Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a conference
Speaker 1: room with my colleague Sarah Frya. She covers Facebook, and
Speaker 1: had something to show me. It was an impressive collection
Speaker 1: of screenshots of drugs for sale on Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 1: So this is a typical example of an account. He
Speaker 1: has these obvious images of drugs. I think this looks
Speaker 1: like cocaine, this little plastic There were hundreds of images
Speaker 1: showing piles of pills, bags of meth and cocaine, stacks
Speaker 1: of fentanyl patches. In the photo caption or at the
Speaker 1: top of the profile page would be all the information
Speaker 1: to buy the drugs and have them shipped to your house.
Speaker 1: An activists named Eileen Carey had sent me these files.
Speaker 1: I'm constantly hearing about people's problems with Facebook and Instagram,
Speaker 1: and I think it's because I've been writing for so
Speaker 1: long about how bad they are with policing content. They
Speaker 1: hire thousands of people to review what we post online,
Speaker 1: but sometimes there are big, terrifying gaps an enforcement. Eileen
Speaker 1: had spotted a big one. Aileen doesn't work for the
Speaker 1: police or the government or anything. She came across the
Speaker 1: issue through her work in cybersecurity and crisis management, because,
Speaker 1: in addition to the vacation picks and brand campaigns and
Speaker 1: celebrity posts, Instagram is also a place where illegal drugs
Speaker 1: and counterfeit prescription medicines are sold, and it's all out
Speaker 1: in the open. To find the stuff, you just need
Speaker 1: to search for the right hashtag HASHTAGSANX hashtag, thirty milligrams
Speaker 1: hash hag zan x bars, hashtag asticons and hashtag pain killers,
Speaker 1: hashtag codein, hashtag hydrocodon hashtag. This is the first episode
Speaker 1: in our new season of Decrypted, dedicated to exploring how
Speaker 1: the tech industry is pushing the limits of the world
Speaker 1: around us. Today, we'll tell you about Aileen's fight to
Speaker 1: get Instagram and Facebook to take down posts showcasing drugs
Speaker 1: for sale. Despite the explosion of this type of content,
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram have been slow to react, choosing to
Speaker 1: push the limits of what its uses and lawmakers would
Speaker 1: tolerate before taking action. I'm Pia Gatkari and I'm Sarah Fryar,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Decrypted. One day, Eileen reached out
Speaker 1: to me on Twitter and I agreed to meet her.
Speaker 1: It was a rainy day in December and we talked
Speaker 1: for two hours straight on a couch at her coworking space.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, that same
Speaker 1: small three mile town as Mark Zuckerberg. We're the same age.
Speaker 1: Aileen had worked on Wall Street for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Then she moved to Silicon Valley. So I moved out here,
Speaker 1: thinking I was going to work at Facebook or Google
Speaker 1: or you know one of those companies. She ended up
Speaker 1: working for an anti counterfeiting company. Basically, it used technology
Speaker 1: to search the web for fake versions of its clients products.
Speaker 1: It was Eileen's job to make sure the public had
Speaker 1: no idea just how many fakes were out there. This
Speaker 1: problem of online counterfeits was somewhat new. It was and
Speaker 1: the amount of stuff people were buying online was exploding,
Speaker 1: and along with that, the volume of fake goods being
Speaker 1: sold on the internet was exploding to Eileen's biggest client
Speaker 1: was the pharmaceutical company Perdue Pharma. The company makes oxycontent,
Speaker 1: a narcotic pain killer, which we now know is incredibly addictive.
Speaker 1: Eileen already knew about all the drugs being sold online
Speaker 1: because was the year when the FBI shut down the
Speaker 1: notorious website called Silk Road, alleging that it should become
Speaker 1: a massive online marketplace for buying and selling drugs and guns.
Speaker 1: But Eileen discovered that there was another way for thousands
Speaker 1: of online sales to take place. It turns out that
Speaker 1: it wasn't just counterfeit prescription drugs like OxyContin and percocet,
Speaker 1: but all sorts of illegal street drugs that were being
Speaker 1: sold on Instagram. It is misinformation that drug sales happen
Speaker 1: entirely on the dark web. Sure, maybe wholesale right, like huge,
Speaker 1: huge shipments of of drugs, but direct to consumer purchases
Speaker 1: of M D M A of cocaine, of xan x
Speaker 1: that occurs on Instagram, on Facebook, this problem is well
Speaker 1: known by experts in the space. To put it bluntly,
Speaker 1: it's a colossal issue. That's Daniel Bennett, the CEO of
Speaker 1: Yellow Brand Protection. He works with some of the biggest
Speaker 1: brands in the world to help them keep fake products
Speaker 1: off the Internet. Daniel explained that it's easier to block
Speaker 1: counterfeit goods when they're for sale on an e commerce
Speaker 1: website because you have to set up an account before
Speaker 1: you can sell anything. With social networks, It's different with Instagram.
Speaker 1: In particular. Unlike Facebook, you don't have to use your
Speaker 1: personal identity to make an account. All you need is
Speaker 1: an email address or a phone number. Social networks, of course,
Speaker 1: are are generally more complex than say, for instance, online marketplaces.
Speaker 1: Just pure just purely down to the fact that obviously,
Speaker 1: if you go to an online marketplace, you know that
Speaker 1: there's commercial activity, you know there's something to sale immediately,
Speaker 1: whereas searching on social media, um, you know you're you're
Speaker 1: gonna be finding a lot of sentiments, a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion about different products. We're often following links through to
Speaker 1: online pharmacies or online marketplaces where the actual sale would
Speaker 1: take place. Sales of drugs seemed to be proliferating on
Speaker 1: all the popular new tech platforms, not just Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker 1: You could find them on Craigslist, Google, Ali Baba, and others.
Speaker 1: Part of Alien's job was to work with the tech
Speaker 1: companies to see if they would introduce policies to block
Speaker 1: the sale of drugs on their platforms. Ali Baba and
Speaker 1: Chinese e commerce companies they were right there, they were
Speaker 1: right there for enforcing. They were great partners. They were
Speaker 1: working with the pharmacutal companies to remove the counterfeits. Eileen
Speaker 1: discovered that e commerce platforms were pretty open to fighting counterfeits.
Speaker 1: Craigslist was one of the early platforms to block listings
Speaker 1: about prescription drugs. Amazon and Ali Baba have created brand registries,
Speaker 1: which is a way for brands to fast track their
Speaker 1: reports about fake items and get them taken down faster,
Speaker 1: and Google has strict guidelines about what kinds of pharmaceuticals
Speaker 1: can be advertised on its platform. The social networks were
Speaker 1: less willing, so Eileen turned to people she knew to
Speaker 1: try to understand why Facebook wasn't taking action. You actually
Speaker 1: knew Facebook employees at this time, and you were having
Speaker 1: those conversations with them directly. Yeah, and what was that like? Frustrating?
Speaker 1: They you know at the time, it was the I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the same kind of book that we hear today
Speaker 1: of that. You know, there's there's so much on the platform.
Speaker 1: We're really focused on terrorism, we're doing a you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's what the big problem is, that it's free speech.
Speaker 1: That if we start policing one thing, you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to have to police all these things. Aileen became
Speaker 1: convinced that Facebook and Instagram were reluctant to act because
Speaker 1: they weren't legally required to do so. What I know
Speaker 1: is their legal team was very clear on their policy
Speaker 1: when we were working with them that no, they were
Speaker 1: not going to proactively enforce against counterfeit pharmaceuticals oxy cotton. Facebook,
Speaker 1: for its part, said it has long standing policies against
Speaker 1: attempts at buying, selling, or trading non medical drugs, pharmaceutical drugs,
Speaker 1: or marijuana on Facebook and Instagram, and today it says
Speaker 1: it's trying to make this tie of content how to
Speaker 1: to find But one of the common arguments I've heard
Speaker 1: is that at the time, the company wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure it wasn't setting a precedent that could be damaging
Speaker 1: to its business. If it took down counterfeit drugs, for example,
Speaker 1: it might also have to police counterfeit handbags, t shirts, jewelry,
Speaker 1: and more. And it took the same approach to illegal drugs.
Speaker 1: They don't want to be held liable for anything. So
Speaker 1: it's very similar to the arguments you see about free
Speaker 1: speech and about how they are gonna, you know, police
Speaker 1: free speech. They're not going to take down, you know,
Speaker 1: hate speech. Legally, Facebook was in the clear that's because
Speaker 1: of a law from ninete called the Communications Decency Acts
Speaker 1: Section two thirty. Essentially, it says that the tech platforms
Speaker 1: don't need to be held responsible for the content that
Speaker 1: users post on their sites. There was also a lawsuit
Speaker 1: from two thousand and eight that sets an important precedent
Speaker 1: for the tech industry. Tiffany's the Jewelry and had sued eBay,
Speaker 1: arguing that the marketplace needed to be proactively taking down
Speaker 1: counterfeits on its platform, but the courts ruled in favor
Speaker 1: of eBay. I think the term is generalized knowledge. eBay
Speaker 1: needs more than simply generalized knowledge that its platform was
Speaker 1: being used uh to sell counterfeit products. They had to
Speaker 1: know or had to have a reason to know that
Speaker 1: there was a specific list in that was counterfeit. That's
Speaker 1: Peter Kolosi. He's a partner at the San Francisco law
Speaker 1: firm Sidmon and Bancroft, and he specializes in anti counterfeiting.
Speaker 1: So when you talk about the Amazon's or Facebook or Instagram,
Speaker 1: you know they're all subject to this Tiffany v. eBay
Speaker 1: um liability requirement that as long as they have a
Speaker 1: process in place to deal with it, then they're not
Speaker 1: going to be found to contribute to any trademark infringement
Speaker 1: or counterfeiting claim. At the end of Aileen left her
Speaker 1: job at the anti counterfeiting company. She decided to start
Speaker 1: a company of her own called glass Breakers, which makes
Speaker 1: software to empower women in technology. But she was haunted
Speaker 1: by the things she had learned while tracking counterfeits for
Speaker 1: Purdue Farmer, and the opioid crisis seemed to be getting
Speaker 1: worse with every passing month, not just with counterfeits, but
Speaker 1: first a drug crisis in America today is killing more
Speaker 1: people each year than aid, gun deaths or car crashes
Speaker 1: did at their peak. We wanted to understand how the
Speaker 1: availability of drugs on major tech platforms was affecting communities
Speaker 1: hit hardest by the opioid crisis, so we talked to
Speaker 1: Jessica Hale. She's an addiction counselor at Awakenings Counseling Center
Speaker 1: in Merylville, Indiana, and she said that she's seeing social
Speaker 1: networks and multiplayer video games taking over as the simplest
Speaker 1: ways for her clients to buy drugs. She also had
Speaker 1: some unrelated developments in the medical community. We're causing even
Speaker 1: more people to turn to social media when they were
Speaker 1: looking for drugs, you know, norcos and vanax. They they're
Speaker 1: easily found that way. Actually, I think it's probably easier
Speaker 1: to find them that way because, um, there's so many
Speaker 1: people that are getting cut off from their doctors that
Speaker 1: it's not as easy to get anymore. And to find
Speaker 1: somebody in freet it's a lot harder. I think that
Speaker 1: social media just makes it a lot easier for them
Speaker 1: to find it. If they they really want to, they
Speaker 1: can find it. Has this changed at all the relationship
Speaker 1: people have with a regular street dealer? Oh yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty remarkable. Um, you know, thirty and forty
Speaker 1: years ago, it wasn't anything. You know, people would find
Speaker 1: their their drugs by one uh person that was their
Speaker 1: dealer and and but now it's it's just like an advertisement.
Speaker 1: All of these social sites makes it really easy. You
Speaker 1: could literally spend twenty minutes on the computer if you're
Speaker 1: seriously trying to find some drugs and you could get them.
Speaker 1: You just have to just keep going through the different sites.
Speaker 1: It's just out there. It was sobering to hear from Jessica.
Speaker 1: Technology and the internet was making it easier than ever
Speaker 1: for people to buy and sell drugs. Jessica told us
Speaker 1: that people she was counseling could now just get drugs
Speaker 1: sent to them in the mail, and disappearing messages like
Speaker 1: the sort of Snapchat is famous for allowed people to
Speaker 1: advertise when they have drugs for sale. The message only
Speaker 1: stays up for twenty four hours, so it's pretty hard
Speaker 1: to get caught. That's what I'm finding is that that
Speaker 1: snampchat thing is is time h so it doesn't stay
Speaker 1: up there long enough to draw of our attention. It's
Speaker 1: reaching the people that it needs to, but devading some
Speaker 1: of the other people so well. It might be more
Speaker 1: more easy to track even on on Instagram or Facebook.
Speaker 1: It's harder to track on these new platforms like snap
Speaker 1: and um and the video games Fortnite right oh yeah, UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot about Fortnite. I do know
Speaker 1: that it's an online gaming system and my niece does
Speaker 1: play that, and her boyfriend was able to connect with
Speaker 1: people um that would hook up in you know, trade
Speaker 1: sell or whatever. It's easier easily to do without getting
Speaker 1: caught some spooks. It's there for a second and then
Speaker 1: it moves on in the conversation snap said in a
Speaker 1: statement that it's completely prohibited to use Snapchat for any
Speaker 1: illegal activities and that accounts selling drugs are an intentional
Speaker 1: abuse of the company's terms of service. It added that
Speaker 1: such accounts are removed when they're reported, and Epic Games,
Speaker 1: which makes the game Fortnite, declined to comment. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: Alien had started searching proactively for counterfeit drugs for sale
Speaker 1: on Instagram and was reporting them to the company. This
Speaker 1: went on for a few years. Ailien said she reported
Speaker 1: tons of violating accounts that were very obviously showcasing drugs
Speaker 1: for sale. Instagram's content moderators either didn't respond or Eileen
Speaker 1: would get these generic acknowledgements, saying the post she was
Speaker 1: reporting weren't violating any of their rules. We saw the screenshots.
Speaker 1: The crisis got worse, and it got worse, and it
Speaker 1: got worse. I would go in, I would open the app,
Speaker 1: and I would report on like three to four like
Speaker 1: drug dealers, and I would document everything, and it just
Speaker 1: nothing was changing, Nothing was changing. Eventually, the FDA started
Speaker 1: speaking publicly about the role tech companies with playing in
Speaker 1: the opioid crisis last year. In April, Scott Gottlieb, who
Speaker 1: was the f d A commissioner at the time, called
Speaker 1: out Facebook and Instagram by name, along with some of
Speaker 1: the other large tech firms. He called on the company's
Speaker 1: to do a better job of monitoring illegal opioid sales
Speaker 1: being advertised on their platforms, and he called for a
Speaker 1: change of mindset across the industry. The f d A
Speaker 1: told us that approximately nineties six percent of online pharmacies
Speaker 1: selling prescription medicines to US consumers are illegal. The FDA
Speaker 1: also said it screens thousands of parcels at international mail
Speaker 1: facilities and has taken action against dozens of websites marketing
Speaker 1: unapproved opioids in an effort to combat the crisis. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: around seventeen and into Facebook started to be criticized for
Speaker 1: all sorts of content specific issues, from violent videos that
Speaker 1: would go viral to fake news spread by Russian backed
Speaker 1: groups ahead of the US presidential election. Aileen wondered why
Speaker 1: isn't anyone at the company doing anything still about the
Speaker 1: sale of drugs on Instagram. In an effort to get noticed,
Speaker 1: she started messaging Facebook executives on Twitter. One day, someone
Speaker 1: finally responded. It was Guy Rosen, a VP at Facebook,
Speaker 1: in charge of figuring out how to automate a lot
Speaker 1: of the company's content decisions. He had sent her a
Speaker 1: direct message. Eileen showed me screenshots of their conversation. She wrote,
Speaker 1: do a search for hashtag fentinel as well as hashtag
Speaker 1: box eyes on I G and you'll see lots of
Speaker 1: picks of pills. Those accounts are usually drug dealers. I
Speaker 1: reported these earlier and they are still there. In the
Speaker 1: hashtag opiate search there are forty three thousand results. Eileen
Speaker 1: also sent examples of the kinds of Instagram plast she
Speaker 1: was talking about. Guy wrote back to her, yigs, He said,
Speaker 1: this is super helpful. Finally, five years after she first
Speaker 1: started badgering Facebook and Instagram, some one was paying attention.
Speaker 1: The searchable hashtags were taken down one day before Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg testified in front of Congress about data privacy issues
Speaker 1: and Russian election interference. Towards the end of a handful
Speaker 1: of counties in the regions hit hardest by the opioid
Speaker 1: crisis reported that there had been a decline in overdose
Speaker 1: deaths in recent months. We asked Jessica, the addiction counselor
Speaker 1: in Indiana, whether she thought that action by the social
Speaker 1: media companies could have helped. Well, of course it would
Speaker 1: be useful, but I don't know that it would be successful. Uh.
Speaker 1: The drug dealers, kids seeking or you know, individual seeking substances,
Speaker 1: they always find a way around um this situation. So
Speaker 1: if these kids just re up on a different site
Speaker 1: under a different name. You know, one of my clients
Speaker 1: have got four different Facebook identities, so when one gets
Speaker 1: a down a discus through to another. Then at some
Speaker 1: point the hashtags that Aileen had helped to block went
Speaker 1: back up. We're not sure why those hashtags became available again,
Speaker 1: but by then people seem to be making new hashtags anyway,
Speaker 1: presumably to get around the fact that some popular ones
Speaker 1: have been blocked. The other day, I was able to
Speaker 1: find drugs for sale under misspellings of the drug names
Speaker 1: like oxy cotton spelled c O T T O N,
Speaker 1: and I noticed a lot of comments about drugs for
Speaker 1: sale under pictures of drugs that people might have actually
Speaker 1: been prescribed. When I was looking, I found I was
Speaker 1: being redirected to information about recovery and support groups, so
Speaker 1: actually helpful content and sometimes but not all the time.
Speaker 1: When I tried searching for drug related hashtags, I would
Speaker 1: get an automated message from Instagram asking if I needed
Speaker 1: any help. That's a relatively new feature that was rolled
Speaker 1: out in the fall. Facebook also said it has been
Speaker 1: using computer imaging technology to find and remove drug content
Speaker 1: before anyone sees it. It's part of a new goal
Speaker 1: to rely on more artificial intelligence for content moderation. The
Speaker 1: company singled out hate speech, violence, and graphic content as
Speaker 1: specific areas where it has seen some improvement. Today. Alien
Speaker 1: doesn't use Instagram or Facebook. She says it causes her
Speaker 1: anxiety to even think about it. She was clearly deeply
Speaker 1: moved and also emotionally drained by this experience of caring
Speaker 1: about something nobody else really seems to be paying attention to.
Speaker 1: It's so frustrating to know that nothing is being done,
Speaker 1: and so I couldn't I couldn't keep doing it. I
Speaker 1: couldn't keep reporting to them about it because A there's
Speaker 1: no direct line, so there's no way to actually get
Speaker 1: in touch with people there and be It's kind of
Speaker 1: hopeless if the people at the company don't care about it.
Speaker 1: Eileen wants the executive a Facebook and Instagram to face
Speaker 1: consequences I think that the there has not been true
Speaker 1: progress on this because nobody at Instagram is in a
Speaker 1: criminal court proceeding. If the founder of the Silk Road
Speaker 1: is in jail for drug trafficking, why do social media
Speaker 1: companies that are making billions of dollars get a free
Speaker 1: pass to allow and again like support, the trafficking of
Speaker 1: the legal narcotics that are killing us. We tried to
Speaker 1: talk to an executive from Facebook about this issue, but
Speaker 1: they declined our request for an interview. Meanwhile, Facebook CEOO
Speaker 1: Cheryl Sandbook was actually asked about the company's responsibility when
Speaker 1: it comes to drug sales in a congressional hearing in September.
Speaker 1: It was a question from Senator Joe Mansion of West Virginia.
Speaker 1: He made a direct link between section two thirty that law,
Speaker 1: which says platforms are not responsible for what uses post
Speaker 1: and the number of people overdosing on illegal drugs. To
Speaker 1: what extent do you bear responsibility for the death of
Speaker 1: a drug user if they overdosed on drugs received through
Speaker 1: your platform? Either one. I'm happy to go. This is
Speaker 1: really important to us. The opioid crisis has been devastating
Speaker 1: and takes the lives of people in our country and
Speaker 1: around the world. It's firmly against our policies to buy
Speaker 1: or sell any pharmaceuticals on Facebook, and that includes opioid drugs.
Speaker 1: We rely on a combination of machines and people reporting
Speaker 1: to take things down, and I think we've seen market
Speaker 1: improved geryld Standberg didn't really answer the senator's question, and
Speaker 1: neither did CEO Mark Zuckerberg when West Virginia Congressman David
Speaker 1: McKinley asked about it during a separate appearance before Congress
Speaker 1: a year ago. So my question to you is, when
Speaker 1: are you going to stop take down these posts? They're
Speaker 1: done on it with illegal digital pharmacies. When are you
Speaker 1: going to take them down? Congressman? Right now, when people
Speaker 1: report the post us, we will take them down and
Speaker 1: have people Why do they have to if you've got
Speaker 1: all these twenty thousand people, you know that they're up there,
Speaker 1: Where is your requiring, where where is your accountability to
Speaker 1: allow this to be occurring, this ravaging this country? Congressman,
Speaker 1: I agree that this is a terrible issue, And respectfully,
Speaker 1: when they're tens of billions or a hundred billion pieces
Speaker 1: of content that are shared every day, even twenty people
Speaker 1: reviewing it can't look at everything. What we need to
Speaker 1: do is build more AI tools that can proactively been
Speaker 1: before you're going to take them down. And you have it.
Speaker 1: And so, Sarah, You've spent months reporting this story, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious, what do you make of Mark Zuckerberg's argument
Speaker 1: that Facebook needs AI tools to be able to monitor
Speaker 1: content about drugs and other things. Well, I do think
Speaker 1: Facebook wants to delve into this issue with AI, but
Speaker 1: it's very slow going and it's never going to be perfect.
Speaker 1: The other thing I would note is if you are
Speaker 1: at the head of Facebook and Facebook is your flagship
Speaker 1: product and Instagram is the smaller product, and this is
Speaker 1: an issue that is maybe more specific to Instagram, it
Speaker 1: just may not seem like the priority for investing AI
Speaker 1: tools in. We've seen Facebook invest in counter terrorism, We've
Speaker 1: seen them invest in guns, We've seen them invest in
Speaker 1: hate speech because of that genocide and Myanmar that was
Speaker 1: that was perpetuated by post on Facebook. But so far,
Speaker 1: though we've seen some change, I haven't seen a mobilization
Speaker 1: in on illegal drugs the way I've seen all those
Speaker 1: other issues. Yeah, And it's hard to understand that because
Speaker 1: when you think about how deadly the opioid crisis has
Speaker 1: been in the US, it's in a way you might ask,
Speaker 1: what issue is there that's that could be more urgent?
Speaker 1: What do you think of the chances that the government
Speaker 1: might force Facebook by passing some new regulations to take
Speaker 1: more action on this. For the first time in a
Speaker 1: very long time, politicians feel like they can be outspoken
Speaker 1: and critical of tech companies. I think you're right that
Speaker 1: it's one of the only bipartisan issues in Congress right
Speaker 1: now is to critique chech companies about how terrible they
Speaker 1: are at policing content. But you know, I've listened to
Speaker 1: those hearings, and everyone has their different pet issue that
Speaker 1: they care deeply about. The senators from West Virginia care
Speaker 1: about this issue, but other senators care more about bias
Speaker 1: against conservatives or against liberals. Others care more about discrimination
Speaker 1: and ads. Others care more about the live shooting like
Speaker 1: the one we recently experienced in New Zealand. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen a coalition to come together. I think the best
Speaker 1: chance we have, and what we've seen is the f
Speaker 1: d A come down hard on this and tell companies
Speaker 1: they need to get their act together. Scott Gottlieb has
Speaker 1: been a force on this, but he just left the
Speaker 1: f d A, so I'm not sure if the next
Speaker 1: leadership is going to be as on top of this issue.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they are. Well, I know you'll keep proposing on
Speaker 1: this very very important issue. So thanks for sharing, you're
Speaker 1: reporting with us, Sarah, and that's it for this week's
Speaker 1: episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. If you or someone
Speaker 1: you know is struggling with addiction, the Department of Health
Speaker 1: and Human Services has a twenty four hour national helpline
Speaker 1: where you can find information and treatment referral. The number
Speaker 1: is six six to H E L P. And if
Speaker 1: you have a story to share, you can reach me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. I'm at Sarah Fryar and I'm at Pia Gadcari.
Speaker 1: And please help us spread the word about on new
Speaker 1: season by leaving us a rating or a review wherever
Speaker 1: you like to listen. This episode was produced by Pierre
Speaker 1: Gadcari and Lindsay Cratterwell. Our story editor was Emily Busso.
Speaker 1: Thank you also to Anne Vandermay, Aki Ito and Brad Stone,
Speaker 1: as well as Liz Smith, Magnus Henriksson, and TOFO Foreheads
Speaker 1: Francesca Levie is head of Bloomberg Podcast. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.