Speaker 1: Wellcome to the final Spooky Week episode. Hi, Look, this
Speaker 1: is this is it could happen here, and this is
Speaker 1: our last Spooky Week episode for this year, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about something extremely spooky and Halloween themed.
Speaker 1: Rainbow fentonel the newest deadly threat hiding in your kids
Speaker 1: trigger treat basket, or so you would think if you
Speaker 1: are a frequent viewer of Fox News or really any
Speaker 1: local cable news channel, and that rainbow fentanyl in particular
Speaker 1: is troublesome because of its appearance. This is treacherous decepsion
Speaker 1: to market rainbow fentonel like candy. This is every parents
Speaker 1: worst nightmare, especially in the month of October as Halloween
Speaker 1: fast approaches. That was Fox five News, New York and
Speaker 1: d E a special agent Frank Tarantino, giving a press
Speaker 1: conference on the rainbow fentinel scourge sweeping the nation. It's
Speaker 1: not hard to see how this narrative became the new
Speaker 1: protect the children pearl clutching panic. It's a natural extension
Speaker 1: of the police officer touches fentinel and spontaneously overdoses lie
Speaker 1: that local news across the country have been pushing for
Speaker 1: over a year now. More on this later coupled with
Speaker 1: the old classic poisoned, drug laced, tampered Halloween candy myth
Speaker 1: that's captivated American parents for decades, whether it be razor
Speaker 1: blades and napples, needles and tutsie rules, meth in, gummy bears,
Speaker 1: cocaine candy corn, or th HC sour Patch kids. If
Speaker 1: you've ever watched any local news during the month of October,
Speaker 1: clips like these should sound really familiar. Police in at
Speaker 1: least two Wisconsin towns are investing in reports of possible
Speaker 1: Halloween candy tampering breaking right now at ten concerns about
Speaker 1: possible tainted candy in Economy Walk tonight. Police tell us
Speaker 1: they've received reports of a suspicious person handing out Tutsi
Speaker 1: roles on Oakwood Avenue. Right now, police have no evidence
Speaker 1: that any candy has definitely been tampered with, the world's
Speaker 1: leading researcher on Halloween candy tampering, Joel Best, professor of
Speaker 1: sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, has
Speaker 1: found little evidence to substantiate Halloween candy fears. Joel Best
Speaker 1: has published multiple studies analyzing the legitimacy of Halloween candy tampering,
Speaker 1: including his research paper The Razor Blade in the Apple,
Speaker 1: The Social Construction of Urban Legends, and his sociology book
Speaker 1: Threatened Children, Rhetoric and Concern around Child Victims. I have
Speaker 1: followed press coverage of Halloween back to night so more
Speaker 1: than sixty years, and I cannot find any evidence that
Speaker 1: any child has ever been killed or seriously injured by
Speaker 1: a contaminated treat picked up in the course of triggered treaty.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to kind of where all this started.
Speaker 1: The first report of Halloween treats being tampered with in
Speaker 1: North America was in nineteen fifty nine. That Halloween, a
Speaker 1: California dentist named William Sheen distributed four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: laxative laced candies to children, thirty of whom fell ill.
Speaker 1: He was later charged with outrage of public decency and
Speaker 1: unlawful dispensing of drugs. This is kind of like the
Speaker 1: only incident that says that this has ever actually happened
Speaker 1: with was back in the late fifties. This is the
Speaker 1: only true one of someone like handing out actually laced
Speaker 1: candy to tons of kids. Now, to determine whether the
Speaker 1: current tempered Halloween candy myths hold any weight. Joel Best
Speaker 1: examined twenty five years of Halloween coverage from the New
Speaker 1: York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. In his research,
Speaker 1: he found that there's only been one confirmed death from
Speaker 1: a poisoned Halloween candy, and it wasn't from a nefarious
Speaker 1: stranger who wanted to harm tricker treaters. The fatal incident
Speaker 1: occurred in nineteen seventy four, after a Texas man named
Speaker 1: Ronald Clark O'Brien poisoned his eight year old son with
Speaker 1: a cyanide laced pixie stick, shortly after he took insurance
Speaker 1: claims out on his children. O'Brien had reportedly given poisoned
Speaker 1: pixie sticks to his daughter and three other neighborhood children,
Speaker 1: but the candy had not been consumed since then. Joel
Speaker 1: Best said that in some instances, kids tamper with their
Speaker 1: own candy to get attention, or a friend or a
Speaker 1: family member played a prank that went awry, or even
Speaker 1: a foreign object ended up inside candy during the manufacturing process.
Speaker 1: And that's the majority of these types of claims that
Speaker 1: you'll see on the local news. Now Halloween can be
Speaker 1: a particularly dangerous holiday, but not due to tampered candy.
Speaker 1: The real notable danger comes from pedestrian deaths. I study
Speaker 1: published last year in Jama Pediatrics analyzed data over a
Speaker 1: forty two year period in the United States and found
Speaker 1: a forty three percent higher risk of pedestrian deaths on
Speaker 1: Halloween night when compared to the week before and after.
Speaker 1: John Staples, lead author and clinical Assistant Professor of medicine
Speaker 1: and as scientist at University of British Columbia, said that quote,
Speaker 1: we found that particularly among kids age four to eight,
Speaker 1: the risk was tenfold higher on Halloween. So yeah, Halloween
Speaker 1: actually is pretty dangerous, but it's from a car, not
Speaker 1: from someone sneaking drugs into your kids candy. Last year,
Speaker 1: before the current Rainbow Centinel scare, the drug laced trick
Speaker 1: in your kids treat was weed laced candy and snacks,
Speaker 1: causing quote unquote THHC overdose among children. But shady marijuana
Speaker 1: pushers package them just for kids, and if stony patch
Speaker 1: kids are made extend, it's hard to tell. And unfortunately
Speaker 1: the black market is making it easy for children to
Speaker 1: get these products. Ben Salem Police confiscated what looks like
Speaker 1: normal candy during a traffic stop earlier this month. But
Speaker 1: these Sweethearts, they're medicated. These sour patch candies have a twist,
Speaker 1: and these Cheetos are anything but all of these items
Speaker 1: are laced with th HC. By laced with th HC,
Speaker 1: they mean the forty dollar Stoner Patch dummies are a
Speaker 1: manufactured weed candy sold in legal weed shops across the country.
Speaker 1: The fact that these novel t THC products are incredibly
Speaker 1: expensive and in packaging covered in we leaves doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to matter. Um, But yes, I'm sure the black market
Speaker 1: is super eager to give away tiny fifty dollar bags
Speaker 1: of weeded rito's. Two children dressed as the Avengers all right,
Speaker 1: now the details on a big warning for parents. Tonight
Speaker 1: police officers and Ben Salem confiscated these items during the stop.
Speaker 1: It's candy laced with marijuana, and now police don't want
Speaker 1: these friendly looking snacks to get into the wrong hands.
Speaker 1: With Halloween coming up. I'm going to quote from Filter
Speaker 1: mag quote. Attorneys general across the country are participating in
Speaker 1: the annual tradition of urging parents to stand vigilant against
Speaker 1: free drugs disguised as candy. On October four, State a
Speaker 1: g s issued such claims, all using the same data
Speaker 1: and language which appears to have been generously pre written
Speaker 1: for them by the Department of Homeland Security Ohio, Illinois, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and in New York and Arkansas. Earlier that month decried
Speaker 1: the dangers of youth THHC overdose, but without hinting at
Speaker 1: what those dangers might be, except for New York Attorney
Speaker 1: General Letitia James, who alone of the ages swung big,
Speaker 1: saying New York parents should be on the alert for
Speaker 1: deceptive cannabis products that look like standard snacks and candy
Speaker 1: but contain dangerously high concentrations of th HC. These products
Speaker 1: are especially dangerous for our children. We've seen an increase
Speaker 1: in accidental overdoses among children and nationwide, and it's vital
Speaker 1: that we do everything we can to protect our children
Speaker 1: and curb this crisis and prevent any future harm or
Speaker 1: even worse death. Now that's a stunning claim, even by
Speaker 1: weed disinformation standards. To date, there's been no confirmed evidence
Speaker 1: that THHC overdose has ever killed anybody, adult or child.
Speaker 1: So with all of that drug laced Halloween history, onto
Speaker 1: the latest rainbow colored menace in your child's tricker retreat basket.
Speaker 1: As Halloween approaches, federal authorities are warning parents about the
Speaker 1: deadly consequences of fentnel pills, particularly about the rainbow variety
Speaker 1: that look like candy. The Drug Enforcement Agency first put
Speaker 1: out a statement on multicolored quote unquote rainbow fentanyl near
Speaker 1: the end of August two, claiming during that month that
Speaker 1: the d e A and law enforcement partners seized brightly
Speaker 1: colored fentanel and fentanel pills in twenty states. And this
Speaker 1: is how the presence of colored fentanyl was framed in
Speaker 1: the d e AS initial statement. Quote this trend appears
Speaker 1: to be a new method used by Mexican drug cartels
Speaker 1: to sell highly addictive and potentially deadly fentanyl made to
Speaker 1: look like candy to children unquote. Now, obviously, children aren't
Speaker 1: the biggest consumer base for these drugs, since they have
Speaker 1: no money, have very low tolerance, and are unlikely to
Speaker 1: be a repeat customer, but that hasn't stopped the d
Speaker 1: e A from continuously referring to these colored pills as
Speaker 1: quote unquote marketing to attract kids, as if there's rainbow
Speaker 1: fentanyl ads on Nickelodeon or something. It seems the only
Speaker 1: one marketing rainbow fentanyl is the d e A itself
Speaker 1: and now news channels across the country. This is from
Speaker 1: Good Morning America. Warning certainly one here that parents need
Speaker 1: to hear with Halloween coming up. It's about potentially deadly
Speaker 1: fentyl pills that look like candy. Obviously, the d e
Speaker 1: A is an enforcement agency, not a harm reduction agency,
Speaker 1: and the way they've been talking about fentanyl the past
Speaker 1: few months has focused more on old War on Drugs
Speaker 1: style propaganda, with anti immigrant drug warriors pushing the fentanyl
Speaker 1: for kids narrative. The d e a s messaging seems
Speaker 1: largely targeted to parents and more intended to cause panic
Speaker 1: than actually work to prevent overdoses, and it distracts from
Speaker 1: experts that's a drug. Criminalization is what actually increases overdoses,
Speaker 1: not these quote unquote candy colored pills. Mariah Francis, a
Speaker 1: resource associate with the National Harm Reduction Coalition, says such
Speaker 1: rhetoric is quote an active byproduct of drug policies that
Speaker 1: prioritize criminalization and political agendas over active harm reduction unquote,
Speaker 1: as colored fentel can actually serve as an indicator that
Speaker 1: these pills are not prescription drugs. The other War on
Speaker 1: drugs style scare tactic being used a lot recently has
Speaker 1: been promoting heavily publicized drug seizures and making highly exaggerated
Speaker 1: claims about what the busts mean to the illicit drug
Speaker 1: supply and public health. Michigan and Ohio, we seized approximately
Speaker 1: four million deadly doses. Special Agent in charge Orville Green
Speaker 1: says nationwide that number jumps to thirty six million deadly
Speaker 1: doses seized and just four months in there in pill
Speaker 1: and powder form, the source materials coming from China, produced
Speaker 1: by drug cartels in Mexico, calling them quote unquote deadly doses,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, dude, if you quantify your seizure by an
Speaker 1: amount that could be potentially deadly, I suppose you could
Speaker 1: only measure in deadly quantities. I could do the same
Speaker 1: thing with with caffeine. I can go to the store
Speaker 1: and pick up like ten bang energy drinks and be
Speaker 1: I just got a deadly dose of caffee. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: that's if you're measuring it in that way, sure you
Speaker 1: can measure it as deadly doses. Plus in that clip
Speaker 1: from Fox to Detroit. You can see the anti China,
Speaker 1: anti Mexico angle that they're running with now. Obviously, places
Speaker 1: like Fox News has been eating this stuff up. Just
Speaker 1: during the first half of September, the network mentioned rainbow
Speaker 1: fentannel at least sixty six times on the air over
Speaker 1: the previous month, weaponizing the narrative to blame migrants at
Speaker 1: the border and China for the supposed is a threat
Speaker 1: that the drug poses to poor, innocent children. And many
Speaker 1: of people's most trusted news sources, which are local news outlets,
Speaker 1: have contributed to the d e a's panic by parting
Speaker 1: the agency's statements as pure fact, pushing the claim that
Speaker 1: rainbow fentanyl is meant to attract kids just at face value,
Speaker 1: presented without any skepticism, without any fact checking or information
Speaker 1: from independent drug policy experts. Here is a headline from
Speaker 1: ABC twenty four in Tennessee quote, rainbow fentanyl the colorful
Speaker 1: marketing tactic already in Memphis streets. And this is from
Speaker 1: a TV channel and Raleigh, North Carolina d A warrens
Speaker 1: of so called rainbow fentanyl putting children at risk and
Speaker 1: headlines like that have been a diame a dozen the
Speaker 1: past month. Never once bringing up that there's not a
Speaker 1: single piece of evidence that these pills are being peddled
Speaker 1: on the playground. This is exactly the kind of behavior
Speaker 1: from news organizations that leads to misinformation and panics, which
Speaker 1: distract from actual public health dangers and relatively simple things
Speaker 1: we can do to combat them. Fox News, many local
Speaker 1: news stations, and the d e A itself has now
Speaker 1: joined in the long standing annual tradition of Halloween candy
Speaker 1: based fearmongering by baselessly claiming that parents should be concerned
Speaker 1: about fentanyl appearing in their child's Halloween candy. Federal agents
Speaker 1: with an urgent warning to parents about potentially deadly fentanyl
Speaker 1: pills that look just like candy. Dubbed rainbow fentanyl, authorities
Speaker 1: are calling it a newly packaged poison as Halloween is
Speaker 1: around the corner. The idea that people are going to
Speaker 1: give away free drugs for Halloween, which it just what
Speaker 1: get wild concept? Um, I wish I would I would
Speaker 1: go trick or treating more if there was free drugs.
Speaker 1: But this idea has been boosted by elected leaders and
Speaker 1: non d e A government officials. Florida's Attorney General, Ashley
Speaker 1: Moody did a whole press conference saying quote Halloween can
Speaker 1: be very scary, but nowhere near as scary as rainbow
Speaker 1: colored fentanel that looks like candy and can be lethal
Speaker 1: in minute doses. Whether these drugs are being transported in
Speaker 1: candy boxes or mixed in with other common drugs and
Speaker 1: sold unsuspecting users, the threat posed to the safety of
Speaker 1: kids and young adults is very real. Just one pill
Speaker 1: laced with fentinel can kill, so parents, please talk to
Speaker 1: your children about the dangers posed by this extremely lethal drug.
Speaker 1: Halloween could be scary, but that isn't anyway. Senator Rob
Speaker 1: Portman wrote quote we must have all the boots on
Speaker 1: the ground to interdict deadly rainbow fentanel as Halloween approaches,
Speaker 1: which he posted alongside a Fox News story about fentinel
Speaker 1: disguised in candy packaging, which is some pa a common
Speaker 1: tactic to smuggle drugs through borders, which is why such
Speaker 1: packaging is found so often in drug seizures. Now, nobody
Speaker 1: is planning to give away free skittle fentanel to little
Speaker 1: Timmy when he comes knocking on doors and more quote unquote,
Speaker 1: and boots on the ground is exactly what law enforcement
Speaker 1: wanted when they started this lie. The d e A
Speaker 1: budget has gone up every year, and so have Sentinel overdoses.
Speaker 1: But it's the won't somebody think of the children angle
Speaker 1: that's so irresistible to news media. It provides a huge
Speaker 1: rush to our cultures actual favorite drug, fear for our children.
Speaker 1: It's the same undercurrent that fuels attacks on drag queens
Speaker 1: and trans people. Fear for the kids. While a long
Speaker 1: piece and CNN explicitly said parents of young children should
Speaker 1: not overly panic, h w R A l piece cautioned
Speaker 1: that quote, we all know how easy it is for
Speaker 1: children to pass candy around to each other, as if
Speaker 1: like Rainbow, Fentinel is going to be shared around like
Speaker 1: Eminem's at a lunch breaker or something like And one
Speaker 1: of the more silly things that I found. People running
Speaker 1: the account for ABC seven Eyewitness News hid over one
Speaker 1: hundred replies pointing out the disinformation in their so called
Speaker 1: eyewitness news story. In their tweet that read quote hashtag
Speaker 1: breaking twelve thousand Fentinel pills seized in wrappers of Skittles, Whoppers,
Speaker 1: sweet Tarts at l a X, sparking renewed Halloween warnings
Speaker 1: to parents. So yeah, they they hid over one hundred
Speaker 1: applies to that tweet basically saying this is this is bullshit.
Speaker 1: You have no idea what you're talking about. This this
Speaker 1: story again, it conflates methods of drug trafficking with the
Speaker 1: longstanding myth of expensive drugs being hidden in cheap Halloween candy.
Speaker 1: And then, by far the most ridiculous thing that I found,
Speaker 1: it's just because it's kind of absurd and slightly funny,
Speaker 1: Laura Trump on Fox News did the most ridiculous Rainbow
Speaker 1: Fentinel segment that I could find, including spreading the blatant
Speaker 1: lie that police officers have indeed died by simply touching fentinel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you look at the police officers who when they just
Speaker 1: pat people down and they find it, if it touches
Speaker 1: their fingers, they literally go into shock and almost die
Speaker 1: from it. Something I think have died from it. The
Speaker 1: idea that you could have a kid anywhere in America
Speaker 1: if if one child dies from this on Halloween. I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, we have to take action to stop
Speaker 1: this right now because parents are terrified and we have
Speaker 1: no answers. What are we supposed to do they're gonna
Speaker 1: go trick or truth. So Democrats ruin Halloween to plan,
Speaker 1: they really do. So what you wouldn't know by watching
Speaker 1: these types of news programs, whether they be Fox News
Speaker 1: or just regular cable news, is that the colors in
Speaker 1: these drugs have been added to pills for years. The
Speaker 1: real danger isn't that kids are being given fentanyl like candy.
Speaker 1: It's that fentanyl is being pressed into the shapes of
Speaker 1: other prescription drugs like oxy codone, and people will take
Speaker 1: a fentanyl pill thinking it's something else and then overdose.
Speaker 1: And throughout many of these news stories, they don't mention narcan,
Speaker 1: or if they do, they mentioned in the context as
Speaker 1: saying like this school in l A Now carries narcan.
Speaker 1: That's how bad things are getting. Like they used the
Speaker 1: presence of an arcan as like a bad omen which
Speaker 1: means no, people should just have narcan everywhere cause it's great.
Speaker 1: Well more on that later, but these colored pills provide
Speaker 1: such a compelling visual for anyone with a financial stake
Speaker 1: in continuing prohibition. In a way, the d A is right.
Speaker 1: Rainbow fentanyl is a marketing stunt, but one concocted by
Speaker 1: the d e A. Itself as a justification for its
Speaker 1: own existence, rather than drug sellers marketing their product to kids,
Speaker 1: using the escalating demonization of fentanyl to call for increased
Speaker 1: funding to law enforcement and border patrol, and the need
Speaker 1: to convince a public acclimating to the idea of fentanyl
Speaker 1: that actually, fentanyl is even scarier than what they once thought.
Speaker 1: Quoting filter Meg again quote, people sell drugs because they
Speaker 1: are economically motivated to do so. No one except the
Speaker 1: d e A and its allies is arguing that it's
Speaker 1: a good business strategy to kill off your adult buyers
Speaker 1: and give free samples to children previously untapped customer base
Speaker 1: because the fentanyl wasn't never pretty enough, and not because
Speaker 1: children do not have money. The emergence of different colors
Speaker 1: that pressed pills alongside the traditional blue fentanel pills won't
Speaker 1: lure in younger buyers. If anything, it will help keep
Speaker 1: newer buyers safe. Unquote, brightly colored fake pills that are
Speaker 1: clearly fake are helpful for people being cut off of
Speaker 1: their prescription and turning to street drugs to remind them
Speaker 1: that what they're getting is not the ox of codon
Speaker 1: that they're used to, but something more potent and for
Speaker 1: more on what fentinel actually is and to kind of
Speaker 1: get an expert opinion on these topics, I interviewed Ryan Marino, uh,
Speaker 1: the resident Fentinel expert who's sited and basically all of
Speaker 1: these news stories. So after the ad break you will
Speaker 1: hear that interview. First, can you introduce yourself? So I'm
Speaker 1: Ryan Marino. I'm a medical toxicologist, emergency doc and addiction
Speaker 1: medicine specialist. So what exactly is fentinel? What's the deal?
Speaker 1: What's what? What is what is the actual thing? Because
Speaker 1: people I know have heard a lot about it, but
Speaker 1: they may may be unaware, like what this type of
Speaker 1: opioid is, how it's different from other things, why it's around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think most people will hear kind of one
Speaker 1: side of fentanyl. And so fentanyl is a synthetic opioid.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot like harrow and morphine oxycoda and
Speaker 1: all those other things. It acts the same way. The
Speaker 1: difference is that it is more potent, and because it
Speaker 1: is fully synthetic, it can be made without the necessity
Speaker 1: for like large poppy fields whether all that stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's it's very easy to produce it's used medically
Speaker 1: all the time. UM, it's like one of the most
Speaker 1: ubiquitously used medicines and very invaluable lot for its medical uses,
Speaker 1: but in the street because of its potency, small amounts
Speaker 1: to make a huge difference in the dose that people get,
Speaker 1: and so fentanyl in street drugs has been the main
Speaker 1: driver behind what people call our opioid overdose epidemic UM
Speaker 1: and the kind of record breaking overdose deaths that we've
Speaker 1: had in recent years. I would like guess that one
Speaker 1: of the biggest reasons that people have heard about fentanyl
Speaker 1: is due to police officers and all of the stories
Speaker 1: from the past last year of police officers spontaneously overdosing
Speaker 1: by either touching it, getting too close to it, breathing
Speaker 1: the same air that it's around. Can you overdose by
Speaker 1: touching fentanyl? You cannot, UM. So there is a hatch
Speaker 1: that's made for the medical fentyl, so it can absorb
Speaker 1: through your skin if you try really, really hard, but
Speaker 1: it's incredibly ineffective. Even with the best pharmaceutical technology that
Speaker 1: money could buy. UM, this is still very slow, very ineffective.
Speaker 1: Touching fentyl cannot cause an overdose. And the way it
Speaker 1: exists on the street, particularly, You're never going to encounter
Speaker 1: the form or quantity that you would need to cause
Speaker 1: an overdose. So these stories are nothing more than urban
Speaker 1: legends and misinformation. How why are people having these effects then? Right?
Speaker 1: Because there's videos of people like fainting and falling over
Speaker 1: and they're like this police officer needed to receive narcan
Speaker 1: and was rushed to the hospital. Little like, what's what?
Speaker 1: What's actually happening there? Because people obviously look like they're
Speaker 1: experiencing something, but it doesn't really match up with what
Speaker 1: fentinel is able to do. So it's a really interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 1: And if you look at any of these stories, any
Speaker 1: of these videos, you can very clearly see people having
Speaker 1: real symptoms. I'm not trying to cast any doubt on that,
Speaker 1: but what's reported and what's shown is actually the opposite
Speaker 1: of what fentyl would do. And so people report feeling
Speaker 1: very anxious, breathing very rapidly, having their heart race, all
Speaker 1: of the things that fentyl would actually cause the opposite.
Speaker 1: And so I can only speculate on what's really happening there,
Speaker 1: but my guess would be that this is some sort
Speaker 1: of panic reaction related to the fact that people are
Speaker 1: hearing about this every day, hearing the fentyl is killing
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people, hearing that other people have
Speaker 1: just dropped down from being near it. UM. And there's
Speaker 1: also this related concept called the no cebo effect, which
Speaker 1: is kind of like the uh, dark side of the
Speaker 1: placebo effect, if you will, UM. And so basically it's
Speaker 1: just that if you believe something so strongly, you can
Speaker 1: have very negative of real symptoms from it, and the
Speaker 1: way you would treat this would be with a placebo,
Speaker 1: which in these situations Narkian is a placebo. So the
Speaker 1: fact that Narkian works for some of them UM kind
Speaker 1: of suggests that there is some sort of placebo no
Speaker 1: cebo effect going on. I know that the ventil has
Speaker 1: become more common since the pandemics rough you, I would
Speaker 1: say probably starting in California is what most of most
Speaker 1: of it looks like in terms of like the whole
Speaker 1: like opioid epidemic thing, like why is this become such
Speaker 1: a big problem in the past like three years specifically,
Speaker 1: like with fentanyl getting into so much of the supply, well,
Speaker 1: so fentyl started getting cut into heroin. UM particularly on
Speaker 1: the East coast, like pretty early on, probably like ten
Speaker 1: or more years ago now and took a while to
Speaker 1: make its way west. It seemed like California actually had
Speaker 1: different heroin and particularly like black tar, heroin was more
Speaker 1: prevalent there, which can't be as easily placed with a
Speaker 1: powder for anyone who's familiar with heroin. UM. But now,
Speaker 1: I mean, there is really no like other opioid supply,
Speaker 1: So things like heroin are almost impossible to come by
Speaker 1: just because it doesn't exist in the world, be like oxycodone, OxyContin.
Speaker 1: All of these pills that people used to sell on
Speaker 1: the street also just don't exist because they're not being
Speaker 1: prescribed anymore. Some of them aren't even being manufactured anymore. UM.
Speaker 1: And so what's left is really when you take away
Speaker 1: the supply but you don't address the demand, is something's
Speaker 1: got to fill it. And Fentyl is there. Fentyl is
Speaker 1: really easy to make. Its relatively cheap um and simple
Speaker 1: to produce, and so you can press it into pills
Speaker 1: that look like oxycodone. You can mix it up into
Speaker 1: a powder that looks like heroin and gives people similar effects,
Speaker 1: but because it's so much more potent which it's like
Speaker 1: fifty times more potent than heroin. Um So. I mean
Speaker 1: if you think just in terms of percentage wise, like
Speaker 1: a one or two percent difference could be double the
Speaker 1: dose when you compare it to something. Um So, that's
Speaker 1: where the trouble comes in. And then with the rainbow
Speaker 1: fentinyl angle, the DA has been talking about how rain
Speaker 1: fentanyl is this new thing to market tow children. They
Speaker 1: sort of market a lot of being like this is
Speaker 1: like some advertising job done by big drug to to
Speaker 1: sell to sell two kids. Um. I guess first off,
Speaker 1: like why would these drugs be pressed into different colors
Speaker 1: like with with with with the fentinel pills being in
Speaker 1: you know, the multi colored collections, Like what's the actual
Speaker 1: purpose of that. Well, so that's a great question. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what to make of whatever the d
Speaker 1: e A Is doing and why they make these announcements
Speaker 1: because there's there's no evidence behind it. Um They have
Speaker 1: provided no evidence and their own press releases going back
Speaker 1: years show multiple colors of pentinyl pressed pills. UM My
Speaker 1: best guests and in talking to like people use drugs,
Speaker 1: people who work in the same space across the country,
Speaker 1: is that pharmaceuticals come in different colors, and so these
Speaker 1: probably were mostly just to mimic things like oxy code
Speaker 1: on tabs. Also, I mean dealers like to add their
Speaker 1: own kind of like marked the things in terms of
Speaker 1: heroin will come with different like stamps on the bag,
Speaker 1: so probably something similar there. But also I mean people
Speaker 1: just tend to like things that are are colored more
Speaker 1: than like a grainy beige pill um. If it comes
Speaker 1: with like a pink or green on, it is going
Speaker 1: to be more desirable. But there's no evidence whatsoever that
Speaker 1: this is intentionally marketed towards children. Children are not good
Speaker 1: clients for for drug dealers, and these are just things
Speaker 1: that adults want. American adults are the ones buying these drugs.
Speaker 1: I guess can you speak more on how the d
Speaker 1: e as rhetorics around this thing, especially it's been like
Speaker 1: escalating the past few months leading up to Halloween. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of heavily publicized seizures saying like we
Speaker 1: seized enough sentinel to kill five hundred million people or
Speaker 1: something like. They're like they they frame it in this
Speaker 1: really like bombastic way, and then you're there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff talking about how it's it's being hidden in
Speaker 1: like candy boxes and they're gonna be giving it out
Speaker 1: on Halloween to your kids, And like what is the
Speaker 1: d A doing? Like what what's their incentive for talking
Speaker 1: about it in this way? And obviously and you I
Speaker 1: can't like ask you, like what what is the d
Speaker 1: A doing? Ryan? Why are they doing this? But like,
Speaker 1: from your perspective, like like this rhetoric doesn't seem very
Speaker 1: helpful in terms of actually preventing overdoses. It seems to
Speaker 1: be kind of just fear mongering, um, specifically with stuff
Speaker 1: like like like like like with the drugs being hidden
Speaker 1: inside candy boxes, there's reasons for why people might do
Speaker 1: that to smuggle them. But with all of the rhetoric
Speaker 1: that the DA has been been pushing, like, is it
Speaker 1: like actually dangerous the way that they've been talking about
Speaker 1: it in terms of like it's not it's not talking
Speaker 1: about harm productions, not talking about ways to actually help.
Speaker 1: It's just like scaring parents, it seems. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the d e A is solely a law
Speaker 1: enforcement agency. There is no one there involved in the
Speaker 1: treatment of addiction in terms of like addiction science, chemistry,
Speaker 1: no one there who is like a former drug user
Speaker 1: even Um, So their motives are always suspect to me.
Speaker 1: And I think with this rainbow fentanyl press release they
Speaker 1: put it out there was no evidence behind it, that
Speaker 1: none of it made any sense. Um. The term rainbow
Speaker 1: fentanyl wasn't even searchable before August two when the d
Speaker 1: A made this announcement, which is is kind of crazy
Speaker 1: to think about. Um. And then within six weeks of
Speaker 1: that announcement, US Congress has pledged to give them hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions more dollars to quote unquote fight rainbow fentanel,
Speaker 1: which is again a thing that does not exist. Um.
Speaker 1: And I mean looking back, the d e A budget
Speaker 1: has gone up year on year hundreds of percent since
Speaker 1: like the nineteen eighties. But even within the context of
Speaker 1: our opioid overdose crisis has gone up year on year
Speaker 1: for all of the past I don't know however many
Speaker 1: years you want to look at it. Their department size
Speaker 1: grows every year, uh, and overdose deaths go up every year.
Speaker 1: So whatever they're doing is obviously not working. Um. And
Speaker 1: like you said, I mean, they particularly ignore in distract
Speaker 1: from things like harm reduction, from real evidence based measures
Speaker 1: and kind of public health investments that we could be making.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: extra being thrown at the d e A for Rainbow fentannel,
Speaker 1: and we think back to, what was it just like
Speaker 1: last winter when the current administration set aside I think
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars towards harm reduction being the first time
Speaker 1: the federal government has put aside dedicated money for harm reduction,
Speaker 1: and that created its own kind of like moral panic
Speaker 1: backlash as well. Um, but thirty million dollars was the
Speaker 1: first and only federal investment in harm reduction, and yet
Speaker 1: three million dollars can be drummed up at the drop
Speaker 1: of a hat for an invented crisis. So it does
Speaker 1: really kind of beg the question of, like, what are
Speaker 1: we doing here? And why are we continuing to do
Speaker 1: things that don't work? What do you wish people knew
Speaker 1: that would help them maybe combat some of the misinformation
Speaker 1: that gets peddled by like lots of like local TV
Speaker 1: stations are very quick to cover these types of stories,
Speaker 1: very quick to cover the stories of like your local
Speaker 1: cop just almost died at the school by getting within
Speaker 1: five ft of a sentinel vaporizer or something like like,
Speaker 1: what what do you wish people knew to help like
Speaker 1: combat this type of stuff. I mean, it seems like
Speaker 1: common sense is just not common when it comes to
Speaker 1: drug topics. If the police were saying that people were
Speaker 1: giving out guns for Halloween, if they were saying that
Speaker 1: they found uranium or plutonium in a car and four
Speaker 1: officers went down, that would require serious consideration and fact
Speaker 1: checking before it ever was reported on or accepted. And
Speaker 1: so I mean, I think when it comes to this
Speaker 1: idea that someone was in a car with a bag
Speaker 1: of fentanyl and nobody in the car was affected, but
Speaker 1: the officers outside the car all went down, um like
Speaker 1: just basic kind of critical thinking or applying any lens
Speaker 1: of skepticism, I mean, makes all of these narratives fall apart.
Speaker 1: So that would be I mean, my biggest ask in
Speaker 1: people watching these stories. I feel like the onus of
Speaker 1: responsibility really should be on the ones who are reporting it,
Speaker 1: not to just necessarily take the words of law enforcement
Speaker 1: as authority on every subject, especially when they do not
Speaker 1: have the background to be authorities on how things like
Speaker 1: fentinyl work. Before we close out, I would like to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Narcan UM like one is
Speaker 1: what it does and where people can get it. So
Speaker 1: Narcan is amazing. I cannot say enough positive things about Narcan.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not like a religious person or anything,
Speaker 1: but if miracles were to exist, Narcan is literally a miracle,
Speaker 1: um and especially if anyone has ever seen it in action.
Speaker 1: But so, what it is for people who don't know,
Speaker 1: Narcian is the brand name nasal spray of Nilo Zone,
Speaker 1: which is the antidote or the reversal agent for anyone
Speaker 1: experiencing an opioid overdose, including fentyl. And there are no
Speaker 1: opioids that Narcan does not work on. It isn't gonna
Speaker 1: reverse every situation, certainly, um. But it is a perfect antidote,
Speaker 1: so to speak, or as close to one as we
Speaker 1: have ever had, um And so I mean, if you
Speaker 1: are worried about someone experiencing an overdose, it's something that
Speaker 1: you can carry or have nearby, and anyone can give it.
Speaker 1: It was the nasal spray was actually designed with taxpayer dollars.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough UM so that an untrained child administer it,
Speaker 1: and so it's very easy to use. It's very easy
Speaker 1: to obtain for the most part. Nowadays, it's available and
Speaker 1: I think almost every state without a prescription, you can
Speaker 1: just go to your pharmacy and ask for it UM.
Speaker 1: If you can't get it from like your local health
Speaker 1: department or another harm reduction organization. But I have it
Speaker 1: in my car, in every work bag I have UM,
Speaker 1: I take it with me when I travel. It's something
Speaker 1: that people can carry and really makes a big difference.
Speaker 1: And obviously you don't want to experience or come across
Speaker 1: someone having an overdose. But it's much better to have
Speaker 1: with you UM if you need it than to be
Speaker 1: unprepared and have to kind of deal with the consequences.
Speaker 1: And I think this far into this like opioid overdose
Speaker 1: crisis that the United States and now most of the
Speaker 1: world has been experiencing. Most people can probably think of
Speaker 1: someone who they know who they've lost to overdose or
Speaker 1: or similar situation UM, and you don't want to kind
Speaker 1: of be stuck regretting it later. Well, thanks so much. UM.
Speaker 1: Where can people find you on the internet? So I'm
Speaker 1: mostly just on Twitter at Ryan Marino, just my name
Speaker 1: one word, all right, Well, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on to talk to us about the latest scourge
Speaker 1: hiding inside your kid's Halloween basket. So with that, that
Speaker 1: does it for us today here at it could happen here? Um,
Speaker 1: have fun, tricker treating. Um, if you have any drugs,
Speaker 1: good for you. I'm happy you got this for free.
Speaker 1: Watch out for cars, Uh, those are actually dangerous. And
Speaker 1: thanks thanks to everybody who attended the recent It could
Speaker 1: Happen here live stream. Thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 1: I hope to get through more questions, but we went
Speaker 1: a little long because there were so many people. But
Speaker 1: I will I will answer two more questions here. Did
Speaker 1: you know that the latest My Little Pony movie has
Speaker 1: a literal xenophobic fascist dictator as an antagonist? No? I
Speaker 1: did not know that, but it's not surprising based on
Speaker 1: what I know about the recent My Little Pony media
Speaker 1: And and um, what do you think is the most
Speaker 1: important thing somebody can have for a disaster or chaos preparedness?
Speaker 1: My personal answer to that would probably be friends, friends,
Speaker 1: really useful UM books on how to like make stuff
Speaker 1: and like how to like you know, basically survival books
Speaker 1: because you don't want to count on having the Internet.
Speaker 1: And then I don't know, like water, water filters, water purification, tablets.
Speaker 1: Those would be those would be my picks. But I
Speaker 1: hope everyone has a happy, happy Halloween and that doesn't
Speaker 1: here for it could Happen Here. Closing out our latest
Speaker 1: spooky week, It Could Happen Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone Media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for it could Happen Here, updated monthly at pool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com. Slide our sources. Thanks for listening, h