Speaker 1: Clayton. What if I told you in a few years
Speaker 1: there wasn't going to be any heroine on the streets
Speaker 1: like none. Okay, that's a good thing, right, What if
Speaker 1: I told you that was a bad thing for who
Speaker 1: people that do heroin? Now you got to explain this.
Speaker 1: Four suspected drug dealers are under arrest for allegedly supplying
Speaker 1: the fentnyl laced heroine that killed actor Michael K. Williams.
Speaker 1: Someone overdoses on your dope. That is to the rest
Speaker 1: of a consumer population in Sellington, not a warning. That
Speaker 1: is an advertisement, almost like a purity check. I guess
Speaker 1: guys exactly they're trying to find arcanics. Possibly he is
Speaker 1: a country were never faced with massive industrial quantities of
Speaker 1: fennel until the time when the Sun of Law drug
Speaker 1: cartel first figured out that finel existed. This is an
Speaker 1: existential threat to the United States, China, Mexico are flooding
Speaker 1: on c streets to important these elements within the Sun
Speaker 1: of Law drug cartel get pretty mad at him. Not
Speaker 1: a good idea, get the sent a long drug. Hurt
Speaker 1: mad at you, but he down, He sits him down
Speaker 1: and explains to him, look, I have made for you,
Speaker 1: the most profitable, the most potent trug that you are
Speaker 1: ever going to encounter, and it's called functional. I'm Greg Glad.
Speaker 1: I'm Clayton, English and this is the War on drugs.
Speaker 1: Clay Man, how's it going. Oh man, it's good, it's good.
Speaker 1: Were broadcast them from the right place. Yeah, we're in Atlanta. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're on Boulevard. Yeah. Yeah, interesting little area over here,
Speaker 1: East Atlanta area. Yeah, it's definitely. Uh, the War on
Speaker 1: drugs is hit this area repeatedly and heatedly. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad. I'm glad we're here. Though. I think we
Speaker 1: shed light on stuff. That's why I'm glad you down
Speaker 1: here in my city. Yeah, we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 1: I think is is really prevalent to a lot of listeners,
Speaker 1: and I hope we all get something out of this.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk to this guy. Sam Keionis wrote this
Speaker 1: book called The Least of Us. It's about the fentnyl
Speaker 1: epidemic and how it's taken over. And the thing that
Speaker 1: scared me was that, you know, Sam was just like,
Speaker 1: heroin won't be a thing anymore, it'll be a vestige
Speaker 1: of the past. And when you say heroin, like you
Speaker 1: think order the real bowin, like math, it's heroin, and
Speaker 1: and you're just and that's like going to be an
Speaker 1: old timey drug, right, That's right, that's terrifying. That was
Speaker 1: one for me when he said that. At first, I thought, oh, good, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got it. Yeah, but I didn't realize that it's
Speaker 1: all gonna be replaced with finnel, something more powerful, more deadly,
Speaker 1: and something that it's already happening. And the crazy thing
Speaker 1: is like things that you're able to do to help yourself,
Speaker 1: like narcane to you know that can override and opioid
Speaker 1: you know, overdose, or fentnyl strips where you're able to
Speaker 1: test substances and see if it has fentyl and it
Speaker 1: highly highly accurate. They're illegal in a lot of states.
Speaker 1: They're dru paraphernalia. You can't own it or actually give
Speaker 1: it to someone narcn or you can't even have it
Speaker 1: in you. And so it's like it's it's crazy that
Speaker 1: the one thing that can actually maybe prevent some of
Speaker 1: these things, we're also causing it to be drug paraphernalia
Speaker 1: some way. It's like that's the smallest step, Like that's
Speaker 1: the smallest step you could take, like just allow test
Speaker 1: strips to be available. It's it's a crazy thing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Sam really opened my eyes to what this
Speaker 1: all looks like. And if you thought that trying to
Speaker 1: fight the war on drugs when you had drugs that
Speaker 1: needed like you know, poppy fields or field you need people,
Speaker 1: you need You're not to worry about rabbits and yeah,
Speaker 1: the other cartail exactly. Shoot, like your pets become bigger
Speaker 1: and they have automatic work. You can just be in
Speaker 1: a room. What are We're in an eight by eight
Speaker 1: room right now? Yeah, this could be a place where
Speaker 1: you could do twenty million dollars worth of fentanyl in
Speaker 1: a day and that could happen all of the country
Speaker 1: and process it not do it. Yeah yeah, if you
Speaker 1: do it, you you I don't think you're gonna make it. Now.
Speaker 1: If you did it, then we need to do some
Speaker 1: tests on you. Yeah. This is one of these topics,
Speaker 1: the fentinyl epidemic that you kind of have to laugh
Speaker 1: so you don't cry when you look at the the
Speaker 1: numbers of overdoses. It's just staggering. I get text vocations
Speaker 1: and you know, look on Twitter and it feels like, yeah,
Speaker 1: every every month, every month a prominent person. It feels like,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's not it. And you can only
Speaker 1: imagine what's going on, like you said, in the streets
Speaker 1: in your city and my city and all across the country.
Speaker 1: And you know, we joke a lot around a lot
Speaker 1: m and we will during this episode, but we know
Speaker 1: that this is an incredibly serious topic and this is
Speaker 1: impacting the lives of so many people across the country everywhere.
Speaker 1: We really got to get to the root of the problem.
Speaker 1: And the root of the problem is the war on drugs,
Speaker 1: the prohibition, the way that we have criminalized um, you know,
Speaker 1: the drugs and put so many people in prison, and
Speaker 1: the ramifications that has had and the lack of actual
Speaker 1: you know, solving addiction in this country because of the
Speaker 1: war on drugs. Is wife fentinyl so ramping the streets.
Speaker 1: This is the reason. This is the root cause. And
Speaker 1: so we get into that, you know, with um, with
Speaker 1: Sam and I think it's just going to be a
Speaker 1: really great episode of informative one on something that's really
Speaker 1: not you know, well known, like, yeah, we know what
Speaker 1: the word fentanyl, but it's kind of okay, what is it,
Speaker 1: How do we stop? What's what's going on? Yeah? One
Speaker 1: of the things I really got out of this episode
Speaker 1: was just, uh, you actually see how the war on
Speaker 1: drugs actually fuels the whole fitting al epidemic. And then
Speaker 1: I think it's important for people to listen to this
Speaker 1: episode because Sam answers so many questions that I hear
Speaker 1: just talking to people in day to day conversation about
Speaker 1: Fenton Al is what is it? Why is it? Why
Speaker 1: would they do this? And I think he answers so
Speaker 1: many of those in such a playing and simple way
Speaker 1: that everybody can understand. So let's get into it with
Speaker 1: Sam Key on this, Yeah, without any further ado, let's
Speaker 1: let's kick it to Sam and figure out where fentinyl
Speaker 1: came from and where we're at right now with this.
Speaker 1: All right, Sam, welcome to the War on Drugs. How
Speaker 1: are you pretty well? Greg? Thank you? Yeah, great to
Speaker 1: have you. Oh it's good to be here. Yeah. Going
Speaker 1: through your book, it was just absolutely fascinating. And one
Speaker 1: thing that really stuck out that you had said was
Speaker 1: there's not going to be any recreational drug use pretty soon.
Speaker 1: M clayton. Thoughts and prayers to you on that. I
Speaker 1: don't do it recreationally anyway. I have a purpose when
Speaker 1: I use drugs to get high. Yeah. Yeah, So what
Speaker 1: did you mean by that? Well, I think it's we're
Speaker 1: already at the end of the era of recreational drug use,
Speaker 1: and Frontal has put an end to that, well almost
Speaker 1: at an end of heroin. Don't have really much heroin
Speaker 1: on the streets anymore in the United States. I think
Speaker 1: we're about a year or two away from seeing no
Speaker 1: heroin at all. And so everything that's out there can
Speaker 1: have front on online. You can't trust anything really to
Speaker 1: not have fentyl in it, unless it's pills that you've
Speaker 1: got from a pharmacist that they filled in front of you,
Speaker 1: almost And so now it's in everything. It's in cocaine,
Speaker 1: it's in the methamphetam that is also everywhere in the country,
Speaker 1: and it's being put into counterfeit pills that look like
Speaker 1: percosets or xanax bars or even the illegal pills ecstasy
Speaker 1: and what have you. And all of this is really
Speaker 1: because the ease of which the Mexican drug trafficking world
Speaker 1: can make fentanyl, and the enormous quantities it can make.
Speaker 1: All of that is why You've got so much of
Speaker 1: the stuff around and it's being added to everything. And
Speaker 1: what that has done, I think is really put an
Speaker 1: end to risk free recreational drug use in America. And
Speaker 1: now every time you used ope, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: game of Russian roulette. Wow, you said in a year,
Speaker 1: you don't think there'll be any here, When on the streets,
Speaker 1: I'd say we're about a year or two away from that.
Speaker 1: Every place I go, I see less and less heroin
Speaker 1: being seized. People call it heroin by the way they
Speaker 1: call whatever they're buying on the street. I found this
Speaker 1: in eastern Tennessee, for example, people will still call it heroin.
Speaker 1: There's no heroine in it. It tests for fentanyl, A
Speaker 1: tests from math at, tests for thhc, AT, tests for
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. But but there's very little heroin
Speaker 1: in it. And this is all because of economics. A
Speaker 1: basic idea is that fentanyl is simply more efficient, more competitive,
Speaker 1: if you like, form of getting people addicted to opioids
Speaker 1: and then keeping them strung out. It makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense from a drug dealer's perspective, a drug trafficker's perspective.
Speaker 1: You don't have to grow poppies anymore. You just make
Speaker 1: it in a lab. Yeah, yeah, let's I'd love to
Speaker 1: kind of boil down on that, is you kind of
Speaker 1: think about these things and is that the big instant fennel.
Speaker 1: Obviously we can get back to like kind of like
Speaker 1: what fennel is and what the potency is. But from
Speaker 1: a pure economic standpoint, you don't need a poppy field anymore.
Speaker 1: You don't need a marijuana field anymore. You know, you
Speaker 1: can just have a guy pretty much in a kiss
Speaker 1: the chef's schmock in his bedroom, just whipping this stuff up. Yes,
Speaker 1: all of this is supplied driven. Virtually none of it
Speaker 1: is demand driven. In my opinion, it's all about what
Speaker 1: benefits traffickers, and traffickers are enormously benefited by switching from
Speaker 1: plant based drugs to synthetic drugs made only in a
Speaker 1: lab with no plant involved. It's easier to make, it's
Speaker 1: cheaper to make, and all that you really need. You
Speaker 1: don't need land, you don't need sunlight, You're gonna need irrigation.
Speaker 1: All you need now is access to shipping ports. Shipping
Speaker 1: ports get you access to the entire world chemical market,
Speaker 1: and all of this means that they can produce quantities
Speaker 1: of these drugs that are simply staggering, simply unprecedented, the
Speaker 1: quantities of the drugs that we're seeing now coming out
Speaker 1: of Mexico. Because they don't have any more seat, there's
Speaker 1: no more seasons, you're not limited by what the When
Speaker 1: the plant can actually grow, you can make it every week,
Speaker 1: every two weeks. You know. The other thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: I think about all this is if you if you
Speaker 1: look at how corporate America, particularly of products that you
Speaker 1: would you know, like that have some addictive capacity, stuff
Speaker 1: with sugar in it, fast food, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: What they're mostly looking for is to reduce friction of use.
Speaker 1: It's all about supply again. It's like, you want to
Speaker 1: get as much of this stuff out there as easily
Speaker 1: accessible to your consumers as you possibly can. So you
Speaker 1: find fast food at every interstate off ramp. You find
Speaker 1: battles over space in grocery stores for sodas and whatnot.
Speaker 1: It's all this idea, like I want to make it
Speaker 1: as easy for my consumers to buy and use this
Speaker 1: stuff as possible. Well, if you think about it in
Speaker 1: a kind of an unarticulated way, that's really what the
Speaker 1: trafficking world out of Mexico has created with these synthetic
Speaker 1: drugs that can make ye a round no more seasons
Speaker 1: all across the America. Yeah, and similar to almost like
Speaker 1: a McDonalds than anyone else where. It's just like keep
Speaker 1: drolling fatties at this like meat and sugar and fat.
Speaker 1: Literally the names of some of these bills are like
Speaker 1: drop dead, You're gonna die, Like these are like this
Speaker 1: is the good stuff. Yeah. Well, I think this plays
Speaker 1: into another idea that is very common, has been true
Speaker 1: for a long time, and that is that when you
Speaker 1: use an opioid, say heroin or whatever it happens to me,
Speaker 1: and someone overdoses on your dope, that is to the
Speaker 1: rest of the consumer population you're selling to, not a warning.
Speaker 1: That is an advertisement. That's like, go get that dope.
Speaker 1: That's really good. That's that's the stuff that you want
Speaker 1: to get, And so branding it makes that even easier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the overdose is like to them, that's like almost like
Speaker 1: a purity check. I guess exactly correct. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: he overdose. That means it was so much in there,
Speaker 1: you know, like it can't be cut. So that's that's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's that's how it works in their brains. We got
Speaker 1: a couple of bills to pay, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Money money, money. Hi. I'm Jason Flom, CEO and founder
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Speaker 1: Weldon Angelos is one of those change makers. At the
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Speaker 1: life was ahead of him when he was sentenced to
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Speaker 1: he founded the Weldon Project, a nonprofit working to create
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Speaker 1: social change and provides financial aid for all those who
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Speaker 1: can partner Will Stand Together, go to Stand Together dot org. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get back to kind of like the history of fentanyl,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of folks probably think like
Speaker 1: it's like the new designer drug on the street that
Speaker 1: just came out of nowhere. But why did it come from? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's so many people in this like it's hitting
Speaker 1: the streets. But now, fentanyl has a long history. It's
Speaker 1: a magnificent drug and surgery. I've had fentanyl and when
Speaker 1: I had a heart attack. It revolutionized surgery. We're able
Speaker 1: to do all kinds of surgery now that we're not
Speaker 1: able to do before. Funnel Funnel was invented by Paul Jansen,
Speaker 1: my opinion, one of the great scientific of minds of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. He invented many many drugs. Is from
Speaker 1: Belgium on the company Jansen Pharmacunica, and he invented all
Speaker 1: kinds of drugs and it was a really fertile scientific mind.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty he invented fentanyl, which was based on
Speaker 1: the phuentel molecule, which is able to enter the bloodstream
Speaker 1: and enter the brain much more quickly than say the
Speaker 1: earlier morphine and so on. And it didn't last long,
Speaker 1: and that's what made it effective as a surgical tool.
Speaker 1: You went into anesthesia and then very quickly you could
Speaker 1: come out of it once they stopped administering it to you,
Speaker 1: and so you didn't stay doped up for a long
Speaker 1: time as you would on morphine. And that became kind
Speaker 1: of how surgery was done. And so, but what makes
Speaker 1: it a fantastic drug in the surgical setting is what
Speaker 1: makes it a torment for users on the street and
Speaker 1: a huge benefit for dealers, and that is that it
Speaker 1: takes you in and out very quickly. So when addicted
Speaker 1: to fentyl, you gotta always be using, right you got
Speaker 1: to you use, and then three or four hours later
Speaker 1: you got to use again. You were never more than
Speaker 1: a few hours away from the dope sickness taking over
Speaker 1: with fentanyl, and now what they're looking for is fentanyl.
Speaker 1: You can't be the only dealer in the area who
Speaker 1: does not add fentanyl to his math or his cocaine
Speaker 1: or whatever, because very quickly word will spread and you
Speaker 1: will be out of customers. No one will come to you.
Speaker 1: I spoke with a dealer, a kind of a mid
Speaker 1: level dealer out in eastern Tennessee, and she told me
Speaker 1: she would go every day to her wholesaler in Knoxville
Speaker 1: and buy dope and then come back to her area
Speaker 1: and sell it to a bunch of different folks. And
Speaker 1: at one point the wholesaler was going to go re
Speaker 1: up and buy a whole bunch more and she gave
Speaker 1: him fentanyl test strips. Now, these are strips you're supposed
Speaker 1: to as a user's stick into whatever it is you're
Speaker 1: about to use to make sure to see whether it
Speaker 1: has fentyl or not, and the idea being that you
Speaker 1: would not use it if it had had fentyl in it.
Speaker 1: But she gave him fentyl test trips to test whatever
Speaker 1: it was he was going to buy to make sure
Speaker 1: sure that it had had fentanyl in it. That's that's
Speaker 1: the whole point. You don't you don't want to come
Speaker 1: back here with stuff that doesn't have fentanyl already mixed
Speaker 1: into it. She told him, we're not going to buy that.
Speaker 1: When we got we got no use for that. But
Speaker 1: that gives you an idea of what actually happens after
Speaker 1: the fentyl market has matured. And I would say that
Speaker 1: in many, many parts of this country, perhaps all of them,
Speaker 1: but certainly many parts of the country. Now you are
Speaker 1: seeing an increasing number of people just addicted to fentanyl
Speaker 1: and demanding fentyl. Now that's crazy. So there's no market
Speaker 1: for somebody with the organic heroine. I was in a
Speaker 1: Nashville tent encauntment about three or four months ago, and
Speaker 1: I was speaking with this guy, longtime heroine user, got
Speaker 1: them transitioned over to fentanyl, and a guy came through.
Speaker 1: He said a week before I was there and he said, um,
Speaker 1: he got this black tar heroine and it looked to
Speaker 1: be legitimate, good quality blacked our heroin. But the guy
Speaker 1: told him, what use do I have of heroin? I
Speaker 1: need fentanyl. I'm not so. Fentanyl is taking over the
Speaker 1: market and they need it. Heroin is almost worthless now.
Speaker 1: That's why it's very soon will be I think, if
Speaker 1: things continue as they are, will be non existent on
Speaker 1: the streets of the United States. So fentanyl existed for
Speaker 1: decades and it was just kind of us in a
Speaker 1: medical setting. And what happened during that gap, when did
Speaker 1: this kind of like realization from drug cartels and things
Speaker 1: like that kind of spur over to the illicit narcotic ray. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Fentyl for a lot of years just existed as an anesthetic.
Speaker 1: You would occasionally see some you know, underground chemist come
Speaker 1: up with a batch of it, and you would see
Speaker 1: these little spurts and deaths in some area. Orange County,
Speaker 1: California had a San Francisco and San Diego had them
Speaker 1: for a bid. Sacramento area had one for a while.
Speaker 1: But we as a country were never really faced with
Speaker 1: massive industrial quantities of fentanyl until two thousand and five
Speaker 1: and six, and that's the time when the Senelow drug
Speaker 1: cartel first figured out that fentyl existed. And this came
Speaker 1: from an underground chemist that they had hired, Mexican guy
Speaker 1: that had grown up in San Diego, learned somehow and
Speaker 1: I still don't know how to cook some version of fentanyl.
Speaker 1: Was arrested for that, went to prison for many years,
Speaker 1: during which time he took lots of notes and met
Speaker 1: all the chemists in every prison he went to and
Speaker 1: got out of there much better able to make fentanyl,
Speaker 1: and then was deported in about two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and five, he was approached by what he
Speaker 1: said later were members of the Senelo A drug cartel
Speaker 1: who wanted him to make not fentanyl, but if federan.
Speaker 1: If Ederan is the crucial ingredient in one method of
Speaker 1: making methamphetamen. Right, yes, it's it's it's a natural chemical
Speaker 1: that's found in the Sudafid pills and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And they had been making, really industrializing methamphetomen
Speaker 1: based on if ederan. But there were signs now in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five and six that the Mexican government
Speaker 1: was going to get rid of or at least cracked
Speaker 1: down on the importations. And so they wanted another source,
Speaker 1: somebody who who could make this stuff. And this guy said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I could make it. But in the back
Speaker 1: of his mind it was a strange thing. The back
Speaker 1: of his mind, he says, yeah, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: make that. I mean, I know better. This was a
Speaker 1: guy who always thought he was kind of the smartest
Speaker 1: guy in the room. So they buy him all these
Speaker 1: very high quality chemical laboratory equipment and glassware and all
Speaker 1: the rest, and he sets out, but he really sets
Speaker 1: out to make phentomyl. When they just discover this these
Speaker 1: elements within the cinealoid, Joe Cartel get pretty mad at him.
Speaker 1: Not a good idea, get the cinaloa. Joe Cartel mad
Speaker 1: at you. But he sits him down, right, He sits
Speaker 1: him down and explains to him, look, I have made
Speaker 1: for you the most profitable, the most potent drug that
Speaker 1: you are ever going to encounter. And it's called sentinel.
Speaker 1: And he explained fentanyl's benefits from a trafficking perspective to them,
Speaker 1: and the lights go on. This is the first time
Speaker 1: that we have record of the cinaloid drug cartel or
Speaker 1: some elements within it, understanding that there's actually a synthetic
Speaker 1: way of producing a substitute for harrow. No more poppies,
Speaker 1: you don't have to grow poppies anymore, bingo, we can
Speaker 1: make this stuff. And he begins to make it at
Speaker 1: that lab and they begin to ship it and test it.
Speaker 1: Literally there's wire tabs of these guys saying, we tested
Speaker 1: it up in Chicago or we tested it up in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and you know it worked. These guys are like all excited, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, they've at this devastatingly potent drug. And
Speaker 1: what ends up happening is people begin to die in
Speaker 1: large numbers. That's the first mass mortality moment that we
Speaker 1: see it go several thousand people over the next nine months.
Speaker 1: When is that time period that's too end of a
Speaker 1: Fall of two thousand and five until April of two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, which is when he is busted. But
Speaker 1: still after he's busted, there's another ten kilos that he
Speaker 1: has just sold into the market that kill people for
Speaker 1: another must be three four five months until it all
Speaker 1: tapers off. So you see about a year's worth of death,
Speaker 1: very very pronounced death in the areas where this takes
Speaker 1: place are very very easily identified. Chicago's first, he's selling
Speaker 1: it to the gangs in South Chicago at the time,
Speaker 1: it goes to Detroit, down to Saint Louis, it goes
Speaker 1: out to Philadelphia to begin to see an enormous new
Speaker 1: burst of mortality out of nowhere, and then after he's busted,
Speaker 1: it tapers off and to normal. But in the back
Speaker 1: of their minds, they never forgot fentyl. You know, they
Speaker 1: had this one guy who accluded him into it. He
Speaker 1: wasn't around long enough to really teach everybody how to
Speaker 1: do it, but they found other There's lots of chemists
Speaker 1: in Mexico, There's lots of professors at universities and various
Speaker 1: people that end up doing that. The knowledge base begins
Speaker 1: to spread, particularly in the drug producing regions of western
Speaker 1: Mexico on the Pacific coast, and you begin to see
Speaker 1: that's when you begin to see the production levels that
Speaker 1: allow fentyl to reach beyond just Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: Southern Virginia, et cetera, which is where they opioid epidemic
Speaker 1: really started and where the big market for fentyl began
Speaker 1: because the quantities being produced are so staggering. In Mexico,
Speaker 1: they have all these chemicals coming in and they're shipping
Speaker 1: it not in little Manila envelopes, They're shipping it in truckloads.
Speaker 1: They're shipping it and enormous quantities. They have an enormous
Speaker 1: sophistication and getting it across the border. It's they share
Speaker 1: a two thousand mile border and a free trade agreement
Speaker 1: with the United States, so none of these trucks are
Speaker 1: really being check sufficiently. It would cripple our economy if
Speaker 1: they were, you know. And so you begin to see
Speaker 1: these quantities of fentyl just flooding and covering everything and
Speaker 1: then being added to everything as well. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: kind of think, like, you know, we've all seen like
Speaker 1: the Narco Show, or you're watching like blow or something
Speaker 1: like that, and you hear like these quantities of like cocaine,
Speaker 1: it seems like the same amount of quantity, but the
Speaker 1: intensity and the actual like pound for pound punches much
Speaker 1: hundred times a thousand times, it's much. Yeah, exactly, you
Speaker 1: have enormous quantities. But with fentanyl. One of the benefits
Speaker 1: of the many benefits to a trafficker is that you
Speaker 1: don't You could smuggle a few kilos and it's massively profitable.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't need truckloads of funnel. I spoke
Speaker 1: with a kid who's in federal prison at the moment
Speaker 1: for doing a number of years in prison, but he
Speaker 1: was out of Orange County, and he said that he
Speaker 1: would buy quarter killers or a half pound of funnel
Speaker 1: from Chinese manufacturers and then produce through the mail again
Speaker 1: and make tens of thousands of counterfeit percocets. And he
Speaker 1: ended up spending per load of funnel that he would get.
Speaker 1: He would spend five thousand dollars for the fentanel and
Speaker 1: generally his profit was on the order of two million.
Speaker 1: You see, the profit is just staggering. Yeah, that's and
Speaker 1: that's your eyes light up with Dallas science. Would you
Speaker 1: hear that if you are drug dealer, five thousand into
Speaker 1: two million? And that's what I say. I mean it
Speaker 1: feels to a lot of people once they begin to
Speaker 1: figure the fentnel out, it feels like they could win
Speaker 1: the lottery with this stuff. You know, It's like and
Speaker 1: then anyone can be a kingpin at that point. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Everybody can be a kingpin whether you're not
Speaker 1: you're in your your boxer shorts and your mom's basement,
Speaker 1: you could still be this major mover what would have
Speaker 1: been considered a kingpin sized quantities ten fifteen years earlier.
Speaker 1: Now like anybody can get a hold of it, and
Speaker 1: anybody can be selling it. You see, all kinds of
Speaker 1: people get into the drug business who really have no
Speaker 1: business being in the drug business. They're idiots, they or
Speaker 1: they just don't know. And then when those folks get prosecuted,
Speaker 1: they face kingpin sized prison terms too, right, and then
Speaker 1: the cost as well, margin of air is so much smaller.
Speaker 1: And something that you were discussing the book as well
Speaker 1: is like how the magic bullet that blender that's for
Speaker 1: smoothies that became like the way dealers would mix this
Speaker 1: thing up. Can you talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: prevalence of the magic bullet in like the overdoses of fentyl,
Speaker 1: Like in that connection, it's amazing to the prom with
Speaker 1: fentyl from a dealer's perspective is it's very potent. So
Speaker 1: what the equivalent of a few grains of salt of
Speaker 1: fentyl will get you high. A couple more will kill you.
Speaker 1: And so you can't just sell that small amount of
Speaker 1: fentanyl on the street. It's not logistically possible to sell
Speaker 1: a few grains of so you have to mix it
Speaker 1: with some other powder that doesn't do anything. It's just
Speaker 1: a cheap powder. So that means that all those lottery
Speaker 1: size profits that fentanyl promises are dependent on your ability
Speaker 1: to actually mix it with something else at which you
Speaker 1: can actually sell it on the street. That's when the
Speaker 1: magic bullet takes over. The problem with the magic bullet
Speaker 1: is it's it's an awful machine with which to mix
Speaker 1: fentanyl because it only mixes liquids. Fentanyl isn't usually in
Speaker 1: a powder, and if you try to mix you you
Speaker 1: cannot mix powder with a blade. But all these folks
Speaker 1: would kind of get into this thinking, oh great, I'm magmillions.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go down to Target buy me a
Speaker 1: twenty nine ninety five Magic bullet blender. And because of that,
Speaker 1: there were so many of those clusters of overdoses who
Speaker 1: which you'll see forty fifty, sixty seventy a weekend. And
Speaker 1: I would say with their are of the drug war too,
Speaker 1: you know, the drug war, the reason it failed in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways is not because we use law enforcement.
Speaker 1: It's because we only use law enforcement, and to me,
Speaker 1: that was the major failing of the drug war up
Speaker 1: to now. So we tried to deal with a problem
Speaker 1: rooted in the brain chemistry with one tool. And the
Speaker 1: truth is we need a variety of things and in
Speaker 1: each community. I think one of the most radical, beautiful,
Speaker 1: revolutionary ideas is you are now seeing people who are
Speaker 1: coming together and like sometimes that is very low tech stuff.
Speaker 1: It's being outside, it's holding a barbecue, it's holding a
Speaker 1: block party. It's not high tech stuff I'm talking about here.
Speaker 1: It's what people have always done. But in America we
Speaker 1: decided in the last forty years it was not necessary
Speaker 1: and we could get away without it because it is difficult,
Speaker 1: it is messy. But the truth is when we try
Speaker 1: to do that, as we have in this country, we
Speaker 1: end up crippling ourselves. And that's what we're seeing. Though. Well, Sam,
Speaker 1: this this is amazing. I highly recommend M. Sam's books.
Speaker 1: You know, Dreamland New York Times bestseller, A fantastic pick
Speaker 1: it up in his newest book that we were just
Speaker 1: talking about today. A lot the least of us True
Speaker 1: Tales of America and Hope in the time of fentanyl
Speaker 1: and meth Sam, thank you again for joining us. I
Speaker 1: love to love to talk about this more um as
Speaker 1: we move forward. I think this could have gone yeah,
Speaker 1: for a very long time and just fascinated by this
Speaker 1: subject and where we're headed. So yeah, I appreciate again,
Speaker 1: thank you every time. Thank you. My pleasure follows. Thanks
Speaker 1: very much for the interest on the book. Yeah, night
Speaker 1: and Greg. Good to talk with you. Thank you for
Speaker 1: breaking it down for us. Appreciate my pleasure. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back with the War on Drugs podcast. You've you've
Speaker 1: worked on some superhero shows and you know origin stories
Speaker 1: are important. It's definitely a good villain origin story or
Speaker 1: it feels like os are breaking bad. Any of those
Speaker 1: shows where you gotta figure your way out the snowfall,
Speaker 1: any of those shows. That's great. So we did a
Speaker 1: little digging, right, what what would we be if we
Speaker 1: couldn't find out some information. Yeah, so we really wanted
Speaker 1: to dive more into like this guy, Harto Valdez Tori
Speaker 1: is right. Yeah, he was called like a cerebro, the brain,
Speaker 1: the cooker, this guy who essentially was given a task
Speaker 1: by the Cineloa cartel, and he says, in his own head,
Speaker 1: I think I can just do this better. I mean
Speaker 1: that those always those people that they they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna outsmart them. But you gotta see it all
Speaker 1: the way through, like when he was probably like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not making the fuck veteran. I'm not doing that shit.
Speaker 1: You know how good at kim as I am. I'm
Speaker 1: about to make this fitting off. They don't even know
Speaker 1: what this shit is. Watches it? Then, I want to
Speaker 1: see that song and dance number. How did you pitch
Speaker 1: that to down? Yeah? You know what I'm saying, like,
Speaker 1: did you have a PowerPoint presentation? You better have had
Speaker 1: some shit, man, you better started singing like uh. But
Speaker 1: he was pitching that Monareil the Springfield on that old episode.
Speaker 1: Ye gotta got the old Timmy Broadway number about this
Speaker 1: ship because hey, we said do this and you gave
Speaker 1: us this, and basically that's what he did. He negotiated
Speaker 1: a focus group. He literally did. Yeah, he was like, hey,
Speaker 1: look at all our customers in there. They love this
Speaker 1: new what in Chicago? Yeah, just try it in Chicago.
Speaker 1: It was probably like one of them Bill Gates or
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs presentations probably had on a black turtle. You
Speaker 1: know what if I could get you twice as high
Speaker 1: for half as long, would that be something? You're interesting?
Speaker 1: What yah to the cartel? Like these are not okay? Hey? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he held his nuts on that one and he was,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of patient zero this whole thing. This
Speaker 1: went on for a few years and they was blowing
Speaker 1: up and they were bringing in the chemicals like they
Speaker 1: were using a street gang called the Mickey Cobers that
Speaker 1: was big in Chicago at least at that time, and
Speaker 1: essentially using them as the middleman to bring this through.
Speaker 1: They're mixing fentinyl with with heroin and other things. They
Speaker 1: had all these names like Reaper and penicill And that's
Speaker 1: the thing, like they're not even like hiding it, like
Speaker 1: this will kill you. And that was like the attractiveness
Speaker 1: of it. That's what Sam was talking about. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of these people want It's everywhere right now, and
Speaker 1: just you hear too many people die, you hear too
Speaker 1: many people overdose, yet anything out there. Well, I want
Speaker 1: to thank our guests Sam for taking the time to
Speaker 1: talk about this. That was awesome. So with that, I
Speaker 1: appreciate listening to War on Drugs. Yes, thank you. Make
Speaker 1: sure you follow the War on Drugs podcast so you
Speaker 1: don't miss any new episodes or any of our quick
Speaker 1: fixed bonus content. I don't know if it actually helps them.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you follow it and unfollow it and then
Speaker 1: follow it again, and if we get two that don't count,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe you never know. You can that
Speaker 1: trick the algorithm. We'll see, they just give it a shot.
Speaker 1: What's what's the harm? But we'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with another episode of War on Drugs. Until then, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Executive producers for War on Drugs are Jason
Speaker 1: Flom and Kevin Wards. Senior producer is Michael Epstein. Editing
Speaker 1: by Nick Massetti and Michael Epstein. Associate producer and mix
Speaker 1: and mastering by Nick Massetti. Additional production by Jeff Claiburne
Speaker 1: and Anna mcintick. All them people made it happen, man. Yeah, Nick, Nick,
Speaker 1: they might gotta get you a bigger check. You got
Speaker 1: about five things you're doing then, buddy, be sure to
Speaker 1: follow the show on all social media accounts you know
Speaker 1: what they are, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, at lava like molten
Speaker 1: lava for good You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Greg Glode and Clayton on Instagram at Clayton English. The
Speaker 1: War on Drugs is a production of Lava for Good
Speaker 1: podcast and association with Signal Company Number One. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Greg Glode and I'm your host Clayton Ing. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening until next time.