the marl borization of bud Wiz
zation America. You know, I'm the smallest, beautiful kind of guy,

(01:19:23):
and let's try to make that happen. But we live
in the one of the most dynamic capitalist society and history,
and it everardy is going to head that direction. I'm
happy when I see efforts and you know, my organization
I were involved in trying to draft these things to
try to limit that, to give a foot up to
the small entrepreneurs, to try to have some social equity
and all this sort of stuff. But we have to
be reasonable, and ultimately, I would say, give me a

(01:19:45):
choice between a marijuana probition world with seven hund thousand
people being busted, people at being killed, marijuana unknown potency
and purity, people who have medical needs who can't get
it safely and responsibly all sorts of or one where
even it's run ultimately by big marijuana and there's you
have big Starbucks or big alcohol or whatever. I'd say
that other one is a lesser evil and there's only

(01:20:07):
so much you can do on that. And when I
say legalizing, right, I'm talking about not selling it over
the counter, this sort of stuff. The question is, if
you look at the heroin prescription programs, that popped up
in Switzerland thirty years ago and that are now in
Germany and the Netherlands, Denmark, UK, Canada, going to open
up in Norway soon. Which is the results they've been
studying now for twenty or thirty years, and they are
clearly where people go to a clinic, they get to

(01:20:29):
use pharmaceutical great heroin up to three times a day,
they have access to services and all the other sorts
of things. These are people from whom method on didn't work,
who had tried everything else, and you see really impressive
results in terms of people stabilizing their lives, sometimes even
getting jobs, getting housing, reducing their revival and crime, all
that sort of stuff. Now, whether that's possible in some
respect with fentanyl, or whether one should look at whether

(01:20:50):
or not people are using fentanyl can be moved into
less dangerous forms of opioids in different forms, seems to
me one of the options you still have to hold
people responsible. I'm not somebody who says you're a drug
addict and you're going out and mugging people and therefore
just give him a slap on the wrisk and let
him go. I don't believe that this is about how
you deal with the problem is I would say, I

(01:21:11):
follow what you're saying the following. I think what we're
seeing that's played out in in in certain cities of
the country, is that executive that's exactly what's happening. Well,
you know, a restorative justice a kills a person, Okay,
you know. To me, I I don't the way you're
explaining it as the policy you with a spouse sounds fine,
sounds sounds reasonable, and I'm I have I don't think

(01:21:32):
about these topics too much. People think of me as
an opioid reporter. I think of myself is very differently.
But I've had other interests in my life that in
journalism that goes way away from all this. Okay, so
it's not it's not like a major issue for me.
But I think that the way this is being laid
out in person on the ground, with real world policies

(01:21:54):
is exactly what you just described as that people getting
mugged and nobody does anything. People and encounter behaving like
just out of their minds, and nobody does anything about
these incameras well, because it's a community, it's goal. To me,
I feel like this is the issue that that it
when you see it played out, you see it on
the ground, when you see the real world consequences of it,

(01:22:15):
if you don't develop any constituency for the ideas that
you're supporting, yeah, well, I mean, I say, I mean,
I'll tell you. I mean probably where I agree and
disagree with you, but also agree and disagree with many
of my allies in all of this is I have
a fairly you know, conservative view. I think that people
need to be held responsible for their actions in so
far as they harm other people. And if you're stealing,

(01:22:36):
if you're committing violence, if you're hurting other people, you
need to be held responsible of that. But at the
same time, I'm saying, if the issue is your commitment
to using certain types of drugs, well, here, on the
one hand, I'm going to give you access to these
drugs you want. You want these drugs, I'm gonna give
them to you in a pure form, either either there
for free or they cost a few bucks or whatever.
But here's the drugs. I'm gonna offer you some services,

(01:22:59):
some help so you can get out of this life.
Because we know that a lot of people addicted, whether
it's cigarettes or whether it's heron or Fantel go through
periods where they say, I want to get out of this,
and it's really a two pronged approach that says, here's
you want all this stuff, here's the good, here's the
past services, here's the drugs. But if you hurt people,
we hold you responsible. And it's that combination that I think.

(01:23:20):
And here's the thing though, let me just finally, because
I do have to leave soon. It's been a great conversation.
I really am. I really appreciate it, and I really
appreciate your thoughtful reading of my book, and it's it's wonderful.
I'm happy to do that. But to me, I don't
see some of these harder drugs and particularly mathem foment,
as involving any rational desire or not. It's not you

(01:23:45):
choosing anymore to use these drugs. These drugs are completely
in charge of your life completely see that. I believe you.
All I'm saying is I remember when people said that
about heroin and it turned out not to be all
that true. I remember when people say that about crast Well,
I have not met any heroin. But I'm saying back
in the day, right, and so I'm saying, yeah, Fentinel's here,

(01:24:06):
meth famies here. I agree with you. These seem much
more problematic. But whether it negates everything that we've learned
about drugs over the history of human society, I don't know.
We've never known a drug like Sentinel on the streets
of the country, and I would say one like math
and Fedoman either. I love some of your ideas, I
honestly do, and I think that they're very well explained,

(01:24:27):
but I also see what those ideas are translating into
and what they then do is undermine any constituency for
support for the ideas that you would have, and we're
seeing that right now in San Francisco, in l A.
But Sam, I gotta, I gotta. I mean in the end,
when you're asked where does this all come down to,
and at one point you say the solutions will come

(01:24:48):
only when Mexico and US work together, or you say
Mexico must stand up and deal with corruption, and I'm look,
you gotta be kidding me. When do you I mean?
And then maybe the MESSI absolutely what needs to happen.
Mexico has been has had endemic corruptions formation and it
needs to do with that. But Sean, that's the point
you say something has to happen. You're saying, Ethan, all

(01:25:11):
your things, but the politics aren't there. And I'm saying,
sand what you come down to like Mexico, you just
have to work together, crouching like when like after the
Messiah comes the fifth time. I just you have to
live in Mexico to know this can can happen. Of course,
it does need a totally different perspective from the United
States as well. We have to understand the importance of

(01:25:32):
collaboration with Mexico sees with collaboration with the United States,
and that that is too many parts of Mexico. That
is an enormously beneficial thing. Now there are people who
will still go back to the same Yankee go home
kind of idea. But to me, this is fundamental, fundamental,
It's fundamental from Mexico. The people that will benefit most

(01:25:53):
from those Mexicans, not Americans. I don't see it. And
as you point out, we definitely needed a different president
than the one we had before. We definitely need a
different president charge in Mexico. Yeah, but I say, given
as you say, these drugs can be produced anywhere. The
materials are widely available underground canvas are. But it's a

(01:26:15):
very different thing. It's a very different thing when those
drugs are produced right next to you in a country
which which you have a free trade agreement and two
thousand mile border. That's a very different thing. We didn't
get to mass coverage of the United States with China
sending in pounds of funnel through the mail. Yeah, but
then again, there is the Internet, and there is the
dark net, and there are these ever growing number of

(01:26:36):
designer drugs. Yeah, but you're you're talking about but again
you're you're I forgive me even but you're you're sounding
now like the people every time there's a mass shooting.
I've covered seven mouse shootings, by the way in my career. Okay,
every time there's a mass shooting, people proposed we should
do this, we do that. And then argument is it
will never solve the problem. No, it won't solve the problem.

(01:26:58):
It's not on when zero, or it'll go a long
way to curtailing the problem, making it a little bit
more manageable. Form and constituencies for more action, etcetera, etcetera.
Now you bring up the point you talk about analogy
to I think was the tobacco or alcohol, and you
point out some one of the people you interview talks
about the need to add friction to the system. So

(01:27:18):
we know in the areas of tobacco control and alcohol
control that if when you impose higher tax at the
time and place restrictions, it actually does make some difference,
but the cost of imposing those restrictions are fairly minimal.
There's an aggressive effect on people who are heavy consumers,
for better and for worse. But when it comes to
a prohibitionist system, imposing friction is much less cost free.

(01:27:38):
It not just that it costs a lot of money
and that in early drains billions of dollars, but that
when you do that, you generate dynamics in the black
market that creates also alters their problems as well. And
so I'm saying that the notion of that we need
to keep the friction of the system, given the evident
failures on the supply side for so long, so long,
in my view, it seems to me we should be
shifting vastly overwhelmingly to the demand side in the harmyduction

(01:28:02):
side of this day that ultimately, with more criminalization, with
more legalization, you get more far more use of varied
intial struction, and I don't think there's a safe way.
There's not. I don't believe it there's a safe way.
Actually use sentinel not necessary. Look at marijuana and we
don't see atolesta used going up. We see it going
up among elder people like people our age, and maybe
they're switching it out for alcohol. So it's not necessarily

(01:28:24):
the case that happens. It is to say that a pragmatic,
sensible regulatory policy needs a lot more room to run.
While we acknowledge the frustration as it may well be.
But what I say a hundred percent correct, I don't.
I don't. I don't argue with you on that at all.
But what I have seen when this gets into the
area of real world policy implementation is it's a complete

(01:28:47):
goddamn disaster. Look at San Francisco with the with their
d A there, it's just insane what's going on in
that town and the guys saying with the guy in
in l A. I I don't disagree with the fundamental
desire and some of the policies you're talking about, but
they have to be implemented in a way that people
can point to and say that as a success. I

(01:29:07):
know Iancisco and l I may have gone far too
far one way, but when you look at what America
did with mass incarceration and response to drunk hysteria, if
you look at world correctors, any sorts of things. Anyway, listen,
I know you gotta go. I gotta go. I have
loved our conversation. I really like to talk with you,
Matt sometimes. Well we'll meet in person and have some

(01:29:28):
uh some. I'll have some tea, you have some coffee.
I look forward to that, all right. Brother. If you're
enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or you
can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever
you get your podcasts. We love to hear from our listeners.
If you'd like to share your own stories, comings and ideas,

(01:29:49):
then leave us a message at one eight three three
seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero,
or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com,
or find me on Twitter at Ethan Nadelman. You can
also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is

(01:30:11):
a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's
hosted by me Ethan Nadelman's produced by Noam Osband and
Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel,
Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams
and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman.

(01:30:31):
Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks
to Avi Brios, Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week,

(01:30:52):
in celebration of four twenty, I'll be talking with Chef
Nicky Stewart, one of America's great cannabis chefs who's been
curating dinners for Dave Chappelle, Snoop Dogg and many other celebrities.
The relationship with cannabis and food and what I feel
like it should be with everyone, even if you're just
a novice, is to be able to have cannabis as

(01:31:14):
an ingredient in your pantry, in your home and not
be afraid of adding it to food or any sort
of wellness regiment in regards to just being a complete, whole,
holistic like person and keeping that in the vibe. Subscribe

(01:31:35):
to Psychoactive now see it, don't miss it.