An Overshadowed Epidemic: Sam Quinones Talks to Armstrong & Getty

How anything like that and died well. I hope you're doing well well, thank you. So I've admired your work for a very long time, um, and so this is it's great to talk um. Sam might be best known, if not for writing for The l A Times for a decade from about two thousand two thousand fourteen, for then for his his best selling book in dream Land, which was about the opioid epidemic in the house and Where's and wins of that? When when you were wrapping that book up in I'll bet you couldn't dream of

the reality we're dealing with now. That's in fact the case. I had I was. I've been a I've been a crime reporter for a lot of years, and um, really I just could not imagine what you would write about after Heroin, right, It just seemed to me like that was about as bad as it could dead. And then the book comes out, it generates I think, a lot of awareness and a lot of interests across the country.

I began to do a lot of speaking over the next several years, and along the way I figured out what comes after Heroin, and out of course is as fretnal and so that that led in in large parts to the to the book I just put out. Well we uh. I read with interest the excerpt from your new book in The Atlantic entitled I don't know that

I would even call it meth anymore. And we've spent a lot of time talking about that, partly because the show is based on the West Coast, and there is hardly a West Coast city of more than six thousand people that does not have a serious problem with quote unquote homelessness or homeless camps and that sort of thing. Uh. And I think to a very large extent, those are

are junkie camps, their meth camps. But before we get to the meth thing, which is fascinating, UM, let's talk a little bit about opioids and heroin and fentanyl, which we're not for the COVID thing, I think would be an international conversation, it would be the leading conversation on earth. Probably. Yeah, well, it's it's it's certainly um extraordinarily important and perhaps because

because of COVID not really getting the attention uh it deserves. Basically, stuntonol is suttinol is a is a wonderful um drug. Medically speaking, it's highly likely that your your your colleague is being given sutonol as we speak at revolutionized surgery. It allowed for anesthesia that that really wasn't possible before that. And of course that's all of the medical context. But once in the hounds of the underworld, it's it's, it's

a whole other story. Fentinol is very powerful, much more powerful than morphine, much more powerful than than than than than heroin. And um, it's part of on the street and it's part of the Mexican trafficking worlds. Uh shift you might say, away from what they traditionally focused on, which were plant based drugs, marijuana, course, first opium poppy too um away from plant based drugs and towards synthetics. UM.

This happened with methem fettlement. But then as the opioid epidemic took took shape in our country, lots of people began shifting to heroin. They began producing heroin Downto Mexico, more of it than they've ever had before. And along the way they discover centinel. This is a synthetic heroin. You make it with chemicals only. The benefits of synthetic drugs over plant based drugs to a trafficker are many. Right,

you don't need land. You really just need a warehouse or some kind or some place to to put your your lab. That's very small. And then you don't need rain, sunshine, you don't need farmers to harvest it. You don't need um just a lot of things, pesticides, etcetera. All you really need is access to shipping ports. Once you have access to shipping ports, which they do on the Pacific coast of Mexico, there's two major ports right down there.

Um you you get you can get access then to all the world the world chemical market, which is vast and teage and and it comes from China, but it also can come from like almost any country. Really, once you have which you have a port to receive it uh in. And so that is what's been going on. It really their their their move a wave towards synthetic drugs really begin with method fettlement years ago and that's changed to recently, as I wrote wrote about in the

book and in the extra Your Front tip Um. But and then along the way they discover funnel and another story that I talked about in the book, how the Solwer drug Cartel discovers funnel very interesting tale um largely due to one one underground chemist in particular. But what that means is that they can produce now drugs um all year round. There's no seasons anymore, right, there's no summer and fall when you have synthetic drugs. And if you can get the chemicals that you need UM, you

can produce it in just studying quantities. And that is really what's happening. They they control when at least when it comes to those those chemicals, they they control the

traffic at the at these courts. They're able to produce both sentinel and methem petomen in quantities that are absolutely um staggering, just unprecedented quantities, so much so that they've done something that is really unprecedented in this uh, in this country where one source underground underworld's source has been able to effectively cover the entire country with these with these two drugs, and in methem sediments case, the prices has collapsed, so in many areas the price of methem

fedoment is lower than it was a few years a serious back. But whatever the case, they now have these drugs are now all across the country. There you know, New England never had any methem fedoment and now it does. You know, notton always found everywhere. And so this is the the enormous uh fact that we are now having to contend with as a country. Well, I was going to say one of the obvious advantages to smuggler is that the stuff is so incredibly powerful. A small amount

will get many many people high. But it sounds like it's so profitable that that they're taking the risks such as they are to ship enormous amounts of this stuff. Hey, remind us, I think we've all heard anecdotal you know, the bits of quote unquote trivia about how you know an ounce of fentinel can kill X number of people. It's really quite astounding, isn't it. Well, fentanyl is is um, yes, it's you know, a few grains of salt is what you're talking about, normally to kill a person who is

UH doesn't have any tolerance to the drug. Again, this is an opioid, like heroin, like morphine. It develops, you develop tolerance on it. But if you have none, um, you know, a few grains of salt is all it's really going to take that. What that means is that this is more profitable than any other drug that the underworld has ever encountered. However, what it also means is that to access that profited they need to now mix

it with something. It is not commercially viable to sell a few grains of salt on the street, you know what I mean, So you have to mix it with powder. The problem is they're extraordinarily bad at mixing UH this kind of stuff. They don't know what they're Most people on the street don't know what they're doing. Some people in Mexico seem to maybe know, but but not but not the majority. And so right and clearly the margin for air is so incredibly small with something that powerful.

Exactly right early on in the book, UM, I tell the story of how early on when fentinel first started coming over here from China being mailed through the mail or largely and you know, kilos or half kilos or pounds size, it is not very large. Um. People here didn't know how to mix it either, UM, and they the myth grew that you could mix it best with a magic bullet blender. The magic bullet blender that you see a target for, like I guess I think it was. We We only one at our house, UM, and they

make it's great for making smoothies. It is really bad machine for mixing fannel, largely because fentinel is normally a potty. You're trying to mix it with other powders, other white powders, so that you can then sell it. The problem is when you mix it that way m with a magic bullet blender, it's got a blade. The blade mixes liquid, it doesn't mix powders at all. And so what you began to see where these clusters of overdosees, you know, twenty fifty in a weekend in Cincinnati, seventy in a

weekend and Huntington, West Virginia. UM. Uh that that that kind of thing. And it's just this this drug is so difficult to mix that it's by itself because of that very very um dangerous And every every time you use it's it's it's a crapshoot and uh, you know, it's a it's a Russian game of Russian Roulette almost every time. Now, So to what extent is it still being manufactured in China And to what extent is it being cranked out of lambs in Mexico? No, No, it's

all shifted to Mexico. Now, the two thousand nineteen, the Chinese government put a put a rule in place UM only certain companies can produce it, and all these other ones had to stop. And they're pretty scared of the government there, so they did. And but they still sell the ingredients, you know, the rest of the ingredients in channel, they're still sold out of China. And the major uh customers for that to believe that are the folks in Mexico who have now learned how to do that. They

know now how to make UM. In fact, the truth is you would not be able to cover the country with centinel. The waste sentinel is covering the country now. Um, with the mounts that we're coming in from China in packages, you know, small packages, you know a pound here, a kilo there. That's not that would never be able to do the coverage. It's it has to be with a with a country with which we share a two thousand

mile border. That that which with which we have free trade, and so we have all that that stuff is coming through walls, it's all coming through border crossing is most heavily guarded stuff in the quarter. Crossing is almost in the in the world outside maybe Korea and North Korea. But um, but it's it's it's getting it's getting through in quantities that never you could never really feasibly mail,

you know, from from from from China. So what's happening now is because that shipment I'm saying that that source has shifted to Mexico. So before we get more into the logistics of the thing, help us understand the toll. How many people are dying of fentinel overdoses, Oh my goodness, a great, great numbers, a hundred thousand a year every till they have they just came out with statistics. The CDC did that between April one, April twenty and Ape

a hundred thousand people died of overdoses. That's the record that we've never gone over a hundred thousand before in the history of this country. Um. It's it's a very high numbers in many many states. There's a few where it's dropped off. But I mean this is happening constantly all across the country, and largely, Um it's because of the mixing. It's also because the trafficking world, particularly at the street level, has turned to making into mixing Fentinel

into other drugs. So I don't believe there's any cocaine anymore in America, actually trust not to have Fentinel in it. Um Uh, it's it's it's like almost everything. You know, the great actor who was in The Wire, Michael Michael Kay Williams, he had a cocaine problem he was struggling with for many years. Um he died. Uh, not from the cocaine, but from the from the Fentinel that was in his in his the batch or the packet or whatever is that he bought. You see these things happening

frequently all across the country. He was a celebrated case, but I mean there's many, many, many cases all across the country. It's also the way through which the African American community has been dying of in the opioid epidemics. When I wrote Dreamland, I could safely say I didn't speak with any Black people for Dreamland because it was really a white issue. It was like cent of all

victims were white, right. But with Sentinel, what's happened is dealers at the in the in the black community have figured out if I could ask dealers have all across the country, I put my Futinel, which is dirt sheet, but they're very cheap. A little bit of Fentinel into a cocaine all of these them will boost it. But also what it'll do is it's almost like a business

um expansion move. So if you have a cocaine buyer, normally those folks will buy every few days, maybe it take a week vacation from the dope or whatever, maybe even a month vacation whatever. They're not consistent buyers. But once you have an opioid addict, that that that person has to buy from you every single day, no vacation because the dope sickness is a bear, and they're trying to keep the dope sickness await. And so what what ends up happening is from a cocaine customer, you had

Sentinel to the cocaine. Pretty soon you have an opioid addict. And this is happening all across the country. Uh as well, what's happening now is the people who have survived their first exposure to Sentinel, now they're addicted to to to the drug and they need Sentinel. So now heroin is almost worthless, right, Hero's worthless because there's no um it won't it's two mild to keep the dolt sickness away.

Now you need Sentinel, and the problem is there again, as I was saying earlier, the mixes is frequently so unpredictable, and the only thing that really predict about it is that it's going to be bad eventually. Whatever you use will eventually be a bad mix and and we'll will kill you. And that's kind of what's happening now all across all across the country. Used to just be happening in the area where the opioid epidemic was bad. You know, the first state really, Ohio was the place where it

first started. That in in my in the book The Least of Us and in the book that just published, I focus on Acron and Cleveland and some of these other towns where where this first hit in two thousand fourteen, Cincinnati and then into West Virginia as well. It didn't really hit, didn't pardon me, the West coast, I would say, until maybe you know, two eighteen, it's it. It took

takes a while before it kind of catches up. Yeah. Well, and I know enough about drugs and addiction, and some of my musical heroes have died of overdoses that when when folks stumble on the road to recovery, they decided to go back and have another hit or whatever, often their tolerance is down from where it was, and they'll take the same hit, for instance, of heroin that they

used to it'll kill them. Well, this has got to be that affect times, I don't know, ten times a hundred in terms of the risk of having one more hit. That's the thing. There's no more um in America, there's no more surviving recreational drug use and one that's that's the bottom line. I have to say that that. You know,

I'm sixty two. I grew up in an era when it was almost like rude not to you know, take a line of cocaine and some parties, and and the truth is that, um, that that is uh those days, I mean every every every line of cocaine, every uh you know, Uh, it's it's it's these are um, you know, it's Russian roulette, right, so he listen, those old ideas are gone. I realized this could be the topic of

another book or books. But in your opinion, and because I know you've written about studied Mexico in terms of the drug trade and a hundred other issues for a long time, to what extent is Mexico a functioning government and to what extent is it a narco state? Um, that's a hard question to answer because there's certainly many

parts of the country that are auctioning. Clearly, UM, there are certain areas and certain attitudes within certain elements of the government government that I say, let's say lend itself to um to something along those lines where you just can't really um, you know, you can't that they are functioning freely and and UM, in the state of Sinaloa, I have to say parts of the state of meat

Can where I used to go very very freely. I lived in Mexico for ten years and I would travel to metro Con very often, mostly to do stories about immigration, because there's a lot of immigration coming out of meat Con. Now it's really it's a state I wouldn't go to any more. Certain areas of the border like this in parts of uh Of around the Golden Triangle, what they call the areas that to waw Wa, durrangos in Aloa,

the hill, the mountain areas there. Um, you know, these are areas that are that are not safe and and those areas keep on shifting to according to who's fighting whom and you know, so the cartel world down there, I would say, when I was in Mexico, it was very clear. You could draw the border, and you could divide up the border according to like the way they used to do with the Italian mob the five Families in New York and Jersey and so, and you could see, okay,

this is the Colombo, this is the Banano family. You could do the same with the Houara's drug cartel that you want to drug cartel. All these guys were from sin a lawa, but they controlled parts of the border far away from far within the Say, what's happened now in the last fifteen years, really maybe longer? Really is that all those easily definable groups of fragmented and now following, who is a cartel? And where these cartels are? And I don't even call them carts tells anymore because here's

the difference between a cartel. I studied economics and college, and a cartel is a group that that that the restricts product to drive price up. And that is the opposite of what's happening in Mexico now. And that is because they're not cartels in that strict sense. They are groups that are kind of loosely affiliated and you know, sometimes fighting al among themselves, but loosely affiliated, but who concerned. There's nobody really controlling production of these starts that everyone

was kind of free to do what they want. A lot of the guys have taken like those like those uh, those merchants who sold the gold miners their shovels and tents during the gold rush. They're selling them the chemicals. That's how people are probably most likely getting getting wealthy. And it doesn't matter. They want people to make more, and so you have these collapse and prices. It's amazing thing with methempedomen Methempedoman's prices effectively dropped by about a

d percent. It depends on the region, obviously, but about eight percent all acroass the country, even as they covered the entire country. You know, So there's meth in Vermont and New Hampshire that never used to be there, and the prices all over the country are below what they what they've what they've been historically, according to the d e A and agents who talked to you you on in these different areas. I'm in Nashville. At the moment, a pound of an ounce of let's just say, an ounce

of matthews to be hundred fifty dollars. Now it's like about two d Wow. At least the price of something is dropping, he says, fully cognizant of how distasteful that joke is. Uh so, um, if you were dragged in front of Congress to the White House or whatever and asked, what in the world can we do to stem the flow of fentinel into the country, because the death toll is just astounding. Is there anything we can do well, I think I think there's a few things on the

national level that we we absolutely need to do. I was overwhelmed by this feeling when I lived in max to code that we have never established the relationship. Our relationship with Mexico is ought to be equal in the minds of our policy makers, in our government and so on, and the political class, and so to any relationship we have in the world to England, out we have with England, with Japan, with Russia, with China. It's fraud, it's difficult, but we need to make it a priority of the

equal to those countries that I just said. And when we do that, we don't like you know, how many people can actually Americans can actually name the six Mexican border states with the United States and that that kind of basic stuff. We just don't know about Mexico. You know, it's just not even there. And and so I believe that once we have this relationship, we can't There are lots of Mexicans I know who would be very happy to have their government pushed to address the horrible corruption

in there um in a criminal justice. So really it's almost not just even corruption, it's just simply the institutions are unbelievably weak. It's not anything like we have here in the United States, except for maybe in the smallest town kind of shriff corrupt sheriff kind of idea, you know, or stuff that we used to have in the thirties under al Capone. It's that kind of thing, you know. And I think that that many Mexicans are begging for that. This is not something that is a debatable point. I

don't think in Mexico. We absolutely this is this is running our country into the ground. Um. The other thing I think we need to do as a country in the United States is this is a binational problem, and that is that the guns that are purchased easily here

are what ensures that impunity down in Mexico. So many of those guns are smuggled into Mexico, smuggled south, uh and usually in small quantities, not big truckloads of hundreds of guns or anything like That's usually you know of the five, ten, twenty here and there, and and but over period of years it adds up and that is what ensures their impunity. The price of of an a K forty seven made in Eastern Europe sold legally here into into the United States and then bought here illegally

in the United States and then smuggled south. The price of that is too is meth and petomen for two dollars a pound, or announced rather in UM in Nashville, Tennessee. Boy, you want to talk about a topic that will take another book. I mean, that's that's a big one and full of twists, turns and difficulties. Obviously, yeah so so um incredibly troubling and deadly obviously. But let's turn to uh the P two P meth. That was the main topic of the excerpt from your book that was in

The Atlantic. The Jack and I talked about a great deal we for what it's worth, you know. We we definitely swing conservative politically speaking on most things. I hate labels. Labors are for soup games. But um, it's also true that we don't hate anybody. We're not. We try not to be condescending unless it's intentional for the purpose as

a humor. And we have quite a number of listeners who are either uh former drug drug addicts, recovering drug addicts, former homeless people, tweakers, people with all sorts of sins and all because they know we're not preaching at them. We understand people make choices, sometimes they make bad choices, and sometimes life goes sideways. It happens, you can't happen to anybody. You just have to take responsibility for you know, the way you live your life is our point of view.

So we've talked to a hell of a lot of people who have been on the streets or are currently on the streets who say, everybody's a tweaker out here. Everybody in the tent camps is doing meth. And they don't mean literally every single human being. But there was a report out of Portland. They had a couple of guys who are now turning their lives around working for the city. Is actually a really nice story. But they're saying, oh my god, he's so called homeless temps are meth.

The homeless camps rather are meth camps. How did we get to this point? And what effect is this new meth which is actually kind of the old meth, this P two P meth, what what effect is it happen? Right? Well, this the roots of all this are the are in the fact that the Mexican trafficking world, a few folks who are in particular who are instrumental in all this

I talked about in the book. Um begins to understand and learn how to make methum fedomen in the late eighties, mostly in the San Diego Tijuana area, um uh and um they make it. They were able to learn because it's a very simple process. Then it uses a chemical called the federan, so decongestent. It's found in pseudo fed pills and all. That's why, that's why you can't buy those things very easily, have to sign and there's a behind lock and key and all. The ephedrian is a

very easy chemical. It's very effective and good decongestent, but a couple of chemical tweaks and it becomes methum fedoment. It's not really hard to do um so any almost anybody can make and that it really democratizes how how of uh meth can be made. But the folks who really take greatest advantage of that, our Mexican trappickers increasingly into the into the nineteen nineties, the labs that they

call them men super labs. That that acount sounds like a bizarre term now given those quantities coming out of Mexico today, but super lab would be fifty to one hundred towns every time you cook that kind of thing.

And you began to see this stuff in in the central Valley of California, San Diego, to Mecuela, up in the Bakersfield friends, and also and then also down into into Mexico, and they really specialized and they industrialized this, so they're able to produce the very large quantities of stuff of this stuff, but it's always limited by the amount of a phederan they can get. For a long

time it was legal. You could get hundreds of tons imported, hundreds of tons of imported in Mexico, and significant part of that make methal and funniment. But there was never enough to really cover the entire United States increasingly, really it was just a lot of the West during you know, I say it's it never went east to the Mississippi River. Um, A federal meth was a very euphoric drug. You would stay up for several days, you wanted to be around

people gathering away, you know. Um. Your withdrawals from it would be you basically slept solid for two days, you know, and just we're out and then you were coherent. You kind of returned more or less to your saying mental state that you were before that, although over time clearly it degraded your body and your mind. It took several years to do those. But so to be in a state where you really weren't functional, you would have to abuse it for years, for a long time, and stay

up for many days. Once you stayed up for many days, you began to see these what they call shadow people frequently. You know there's somebody over there and you looking. Actually there's nobody, but you know it's that kind of your

mind playing tricks on you, so to speak. In two thousand and eight, all that changes Mexico in two thousand and eight, prompted by a number of of political reasons that I go go into in the book where they did this, but they make a veederan illegal except for a few pharmaceutical companies to possess and use in their processes, and and with that the Mexican trafficking world has to figure out how to make the federan. I mean, I'm

not em fedoment. I'm sorry. Another another way, they've actually been seeing this writing on the wall for a couple of years by then two thousand six, and when they first begin to start experimenting with this, by two thousand and eight, the whole the wall shut slam shut, and they now have to figure out a new So there is another way of making me fedoment. It's it's really not very easy. It's smelly, it's messy, a lot of

different chemicals. UM, it's not anything you'd want to use, except for if you can't get a federan and so and in this UH method uses a precursor known as P two P penal to propanon, very commonly known in the meth making UH world. UH. This method has one benefit to traffickers over the Federman and that is that you can make P two P easily and with many different kind of chemical recipes or chemical hacks, using chemicals that are widely available in industry. They're all industrial, they're

all legal, easily available in the world world markets. Half most of them very highly highly toxic. Which if so, if the government cracked down on this recipe of making P twop, you can come back with this other one

and this one, and there's there's apparently dozens. In fact, I think they never stopped inventing new ways of making P. Two P. What this means is if you have access to to chemicals, which the Mexican trafficking world does, as I said, through these two ports on the Czivic coast of Mexico, you can begin to make this stuff all year round and in quantities that dwarf anything you were capable of making with the pedment. And that's what begins

to happen. It not right off the bat, It takes a couple of years, takes a few years when people get used to this new reality. But certainly by two thousand twelve thirteen fourteen, you begin to see quantities, just staggering quantities coming through and marching across the country. So in l a Portland's west coast, basically two thousand thirteen fourteen, you're seeing this stuff. It hits the Midwest across the

Mississippi River for the first time. It hits the Midwest by two thousand seventeen, and then hits the east coast and up into New Windland, which never had any meth in two thousand nineteen, roughly in eighteen nineteen um and so at the same time, as I said, it's producing such quantities that the price drops to not only covered the country, the price drops, but this, this methem fetomen

has been shown to be accompanied. And I use these words carefully and I'll explain line a little bit is accompanied every place along the way, according to my reporting talking to people in all these different areas, by not just not just this staying up line. A lot of days, it's no longer a euphoric drug. It's a very sinister It turns you inward. It's accompanied by um symptoms of schizophrenia.

So you see people of extraordinarily paranoid, very intense paranoia, like everyone's out to get you, no one can be trusted, and you're running because somebody, you think, somebody looks at you strange, you know, and at the same time, very

very florid, intense hallucinations. Now, now, Sam, let me let me just jump in and ask you, because we've had some folks weather and law enforcement around the streets say, well, listen, it's not as much about the chemical nature of it, but just it is so cheap and so powerful these days that it's overwhelming people's brains. So is it one or the other? Is it really both? Well, here's the thing.

Here's the thing. The reason I said accompanied by and not cause causes us is because there is no neuroscience on this. Nobody understands really what's it work? At least of all me. Okay, I don't want to be putting myself out there. What I'm giving you is street reporting. Okay, I'm going I'm talking to people, you know, e er docs in these hounds and drug counselors over here and recovering addicts over here. Um, no one has actually studied P two P meth the way it's made in Mexico

right now. There's no rat studies, no my studies, there's no journal reports. I'm simply telling you that this is the reporting I've done in these various areas and keep on doing even though the books published. I'm I'm still talking to people. I'm probably gonna talk with a person there Albuquerque, New Mexico and later later today on this very topic. But over and over and over, you just

hear this all the same, the same stories. People go out of their minds, they're raving, they're incapable of living with anybody, so very quickly they're homeless, and the place they least want to be as a homeless shelter, because in a homeless shelter, everybody seems to be a threat.

You know, you're you're surrounded by people who are who are almost like themselves, a little bit out of their mind, and everyone's confined, and you've got to the rules, and there's all this stuff that's so so along with that comes this very you're um accompanied by all this method foundom comes as very severe mental illness and then along as well as a homelessness, and along with that then

comes the tent encountenance. Tents become perfect lodging. If you are in the state of mind where you think the entire world is a threat, the last thing you want to do is be around other people. So a little it's a little pod in which you can kind of exist with what is stuck in your brain and all the those are ideas that are coming through through through through your brain. This is homelessness. Is A is A is a. There are many kinds of homelessness. There are

many reasons why people end up homeless. A lot of them, you know, shredded safety net, homeless people who lose a job and have surgery, can't find can't afford a house, and the surgery that that kind of story is also part of it. There's the sex register at homeless who in a registered sex offender is only a few places in his in his town or as county where you can where you can live, and frequently they end up homeless.

You know, there's a lot of reasons. However, my reporting I believe has convinced me and shows that did a major force behind those tent encampments and the homeless of from the delirium that people are often suffering from and all that is this method set them and has come out of Mexico over the last eight ten eleven years and in many parts of the country, certainly eight or nine years, many and almost all the country. Um, it is made with this P two. Why is it? What

are the neuroscientific reasons for it? I don't know that hasn't been studied in the least. Do we have any and I want to Yeah, I was gonna say, do we have any idea whether some of the mental health problems you're talking about? Uh, can they go away in the brain heal once you discontinue the Matthew, Sir, These people just damaged for life. I realized it's early days, but it is it is early. But I would tell

you this. I spoke with a woman who is the who is a director of a homeless shelter in the Midwest, UM and she spent many years on skid road working with almost folks, and she was graphic about this stuff. She's saying. Used to be we could teach people how to repair their lives. We're almost like life coaches. Basically, you know how to get a driver's license, how do life for a job? All these kinds of that. You could teach people all these ways of recovering and getting

back into life. But the problem is the effect nowadays of the meth is so devastating. This is the woman of thirty years on the job. Okay, this is she is a not born yesterday and the stuff. And she was telling me that that we no longer use life coaching because the people who we see who even though they're sober, they're not on meth, they are not capable. They their brains have been so devastated that they're not capable of following these simple societal rules. As frequently their

memories shot too. They're just not able to function the way you need to function in a in a in a in a society, you know, so you have all of this kind of um combined. So it's still not clear. But the initial indications, and I asked your question, seemed to be that there is in many people, uh, permanent, at least semi permanent, at lasting, let's say, damage to one's brain. And one woman I quote in the book in the least of this my latest book, says that too.

She she you know, she was barking like a dog, she said, and went out of her mind on the stuff. She gets sober. She's been sober two years by the time I spoke with her, And but she still knows she's not the same as such a point in interview, she says, I'm hoping they can study this stuff, because you know, meditation helps, quiet time helps physical exercise health.

But there's she's still not the same. She knows this, and she said, I just would love to know what I can do, what more I can do to help heel my brain. And and I think that's what's really going on out there. And it's there's so many folks. The longer they're left in presence of this myth, the

more damage it's going to do. And the other promise, even if it doesn't create your homelessness, even it's not the root cause of why you're on the street, the fact that you are on the street, and it is so prevalent and so cheap and many, so many areas of this country that frequently people fall into using it sometimes to remove themselves from the reality that they happen to be living, and so they don't feel that reality, and so it but that means it serves to keep

you homeless and make homelessness more durable, more endurable. Kind of Well, it strikes me that all of us who grew up in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, maybe we're part of yours, maybe not conservative, liberal or whatever, we need to just to completely reapproach the question of drug use and legalization and what's partying and what's not.

I mean, all the facts have changed. I mean, other than I'm thinking back to when you know, when I was a kid or a you know, college student whatever. If you overdid L s D, you could really screw your mind. And ecstasy was just coming on the scene when I was in college, and there were definitely some people who did themselves serious damage. But I mean, whether it's the much much more potent pot or what we've been talking about is just that the equation, all the

factors in the equation have changed. That's that's absolutely verioustuet observation. I think that that's actually the truth all the all the myths that we used to scoff at, frankly, because frankly a lot of more myth they were silly, you know, um back in the thirties, fifties, seventies, whatever it was. You know, I got some of this stuff when I was in school too, and I knew it wasn't really true what they were saying, you know, so I laughed

at And well, all those myths have become reality. You can die from a line of cocaine. One hit of myth can lead to you going out of your mind, uh, you know, by repotent pot can lead you to be um uh you know, yeah, send you twenty r with psychotic episode. Heroin does kill One hit of heroin does kill you. You know, that is the reality of today. And so the facts have changed, but frequently are um

our how shall I put it? Our thinking has not. Yeah, there's so this idea that that you know, we shouldn't arrest people for this stuff. Frequently about the only place that people are safe. And I hate to put it this way because it's it's it's a nuanced idea, but frequently, but the only people are people are safe away from this damaging, these damaging to trouble and cheap drugs is in jail, you know, Sam, Just let me jump in

and point out. We read an email on the air the other day of a guy who's turned his life around after a fairly prolonged meth addiction, and it was so interesting how he phrased one aspect of his journey. He said that uh meth was essentially decriminalized right after he got arrested, and he said, thank god I dodged that bullet. It was only being incarcerated it that stopped his use, and he's so grateful for it. And you know that's not some sort of idiotic ham handed to

arrest everybody argument, but it's it's true. It just is it is. And I can tell you I've been doing this now nine years and the number of has heard this so many times in long interviews and short and new casual conversations, on and on and on and every Drug Council has heard it as well that the best day of my life, the best thing ever happened to me was that I was arrested, got off the streets. Um. In fact, in Dreamland, my previous book, a guide almost

ordered me to quote him and I did. Uh in in in New Mexico and Santa Fe saying, um, the I want to thank the d E H for arresting me, because I would be dead otherwise. Now he's doing very well. He's that we're stolen contact on Facebook, and he's doing very well. And but that happened because he was taken off the street. Jail is not the way we do jail today needs to be changed. That can I'm confessed.

I think I think there are um uh, they're in fact in my latest book that there's chapters on this one county in Kentucky that is experimenting with how to do jail differently. Have a pod of recovery, of recovery pod as part of the jail and G E D classes and Criminals thinking classes and all that. Because jail has largely been this anchor around our neck. If you go in a criminal mentally ill or addicted, you're gonna

come out worse. You know, we need to approach this differently, I believe, or at least a offer a different option to folks in jail who want to follow it. And and that's happening now in many counties, particularly in those areas where the opioid epidemic was worse Kentucky, Ohio, places

like that. But um, even the fact of just getting off the street if you if you buy the homeless UM shelter administrators comment to me that the folks who are out there on the street now that that that they are using this stuff when they stopped, that their brains are perhaps permanently at least long term devastated and her words, um, then then more exposure to that stuff is going to lead to further u devastation. Of course, with frontinol risk almost every day basically every day, um

uh death. You know. So the idea that of decriminalizing the stuff COVID was simply I've taken as saying COVID is simply a year long, unplanned, completely obviously unplanned experiment, and decriminalizing drugs on the street when those drugs on the street our frontinl and math and so you see the record overdose deaths. You see. My my opinion really

the real expansion of mental illness and homelessness. Uh, that's driven I believe my reporting shows by by by this method phetom and that's coming out of Mexico and its unprecedented quantities. Wow. What a great point. So final thought, you've scared the crap out of us, in appropriately so. But the tital of your book, the Least of Us, true tales of America and hope in the time of

fentanyl and meth. Where's the hope coming from? Well, this is always the problem I get into with interviews like that. I love talking about all parts of this book. This part of the book is really most of the book. Um, it's it's more than half the book is taken up with stories, and so it really I hate to put to say that, but it really warrants a full conversation of another hour. And I'm happy to do that at

another time if you wish. But but the the I really did view this as as a as an opportunity, this whole thing, and and and and in part because I thought that one of the main reasons for the opioid epidemic and all the problems we faced um uh and in terms of trucks, has a lot to do with our turning our back or ignoring or shredding. Yeah, the what bonded us? What bonds? You know, if you think about why we humans survived and prospered as a species for whatever millions of years, what is the thing

that held it held made that possible? And I would argue to you that it is our feeling that not of community that we need. It's not a nice thing, it's an essential, but it's what kept us alive, allowed us to survive. And and we have decided in America, I would say, I don't know about other countries. Maybe it's also true, but I'm just talking about the country right now. In America, we have decided in the last

forty years that that's not necessary. You know, we don't really need to be around other people, or we can just be around certain kinds of people. We don't need to you know, um, the community banks that can be

swallowed up and buy big banks and who cares. You know, there's we could go on for like literally an hour talking about all the ways in which American our culture we have shredded, destroyed, ignored, unfunded, whatever things that brought us together that were really the bulwarks of the sense

against the stuff. And now we we find ourselves so vulnerable because why my my feeling is because we're so isolated, and we we got away from the idea that a community is built by small acts, gaily act, not worrying if you're saving the world, not worrying if you're if you're some noble person out there doing everything and getting all the credit, and you're just And so what I

did was understanding believing that this was the case. I decided I was going to fill my book, actually half of the book with the stories of Americans involved as many stories of quiet active the quiet work, daily work of Americans involved in community repair that I could find,

not necessarily working only with addiction. Now the idea that we need to be outside among each other, overlooking all these reasons why we're supposed to hate this other person, race or or or political persuasion or all these kind of clapp and when you get down to the bottom, local grassroots level, you find a lot of that just does not matter at all. And it's very exhilarating to do that. So, for example, just give you one example there's many in the book because this was this became

my main focus, not the not the dope. The dope. I I understood it, I understood noting all. I understood nothing. And I told those stories without blinking. But the real stories that exhilarated me, that made me feel like, damn, this is work doing, you know, and and this is the heart and soul of what I'm trying to learn. There are stories of this small kind of stories of

community repair. One of them had to do with a guy named Bird Mike mckissic and the small Southern South Muns, Indiana South Monthly neighborhood surrounded by what used to be enormous transmission plants and transmission Capital of America Munthsly Monthly once was well, as those plants, you know, are really on the verge of dying out. They've been dwindling for years,

and how they're about to die out. The city fathers say, you know what, we can't afford to keep open these community centers that we have three of him around, and one of them was right across the street from Bird's house. He had worked there for a while. So the city fathers he went on the budget, you know, it is not possible anymore. And so they closed the centers, and they think that's the end of it, except except that Bird keeps the key. Right, the bird keeps the key,

doesn't tell the city lead there's anything about this. He just becomes a community center unto himself, as his neighborhood suffers from this real economic stress. And then of course the opio thing on top of that. I mean, all of this is happening at the same time. And he keeps the key, and he goes over and he opens the door for the kids when I want to play basketball.

He gives him a place to hang out amid all this, you know, devastation all around them, the community center without any money and pains that Clay continues to function as a community center. And of course he he he keeps the he keeps the he mows the lawn outside, he keeps the toilets fixed, all this kind of stuff. He allows his community, his his neighborhood to whether this powerful, these powerful storms, and come out kind of the the

the other, the other side. So I tell three chapters in the books about Munsey, Indiana and Bird Makissic who later who dies. He's a strange man, no doubt. He's a man who literally, like psychologically, had some issues and and literally never could leave his neighborhood. He was afraid to leave his neighborhood, but he was. He was like the mayor of the South Mundsy neighborhood, and he kept it a lot. It's those kinds of stories that I believe I wanted to tell, not because they're a prescription.

I don't know what every county in America needs to do about this stuff. I just think that it's very important to understand that we have gotten away from this stuff. That is our life saver, it's our it's our life rep and that is the feeling of repairing community, making that strong again. Boy, I'm starting to get a sense of why you juxtapose those two major things in your book. But it's it's interesting to me that you did in

that way. And by the way, these issues are stuff we talk about all the time, substituting the empty calories of say, online engagement with actual human contact and if a Facebook friend is anything like a friend, etcetera center. Yeah, exactly what an idea, you know, I'll face to face contact, My god, it seems like radical in the in the context of America, of America today. Don't you think I mean to me? But to me this is and and and the idea is to get to cross this idea.

We are only as strong as the most vulnerable. We're only as strong. We learned during the pandemic, all of a sudden, our lives relied on that beat packing worker in Kansas, we who, all of a sudden we discover is actually an essential worker, every bit as essentials as some paramedic, you know, because so is the food supply dies we do you know, what about the grocery store clerk? All of these things and and along the way, just

to explain the title. You know, I'm not Christian, but I was reading the Bible during writing this, and I read the Gospel of mass You, and of course that's a very powerful gospel, particularly in certain parts of it. Um several parts, but one of them, of course, one of the most powerful, is one of Jesus says to his disciples that would you do for the least of my brother? And you do for me? And I And that hit me. It was something I'd read years ago,

but I came back to it for some reason. And when in the middle of it, I realized kind of why I had done that, and that that that seemed to me also this perfect messing of the of the

ideas I was trying to get across. What is the defense against not only not only the sinister drug craft that's coming up, but all these other uh addictive substances and stuff that we are constantly bombarded with sugar and fast food and social media and you know, Twitter and Facebook and all the rest, and and cable TV news and and pornography and gambling and video daancity go on and not take the alcohol? What is our best defense?

These are all the same kind of thing. They're all a bunch of groups whose job is to week whatever they're selling so that we will need, we will feel like we have to have it. Send a lot a drug cartel, McDonald's Facebook, you know, uh scuser's gambling has. You know that it's kind of all in the same

uh continuum. I believe in so to me, I think Jesus understood that the important idea that had allowed people to survive up to his time and have allowed us to survive as a species ever since, and that is that we have to understand how important it is to be with each other. So in some sense that community idea, he understood that. You may not have understood the neuroscience

of it, but he's certainly understood the idea there. And so at some point these these solutions maybe even become fairly low tech, you know, like how about just getting out of the house, have a barbecue with your neighbors, get to know that person always seems like such a commudgeon. Maybe actually get to know maybe he's actually a nice guy, you know, not worrying about whether that person has a

Trump or Biden sign in s front yard anymore. You know, once you get beyond that, get beyond that established let's face to face relationships, so we we what we've lost

so much of in this country. I think, yeah, you know, at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon myself, I'm I'm concerned that though there's an enormous amount of awareness of the things you're talking about, um that number one, the pace of change makes it very difficult to come up with cures as quickly as the disease has happened.

And number two, the greatest minds of our our generations are devoted to the very endeavors you're talking about, which are you know, utterly heartless and soul less in in their effects. But no, I agree with you completely. I'm troubled. You know, it's funny there are there are no chimpanzees sitting around discussing how chimpanzees will clearly be their own doom, whereas human kind of think has been aware of that since you know, when people started tossing ideas around the campfire.

It's not clear whether it's going to be a virus or a nuclear weapon, or or drug or Facebook. But by god, I've often said that Sam that Homo sapiens are my least favorite species. It's mosquitoes are second to the bottom, But Homo sapiens, I don't know what to do with us. You know what, I don't particularly no either. I don't claim to have any answers here. I'm just saying the stories I tried to write. We're saying this is what people are doing. Maybe that attitude is something

you might want to think about. Well, that's the most of the journalists can really do. I think I love the idea of getting together again and chatting about that theme of the book, the connectedness and things that we can do on small and medium scales. Uh, and not just get on Twitter and announced that anybody who disagrees with me as a piece of crap um or worse. But you know, what can we do in our own communities?

You know, there's there's a number of the great philosophers, religious figures who would point out that start with your own soul, then perhaps your family, your household, then maybe your block. Why don't you deal with that and then start crying the problems of the globe and not worry that what you're doing is not in some noble, virtuous way of saving the world. And how it be enough that you're doing it down your block, your church, your

pt A, your school, your kids school. That kind of thing, to me so often gets in the way, like I'm not Oh, there's all these other problems you ask, So what just do like work with your own garden, so to speak. Yeah, yeah, save the one starship. It's a metaphor that's both cliche and incredibly powerful. The starfish. Rather, we're not stay saving starships, were not Captain Kirk in

the scenario star I think you know what I'm talking about. Uh, Sam, Hey, it's been great to talk, and we will will absolutely do it again. Extra large