Speaker 1: In the waters off the Caribbean, the United States military
Speaker 1: has been blowing small boats out of the water.
Speaker 2: The US military is using lethal force to blow up
Speaker 2: boats that it claims they're carrying drugs.
Speaker 1: Well, look, all I.
Speaker 3: Know is this. Every boat that you see get blown up,
Speaker 3: we saved twenty five thousand dollar average lives, twenty five
Speaker 3: thousand lives.
Speaker 2: It's done this at least twenty times, killing at least
Speaker 2: eighty people. And in one case it's in the headlines
Speaker 2: right now. Orders were given to ensure that there would
Speaker 2: be no survivors.
Speaker 4: Both the House and Senate Republicans and Democrats like Senators
Speaker 4: Read and Wicker calling for an investigation into war crimes here.
Speaker 2: And this goes to.
Speaker 1: Guess as the Secretary of Defense Pete heigsas Feis's questions
Speaker 1: about whether he's orders are illegal. Donald Trump is doubling
Speaker 1: down threatening strocks on Venezuelan soil.
Speaker 2: It's important to note that the people in these boats
Speaker 2: have never been charged with a crime, is certainly not
Speaker 2: convicted of a crime, and yet they received the death penalty.
Speaker 2: And this is because the Trump administration claims that we
Speaker 2: are in a war against what they call Noco traffickers.
Speaker 1: It's the latest escalation in Donald Trump's self declared war
Speaker 1: on Fentanyl, a campaign that casts foreign traffickers as the
Speaker 1: villains behind America's overdose crisis. But the origin of America's
Speaker 1: fentantal problem lies much closer to home inside the country's
Speaker 1: own pharmaceutical industry. I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to
Speaker 1: seven AM today drug a story and professor David Herzberg
Speaker 1: on how the fentanyl crisis really started and why the
Speaker 1: war to stop it could make everything worse. It's Monday,
Speaker 1: December eighth. David, I think it's worth getting a sense
Speaker 1: of how bad the API or crisis is in the
Speaker 1: United States right now. What are we seeing at the moment.
Speaker 2: It's really bad, and the hard to wrap your brain
Speaker 2: around thing is that it's that bad, but it's gotten better.
Speaker 2: So we're at about eighty thousand deaths in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of deaths, and it's down from a
Speaker 2: long stretch years and years and years where there were
Speaker 2: more than one hundred thousand deaths per year, and most
Speaker 2: of those deaths did involve fensanyl. It's incredibly potent, and
Speaker 2: that potency means that it's hard to package for safe use.
Speaker 2: You have to mix it perfectly because if there are
Speaker 2: even any little tiny clumps, the tiniest little things can
Speaker 2: lead to contamination and overdose. So it's simply not a
Speaker 2: great product from the consumer's point of view. It's really dangerous.
Speaker 2: But it's great for smuggling because it's potent, which means
Speaker 2: it's easy to conceal, and the amount of profit you
Speaker 2: can make per unit of weight is higher. And in
Speaker 2: a prohibition market, whatever makes it easier to smuggle is better.
Speaker 1: Side Trumpetney's officials side that these fans and is coming
Speaker 1: from Venezueila, and that the cruise on these boute nachie
Speaker 1: terrorists responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans.
Speaker 5: The American people are safer because narco terrorists. No, you
Speaker 5: can't bring drugs through the water and eventually on land.
Speaker 5: If necessary have to do to the American people, we
Speaker 5: will eliminate that threat, and we're proud to do it.
Speaker 1: What should we make with those claims.
Speaker 2: At the most direct level, they, as far as we're
Speaker 2: able to tell, are simply false. Venezuela is not a
Speaker 2: source of drugs heading to the US. At least in
Speaker 2: any significant way. And in general, fencanyl isn't coming into
Speaker 2: the United States over water. In general, it comes in
Speaker 2: over the land border. But let's step back from the
Speaker 2: specifics and address the broader claim that foreign traffickers are
Speaker 2: causing this fencinyl crisis and that we can fix the
Speaker 2: crisis if we stop them. The trouble is in America now,
Speaker 2: there are many people who are addicted to fencanol, and
Speaker 2: that means that they're very strongly motivated to continue to
Speaker 2: buy it. So if we were able to shut down
Speaker 2: the fencinyl supply chain, those people would still be there
Speaker 2: wanting to buy a fencanyl And so you'd have a
Speaker 2: situation where supply and demand are mismatched. And we know
Speaker 2: what happens in that situation. Prices go up, and when
Speaker 2: prices go up, the profits for selling the product also
Speaker 2: go up, and that'll draw in new suppliers to meet
Speaker 2: the demand. But in an illegal market, there's no rules
Speaker 2: for the competition, there's no boundaries for the competition, so
Speaker 2: you often get violent competition, and the winners tend to
Speaker 2: be the ones who are the most ruthless, they're the
Speaker 2: most violent, they're the most effective, and historically speaking, in
Speaker 2: the Americas, they often tend to move closer to the
Speaker 2: end consumer in other words, the United States, because that
Speaker 2: is more efficient. So if we were somehow able to
Speaker 2: shut off the supply of fentanyl, we might soon be
Speaker 2: facing something even worse than we currently have now.
Speaker 1: So Hey does his feet in the Trumps border war
Speaker 1: on drugs rectory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it fits into is broader war on drugs rhetoric,
Speaker 2: and it also fits into the biggest narrative of the
Speaker 2: Trump administration. His favorite story is that Democrats betrayed America
Speaker 2: by opening up the borders and allowing first the jobs
Speaker 2: to be sucked out and then the drugs to be
Speaker 2: smuggled in.
Speaker 6: For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to
Speaker 6: pour into our most vulnerable communities. They've allowed millions of
Speaker 6: low wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against
Speaker 6: the poorest Americans.
Speaker 3: Theoretical Democrats want to turn America into one giant sanctuary
Speaker 3: for dangers, criminal aliens, and every American should know that
Speaker 3: if they purchase illegal drugs, they are helping to finance
Speaker 3: some of the most violent, cruel, and ruthless organizations.
Speaker 1: Anywhere in the world.
Speaker 6: Illegal drug use is not a victimless crime.
Speaker 2: So blowing up boats really should be seen as part
Speaker 2: of his bigger plan to build a fortress America that'll
Speaker 2: stop foreigners from taking advantage of the country, and it'll
Speaker 2: allow this traditional, wholesome America to flourish again once it's
Speaker 2: no longer being exploited by these villainous foreigners. There are
Speaker 2: problems with the story, lots of problems with this story,
Speaker 2: but just in the drug context, foreign drugs didn't cause
Speaker 2: the opioid crisis, and stopping the fenyl supply chain won't
Speaker 2: solve the crisis. In fact, at an even deeper level,
Speaker 2: Trump is spinning a fantasy about traditional America. I'm a
Speaker 2: historian of drugs in America. Traditional Americans used a ton
Speaker 2: of drugs. We've had a long series of addiction crises,
Speaker 2: starting right at the beginning of the country at what
Speaker 2: historians in my field call the Alcoholic Republic, right after
Speaker 2: the American Revolution. So it's important to recognize that using
Speaker 2: drugs is very traditional in America. There is no drug
Speaker 2: free traditional America to return to.
Speaker 1: Coming out the true cause of the epioid cross is
Speaker 1: in America. So Trump's story on the fentanyl crosses is
Speaker 1: one of wakeboarders and foreign traffickers, cattels and chemicals coming
Speaker 1: from Mexico and China. What does the real history of
Speaker 1: the fantanl crosses look like?
Speaker 2: So the fentanyl crisis didn't start with a foreign trafficker,
Speaker 2: It started with an American pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 5: Once you've found the right doctor and have told him
Speaker 5: or her about your pain, don't be afraid to take
Speaker 5: what they give you.
Speaker 4: Often it will be an opioid medication.
Speaker 2: Essentially, Starting in the nineteen nineties, the pharmaceutical industry was
Speaker 2: able to overcome the traditional market regulations that prevented a
Speaker 2: sales boom in medical opioids.
Speaker 4: Doctors know many of those patients aren't really there for pain,
Speaker 4: but seeking a prescription for addiction, claiming a growing number
Speaker 4: of lives.
Speaker 2: And so you had a dramatic increase in the amount
Speaker 2: of opioids just floating around in certain communities, and that
Speaker 2: made them really easy to get, and so a lot
Speaker 2: of people became addicted to them.
Speaker 1: Over the first time, overdose deaths from prescription drugs outpace
Speaker 1: car crash fatalities in the United States.
Speaker 2: When authorities recognized you know something is wrong here. We
Speaker 2: got to take action. They listened to pharmaceutical industry lobbyists
Speaker 2: who are saying, well, this isn't a problem with us,
Speaker 2: with this industry. The problem is the abusers. They are
Speaker 2: the problem. They're coming in and making bad use of
Speaker 2: our product. And so the first set of actions that
Speaker 2: the government took was to say, Okay, we got to
Speaker 2: stop selling to these abusers. They're the problem. So imagine
Speaker 2: there's a generation of people walking out the pharmacy door
Speaker 2: having failed to buy their opioid, but they're still addicted.
Speaker 2: And so this brought in new suppliers, and the new
Speaker 2: suppliers first brought in heroin. But then this moment of
Speaker 2: disruption created an opportunity for innovators, for modernizers, and they said,
Speaker 2: what do we need farms and farmers and cutting open
Speaker 2: flowers with scalpels, like that's very twentieth century. This is
Speaker 2: the twenty first century. Let's use a high tech product,
Speaker 2: a synthetic product. We can eliminate so many parts of
Speaker 2: the supply chain, which is super dangerous in an illegal context.
Speaker 2: And so you saw this switch defensanyl because it was
Speaker 2: good for the suppliers and the consumers didn't have a
Speaker 2: lot of choice.
Speaker 4: We've heard a lot about this country's heroin epidemic, and
Speaker 4: for years, heroin dealers have been using another far more
Speaker 4: powerful drug to cut the heroin they sell. But now
Speaker 4: federal officials are expressing alarm that people are using that
Speaker 4: stronger drug, fentanyl alone, leading to overdoses and deaths.
Speaker 2: And so our policies shifted those markets from pharmaceutical opioids
Speaker 2: to heroin and then defensanyl, and that means our policies
Speaker 2: could switch them back. You know, it's not as sexy
Speaker 2: as saying we're just going to blow all the bad guys,
Speaker 2: but it would be a big public health triumph.
Speaker 1: What do you think when you heat politicians, blind foreign
Speaker 1: traffics in Tolka bat ending these three of military strokes
Speaker 1: on bouts, what's your reaction to that?
Speaker 2: Well, we were just talking about large numbers of deaths.
Speaker 2: Every one of those deaths left people who loved that
Speaker 2: person with grief and fear for the other people and
Speaker 2: their families. And when you're afraid, you want a strong response.
Speaker 2: You want someone telling you that it's going to be
Speaker 2: okay because they're going to protect you. And so there's
Speaker 2: something very emotionally satisfying about saying, these foreign villains are
Speaker 2: doing this to you, and I'm going to get them
Speaker 2: and you'll be safe. But it's also deeply depressing because
Speaker 2: it also just doesn't work, and we have a couple
Speaker 2: hundred year history of seeing how it makes things worse.
Speaker 2: You can win a battle or two, like, who knows,
Speaker 2: maybe we could stop this fens andal supply chain, but
Speaker 2: will it still be gone in two years. It's just
Speaker 2: historically speaking, incredibly unlikely. What we need is something we're
Speaker 2: not going to get, unfortunately, which is the political courage
Speaker 2: to recognize that this is a pragmatic matter. What we
Speaker 2: have is a market for a product that's highly desirable
Speaker 2: and highly dangerous. The market has gone off the rails
Speaker 2: because we haven't regulated it, and as a result, we're
Speaker 2: seeing this kind of public health crisis, and we need
Speaker 2: to step in and do the real work of making
Speaker 2: people safer rather than beating our chest and going after
Speaker 2: foreign boogeymen.
Speaker 1: So you calling for a pragmatic approach, David, History tells
Speaker 1: us what doesn't work. Does history point to us what
Speaker 1: does work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a broad sense, it does. And I'll say
Speaker 2: that in general, we're pretty good at capitalism. We know
Speaker 2: how to build markets so that we incentivize the kind
Speaker 2: of behavior that we want. What has historically worked are
Speaker 2: moments where we have applied the tools we apply in
Speaker 2: the rest of capitalists to drugs. And in the broadest sense,
Speaker 2: this is you robustly regulate providers, manufacturers, sellers, and you
Speaker 2: make a deal with them. You say, you can make
Speaker 2: a lot of money selling this product, but to do that,
Speaker 2: you've got to follow these rules. So think about automobile
Speaker 2: manufacturers have to do all these expensive things to make
Speaker 2: their cars, and they're not allowed to sell super cheap
Speaker 2: cars without anti lock breaks and airbags. You also got
Speaker 2: to recognize that life is imperfect. Hey, we have a
Speaker 2: lot of safety precautions, and there's still a lot of
Speaker 2: automobile accidents. So any system that circulates a potentially dangerous
Speaker 2: product has got to have things in place to care
Speaker 2: for and support people when they're harmed to spital those protections.
Speaker 2: In the case of drugs, historically, what this has meant
Speaker 2: is providing treatment options that need to include access to
Speaker 2: the safest version of the drug that will keep that
Speaker 2: person going. One of the reasons why I don't think
Speaker 2: this will be taken up by politicians. Is people as
Speaker 2: they have for the last two hundred year, will still
Speaker 2: be killed by drugs. I'm not promising a utopia or
Speaker 2: that we can go back to this imagined faeryland when
Speaker 2: everything is wonderful. I'm saying we're gonna honestly do the
Speaker 2: best that we can do, and it'll be better than
Speaker 2: what we're doing now.
Speaker 1: Well, David, thank you so much for bringing it to
Speaker 1: my attention and for coming on seven am this morning.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, Anthony Alberes he knew about and
Speaker 1: approved Communication Minister Anika Wells's decision to spend almost one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars on flies to New York for her
Speaker 1: and two colleagues. Anthony Alberanezi has told the ABC's Insiders
Speaker 1: program the flights were within the rules. Wells had planned
Speaker 1: to travel with the PM to sproute the social media
Speaker 1: ban at the UN but stayed back in Australia for
Speaker 1: longer to deal with the Optus triple zero out each.
Speaker 1: She's now facing questions about other expenses she has claimed,
Speaker 1: including accommodation in Threadbath for her and her family who
Speaker 1: went skiing while she performed parliamentary duties. Wells has defended
Speaker 1: the expense, saying she doesn't write the rules, but she
Speaker 1: did follow them. And social media companies will blur pornographic
Speaker 1: and violent images from December twenty seven under new industry
Speaker 1: drafted rules released by the E Safety Commissioner. The move
Speaker 1: is designed to protect children under eighteen from saying what
Speaker 1: the Commissioner describes as awful but lawful images. Adults who
Speaker 1: wish to view the material will be able to click through.
Speaker 1: The new rules also require social media platforms to redirect
Speaker 1: people looking up suicide, self harm, or eating disorders to
Speaker 1: mental health support services. I'm Daniel James. This is seven
Speaker 1: a m. Thanks for listening.