Sam Quinones on the Rise of Fentanyl & P2P Methamphetamine

any type of drug. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. You know, we've done quite a number of episodes on the issue of the overdose epidemic in America and the role of Purdue Farm and other firms and promoting this, and we've done someone Mexico and drug trafficking. Today we have somebody who's done some really cutting edge work at the intersection of

all this, and that's saying Canonists. He's been a journalist for about thirty five years, including ten years at the Los Angeles Times, well known for his reporting on Mexico and on Mexicans in the US. About six seven years ago he published a book called Dreamland about the opioid crisis in the United States and it won a bunch of awards, and just last year, the end of last year, he came out with a new book called The Least of Us, which really is a sequel to that book.

It traces the evolution of the opioid epidemic from the days of pills into heroin, into fentonel and weave it together with the story of meth amphetamy re emerging in parts of the United States where it's almost never been in really scary ways. And he sets all that in the context of parts of America both going through the devastation of drugs and then recovering in various ways, and makes some interesting analogies to other addictions and things like

addictions plaguing American society. So, Sam, thanks so much for joining me today on Psychoactive. Very nice to be with you. Thanks very much for how anything. I read your latest book intensely and I found it, I had to say, highly engaging. I learned a lot in it. I think you tell a wonderful story. I also had some issues with the way you presented things and some of your policy solutions and your framing. So we'll get well. I think we'll go back and forth this, we'll mix it

up a bit. But why don't I first ask you to say so, if you're summing up the story of this most recent book, The Least of Us, what's your your short version of what this book does? It? Ast oh man, it's about how our opioid epidemic ignited the creativity and the profit mode of the Mexican trafficking world, and along the way, providing us with heroin, they discovered

button could be made in a lab. And it's the story too of how they become really just synthetic drug producers mostly now, and that this is extraordinarily a deadly harmful thing for the country of the United States, well

Mexico to, I have to say. And at the same time, though, along with that, I find great hope possible, because all of this is really awakening us, I think to or pointing us to the idea that how thoroughly we have shredded a community in this country in many, many ways, and that that's one of the most powerful forces that

we have as as human beings. We have evolved to not find it nice to have conan but essential, crucial and without really a substitute and we have certainly the last forty years gone about shredding a lot of that and isolating ourselves and leaving us vulnerable. And what that means is that these epidemics are showing us that is the great defense as community. We we really it's more powerful, I think than dope in a lot of ways, because we find it so essential to our survival we exist

as a species. Really because of that. The idea was to draw out those two forces as ways of saying, this is what we have. In this way we can respond if we'll learn from it. Well, you know, I have to say, because I saw some analogy in your book, and you had these stories right of people sort of descending into the depths of drug addiction and then coming out of it and beginning to leave more wholesome and better lives. Not everybody some crash and burn and don't

make it. And then you have a similar analogous story around community. So I want to get to that. But let's dig more deeply first into what's gone on with the drug stuff, because many of our psychoactive listeners will have some sophisticate understanding of this stuff. They'll know that there was the history that heroin has parro and epidemics going back in America multiple times, right the era of

the sixties and seventies, there's another recurrence. They've know the story about, you know, Purdue farm and the other pharmaceutical companies who will overpromote. They create a wonderful drug, oxy content, which is fantastic for certain types of pain patients, but overpromoted aggressively in ways which are really quite reprehensible and where they may finally be being held to account. We

know the sort of crackdown on that. And the story you described in your previous book, Dreamland was about, you know, how that the Mexican traff curse saw this opportunity to get into herowin and not they've been into heroin right oftentimes been the number one one, but they got very sophisticated. It distributed the networks all around America, and that's part

of your story, the democratization. But you picked the story up are really around fentanyl and fentanyl you know, as I think many of our listeners know, it's a pharmaceutical drugs. It's a fantastic drug for pain. And in this case we're not talking about fentanyl being diverted from legal channels in America. We're talking about fentanyl that begins to come out of China, and then were the supply shifts to Mexico, And I wonder if you could pick up the story

right there. Well, yes, I mean our illicits quantities of supplies of fentanyl came really in the largest supplies first from from Chinese chemical companies who found that it was a decent business proposition to sell it over the dark web or the open Internet, depending on the chemical company, and they began to do this I would say three thousand, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, certainly sixteen got very into it, and they send it through the mail mostly, you know, just the regular mail,

just sending it to in pounds or half kilos or um, you know, a quarter kilo, smallish amounts through the mail. And these were individual chemical companies selling this to people who contacted them on the dark web. I would say the first place that happened was in the state's hardest by the opioid epidemic. I would say, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, where you first began to see these explosions of you know, seventy overdoses in one weekend and that kind of thing.

Huntington's Cincinnati, and part of their customer base was the trafficking world in Mexico as well, and they began to send up quantities of method of continel sorry that were substantial, though not anything like what they're doing now. The sign that that was changing comes in about two thousand and seventeen, where it's clear then at that point that Mexicans have figured out or or figuring out, how to make sentinel themselves.

So let me stop you right there, because one of the things that I found fascinating your analysis that you describe one of the manufacturers, a guy named Gordon chen j I N. And you said that one of the things he was doing was when he would send the fencinel right And of course it's made sense economically in small packages because it's fifty hundred times more potent per milligram or microgram than heroin. Is he had a real

bank for your book. But then when he was sending out he would include the chemical abstract services dedicated number that each drug in the farm of could be a has, just like book in the library has a dedicated a number.

And also the nuclear magnetic residents n MR Spectroski test about the purity, which I had never heard about this, and that suggested that there was a level of sophistication in the information that he was providing to the people, the distributors in the US and ultimately you know, initially in Mexico or Canada who were getting this from him, and that seemed to be a piece of the international drug trafficking pie that I had not heard much about before.

Level of chemical assistication. I think this was possible because

these are chemical companies. They're used to dealing with this data, with these numbers, with this information, and I think in some measure to the people that he was dealing with that I wrote about, not so much, but certainly in some measure he was dealing with people who were used to ordering chemicals through the world chemical market legally and so on, and so providing this information was actually I think second nature and seemed to be kind of a

way of quality control. And I think that that was a competitive benefit of dealing with him, and I think others did this as well, though my understanding that was not the only chemical company that provided that information. As if the drug were a normal legal drug that you would buy legally. So initially the Mexicans presumably are importing it from China and it's shipping in and bigger things

through the distribution channels into the US. But then when they start, you know, hiring their own chemists, many of the Mexican chemists, some of them foreign chemists. Are they doing the same thing that Jin did? Are they also provided that kind of information? You know? No, they're they're selling it kilo blocks. They're selling it through the normal clandestine trafficking routes that come up through Tijuana into San Diego, Galas,

into Nogalis, Arizona, horizontal Aposto, etcetera. There smuggling it there in clandestine ways, and and no, there's nothing to listen about what they're doing. In some cases they're sending it up in powder form or it just kind of kilo blocks of the stuff. In two thousand and seventeen, you begin to see the first seizures of counterfeit pills that are designed, pressed and printed as if they were a pharmaceutical phill. The first ones are oxycodontin eric thirty milligrams

and the press blues thirty milligram pills. It sounds me at the beginning stages are cutting heroin with it as well. It's a way to sell market is heroin and stretch it. And then at some point to heroin disappears from the nix and it becomes all fentinyl. Yeah, I think that was happening more locally though, I think that was happening.

People would by fentanyl and then mix it. The the guy that I wrote about in the book who sold the fentanyl to Tommy Rao, who eventually the kid I wrote about in the in the book who died, he was mixing it himself. That's where the magic bullet blender becomes part of the story, where this is myth in the underworld that the best way to mix your fentanyl is with a magic bullet blender. I would say, just by way of a side that magic bullet blenders are

fantastic little instruments. We own one. It's of course abysmal, a little machine for mixing your fentanyl. And it's that's the case because it's got a blade and fentyel is a powder. Magic bullets mixed liquid very well. They don't

mix powders at all. And but yet this idea took hold of narcotics agents began to find the magic bullet blender at different mixed sites that they would raid, particularly early on in certain areas like Columbia, I think was Sapping somewhat, but certainly Ohio, Kentucky was where you see you see this thing show up because it's people who are seeing fentanyl representing lottery like profits. The only problem is to realize those profits, they have to mix funnel

with inert powders. Futtonnel is so potent that a few grains the equivalent of a few grains of salt is enough to kill your pain. And a couple more and I'll kill you. And so you can't sell that on the street. That's that's very small amount of drug. You have to mix it to be able to commercially sell it.

You have to mix it. And this menth was the first time I think in the in the history of the drug trade where enormous profits are associated with the ability of common, ordinary schmos to to mix this stuff in their mom's kitchen or in their basement or their bathroom. And this myth is perpetrated that has spread that that this is a magnificent thing to do with a magic

bullet blender. Because I think one of the reasons was because the magic bullet has a plastic bubble and so you don't have the maybe the same inhalation of fumes and dust that you might just mixing it in a bowl, that kind of thing. But it gives you the idea of how badly that wrote. Yeah, Sam, I have to tell you something. Actually, that piece of in your book about the Magic Philip Lenders was something I had never heard before, and it answered a few questions for me,

and it was it was like the entire book. It was the thing that much most jumped out at me because it made the issue also about the sort of

inconsistency and supply. One of the things I've been incredibly frustrated with is with a hundred thousand people dying of overdoses last year overwhelmingly opioids, awhelmingly fentonel right now that the National Student Drug Abuse seems to be devoting almost no attention to try and to figure out doing ethnographies that interviewed the dealers, the street dealers, the dealers one

level up. Or when cops are locking up huge numbers of people, why aren't we trying to get cops or jailers to offer people who have been locked up opportunity to make some money by being interviewed about what they were doing, you know, in return for not being pressed further charges, so we can find out what that mixing process is and are remember, you know, as cannadas started to become legal and his edibles become became more common, one of the challenges initially was how do you make

sure if you're making a Cannabi's chocolate bar that each five grand square has the same amount of cant HC as the other ones? And I think now they've got that doubt and you know, obviously companies know how to do that, but it sounds like in the whole Fentinel

area that was a real challenge. And I wonder, do you know, has there been an evolution where you see a lot less of magic blenders these days and a lot more sophistication and eating it out The Mexicans have done that with Yeah, I would say that the magic bullet blender had its moment a few years there and generally has faded. Of course, it was also it was a magic bullet blender that stood out the narcotics say it was also coffee grinders another kind of bizarre machinery

that was used to mix. But but um, But I would say that that kind of faded, um and and one reason it faded, I think was that, first of all, the mix was was happening on in Mexico more they were making it, and they were mixing it down there, especially into these counterfeit pills that I mentioned earlier. First

it was thirty milligram generic oxycodons. Then it was xan x bars and percocets lookalikes, you know, counterfeits, And so you you don't have the same need to you just buy these pills, you know, why do you want to mix it? And and so I would say that the most most of the mixing when it when it does happen, is still at the local level. And I agree with you. I've, in fact, I've done some of that ethnography to find

out but not I'm just one reporter. There's there's I'm not sure you know, entire countries full of people who are doing this. Now, there's many things to learn from from folks who were sitting in jail as I've basically used my entire career, essentially um to find this stuff out. But but I would say that that a lot of that is happening at the local level or the mid level. I don't think it's so much happening down in Mexico anymore.

And it makes sense that that would not be the case, because down in Mexico it makes sense to just ship up a kilo of I mean, it's just more efficient. Yeah, the whole story you tell, and the same thing happens when we get into mith amphetamine story. It's an age old story, right. It's the way in which we had to shift from opium to heroin a hundred years ago.

And you have the crackdown there, the way in which you saw the shift from opium to heroin, and East Asia when they cracked down an opium production, they shifted to heroin. The shift from a cannabis to cocaine in nineteen eighties with a Caribbean crackdown, the shift from beer

and wine to hard liquor during alcohol prohibition. So it's an age old story, right, of the distributors, the manufacturers wanting to get the biggest bank for their buck, to ship the most potent compact products, the least detectable product, and all this thing when the stuff comes into the US. It seems that initially it's the East coast getting hit by fenton al parts of the East Coast more than

West coast, even midwest, Midway Midway. I would say that that was the first place that I was aware of, and also two thousand and one was a fourteen or ten. I'm losing track now, but it's the areas that were worst hit by the opioid epidemic in my in my view, is really where that started. Then it goes both directions. It goes out from Ohio and in Kentucky and Indiana, and in Tennessee and West Virginia and those states. It goes to east end and west, but I would say

ends up in the West coast. Last, the first real problem that anyone saw with with fentanel was in in California. Was in Chico, I think where they had nine people was at nine or seven I can't remember. People fall out and overdose and they saved I said, they said all of them, actually, But that was the first time anyway, and this was in rural Butte County way up north in California, where they were just not expecting that that

at all, And so it began to spread. But I think the first people to buy it where the folks who figured out that they could buy it from these Chinese companies. And then it was this, as I say, lottery like profit were associated with it. They just had to mix it, and when they mixed it, they did a poor job of it. I think you also say that some of them can't believe that it's fifty times

more potent than heroin. Is it's almost unbelievable that that infintestinal amount could be getting the saying bang sing bang for the buck. Oh, I think. I think. In fact, if you read the book, you saw the first chapters about the chemist in and Toluca Mexico, who was making with the funding from the sinloa drug cartel, was making the fedinl They thought he wanted They wanted him to make a Federan. He starts making funnel. He clues them in for the first time. That's really the first time

in the Mexican drug world. Get got windowed with this thing called funnel. There was a substitute, synthetic substitute for heroin. And he does these tests on his fentinyl and figures out that intell actually take a fifty to one cut, so one kilo will make fifty sailable kilos on the streets of some city in the United States. He sends that information with the people he gives But and my understanding from the agents is that nobody in Chicago believed it.

It sounds like a myth, like fifty to one are you people are always over selling their job. They're always saying, oh you can, this is a five to one cut, you can take. This is cut. Five people come in with fifty two one and nobody believe it. So nobody really cut it that much, and that's why you had this massive death pull that came and went with that

one lab down in to local Mexico. The other thing I picked up from my networks was that in the early years of fentanyl coming in five, six, seven years ago, that a lot of consumers basically they didn't like the

fentinel as much as the heroin. Initially it was a different type of thing, and oftentimes they were getting they were being told they were getting heroin, but it was heroin being cut or displaced by fentonel and was actually happened over the last four or five years as fentanyl has basically displaced heroin in the United States, is that this people now prefer fentanyl. Fentinyl has become the new thing they like, and they get heroin, they almost go like,

what's this? Or I don't like it as much anymore. I'm not sure i'd put it that way. I would say they are now addicted to fentyl. You know, to me, that's that's not a preference. That's that control of the brain that really has nothing to do with free will and the choice. The traffickers are saying, were you were giving you funnel? And yeah, today on the streets so many parts of America, heroin was worthless. It will not get rid of the dope sickness. But I was just

speaking with the guy from an attict in Maine. He was very clear he doesn't like fentanyl. He doesn't still doesn't like finol. A few reasons for that. One is that at first fentinal was to him and there was no heroine in the area, and he just he was strung out. So we had to use it. So we used it, and at first it was like a massive financial savings. But eventually, very quickly he got addicted to it,

and very quickly his use tripled because fentinel. The key thing about funtinel, the reason it's such a great drug for anesthesia, is what makes it a bad drug for a user. It's it's quick in and quick out for an anesthesia. That's fantastic. You can do a two hour surgery on somebody and that person could be removed from anesthesia and and be lucid. And I happened to me, and it's what allowed Fountainel to revolution revolutionized surgery in anesthesia in America. But for an addict that meets you

have to be constantly using it all day long. My understanding is the highest end is nice. But the main problem I think for a lot of people is there's no longer like a six hour period where you're not using. You're always This guy told told me I was using twice a day, two grams of heroin a day, and with fentinel it was six times a day, five six times a day, Uh, seven grams of frontinell. I'm sorry,

And so you see this, Yeah, just placement. I was in a homeless encountment in Nashville where I'm not living about was it like around Thanksgiving? And I met a guy and he is a longtime heroin addict, and he said, there's some guys came by our encampment offering black dar heroin straight up legitimate blacked our heron and I told him, man, I can't buy that. What's that gonna do? I need frontinel.

Nobody is so once you get through that period where you have survived till you're now addicted to fentanyl, at that point heroin it's worthless. And I think that's worth seeing that in many parts of the country. Yeah, yeah, even though they call it here thing. I've been in several parts of Tennessee where they say no about heroin, there's no heroin in the stuff. They know there's no heroin in it, but they still use it, use the terminology.

You know. I have to tell you. I just went up to record an episode up at the over Those Prevention Center, the Safe Injection side through Consumption that just opened up in East Carolan, and they're basically the staff working they're saying, almost everything's got fentonel in it. And then I interviewed one of the clients there and he was saying, oh, yeah, heroin sometimes, but it seems like

exactly what you're saying there. It also raises some questions about whether the fentonel things more likely to burn itself out. All drugs go through their phases right were able to do. The heroin phase burns itself out, and crack particularly was one where crack came on like crazy, first in the New York in the big cities, and then in the smaller cities, and then at some point it burns it out and a younger generation turns their back on it and just two forties in a blunt and maybe beating

up crackheads or something like that. And so with fent atyl, if it's that drug which doesn't actually make people feel as good, especially early on, and if it has to be used repeatedly like that, it suggests fentanyl. It's taken over for now. But maybe we'll see what But here's the thing I mean with fentanyl. Yes, I think that's that's it's certainly a possibility, and I think we'd all welcome it. The problem is this that this is a drug almost entirely from the from a trafficker's point of view.

It doesn't have anything to do with what the customer wants and makes total business sense from a traffickers point of view, as I said in the book, and and so it doesn't matter what people switched to. We've already seen that fentinel can be mixed with it methem fedoman. There's some examples, not many, it's rare, but certainly some examples of marijuana being adulterated with fentanyl, certainly cocaine. So

whatever you switch to. Fentanyl is so cheap, it's like salt on food, the way we have salt on food, and and and so you can put fentinel in anything. And the key thing there is once you do that a little bit, and pretty soon you replace that occasional cocaine user with a daily opioid user, and that person doesn't have the ability to choose anymore. That's a that's

a thing. One of the things I took a little bit of issue that you said is at one point you said the traffickers after just make creating, you know, hiring chemists to make ever more potent substances. And I don't think that's quite exactly right, because if that was right, car fentanyl would have replaced fentanyl. By now. Car fentels many times more powerful than fentanyl. We had that horrible cower fentanyl outbreak in Ohio where people were dropping dead

like flies. Then it stopped and it's not spreading. So there's a point which is not really about potency. It is a seller's market and they're they're basically looking is what's going to make them the most money. And ultimately, when you're putting stuff out there you want with the consumers are gonna pay for what they're gonna buy for. You know, if you shift the incentives, It's just like

with alcohol prohibition. When that gets repealed, the taste for harlequer becomes an every diminishing part of overall alphol consumption because lots of people don't want that. And there's another thing you were righting. You kept talking about marijuana, this high potency marijuana. There is no such thing as recreational drug use anymore, and I'm going, what the hell are you talking about? Sam, of course is recreational drug use.

The vast majority people use merrihan are using recreationally. And we know when dabbing came along, it's not like everybody went to dabbing, which is like the crack version of marijuana. Basically, the producers are gonna keep doing what's going to make them the most money, and for consumers, it's gonna be what works for them. Yeah, and with fentanyl, they've seen that fentanyl makes them the most money when it turns occasional users into fine ladder. That is what's going on now.

And so what I meant by that is that there is no risk free recreational drug use anymore. You can be given a pill at a party and that party, that pill can look exactly like a purcoset and maybe even seeing a percoset. If you use that pill from the trusted friend, it's very likely that I'll have funnel. And so the way traffickers work is the way they make their most money is by making sure that people

get addicted to fentanyl. That's what makes them. Yeah, Sam, you realize you just made a pretty strong argument for legal regulation of these drugs, right. It's the greatest denjer is this stuff being adulter and stuff like that. So it is truly a risk. But let's shift to your story on meth amphetamine, because I think people are where. You know, meth amphetamine has been around in some parts

of the country for many decades before that. You know, amphetamie was a common thing in the fifties and then it shows a big time in the South, the western places. Hawaii's had it for many decades. I remember twenty years ago when Alison the meth craze became the big thing, and all these mom and pop little meth labs pop around the country and people sometimes blowing themselves up. And and then we read about the Mexicans kind of like, well, we'll take this over instead of your crappy meth, We'll

start producing high quality meth. But then there's something else that happened, which also I knew almost nothing about until I read about in your book, which was the evolution from Aphedian based meth toisting pete p. Two p. So please tell us that story, sure, and m P. Two p Based meth is really an old method, Mike and action to methem Fedoman began when I was a crime reporter in the city of Stockton, California, and there was a whole part of Stockton that had a lot of

methane and it was really still the biker kind of guys. That's how you know the Hell's Angels. You see in the Gimme Shelter, the documentary of the Rolling Stones, you see the Hell's angels, And that's really I think most Americans awakening to what methem Fedomen was. And then you can't heat with speed kills and all that stuff. And that's fifty years ago, basically, that's in the nineteen sixties. Yeah,

sixty nine is when Altamont took place, right exactly. But they made it in this way that was really not a good way to make. No one would ever choose to make nothing fedom on the PQP method because it's very messy, it stinks, it's a lot of chemicals, etcetera, etcetera. It's it's more complicated, it's more less efficient. The Federan method is far better if you have that opportunity. And

that's how the Mexican trafficking world industrialized. Metham Fedomen was with their federal method for beginning in the late eighties. Talk about it in the book. Through the nineties that you get these kind of nodes of expertise developing, certainly around Guadalajara sent a law to labs at the time, we're like twenty poundtound labs that they would produce per cook and that kind of thing. And time went on, it grew and grew and and and more and more

people learned how to do it and so on. And then in two thousand and eight, the Mexican government really responding to a few pressures. One was from a scandal that had taken place. I talked about a Chinese fellow involved in all this as well, they put regulations on the importation of the federan only for certain pharmaceutical companies

can possess it. And at that point there begins a general migration away from the federal method, although it's still used from ton of time and I think it's generally the meth season in the United States tested by D. E. A Chemists is increasingly becoming the meth that is made with P two P. P two P has one benefit and one benefit only over the traffic over the federal method, and that is you can make P two P many

many different ways. It's it's not difficult to make it with a variety of industrial chemicals that are all legal, cheap, easily available, et cetera, toxic too, and they begin to make it that way. And so whenever the government cracks down on this batch of chemicals, well they shift to another way of making P two But anyway, what it

allows them to do if they control the ports. Which they do is import all these chemicals and begin to make quantities of metal phenom and the federal never allowed them to make, and so you begin to see an explosion of producers down in Mexico. We think of these things as cartels. I don't really, ever, really use the term cartels down to describe what's going on down in Mexico. That's not what they are. Cartels are like opeque, you know, where you control, you constrict product to force price up.

The groups down to Mexico trafficing organizations down to Mexico do the opposite. They charge for permission. So they charge for permission to cook or make your drugs in their areas. It's basically lots of fiefdoms under a general umbrella. We'll be talking more after we hear this ad. You and I have the exact same perspective on this. I always thought the use of the phrase cartel was bullshit, right,

because they're not acting acting like opec. Right. He's a group's competing they don't have to and and in fact, I sometimes wonder if the reason it became popular because we didn't used to talk about heroin cartels. I think it became popular. This is just my speculation with cocaine cartels because of the alliteration. Cocaine cartels had a buzz to it, even though it didn't make any sense. And

then we just got caught with the word. And I'll tell you by the way, I just found an example of a Mexican cartrtel in the news a couple of days ago, where they're acting like a cartel on the control of lines. How they were taking over avocados and alice go. It turns out there's now cartel action because it's coming because it's an agricult true product, because it's coming just from one part of Mexico, they actually can engage in cartel behavior and they're kicking up the price.

And it's one of the first examples I see of a Mexican cartel actually acting like a cartel. Yeah. I just find it interesting that the DA doesn't use that term either, by the way they use d T O drug traffic organizations. That's a far better descriptive thing. I would say that the Colombians were more akin to to cartels. There was differences, of course, I don't want to get too far into that. But the Mexicans have no resemblance to what I would consider having study economics so many

years ago, decades ago, to a cartel. They are loose confederations of fiefdoms and controls of those fiefdoms, change and morphin are There's lots of battles for these things. Within and without. They benefit from people producing more, not less. They benefit in the following ways. They benefit by selling permission to be able to make your drugs in their area.

They benefit by selling you the chemicals. And they also some of them, not all of these groups, but some of them benefit by charging polls into the United States. Chappolzman was huge into that. That's why the tunnels and how they would choose you. You pay thirty grand, fifty grand, hundred grand, you use the tunnels and under that kind of thing. I remember one of the theories around why all that violence happened in Sea Atuire is about fifteen

years ago. You know, it was essentially that's one of the one of the groups that had been just allowing cannabis to go through and just taxing, just basically controlling the cocaine started to crack down and no longer given the set of free passage. So yeah, very much consistently you're saying right there. Yeah, well, I would say in in Quarras it was a little different story though. You know, the great tragedy of Mexico is connected to the fact

that Chappolzman left prison. I have to say, I believe that he starts the wars that start everything. He starts the wars when he gets out with the Tijuana cartel who who he hates. These guys are all from Santa Lo. Okay, all the cartels are from Santa Look, except when you get down to the used cartel but whatever, down to into southern Texas, and then it becomes a whole different world, a whole different culture of trafficking organization, which I'm happy

to talk about. Okay now, but let's let's let's stick on the meth amphetamy thing, because you're describing this evolution right where the pseudo federant I mean, first the US cracks down on it, and China cracks down a sudo

federan and Mexico cracks down. They shift to P two P and you're basically saying that now throughout much that we're now seeing meth emerging all around the United states, including in places it's never been, including in black communities that were never that into meth using before, and of a different sort. And so one of your claims, it's a more provocative one, and that's hard. And then you have good anecdotal evidence on But where people are wondering,

is this P two P is it something special? Is it a new type of meth doing something differently, or is it simply that meth amphetamy now, because it's so cheap to produce is as you point out, it's much more potent and much cheaper than it ever used to be, which could also help explain why we're seeing these terrible myth problems. All of that could be all of that could be possible, I would say that. And again it's

not been studied. There's no neuroson since I said in the book, there's no rating my studies and so all of this stuff. But yes, it's everywhere. It's in quantities that stagger the mind. And there's no general region any way of the country where that where you don't find it.

And again, yes, absolutely it's in the black community now, which has stunned me because I've been doing this work for years and years dating back to Stockton, I have never known one single Black person to ever buy, sell, use, or know anything about methym fuddlement until the last few years. And so it's changed. A couple of things on your question.

One is that it could very well be that this is because it's just so potent and so prevalent that it is creating or or a accompanied by whatever terminology you want to use, very profound symptoms of mental illness and then homelessness and then tent encountments with that. However, I have found other people and again this is it could be that all of this is true, right. It could be that in one area they're getting methym fedoment from gas in the Law, in another area they're getting

method fundament from Gallahara Jalisco. And there could be different That's why they We need substantial studies on this stuff to understand what's going on here. But I have known and just was talking with a guy from Michigan who who said that he has been in and out of meta futomen for a number of years. He remembers distinctly when it changed, absolutely he remembers almost The date is late Friday in late June and two thousand and twelve when he used it, all of a sudden it was

a party drug before he's gay. He was in the gay community where it's a big deal, and all of a sudden it became the sinister thing where all these demons were chasing him, and it never returned to the euphoria of and the party kind of nature of the drug. And every time he uses it it happens. So the idea that all these people using this a lot always always available to them, always, and that's what drives them

to these expressions of mental illness. On the other hand, I think I've remember several people now who are telling me this is stuff that that immediately no matter how little you use and how rare the uses, it will immediately drive you to That's what happened to me. That's what they're telling me. So to me, this is as I say in the book. Yes, there's no neural science on those. I think there is ample evidence of those.

You know, also, you used the possibility about whether there might be a certain adulter rates in the p twop that the old pseudo Federan stuff that the meth labs they were had all kinds of crap in there. In fact, one of the bizarre things is when is when it shifted to Mexican production. To some respects, the Mexican myth

was made with less crap. But you had some of the bigger method labs that were higher quality method which interestingly were problematic as they were cheaper, but might have actually presented a few less consequences for the consumer because

there was less crap. And I also tell you I talked a couple of days ago to somebody who I interviewed earlier on Psychoactive a few months ago, who I think you interviewed for your bookstand ch at your own, who's a university you CSF research And I think he just got a grant from Nationals to the drug Abuse to look at this P two P issue into see was actually going on. Great. Oh really, Oh no way,

I had not heard that. Yeah. I will be in touch with Dan to find out if that's what's going on, because to me, that is that is one of the

great burning questions. And I believe that the methum feedoment that's spread from Mexico across this country is a major driving force, if not the driving force, behind our mental illness that we're seeing in such an intense amounts behind the tent encount mons, behind the homeless problem in so many areas, not just by the way, in high priced, high housing costs, cities like San Francisco, in l A, Appalachian towns, rural New Mexico. This is everywhere that meth is. Yeah.

I will say, there have been people, you know, you make the big argument that this meth is driving the homelessness, and and talking to some of the researchers out there, there are bits and they say, obviously it's problematic, but in terms of causal thing. The Losso point out to the place like West Virginia has got one of the lowest you know, homelessness rates even though it has Oh no, yeah,

wait wait wait wait, wait, wait, time out. I read that. Okay, guys, full of ship, go he should go to West Virginia. Do you know the homeless problem there is through the roof. Go to Clarksburg, West Virginia, Parkersburg, go to go to wheel and go to these places where you hope see vast Tenton campts. You will see people out of their minds. I swear to God when I read that, I wanted. It helps, It helps to actually go to the city

or the state that you're talking about. That is no I'm sorry to get a little well, hold on, hold on, hold on. This is you can find in West Virginia brand new Florida expressions of homelessness that they, yes, never had because people leave people who are from West Virginia all over Ohio and Indiana and various places like that. Of course, that's exactly what's going on. But nowadays, since this methos hit those areas, you were seeing people who

own their houses. There's no rising housing cost problem in West Virginia, and yet these folks are all just go there, just go there and do some ethnography as also known as reporting, as this guy apparently has not done. When I read that, I was like, this guy's an idiot. You also make the point though that even this, if the P two P is really the way it does, where it's knocking people out, where is the old method

get people up and going. They wanted to do something, and they're always talking a mile minute and you know, how to be taken care of stuff. That the new myth is more almost turning them in that zombie life. But really disconnected, dissociated, how to some extent that almost helps people are homeless deal with being homeless. Yes, that's the other point. That's it pushes you into homelessness and allows you to endure the brutality of the situation in which you find. And one way it does that is

from completely separating you from reality. And another way is and I found this very ominous honestly to say, but it really strips people of their memories, so people don't remember major chunks of where they were. Run into this over and over. Now, I said in the book, this one woman told me a residential treatment center, people guys coming up to her all the time, going I can't remember why I'm here. How much of the time did the judge give me? You know, it strips personality, Its

strips memory. I mean, if think about memory, memory is our personality. I mean, it's a major part of what makes us who we are as we remember things. And this myth has stripped that also from people very scary with the other thing that this myth does that really adds to the complications of it all is that this meth makes people seriously resist leaving the tent and can they they feel that they've found like their community. Of course,

it's a community of a rewired brain. So it doesn't matter how cold it gets, it doesn't matter what risk it is there is to my life. I'm still gonna stay here. I'm not gonna the offer of shelter, the homeless shelter is like the worst place you would actually want to be if you're on that math. Sam, let's come back to it. Let's tie these two stories to

get in now. So what you described is basically we're coming to a point when you finish the book two now we're basically we see myth amphetamine being combined with fentanyl. We see myth anthonetamine displacing fentanyl use. We see myth amphetamine displacing cocaine used used being used together. Right, I mean it really depends. I would say no, no, I wouldn't say it's displacing fentonol use and fentanel. When it takes over, it thinks over for good. Um, it seems

to me fentinel was being mixed into these drugs. You know, it's mean makes on the cocaine. It's being mixed into a nothing phenomen though, What is happening? I found this over and over particularly in some of the areas where the opioid crisis really hit how hard, like Kentucky. You want one area and saw there's a lot is where you find people who are using soboxing to control the opioid cravings that they how because they went through the

whole pill the heroin problem. And just for our listeners to boxing is bupernorphine, which like method on, is a drug that's used for people trying to put a heroin addiction behind them because it's a sort of benign, more benign form of opioid that it doesn't have the risk of street drugs and has less risk of overdose. So

goodhead Sam. They're using suboxon. And then because suboxon has not been used in ways that probably it needs to be, which is in conjunction with a variety of therapies that help you repair your life, those folks remain in the drug world just using suboxon, and that means that they were prey to the next big drug that comes along, and from the next for a lot of them, the next big drug was not from feedomon because it was

so cheap. Still want to get high, still hanging out with the wrong people, etcetera, etcetera, all that kind of stuff, and so you get this change in people. So that's also when I saw methem feedomon in the black community, and when I saw methym fedomen taken together but not really together with opioids, that both of those things just shocked me. I couldn't believe I was seeing that, because you've never really seen. When I was a young crime reporter,

there were two worlds in the drug world. Basically in the Stockton one was a heroine the world and what was the meth world, and they didn't like each other even you would never see the mix, but you did have always heroin and cocaine going together. I mean, the speedball is a very common thing that's been going on forever and ever and ever about mixing those things once and upper ones there and they go better together in that respect. And or yet people who use heroin and

then they'll smoke crack. And sometimes people describe themselves as just being a heroin user, just being cracked, but in fact you'd see a lot of people who are heroin users alsius in the crack because that up down thing, you know. I sometimes joke that my legal speedball will be after dinner having an espresso with an after dinner drink, a little chilling out, a little, you know, the moderate

legal speedball. What's interesting is this combination. It seems to me that a few years ago, I remember somebody I had somebody, uh, physician from Rhode Island, Jodie Rich described in Rhode Island around twenty six fifteen sixteen, and he described this sting where all of a sudden, a half a dozen ordinary middle class white people, not known as drug users, all of a sudden dropped dead from fed at all. And it turned out they got in some cocaine.

They started the cocaine, and they didn't know it was in there. It's not even clear their dealer news in there. So it seems like a few years ago you had more of the kind of accidental overdose of these drugs, either the dealers accidentally putting them together or people not knowing what they're doing. But that at this point the accidental factor is becoming less and less because it's just

so on the present now, well, I would say that's true. Yes, I think they're more people who are now just fully addicted to funnel and they know what they're using them. And there's a whole lot of that. On the other hand, the pills, the counterfeit pills that are coming up from Mexico are aimed at a market generally younger kids. Sold on Snapchat, sold on Instagram. That kind of thing sold by younger kids too. I mean it's sold by people who are not a bunch older than the people are

selling to. Particularly during the COVID years, you see a lot of people on their phones and there these pills are so so on the present now and the pills aren't combining them or they just one of the other. No, the pills have only utonal and and their conterfeit made in Mexico by the droppers down to Mexico. They're only funnel. They look like percoset bar oxy code on generic thirty

million ground. That's what they look, perfect replicas. That's why I say that there was no such thing as recreational drugging. You can't just take one of these as a better party anymore. You used it. It was not a good idea back then, but people did it. But now they dropped dead. And the thing is that too people are buying these on the I don't know if that claim wholes.

You're right about the risk of fentiel. The argument has been when it comes to white powdered drugs, you better we dan careful when it comes to cannabis, or if you're coming from a knowing supply, or if you're doing I mean the fact that there is the vast majority of people are using the vast majority even if these pills without dropping dead or getting killed. But the risk has definitely died up. Now the risk is enormous and nationwide,

I would say too. And that's the thing. Those these pills are all over there's like not one area or certain areas of a state that you're known to find that I think these are that they've exploded. It's a thing that that it corresponds to the structure of the Mexican Drugs part Drug Drafting Organization world where everybody's free to make whatever they want so long as they buy the chemicals from us and pay for the permission to do it here. And you know that kind of that

kind of thing. When we look at this broader this hundred thousand overdose last year, of which a majority of those now involved fentanyl, and a growing percentage of them involved fentinyl combined in cocaine or methamphey, So we're seeing the polydruig uses out there. Now we know it's even

more prominent out there. As you're saying, oftentimes people are buying maybe cocaine and maybe it feels different because it's got fentanyl in or as you and you're making the claim that they're also more likely to begetting addicted to what they think is cocaine, but it's actually developing an opioid addiction. And so what I'm wondering with all of that, I've asked people that when you combine fentanyl with cocaine or myth amphetamy, does it make you more or less

likely to overdose? And what people have said to me is this hard to say. On one hand, the stimulant effect should maybe reduce so likelihood of an overdose or to counteract the effect of the fentanyl. On the other hand, the physical degradation that goes along with getting addicted to myth amphetamine makes you more vulnerable to overdosing from the fentanyl. So that's a kind of I would say it's a consensus, but it seems to be a logical explanation for some

of what's going on. What are your thoughts about that? Well, my thoughts that this is entirely the what benefits the street dealers. The street dealers are gonna add fentanyl to their cocaine. It doesn't matter what effect it has on you.

They don't give it down. They see a customer expansion vehicle through in Fentinel, you get someone addicted to fentanyl who was occasional cocaine user, could be two or three times a week, could be every two weeks, and now that person is buying from you every single day, sometimes several times a day. Um, it doesn't matter that you may risk killing a few people, because it's a there's a long history when people in the way into the

hero own world. You know, for years of people hearing of somebody overdosing a certain amount of heroin and going to buy that heroin because then what they want that big boost that they got when they first used the drug. How it benefits you that the customer is secondary. Um, and not say that it never is important. I'm just saying that it it this, This is the thinking so so often among dealers. It is, but I have to say it's also dealers in a way are also a

diverse group of characters. And some of them are just fucking bastards and mercenary and they'll sell whatever. And some of them are just selling to people, you know, driving up to a corner like in the old days. And many dealers, though they know their customers, sometimes there are people who are quasi friends. There may be relatives. They may be selling, and they don't want those people to die, not just because they're customers, but because they may actually

care about them. I mean, we know a lot of drug dealing networks are like that, so we know there's another human element going into all this stuff. And what I'm trying to figure out is, with the over those things going so high, it sounds like we've hitting this kind of moment where fentanyl is pervasively out there. It's now throughout much of the stimulant supply, and it wasn't in a way it wasn't even a few years ago, and it's coming in pills and other sorts of things.

On the other hand, I'm also wondering, given what you say about P two P being a kind of undesirable drug in terms of what it does to you and the intensity of it, and also about FINITYL being in a way, at least initially less better than Heroin. It's suggest for the existing consuming population, we've got to see how that plays out with all of them. But in terms of the new users people coming in, the question

is are they really gonna want that stuff? But here's the thing that I don't also think that what you want is the issue. But I do think it is because ultimately, for you, if you're selling something, you want something that consumers want. If you can addict them to it, all the better. But it's there is some there's a supply demand interaction, and people always looking for something new. All those kids who are buying them from Snapchat are

not buying fentonel. They don't think they're buying fentanyl. They don't want fentonel. They're being given surreptitially given channel and xan x bar and what's something they think is a legitimate xan x bar. So to me, it's very difficult to I think, when you have this kind of supply, this kind of rampant immunity down in Mexico, it is very difficult to imagine that this supply won't be used again and again to more customers. Whether people want it

or not. Those kids who are buying those pills don't want pentonel. They think they're buying xan x bar benzea

has a pin. Yeah. I just wonder though about whether there's going to be such a big demand among those Look, obviously there's a generation now, a younger generation whose parents and maybe even grandparents were caught up in drugs from broken families and are feeling desperate, and that is a continuous opportunity for traffickers to sell drugs that are really and that I think remains the market for this sort

of stuff. But let me go to this next part, Sam, which is that one of the things where I really liked about your book, and I agree very much, is that not only are you lighting up produe farm of big opioid producers with the Mexican traffickers, but you're also talking about the producers of processed foods, the guys who are combining sugar fat salt combinations in ways that have led to an epidemic of obesity. Now that is probably

exacting greater healthcare costs in America. I think it's now neck and neck with the cost of smoking in America. So we're talking about a massive cost in terms of years of life lost and stuff like that. I mean, it's hitting people later in life. It's not messing them up when they're young, in the same way cigarets don't mess you up when you're young, but it's really messing

them up otherwise. But just I thought you were really right onto something there about the nature of American culture, society, the food industry, maybe the gambling industry, the social media industry. Just say a little more about that, because I think you were right onto it. Yeah, it's very easy to vilify send a lower drug cartel, and they deserve it.

But we need to understand that there are many many entities around our economy that that really know and spend millions and millions of dollars using the best and most intelligent analysts and engineers they can find to manipulate our brain chemistry reward pathways. And this is why, for example,

fast food companies never changed their logos. Those logos have become almost like triggers, and why they try to put at every intersection, on every off ramp on the freeway you'll find fast food, and every seven eleven and every grocery store you'll find the mid alisles packed with sodas and the just the battles for the territory is so important because they understand that we when you haven't activated that reward. So some people buy on impulse and it's

very hard for us to stop that. It's extraordinarily hard. And the same with with social media. Same with chicken nuggets. Chicken nuggets almost reminds me like a crack cocaine. You've taken the chicken, which if you eat it regularly, will not have this victman. You reduced it to fat and saw you put it in sugar, the dip and all. And you have taken the coca leaf that you can chew, and you've reduced it to and you've just stripped it of all it's it's nutrients, and it's fibre and all

that kind of stuff, and it becomes crack cocaine. That's what to me, that's what chicken nuggets feel like, honest, the gutty. Hey, you're reminded me of Chris Rock, the comedian had a routine. I remember years ago, he goes, I think I discovered the secret ingredient and Crispy Cream donuts cocaine. But it was very much. Really. The place hopened up right near my apartment on seventy seconds three years ago, Chrispy Kreathy and walking by was just to smell.

They would they make sure the aroma came out, and it just triggered something in my brain. Absolutely to me, the idea was trying to do with the book was to say, look, yeah, we've got tochple Gosman and we got Minos Sambaba, we got all these these nefarious characters down in Mexico. They're not the only ones who have figured out this very intricate process of our reward pathways in our brain, and that it makes a ton of money to manipulate that and to always get better manipulating.

But I also felt in my own one reason was that once I began to understand that, once I began to think logically about it, I began to make more liberating choices in my life. So I don't drink soda anymore. I stopped complete almost completely. Only time I ever drink sodas want to go to a movie theater, and I've done that like twice the last two years. You don't eat the crappy foods I used to eat Snickers bars, and my name's constantly it was overweight. I get a

lot more exercise because it's a liberation. The more mobile you are, the more free you are. And this is some of the ideas I wanted to tell people about, just kind of express I guess in my journalistic way, you know, and say that once we know this, we have I believe a certain defense against it, particularly surround people yourself, what people who also believe that way. You know, you're not around people who are constantly recovering from addiction.

You get away from people are still in dope. The same thing is true a little bit when you want to, you know, I'm gonna move away from people who are not believing this way as as well. But overall, I wanted to talk about how I see a continuum and at the far end as send a lower drug cartel. Closer to the center is Facebook, software engineers and check the nugget manufacturers and software and soft and soft drink

folks and that kind of stuff very very important. I thought, I'll tell you this another point you kept, and I realize there's no way to square the circle of this stuff that you can't fit all in. And so there are ways in which you talk about drugs and community. And one of the points you make, which is true but also not true, is you'll make some broad statements about drugs being antithetical to community, but then you give examples. Right, We know in fact that oftentimes drugs does do some

of that. People can isolate into that. But we also know when we look at alcohol, there's a whole drinking culture and bars and all those sorts of things. We know that with cannabis people like to get there. We know that people would go to quote unquote shooting galleries or things like that, or they go to even harm reduction programs not just for the services, but for the sense of community. Even the homeless encampments are a place where people who are all messed up on drugs can

find kindred souls who can tolerate their eccentric behavior. So I I don't know if I quite yes it does that. If I'm thinking, if there's any quote unquote drug like a thing out there in America which is promoting isolation and antithetical to community more than any substance out there, it's probably Internet based stuff exact that we're now spending six seven, eight hours in front of our screens that

young people, they say, don't read social cues anymore. In fact, sometimes people ask why hasn't marijuana use, Like with all the legalization going on, we don't see adolests and marijuana use increasing over the last eight eight nine years. And I think one of the reasons that maybe marijuana use doesn't go that well with being on the social media all the time. It's it's not that they don't go together.

That oftentimes people want to do that stuff socially, and if you're spending less time hanging out, you're less likely to do that stuff. Now what one can do as a matter of control about that, I don't really know. No, I don't either, and you're you're right about that. I would say sometimes of drug users, I'm I'm very skeptical frequently about I'm not a big drinker. Um. I have seen communities of drug user of alcohol drinkers very frequently

devolved into not like communities of book readers. I guess, I don't know. I buy your point, though you're you're correct, I don't dispute it. I would say, you have to be careful how far you draw that out, because a tent encamin of methamphetamen users. Think about what that that encountenents about. It's about pimping, It's about living in utterly unhygienic in the middle of winter. Uh, not caring about anybody if that person doesn't have access to dope there

might be to the uninitiated. It seems to me some kind of like communal romantic communal aspect to these encountments. If you view them in another way, you view them as as just basically people who are slowly trying to die. You see him, I have to tell you, I mean

yes and no once again. Like I just interviewed Philippe Bougua, who's in ethnography, one of the best in American he'd read in a book Righteous Dolphins, and he's spent ten years and another guy almost like spending thousands of hours with a community indrecting drug uses, living in San Francisco under the freeway and such, and what he found there was some of the most reprehensible types of behavior you could possibly imagine, and at the same time some of

the most generous. Like, you know, certain norms existed, you didn't give a damn about everybody else. You're hypocritical but if somebody was dope sick, that became a priority either complicated or that even when they would be offered, people would be offered. We know there's research showing that when you offer people supportive housing, housing first programs, it helps

a lot to have that kind of availability. But we also know that sometimes when people go into those programs they fall into massive depressions, they missed the community, and then even when some people are offering those programs, they may go back to the homeless encampment even though was you know, cold, miserable, dirty, everything, because of that sense of community there. So it's a tricky thing. I would say that that sense of community is dope and dues.

I don't believe that that is actually I think that's a romantic view of the encampment. That is a very very sinister place. It's a very scary place. It's a place where women are constantly raped and constantly pimped. Yes, there is a lot there's there. There may be expressions of human kindness and human decency amid all that, But I just don't see that that is mix up for the harm, the massive harm that those things did. I totally agreed. I'm just kind of adding complicate the variables

here to say that that these communities are there. No, I I love it. I love it, and I'm a reporter and I'm I'm constantly trying to complicate my own story. I don't deal in generalities, even though you point to something that's not where I'm living in my journalism. But okay, let me press down this thing. So, in retrospect, Perdue Farm at all those other pharmaceutical companies, others that were

massively over promoting, over advertising the opioids. Now we know that when that was at its peak, maybe fifteen years ago or so, that the number of over those fatalities in the country was maybe ten or fifteen percent of

what it is now. And it raises the question in retrospect, right, if policy makers hadn't really responded to that, if we hadn't cracked down on those old peways and yes, damn those guys, Dan Richard Sackler and all the family around, and we did that stuff, Dan the Johnson Johnson, Damn damn, damn damn them and let him rod and hell and be sued up to Gazoo for everything. But from a policy perspective, if we had never cracked down on that stuff.

Maybe that would have not opened the door for the Mexican traffickers to get first into heroin and then fentanyl, and and maybe FENTONYL might never have really emerged. Maybe if we lived in a country where politicians didn't have to pay attention to what is absolutely on the front of mine, to the people who are who are at their in their churches, or at their state legislatures or

all that, you might well be right. I I don't know, but I would say that to suggest, For example, with Ohio, people say, gee, they shouldn't have closed down those pill mills, ghastly places, long lines, doctors are just behaving like debased quacks selling this crep. If they had only not done that, we wouldn't have had X, Y, a variety of other

things that came later. And my feeling is there's no chance anybody the mayor on up to the governor of Statable Ohio, and the senators included, and the state legislatures could have or should have done anything else but close those things. It was an affront everything. It was impossible to sit by and say, you know what, ten years from now, we're gonna have, you know, it is. What

it isn't. What it really means is that we in the future need to understand that we need to step back, far back from the idea that we have these magic bullet solutions to problems. So the opioid epidemic really begins, in my opinion, because we were proposed this idea that you can cure human pain, you know that deals with the central nervous system in our brains. You can deal with this with one single pill for all human beings, and Americans were bought into that. In fact, we pushed that.

A lot of the doctor said, hey, no, these pills, that's probably not right for you. No, no, no, doctor, I want to be cured. You'll give me the damn pill. God, damn it. Let's take a break here and go to an ad Sam if I could, there's a paragraph in your book here and when I would go around giving speeches that I, how do we explain the opiated academic, and I would say, it's complicated, yes, produce farm of,

but everything else. And you have a paragraph in there which I thought said it better than almost I've ever said. He I can never see and I just want to read it to our listeners. It's folly to attribute this opiate epidemic to one drug, one company, one family, like the Bad Guys, and some soap opera. So much more went into it. We Americans, so many of us, demanded convenience to be fixed, wanting miracles and unwilling to do the work of wellness, unwilling to change what we bought

eight and drank. We insisted doctors cure all our pain. Pills seem to fit the bill. Insurance company stopped reimbursing for therapies that did not involve pills, leaving doctors with fewer tools to address pain. What's more, oxycontent did provide a Sackler Family letters later sent a statement life changing relief from pain for many Americans. It's unconscionable that a two common result of the opioid epidemic is that doctors cut off patients from their pain medication when they have

used them without problem for years. But then if purdueing, marketing OxyContin and more restrained way, we might be lining up to praise it. And I thought it was the most nuanced, best presentation of the complexities and the border social cultural context that's out there. But it does lead then to the policy answers here and so here's where you say, I'm sympathetic to legalization, but nah, I'm sympathetic to decriminalization. But nah. And you actually don't even mentioned

harm reduction almost at all in the book. It's all about drug courts and pushing people in the role of judges and punitive types of stuff. And so it is not punive. Sorry, then that's not right. It's not punitive to arrest someone from a tent and camera with with syringes who was about to die and put them in jail where they can have a place of a place of recovery. And that's what That's what I was just arguing.

That isn't that is compassion the opposite. It's the opposite of compassion to say we're gonna deal with you, We're gonna meet you where you are, and then let you decide, under the influence of these devastating drugs that you're going to decide when you're you'd rather freeze to death then leave the drugs. We're gonna let you decide. That's an insane fair enough, fair enough, But you do make a fundamental mistake I think in the book, which is that

you have an entirely uncritical view of drug courts. I've been studying drug courts for twenty years. I gotta tell you, for many years, a majority of drug courts would not even offer meth, and I made it as an option. No drug court judges were off not trained in dealing with addiction. If people were stumbling along the way that if somebody was smoking weed and they've got an off heroin and cocaine, they still had to ultimately sanction them

because that was technically illegal. You had judges operating within the setting of the criminal justice system. You had people in imposing that twelve step The twelve step approach was the all on the end all, even though the twelve step approach, even though millions have benefited, doesn't work in the vast majority of cases. Now, of course you're right, drug court judges are changing. The new head of the

Drug Court Association is very sympathetic to harm reduction. There are drug court judges around the country embracing needle exchange programs at least his policy. But at the same time, you don't talk about harm reduction programs in the book. And it brought me back to the fact you keep quoting people saying people aren't going to get better unless you force the MC grab them. And it ignores the fact that the very first, one of the very first

needle exchange programs in America, Tacoma, Washington. One of the way it established itself and this was proven over and over, was it landed up becoming the number one point of reference recommendation into drug re treatment programs in the city. And the fact of the matter is that, yes, some people benefit by being pushed in exactly the way you're saying, but for other people, it's not what works. For other people,

it's about being in a more human environment. Well, I'm saying that today the drugs on the street do not allow for that. The strugs on the street are so deadly, they're so mind tangling and and devastating to the brain, and the Malcolm fuddlement is creating brain damage very clearly, and they're parting the people who work with this. This is not compassion. It's not a way of saying, well, you could do whatever you like and then you come to us when you need some help. Those people are dying.

Meet them where they are. I know where they are. I have to I have to call you out on this. You do not use the phrase harm reduction barely in the book. You do not visit a needle exchange your harm reduction program once. You don't go to those places and see how they're working or meet those people. You talk about people using the phrase at one point very nicely, any positive change that's trains coined by a foulader of

harm reduction. Dan Big when over those preventions to locks on distribution, the role of harmonduction programs in this and meeting people where they're at, you quote people working in the system saying it's got to be any stuff. It's incremental change, of course, but that's the fundamental idea of harmonduction. And I didn't quite understand why it almost aunt felt like you were giving a cold shoulder to harmonduction and all of this. Well, because I think the drugs on

the on the street need to change. Thinking they haven't changed. Thinking the drugs on the street are different from five years ago. Okay, they are very different. They're very damaging, their deadly, and that requires a different approach to wait for people to come to the That woman who froze to death, her mother would brought her a little The title please, this is their child. You have this home, you have this, all of this. This woman wouldn't be

convinced there was that's where she is at. Meeting her where she's at, meaning she's willing to freeze their death rather than spend time with her baby. For child to me, Sam, I hear you. But if you haven't been there, and you haven't gone to, if you had gone to dozens

of harm reduction problems in Ohio. Harm reduction programs are springing up all around the state and they're dealing with exactly the sorts of people you're talking about, and there's a dynamic and interaction that's going on there that is keeping people alive, saving people's lives, reducing over those, keeping

people alive until the next time. And the same thing is true of jails, because people are coming out of jails and one of the most likely times to dive in over those is right when you come at And that's why that's why the jail I talk about uses m AT for the people who are m AT science people are for the vitral and what have you. Of course, there's lots of people stumbling towards solutions. But my feeling

is the drugs on the street have changed fundamentally. The approaches and Sham and Sam, I have to tell you, harm reduction programs around the country, in the world are evolving to deal with the drugs are on the streets.

When I go and visit the over those preventions that are needle exchange programs, I see people dealing with the population using fentonel, using meth amphetamine, and doing harm reduction in ways that are But I'm just saying I think your book would have benefited really looking into this piece as well, because it's one thing you talk to people drun court judges, and they have their own angle, They

know their things, they come from theirn iology. It's good to praise twelve step programs, but it's not the only approach. Method on is pivially important, No, I know that. I know that, And I think what's what's fascinating about the world America today is how these topics are now being debated very hotly, Whereas when I was writing Dreamline, I don't remember any debate over them. There was no one cared.

There wasn't no debate. There was just nobody cared. So let's go back where you don't have to get in one of his face so much on this thing. One of the things I did like was what you describe really about the evolution in quote unquote white America. Right when HIV AIDS came around and was devastating people. You know, the notion harmoniction comes around because the old line you have to let people bottom out before they get better. It wasn't just more dangerous drugs like today. That's his

bodying out only makes sense. It was HIV AIDS back in the eighties and nineties that wiped out the notion or should have wiped out the notion of bottoed me out. But at that time it was more affecting black people, brown people, and people are and the white people who

saw were much more in hiding. Now as opioid juice became much more pervasive among white people and by the way it continued, you know, people would talk about Staten Island, New York, which is mostly white, but they forget the point that the over those rates in the Bronx, which is mostly black and brown, were just as high. They

just it wasn't as new. But what you talk about here is an evolution in quote unquote white America where places that are coming to drug courts, which is good for them twenty years after the fact of the other places in the country had becoming more compassionate, and just say something about how you encountered this kind of evolution there, sure, And I would say that that one of the things that struck me was that early on in this I would say during Dreamland, in fact, I came to this idea,

saw this at work in Tennessee. In fact, with the great drug court judge Stuff Norman out here in Nashville, now retired, who was telling me this that you know, once once it was their folks getting addicted. Then you all of a sudden, I began to get phone calls from state legislators. Those are the judge talking um saying, hey, can you get my nephew or my my donor's sister or whatever that kind of thing, And you began to see that I would say that this about the opio

epidemic on rays. I would say that the opioid epidemic was hidden. People say it only got attention once the white population, middle class white population got it got addicted, And I would say that's not exactly true. I covered the crack epidemic that got huge press for years because it was very public. You couldn't avoid the drive by shootings and and all that stuff, the car jackings. It was just everywhere you couldn't have been open and open yeah,

open air bazaars. I covered that all the time in Stockton when I was there for four years. I would say that when this opioid epidemic didn't get pressed because it affected middle class white people, because they didn't want it to be covered. They were from the seventies. Some of the parents may have smoked weed or something, but very few had ever tried heroin, and nobody wanted that public. So you began to see very much like the early days of the AD's epidemic, where nobody wants HIV in

their son's obituary. You begin to see died suddenly at home, uh drive of a heart attack twenty seven years or something like that. You begin to see that take place. I would say too, that this dove tails almost exactly with the golden age of neuroscience research, So now we

are learning at the same time that this is happening. Really, I was just stayed beginning late like late nineties, certainly into the two thousand's you're seeing huge advances in both of the technology but also the understanding of the brain, and and we're seeing now huge advances during these same

twenty years when this opioid epidemic has taken place. I can tell you that when I was in Stockton, and again this is anecdotal, is my my experience, but it was very clear to me Stockton is one of the most integrated cities in California, it was white six percent. Everything else. I do not remember the very large Southeast Asian community and Latino community, sizable black community. Nobody during the crack epidemic, black people, Latinos, anybody wanted treatment. Nobody,

there was no constituency for that. This was two. They wanted people thrown in jail. That's it. And so the change that we're seeing now has absolutely something to do with race. In my opinion, it's white people developing a consciousness of how this must have, this feels, and how therefore expecting some Christian charity, as I said in the book, that they didn't express when it was another other groups

that were being more more effective than they were. But I would also say it's important understand that we have a revolution in neuroscience understanding in those years, there is nothing remotely comparable in the opioid epic damach of the street violence that was taking place in the crack of item. So you have, you have, yes, you have this fascinating change,

particularly in red areas. I would say, it's just amazing transformation of people's thinking because yes, it's their kids, it's their nephews, it's their brothers and sisters and grandparents and whatever that's getting addicted. But I would stop at generalizations about that because there's a lot of nw ones that we're talking about news earlier very correct. Well, well, Samuli,

I have like three at reaction. One is I mean you and I both got into this drug issue back in the eighties, so we both go back a long time. And what I recall back then, it wasn't that black

people didn't want more treatment. My recollection because I was debating Jesse Jackson, debating Charlie Wrangle on you know, the TV shows and all this sort of stuff back then, and what I found the difference was that those guys they swatted the drug war, but they said, but we also want resources and treatment and blah blah blah, and the Republicans and others were saying, and the hell with treatment.

It was almost like lip service, So there was some support for them, but there was also in terms of the opioid issue, there was a kind of anti method on sentiment back then. There was an anti harmonduction sentiment back then, and the black community evolved more rapidly in the white community. The second thing I'll say is that you're right about the neuroscience that breakthroughs in all these

important ways. What's sad and disappointing is that with all this neuroscience breakthrough there has been essentially nothing new to emerge in terms of drug train like methanon, entrepreneurphine now treks and I'll go back fifty years nationally a drugging. This is board billions into it with nothing to come out of it, which suggests that when we're looking for the solutions to drug addiction, it may have a lot less to do in neuroscience and a lot more to

do with the broader conditions. Part of what explains why we see these problems much less in Europe. Because the last thing I'll say is what really hit me what

you're saying about Red America, the white population. It was during the Republican primaries back in sixteen fifteen, maybe a fifteen sixteen, when all of a sudden you saw it, like in the public forum, the opioid issue popping up as a point of discussion in Republican communities, and we're just saying I'm going to shut the border with Mexico no longer was an effective selling point where people were

looking for something more. And then fast forward to eighteen when there's no bipartisanship, but actually a relatively decent congressional bill to do with the opioid crisis passes with bipartisans porch and is signed by Donald truck So you see this evolution in a way as you see it in Mike Pett's deciding he's going to support a needle exchange

program with So there is that thing. I think there is why when you say that what happened with this thing is it promoted a greater sense of empathy and a greater openness to new ideas In that type of stuff we'd seen in urban America and on the coast and in certain big cities back going back to the

nineties and the aughts. We now see happening in these parts of the America and in rural America and suburban and yeah, I mean I remember one person telling me in a rural part of Ohio that his parents he was a cop, but his parents could never get over the idea that there was heron in their in their area. This was something for Cleveland, there was something Chicago. It was that kind of thing. And there in these areas you began to see this. Now, is there a racist

component of that? I'm quite sure there is and no doubt about it. On the other hand, how often do you care when a plane goes down in Malaysia? Do we care? No, we didn't know anybody and on that plane in Malaysia, and so you know, it's part of

there's a company. I'm I'm reluctant to get too quickly into these like blanket condemnations that that people want to get into, even though I have to say, and I'm gonna say it very immodestly, but i will say it because if I don't defend myself, nobody else has gonna And that is that the first person to report on that very phenomenon was me and my book Dreamland. When

I was talking with exactly that. The judge Steth Norman and I went to chapters about how all of a sudden you saw white, rural, white America begin to ask for treatment and you begin to see a change, and all of a sudden, he's the best buddy of the Republican Speaker of the House in Tennessee, and all this kind of stuff. Not that I don't want to report on that I have already. I was the first one to do it. I believe. I would say that that

there's a lot of nuance to it too. And I do believe that the neural science was part of it, maybe because now we're able to see the brain in action in a sense, see the blood flows on this drug and on that thing, and on prayer and on storytelling and all the rest. That's an amazing thing to work. Yeah, But I mean it also makes the point that a lot of things we associate with drug use, we see I mean, it's just like the same parts light up

when you're watching a TV program or playing tennis. There are all sorts of activities which light up parts of the brain as do drugs. It's why, for example, gambling, right, why gambling and gambling addictions so much resembled drug use and drug addiction. And it's also why, as you say, from the supplier side, the casinos as well as the manager of lotteries, I figured out how to appeal to the addictive personality and all this sort of stuff. So

it is that stuff. But so to bring this to a conclusion here on the policy issue, right, so, you know, on the legalization thing, it's funny when people ask me because I'm so much identified as an advocate of legalization, and I say, well, I'm not a libertarian legalizer, and they say, what's your big greatest residency about legalization? And my responses, Look what happened with food. It's exactly what

you know I've been saying us for years. The sugar fats all thing to imagine big multinational corporations going to work the way the Mexican drug traffickers are on the underground chemists but at a level of cistication. But on the other hand, there are steps short of legalization. And so you now have a growing discussion, say around British Columbian parts of Canada, around safe supply, and it's basically making the argument, yeah, we can throw people in jail.

We could do the drug court, we can offer this in that. But given that there are some people who are absolutely committed to using these drugs from the black market, aren't we better off trying to find a way to allow these people access to the drugs that they want in such a way that without making it available to the broader population. So you're saying, let me ask you, though, are you saying that we should think of ways to providing funnel to people who wanted to me? That's a

I'm not. I don't think a lot about legalization. You think all about it all the time. That's great for a lot of reasons. Probably too complicated again too right now. But my feeling is, before we do any of that, uh, I would like to see us legalize marijuana in a way that did not create big pot, right, which is

what we're doing right now. But that's that's the impossible, right because I would always saying like I was one of the key people involved in moving the country towards legalization of marijuana with the ballot issues and all that sort of stuff. And my line was, look, I'm not in a favor of the marl borization of bud Wiz zation America. You know, I'm the smallest, beautiful kind of guy, and let's try to make that happen. But we live in the one of the most dynamic capitalist society and history,

and it everardy is going to head that direction. I'm happy when I see efforts and you know, my organization I were involved in trying to draft these things to try to limit that, to give a foot up to the small entrepreneurs, to try to have some social equity

and all this sort of stuff. But we have to be reasonable, and ultimately, I would say, give me a choice between a marijuana probition world with seven hund thousand people being busted, people at being killed, marijuana unknown potency and purity, people who have medical needs who can't get it safely and responsibly all sorts of or one where even it's run ultimately by big marijuana and there's you

have big Starbucks or big alcohol or whatever. I'd say that other one is a lesser evil and there's only so much you can do on that. And when I say legalizing, right, I'm talking about not selling it over the counter, this sort of stuff. The question is, if you look at the heroin prescription programs, that popped up in Switzerland thirty years ago and that are now in Germany and the Netherlands, Denmark, UK, Canada, going to open

up in Norway soon. Which is the results they've been studying now for twenty or thirty years, and they are clearly where people go to a clinic, they get to use pharmaceutical great heroin up to three times a day, they have access to services and all the other sorts

of things. These are people from whom method on didn't work, who had tried everything else, and you see really impressive results in terms of people stabilizing their lives, sometimes even getting jobs, getting housing, reducing their revival and crime, all

that sort of stuff. Now, whether that's possible in some respect with fentanyl, or whether one should look at whether or not people are using fentanyl can be moved into less dangerous forms of opioids in different forms, seems to me one of the options you still have to hold people responsible. I'm not somebody who says you're a drug addict and you're going out and mugging people and therefore just give him a slap on the wrisk and let

him go. I don't believe that this is about how you deal with the problem is I would say, I follow what you're saying the following. I think what we're seeing that's played out in in in certain cities of the country, is that executive that's exactly what's happening. Well, you know, a restorative justice a kills a person, Okay, you know. To me, I I don't the way you're explaining it as the policy you with a spouse sounds fine, sounds sounds reasonable, and I'm I have I don't think

about these topics too much. People think of me as an opioid reporter. I think of myself is very differently. But I've had other interests in my life that in journalism that goes way away from all this. Okay, so it's not it's not like a major issue for me. But I think that the way this is being laid out in person on the ground, with real world policies is exactly what you just described as that people getting

mugged and nobody does anything. People and encounter behaving like just out of their minds, and nobody does anything about these incameras well, because it's a community, it's goal. To me, I feel like this is the issue that that it when you see it played out, you see it on the ground, when you see the real world consequences of it, if you don't develop any constituency for the ideas that you're supporting, yeah, well, I mean, I say, I mean,

I'll tell you. I mean probably where I agree and disagree with you, but also agree and disagree with many of my allies in all of this is I have a fairly you know, conservative view. I think that people need to be held responsible for their actions in so far as they harm other people. And if you're stealing, if you're committing violence, if you're hurting other people, you

need to be held responsible of that. But at the same time, I'm saying, if the issue is your commitment to using certain types of drugs, well, here, on the one hand, I'm going to give you access to these drugs you want. You want these drugs, I'm gonna give them to you in a pure form, either either there for free or they cost a few bucks or whatever. But here's the drugs. I'm gonna offer you some services, some help so you can get out of this life.

Because we know that a lot of people addicted, whether it's cigarettes or whether it's heron or Fantel go through periods where they say, I want to get out of this, and it's really a two pronged approach that says, here's you want all this stuff, here's the good, here's the past services, here's the drugs. But if you hurt people, we hold you responsible. And it's that combination that I think. And here's the thing though, let me just finally, because

I do have to leave soon. It's been a great conversation. I really am. I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate your thoughtful reading of my book, and it's it's wonderful. I'm happy to do that. But to me, I don't see some of these harder drugs and particularly mathem foment, as involving any rational desire or not. It's not you choosing anymore to use these drugs. These drugs are completely in charge of your life completely see that. I believe you.

All I'm saying is I remember when people said that about heroin and it turned out not to be all that true. I remember when people say that about crast Well, I have not met any heroin. But I'm saying back in the day, right, and so I'm saying, yeah, Fentinel's here, meth famies here. I agree with you. These seem much more problematic. But whether it negates everything that we've learned about drugs over the history of human society, I don't know.

We've never known a drug like Sentinel on the streets of the country, and I would say one like math and Fedoman either. I love some of your ideas, I honestly do, and I think that they're very well explained, but I also see what those ideas are translating into and what they then do is undermine any constituency for support for the ideas that you would have, and we're seeing that right now in San Francisco, in l A.

But Sam, I gotta, I gotta. I mean in the end, when you're asked where does this all come down to, and at one point you say the solutions will come only when Mexico and US work together, or you say Mexico must stand up and deal with corruption, and I'm look, you gotta be kidding me. When do you I mean? And then maybe the MESSI absolutely what needs to happen. Mexico has been has had endemic corruptions formation and it needs to do with that. But Sean, that's the point

you say something has to happen. You're saying, Ethan, all your things, but the politics aren't there. And I'm saying, sand what you come down to like Mexico, you just have to work together, crouching like when like after the Messiah comes the fifth time. I just you have to live in Mexico to know this can can happen. Of course, it does need a totally different perspective from the United

States as well. We have to understand the importance of collaboration with Mexico sees with collaboration with the United States, and that that is too many parts of Mexico. That is an enormously beneficial thing. Now there are people who will still go back to the same Yankee go home kind of idea. But to me, this is fundamental, fundamental, It's fundamental from Mexico. The people that will benefit most

from those Mexicans, not Americans. I don't see it. And as you point out, we definitely needed a different president than the one we had before. We definitely need a different president charge in Mexico. Yeah, but I say, given as you say, these drugs can be produced anywhere. The materials are widely available underground canvas are. But it's a

very different thing. It's a very different thing when those drugs are produced right next to you in a country which which you have a free trade agreement and two thousand mile border. That's a very different thing. We didn't get to mass coverage of the United States with China sending in pounds of funnel through the mail. Yeah, but then again, there is the Internet, and there is the dark net, and there are these ever growing number of

designer drugs. Yeah, but you're you're talking about but again you're you're I forgive me even but you're you're sounding now like the people every time there's a mass shooting. I've covered seven mouse shootings, by the way in my career. Okay, every time there's a mass shooting, people proposed we should do this, we do that. And then argument is it will never solve the problem. No, it won't solve the problem.

It's not on when zero, or it'll go a long way to curtailing the problem, making it a little bit more manageable. Form and constituencies for more action, etcetera, etcetera. Now you bring up the point you talk about analogy to I think was the tobacco or alcohol, and you point out some one of the people you interview talks

about the need to add friction to the system. So we know in the areas of tobacco control and alcohol control that if when you impose higher tax at the time and place restrictions, it actually does make some difference, but the cost of imposing those restrictions are fairly minimal. There's an aggressive effect on people who are heavy consumers, for better and for worse. But when it comes to a prohibitionist system, imposing friction is much less cost free.

It not just that it costs a lot of money and that in early drains billions of dollars, but that when you do that, you generate dynamics in the black

market that creates also alters their problems as well. And so I'm saying that the notion of that we need to keep the friction of the system, given the evident failures on the supply side for so long, so long, in my view, it seems to me we should be shifting vastly overwhelmingly to the demand side in the harmyduction side of this day that ultimately, with more criminalization, with more legalization, you get more far more use of varied intial struction, and I don't think there's a safe way.

There's not. I don't believe it there's a safe way. Actually use sentinel not necessary. Look at marijuana and we don't see atolesta used going up. We see it going up among elder people like people our age, and maybe they're switching it out for alcohol. So it's not necessarily the case that happens. It is to say that a pragmatic, sensible regulatory policy needs a lot more room to run. While we acknowledge the frustration as it may well be. But what I say a hundred percent correct, I don't.

I don't. I don't argue with you on that at all. But what I have seen when this gets into the area of real world policy implementation is it's a complete goddamn disaster. Look at San Francisco with the with their d A there, it's just insane what's going on in that town and the guys saying with the guy in in l A. I I don't disagree with the fundamental desire and some of the policies you're talking about, but they have to be implemented in a way that people

can point to and say that as a success. I know Iancisco and l I may have gone far too far one way, but when you look at what America did with mass incarceration and response to drunk hysteria, if you look at world correctors, any sorts of things. Anyway, listen, I know you gotta go. I gotta go. I have loved our conversation. I really like to talk with you, Matt sometimes. Well we'll meet in person and have some uh some. I'll have some tea, you have some coffee.

I look forward to that, all right. Brother. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends about it, or you can write us a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share your own stories, comings and ideas, then leave us a message at one eight three three seven seven nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com,

or find me on Twitter at Ethan Nadelman. You can also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by me Ethan Nadelman's produced by Noam Osband and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel, Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams and Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman. Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks

to Avi Brios, Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week, in celebration of four twenty, I'll be talking with Chef Nicky Stewart, one of America's great cannabis chefs who's been curating dinners for Dave Chappelle, Snoop Dogg and many other celebrities.

The relationship with cannabis and food and what I feel like it should be with everyone, even if you're just a novice, is to be able to have cannabis as an ingredient in your pantry, in your home and not be afraid of adding it to food or any sort of wellness regiment in regards to just being a complete, whole, holistic like person and keeping that in the vibe. Subscribe to Psychoactive now see it, don't miss it.