February 27, 2025 • 35 mins
The fentanyl crisis represents one of America's most pressing public health emergencies, one that has affected countless families and communities across the country. In this engaging episode with Dr. Robert Marbut, we explore the alarming statistics surrounding fentanyl's impact, which has become a leading cause of death, eclipsing even the toll from warfare. Dr. Marbut, a distinguished expert on homelessness and addiction, unpacks the connection between structural issues like mental health and substance use, shedding light on the intricacies of these intertwined crises.
Throughout our conversation, we delve into how societal factors such as loneliness and consumer culture contribute to higher rates of fentanyl use and addiction. Dr. Marbut emphasizes the importance of reclaiming family dynamics in the fight against addiction, noting that two-thirds of the experts pointed to the need for strengthening family bonds as a crucial step toward alleviating these issues.
Listeners gain unique insights into the making of the documentary “Fentanyl: Death Incorporated,” which aims to bring these discussions to a broader audience. Dr. Marbutt shares behind-the-scenes anecdotes that underscore the power of storytelling as a means to foster empathy and inspire action.
This episode isn't just about statistics; it's an urgent call to consider how we can collectively change our response to the crisis. By fostering a culture of connection, understanding, and accountability, we stand a better chance against this existential threat. Join us in this important discussion and explore how you can be part of the solution.
Subscribe for more insightful discussions on drug policy, community action, and strategies to tackle addiction head-on. Don’t forget to leave a review and share this episode with someone who can help raise awareness.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yes or no?
Do you believe nicotine is notaddictive?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I believe nicotine is not addictive.
Yes, Congressman, cigarettesand nicotine clearly do not meet
the classic definitions ofaddiction.
I don't believe that nicotinefor our products are addictive?
I believe nicotine is notaddictive.
I believe that nicotine is notaddictive.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hi everyone, this is Luke Niferatos.
I'm your host of the DrugReport podcast and thank you for
joining us again.
Again, this is made possible byour two sponsoring
organizations, that is, sam,smart Approaches to Marijuana,
as well as FDPS, the Foundationfor Drug Policy Solutions.
Those two organizations makethis podcast and all of them
possible, and I want to thankyou all for joining us for
another episode and apologizefor the hiatus.
(00:39):
Unfortunately, both I and myfamily have been subject to the
you know, I will call themplagues of Egypt at this point
all the illnesses circulatingaround these days, so my voice
has been totally out ofcommission.
It's great to have my voiceback a little bit, but you'll
probably notice it's a littleoff, so bear with me on this.
So, without further ado, I'mreally excited about the guest
(01:01):
we have on the podcast today.
He is a really renowned experton homelessness and now fentanyl
nationally, so I'm going toread his bio.
It's Dr Robert Marbutt, and heis a renowned expert on
homelessness and a senior fellowof the Discovery Institute
Center on Wealth and Poverty.
Dr Marbutt has a PhD inpolitical behavior and American
(01:21):
political institutions, and hiscareer has been marked by
bipartisanship, having served asa chief of staff for San
Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros inthe 1980s, as a White House
fellow under George HW Bush andmost recently as the executive
director of the US InteragencyCouncil on Homelessness from
2019 to 2021.
So he served for both PresidentTrump and President Biden and
(01:43):
their administrations.
Additionally, he served on theboard of directors of the United
States Olympic Committee from1992 to 2004.
So, dr Marbutt, thank you somuch for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Thank you so much for having me and, more importantly
, thank you for caring about thefentanyl crisis.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You bet.
So obviously our organizationsare working on drug policy, you
know, globally working onfentanyl and marijuana and
everything else in between.
And so, dr Morabot, you knowI'd love to hear you talk a
little bit about.
So we're here today to talkabout your documentary that
you're the senior producer for.
It's called Fentanyl DeathIncorporated really powerful
(02:22):
documentary on the fentanylcrisis and what the country's
facing as it relates to thatcrisis.
So before we get into thatthough before we kind of dive
into that documentary, I'd loveto know you started out working
on homelessness nationally.
Talk to me about thatexperience and then how it led
to your interest in the fentanylcrisis.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, when you look at homelessness, there's no way
to talk about homelessnesswithout talking about substance
use disorders and addiction.
That you just can't.
75% of the street-levelhomelessness in America has some
sort of substance use disorderand that is based off the
largest study ever done by thePublic Policy Lab Not a
(03:04):
right-wing think tank, actuallya left-wing think tank, a
combination of UCLA and UCBerkeley and they did the
largest study ever of thehomelessness community and 75%
had in their clinical chartsserious substance use disorder,
(03:24):
more often than not with theco-contributing untreated mental
illness.
So there was a lot ofself-medicating going on.
But what was even a biggersurprise in this is 50% of that
study self-reported.
That substance use disorder wasdirectly the loss of their
housing, and anytime you get aself-report north of 50, I think
(03:49):
it was 51%.
That's amazing because we allknow that those sorts of surveys
under report.
And so that's to me how I wentfrom homelessness into prior to
fentanyl it was meth, coke,crack, k2 spice, but then now
I've moved, now it's really justfentanyl now.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, it's really obviously a dangerously potent
drug that is wreaking carnageacross American families.
So talk to me about the journey, then, that you made so you
identified this trend washappening.
Talk to me about the journeyfrom you're working on
homelessness, where did you thengo?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
And then, how did you fall into this documentary?
Well, when I started working onhomelessness, you just start to
realize if you don't deal withthe root causes, if you just
deal with the bandaid, I lost myhouse, I lost my job, I lost my
car.
You're not going to solve it.
So if I could get your car back, I could get you some housing
back, I might even get you a jobsomewhere else, but then you're
going to lose those again.
(04:51):
So if you really want toaddress homelessness in the
right way, where it's long term,moving people towards
self-sufficiency, you have todeal with substance abuse.
You have to deal with substanceabuse.
And how I jumped from sort ofbeing a wonky nerdy, you know,
(05:14):
white paper writer and all thatand you need that.
I mean, I don't want to takeaway from that, but I was
meeting with a senator while Iwas still at the White House and
he's a good friend.
I met somebody I really admired, really trusted, you know,
really thought well on this, andI made a comment about fentanyl
.
This is about four and a halfyears ago and I said fentanyl is
(05:37):
starting to really take overthe street away from, and I
specifically mentioned meth andhe said, yeah, fentanyl is just
a stronger version of meth.
And I'm like here's a senatorwho's on the right committee,
who's friendly, I mean, you knowhe's a good guy.
I don't want to name names toembarrass, but fentanyl and meth
(06:01):
are almost opposite sides offamily and for those who don't
know, meth is like sort of likehyperactive.
You know anything in the?
You know?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
It's a stimulant.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Stimulant world.
I mean it's like caffeine times1,000 times.
And fentanyl actually paralyzesyour chest cavity.
Without getting too technicalabout it.
It paralyzes your chest cavity.
That's why you see the fentanylbend or the fentanyl fold,
where somebody's standing up andthey're bent over and their
(06:35):
chest cavity is paralyzed.
And then that affects yourheart.
It slows your heart rate downto a point where sometimes you
die because it stops your heartrate.
And the same thing with yourlungs.
So it slows your lungsbreathing capacity.
It paralyzes your chest cavityand slows your heart rate down
to a point where many people diebecause you either stop
(06:58):
breathing or the heart stopsbeating or both.
And so I realized I wrote allthese white papers, I was
sending it in to him and hisstaff and he said a comment like
that and I go.
I now realize that white paperscan only move people so much
(07:18):
and that storytelling andHollywood movies and
documentaries are the way to thefuture to start moving people
and storytelling in shorterformats.
And so that's where I reallyrealized I need to make that
jump and still be grounded infact, and use the white papers
(07:41):
as the framework or the skeletalframework.
But if you don't havestorytelling with it.
You're not going to move thegeneral population.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That's great.
So tell me, you know, obviouslyit's one thing to say, okay, we
need to do more broader-basededucation, we need to kind of go
back to the basics.
A film would be helpful, butyou know it's pretty hard to
pull off a, you know, reallyprofessional and beautiful film
like the one that you've pulledoff.
So talk to us about how thatkind of came together.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well, the great thing is when Warner Brothers, we
signed a tentative distributiondeal or a framework of a deal on
June 28th of last year and, bythe way, warner says this is the
fastest movie or documentarythey've ever seen developed and
I got a team together and I saidthis is about life and death.
(08:31):
We have a chance to save a lotof lives, both from a broader
policy what we need to do butalso at a family level how to
help families deal withaddiction inside their family or
in friends, and so we reallywanted to do that.
So I got a group of peopletogether and literally the day
(08:52):
we signed with Warner Brothers,I call up our director of
photographer in our editor and Isaid all right, we got to have
this done by October 15th.
He says July 1 is this weekendand we don't have a single
person set up to be interviewed.
How in the world do you thinkyou're going to do it?
And so we decided to donormally a documentary you take
(09:16):
a crew of seven or eight peopleand you move them around the
country to meet with one person.
So I had a hunch that so manypeople were dedicated on this
issue.
If we did it a littledifferently and do one shoot a
week for four weeks.
So we shoot all day long, picka place, change the background
in the set, and it's a differentway to shooting a documentary
(09:38):
and it might become the waypeople start thinking about it
differently.
So instead of moving a crewaround, I put a crew in a
location.
Then we set it up and StephenWoolworth, our director, and I
sort of like hey, this may be,you know, we were doing it
because out of need andnecessity, which often creates
(09:58):
innovation, and so we called upeverybody we were going to
interview and said we're goingto shoot in San Diego, we're
going to shoot in this location,this location, when can you
come?
And of everybody we wanted tointerview, we got them
interviewed and they flew in.
So we would fly them in ratherthan a whole crew.
(10:19):
And what was so unbelievableabout it and this wasn't
intended is the first day aperson come in and then they
listen to the next.
And then another person came inearly and they listened.
People weren't leaving our set.
Everybody said, oh, I have areal tight schedule, I can only
come in for an hour, and byabout 1.30 in the afternoon we
(10:43):
had five or six people who hadprior been interviewed and
they're watching all theinterviews and we started
realizing we had some of thesmartest people in the world,
literally on fentanyl.
So after Stephen and I asked thequestions, we turned to the
peanut gallery.
That were people we interviewedearlier in the day and said, do
you have any questions?
And so we had to get thembehind the camera so people
(11:06):
would keep the sight line.
And so we had other guestsinterviewing the other
interviewees and it was the mostincredible thing, and to a T,
each of our four major shootings.
They all set up subgroups tostay in touch and so we had
people from foreign intelligenceofficers you know intelligence
(11:27):
world that we had to hide.
We had, you know, fbi, dea,local law enforcement, state law
enforcement policymakers.
We had two fentanyl doctorslike research anesthesiologists.
So we have parents and familywho sadly lost people to
(11:47):
fentanyl and so we had the sortof science, the chemistry, the
law enforcement, the familystory, the loneliness story,
psychologists, and they allstarted cross-pollinating and it
made the movie in thedocumentary way better than we
could have ever imagined.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And it sounds like just an explosion of creativity
and kind of organic informationjust coming out of that process.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
It was amazing.
And then within within 28 dayswe had had all the principal
photography shot.
Now we had some pieces weneeded to pick up and we knew we
needed to do.
You know, up front we had wewanted to do one little sort of
micro feature.
So we went to Arkansas just forthat one.
But we got everything shot in amonth and our my director was
(12:36):
like.
He was like I can't believe wegot the in in everybody.
We sort of picked five people inevery category and we said, all
right, we hope to get two ofthe top five In every category.
We got the top two person andin some categories we were
worried we weren't going to get.
So we invited like maybe fourdeep.
Everybody said yes, everybodysaid yes.
(13:00):
And the only one person we werehoping to shoot was the deputy
police chief of Mexico and hewas on our list and sadly he was
executed by the cartels whilewe were filming our project and
he was the only one.
So we get, we talk a little bitabout him and sort of honor him
(13:22):
for what his hero.
I mean, this is an incrediblehero.
If you're in Mexico and you'restanding up to the cartels, we
need to thank you andacknowledge you, and he was the
only person we didn't getinterviewed that was on our list
.
Everybody else came in and wasinterviewed and we had a
fabulous diversity of talentthat are so much smarter than
(13:46):
any of the crew or theproduction team was.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
That's fantastic.
So I want to get further inthis documentary, but real quick
, because I know everyone'swondering this at this point,
which is where can they watchthis?
Where can they find it?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
We're about ready to go to national streaming and
we're going to be in theatersthe next six weeks for like a
one night only theaterexperience in New York, starting
next Friday, and then we'regoing to go in and do Atlanta,
then Nashville, little Rock andwe're going to move that around,
and then we're going to begoing to national streaming.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Fantastic, okay, okay .
So everyone's got to eithercheck out those cities and look
up the documentary I'm assuming,and you know they can find out
where it's being played or, um,sit tight for the streaming
services, which I know it'sgoing to be really exciting to
to be able to watch that, andthat should be happening within
about 68 weeks here and you'llsee the plan that that warner
brothers has is.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
It's going to be you won't miss it type of deal.
It will be everywhere.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
That's exciting, that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
And so Fentanyl Death Incorporated.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, fentanyl Death Incorporated Okay, great.
So, given we can't all watch itand get all the big themes out
of it at this point, can youkind of tell us what you think
are some of the key themes ofthe documentary that it explores
and maybe the big messages thatyou want folks to take away
from this?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Well, the big message is fentanyl is an existential
threat to our country, and somepeople have made fun of me
because I've I've remind peoplethat fentanyl has killed more
people in America than Mussolini, tojo and Hitler combined, and
most people stop and go no way.
(15:27):
You know, in terms of AmericansNow, worldwide, that's a
different deal.
But when you look at it, moreAmerican men and women have died
from fentanyl overdose andpoisoning in the last four and a
half years than all Americanmen and women in services to our
last hundred years of war.
(15:48):
So if you start at World War II, korea, vietnam, global War on
Terror, gulf War I, gulf War II,afghanistan, iraq, kosovo and a
few smaller UN actions, add upthe entire death in theater and
directly to theater.
So we're using the wider KIAterm Still more people have died
(16:11):
in fentanyl in the last fourand a half years than 100 years
of Americans at war.
And if that doesn't get yourattention, it is just crazy, and
I know you've been doing thisfor a long time.
And the death rate insidesubstance use disorders
basically, has increased sevento eight times just in the last
(16:35):
five years because of fentanyl.
And so then that gets you to.
What do you do about it.
One you got to get tough onChina.
China is bringing in theprecursors.
You got to get tough.
You got to get tough on theMexican cartels.
Hopefully we'll get anarrangement with Mexico, the way
we did Colombia to go afterPablo Escobar.
You need that level ofintegration and you don't want
(16:58):
to do it unilaterally unless youhave to.
You might have to, but you hopeto have an integrated program.
The other is brand new, justduring the time of our shooting
of the movie is how much hasgone through Canada now?
The biker gangs in Canada arereplacing the cartels in many
ways and the US-Canadian borderis the longest linear border in
(17:22):
the world between two countries,a land border.
So we've got to focus on Canada, it can't just be Mexico only.
And then we've got to go afterthe local gangs who are doing
the local distribution.
And finally and I know this isvery much up the line that
you've spent a lot of time.
You and I have known each othertwo or three years now and you
(17:44):
talk a lot about it.
Why do Americans, citizens whoare 4.25% of the world, you know
(18:04):
, less K2, spice and everythingup?
United States citizensgenerally are consuming 30 to
40%.
Right now we're consuming about38% of the fentanyl worldwide,
yet we're under 5% of thepopulation.
We got to have an honestconversation about why United
States has gotten to that pointand the Mexican president who we
(18:31):
were trying to film and weended up getting he gave us some
great clips.
He points out and I think thisis very important if America
keeps over-consuming at our rate, he said I'll knock that, and
this is the prior president ofMexico.
He said if I can take down onecartel, another cartel is going
to pop up and fill that supplyUnless you, united States, get
(18:53):
serious about the internal.
Why are we over consuming thesedrugs?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, and I think you make great points there,
because we have to have thesupply reduction, but there's
multiple legs of the stool andthe stool can't stand without
all the legs.
So we have to do a better jobwith supply reduction because it
is bringing poisonous chemicalsand precursors into our country
that are contributing to this.
But we also have to deal, asyou allude to, with the demand
(19:20):
as well, and how do we deal withthat demand?
And I think you make a greatpoint there and so love to kind
of hear your thoughts on kind of.
You know you make a great point.
You know why is America such amassive consumer of drugs?
And it's interesting.
You know there was some talkthe other day about how our
economy 70% of the Americaneconomy is a consumer economy.
(19:42):
You know we're not.
So the vast majority of oureconomy is based on consumption
and people buying goods andservices, and so we have an
environment that is just pushingconsumption.
And you blend that with whatyou were talking about earlier
about the loneliness andisolation, and then you have our
mental health crisis, whereit's pushing people to consume
(20:03):
as a way to fill some of thoseholes.
So I'd love to, I guess, justhear you opine a little bit on
that dynamic and how that'sdriving demand in this crisis.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And this is that fifth conversation that we
failed to have too much.
We need to have thisconversation as much as we're
talking about the Mexicancartels, the Canadian biker
gangs and the China.
They all have to talk about itand part of the United States'
issue when we got into it withthe real experts and think of
(20:34):
this in terms of homelessness.
Most of the people who areco-presenting so they have an
untreated mental illness andthey have a substance abuse.
Most started out with untreatedmental illness and became
self-medicating.
That's the real truth.
It's a myth to think youstarted out as a substance use
(20:56):
and developed a mental illness.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
That's a powerful statistic.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, there's probably 6%, 7%, 8% that started
out as a recreational drug userand then developed a mental
illness.
But that's the exception, thatis not the rule.
So why do we have a-funded bedsfor mental illness in America?
(21:30):
And one side of the aisle saidwe're going to stop funding,
that we don't think that's apriority.
Government should not be in themental illness game.
So one side started doing that.
Then the other side said wedon't want to criminalize mental
health, we want todeinstitutionalize mental health
.
They were watching when it FlewOver the Cuckoo's Nest, thought
(21:51):
it was a documentary rather thanfiction and they went to try to
close down all mental healthbeds.
Now the place that's looselydeveloped around.
When it Flew Over the Cuckoo'snest there were two of them but
one was out on Long Island andI've been out to that site and
it is a creepy site.
I mean it is creepy and thatplace needed to be closed down.
(22:16):
But you don't close down theentire system, you fix the
system, you don't close it down.
So think about our country is 40to 50% bigger in population,
higher number than in 1950.
And during that time we've gonefrom 500,000 government funded
(22:37):
beds to under 30,000 beds andall are forensic, meaning if law
enforcement, judge doesn't putyou there, you are not there.
And so some people argue ournumber of beds is closer to zero
.
But I think we got to be honestbecause that would get you
tripped up if we don't talkabout the real facts.
(22:58):
But we've gone from a halfmillion beds to under 30,000
beds, even though our country ismuch, much bigger.
Where did they go?
To the street, to jails, tosome extent state prisons.
That should worry us because weall know how bad that is.
(23:27):
We know that doesn't work, weknow that's not best practices
by any imagination, but that'swhere we have come, and so we
need to bring treatment andrecovery back.
I have a mantra and I knowyou've heard it before and I
really believe it, and to me itdrives my policy and it drives
(23:50):
like if I work in a local cityor big policy.
Right now in America we'remaking it so easy to get high
and so hard to get treatment.
We need to flip it on the headand make it easy to get
treatment and hard to get high,and if we are only to do one
thing, that's it.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Right, and there are so many policy instruments that
come with that right.
It's the demand reduction we'vetalked about in terms of the
borders and foreign issues, butthat's also at home, reducing
the supply of availablecommercial addictive drugs,
which, as you know, is what ourorganizations work on.
We shouldn't have legalmarijuana, psychedelics and
whatever other drug is next onAdvocates Playbook to become
(24:31):
legally and widely available andadvertised.
And so I think, as long as wecontinue to prey upon those
behaviors and I think thatstatistic you gave is a really
critical one that so many of thefolks who are now either dying
of fentanyl overdoses or are nowsuffering of homelessness and
addiction started with anunderlying mental health
disorder that they are nowtreating.
(24:51):
And you know I couldn't helpbut think of, you know, medical
marijuana, where we have peoplesaying, well, this is treating
whatever my mental health issuesare.
And now we're seeing that withpsychedelics as well, where
people are self-medicating theirmental health disorders and, in
many cases, are making it worse, and so I think that you know
that's a really critical point.
I think that a lot of peopleare missing.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
And doctor-led, based off of best practices treatment
is what we need.
The last thing you need isself-medication from people who
have no idea what they're doing,or it's political bumper stick
jargon.
You know, let's let you know,weed kills nobody, and so it
(25:35):
becomes a bumper sticker and itbecomes political jargon.
That is the worst thing weshould be doing.
But we also should realize whyis our country over consuming?
And some of that is you know we, we've done so poorly on
untreated mental illness.
Some of it is we're a consumerbased society that you hit just
(25:58):
perfectly, set that up and thenyou add our country is sort of a
uh, you know, take one pill foreverything.
You got a learning disability.
You take a pill.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
You got the easy button solution.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
You take a pill and, rather than dealing with, let's
go to yoga, let's go to workout,let's go to the gym, let's get
better sleep, let's eat better,let's hydrate, let's take a pill
instead and try to find theeasy, fast way out.
And I think all that togetherand then you combine that with
(26:31):
the epidemic of loneliness andin some ways, you know these
things, you know these phones,you know one of the things we
talked about, a couple of ourspeakers talked about in our
documentary, is the need to putyour phones down.
Have family dinners togetherwhere you talk to each other,
you listen to each other, you doit and my family and my kids,
(26:56):
like at first, like you're like,but you know, dad, you're being
too strict.
You know my girlfriend'scalling, my boyfriend's calling.
I'm like, put your phones downto a point now that they like it
so much.
Your phones down to a point nowthat they like it so much when,
when, like I'll, my phonestarts ringing.
The other day my one of mydaughters like she said, hey,
(27:16):
put your phone down.
You know you can get it whenyou get upstairs.
You know we're doing familytime now.
I thought, hey, it's working.
I'm now being called out by mydaughter on on the need to put
the phone down, called out by mydaughter on the need to put the
phone down, and so we need tocommunicate more and listen more
in our families and friends,and that also helps part of it.
(27:37):
So I don't think it's one thingonly.
You know, it's a package ofthings.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
It's a package of things for sure.
And actually you know, thisconversation around isolation
and kind of finding ways formeaningful connection and
meaningful outlets to kind ofavoid getting into that spiral
of disorder made me think of Idon't know if you were following
the news a few days ago there'sa town in Kentucky that is
using some of the opioidabatement funds, based on the
Icelandic model of prevention,providing other kinds of
(28:06):
community outlets for people,and so what they did was part of
the expenditures, a very smallpercentage of it.
It was $15,000.
They put in to build an iceskating rink for kids to go and
meet up at, but they wereactually taking some flack in
the press for doing that insteadof just purchasing around 330
doses of Narcan with that moneyand I just was scratching my
(28:29):
head at the story, thinking it's$15,000.
It's not the entire sum offunds and what they're trying to
do is invest in the problem ofisolation by fixing it, by
providing opportunities forcommunities to come together.
And it'd be one thing ifthey're spending all the money
on it, but they're spending justI mean, it's not nothing, but
just $15,000 of that money toprovide an outlet for kids.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And if you can get a thousand kids to go, that's way
better than all these otherthings that are talked about.
And I got to tell you some ofthe opioid money on the West
Coast in particular and I hateto pick on California,
washington State and Oregon, buta lot of that.
(29:11):
They're talking about moneygoing towards safe consumption
of drugs.
So we're using money from asettlement that missaid drugs
when it be addictive and itwouldn't be so powerful and it
ended up being more deadly thanever and more addictive than
ever.
So the why that came with it sowe're going to use that
(29:35):
settlement to give you more ofanother type of drug is just
mind boggling to me, and it goesback to my mantra why are we
making it easier to get high?
We need to make it harder toget high and easier to get
treatment.
So any dollar of the opioidsettlement that goes to healthy
alternatives and treatment to meis just a way better use than
(30:00):
saying we're going to do theclean needles.
We're going to do this and thatand harm reduction has been
hijacked, now that to me it'senabling drug use in most parts
of the country, and I reallythink if we have compassion
without accountability itbecomes enablement.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yep, you're absolutely right about that and
that's a principle that you'vestuck to throughout your years
of service to the country and wevery much appreciate that you
have.
So I know we're kind of runninglow on time, but I wanted to
give you a chance to maybe sharewhat you thought was maybe the
most powerful story that comesout of your documentary that I
guess really left an impact onyou and you want to share with
our listeners before we wrap ourpodcast.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Gosh, that it's hard to pick one because we had so
many family members we talked toabout the loss of their child.
Sometimes it was addiction,sometimes it was overdose,
sometimes it was poisoning.
We have a mom that we have inthe documentary whose
three-year-old son died becausethere was fentanyl dust on a
(31:07):
countertop and they put food onand and, probably with the
cookie, picked it up and ate it.
So the the sad stories of thefamily are are just so powerful
and everyone's a littledifferent and every family
member you know it, it it just.
And so much of it is poisoningand accidental.
(31:28):
Some of it's addiction, I getthat, but those were all sad.
The one thing that was reallyshocking as we outlined the
movie and we sort of said, whatdo we want to get?
And we wanted to make sure itwas one hour so we can play it
in classrooms.
And, to our absolute surprise,we interviewed 65, 68 top
(31:51):
experts in their field and allwe asked was a question if you
were king or queen of the day,what would you do to make change
?
What policy, what things wouldyou do?
And we're expecting everybodyto say get tough on China and go
after the cartels and go afterthe biking, and we got some of
that.
And go after the cartels and goafter the bike gangs, and we
(32:11):
got some of that.
But two-thirds of the people weasked that question across the
board all brought up breakdownof the family.
We weren't asking that question.
We didn't ask about breakingdown of the family, but that's
what two-thirds of our expertsacross all sorts of
sub-disciplines on the fentanylcrisis came back and said we
need to rebuild the family.
(32:32):
We need to have the familylisten to each other, be there
for each other, spend qualitytime with each other and
quantity time not just qualitybut quantity time and have us be
there for each other.
That was a surprise to usbecause it came from our
intelligence officers, it camefrom our anesthesiologists.
(32:55):
Of course it came from families.
Of course it came from thepsychology, but it also came
from the FBI and the DEA and thelocal law enforcement.
And that was probably ourbiggest aha moment is how
important rebuilding thoseconnections and it could be a
very formal, traditional family,but it could also be a family
(33:18):
made up of deep, deep friendsand rebuilding that connectivity
.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
That's beautiful.
What a powerful conclusion tothis.
Thank you, dr Marbutt, for thegreat work you're doing.
And again, everyone.
It's Fentanyl, deathIncorporated.
It's going to be coming tostreaming services soon.
It's going to be in some selectcities for theatrical showings.
Dr Marbutt, before we leave,can you share with folks where
they can find you online any waythey can follow the work that
you're doing nationally?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
If you go to fentanyldeathincorporatedcom or
fdicom FDI movie there are acouple of ways you can get to us
and just type in that and youwill get our website and from
there you can see where ourscreenings are.
You can get tickets, you'llknow what we're doing on the
streaming services.
When we get to there you cansee some features from the
(34:07):
movies and we really feature ourexperts and I got to think you
know we got 60 of the top ineach subfield of this issue.
And the coolest thing that I'veenjoyed on the movie is
everywhere we've showed it.
You know we've shown it to a lotof experts, shown it to a lot
(34:30):
of experts to a T.
I thought they were all goingto come in and say I heard that,
heard that, and I was hopingthey would say oh, you packaged
it nicely.
But every single expert we'veshown it to they said I had no
idea.
And then they have a take thatthey knew their area well but
they didn't know another part ofthe issue well.
And that's so exciting whenreal experts in the field are
(34:50):
saying we learned something.
We learned something different.
We learned something outsideour lane.
We also learned how importantwe all need to.
All these subgroups need to beworking together Because if you
do this with law enforcementalone, it will not work.
They're a critical piece, butthey're not the only piece to
make this, to solve this issue.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
That's great.
Well, thank you so much forjoining us at the Drug Report
Podcast.
Keep up the good work, DrMarbutt, and thank you to our
listeners, as always, for yoursupport.
Please leave us a review andfive-star rating.
We always appreciate that, andhave a great rest of your week.
Yes or no?
Do you believe nicotine is notaddictive?
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I believe nicotine is not addictive.
Yes, Congressman, cigarettesand nicotine clearly do not meet
the classic definitions ofaddiction.
I don't believe that nicotinefor our products are addictive?
I believe nicotine is notaddictive.
I believe that nicotine is notaddictive.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hi everyone, this is Luke Niferatos.
I'm your host of the DrugReport podcast and thank you for
joining us again.
Again, this is made possible byour two sponsoring
organizations, that is, sam,smart Approaches to Marijuana,
as well as FDPS, the Foundationfor Drug Policy Solutions.
Those two organizations makethis podcast and all of them
possible, and I want to thankyou all for joining us for
another episode and apologizefor the hiatus.
(00:39):
Unfortunately, both I and myfamily have been subject to the
you know, I will call themplagues of Egypt at this point
all the illnesses circulatingaround these days, so my voice
has been totally out ofcommission.
It's great to have my voiceback a little bit, but you'll
probably notice it's a littleoff, so bear with me on this.
So, without further ado, I'mreally excited about the guest
(01:01):
we have on the podcast today.
He is a really renowned experton homelessness and now fentanyl
nationally, so I'm going toread his bio.
It's Dr Robert Marbutt, and heis a renowned expert on
homelessness and a senior fellowof the Discovery Institute
Center on Wealth and Poverty.
Dr Marbutt has a PhD inpolitical behavior and American
(01:21):
political institutions, and hiscareer has been marked by
bipartisanship, having served asa chief of staff for San
Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros inthe 1980s, as a White House
fellow under George HW Bush andmost recently as the executive
director of the US InteragencyCouncil on Homelessness from
2019 to 2021.
So he served for both PresidentTrump and President Biden and
(01:43):
their administrations.
Additionally, he served on theboard of directors of the United
States Olympic Committee from1992 to 2004.
So, dr Marbutt, thank you somuch for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Thank you so much for having me and, more importantly
, thank you for caring about thefentanyl crisis.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You bet.
So obviously our organizationsare working on drug policy, you
know, globally working onfentanyl and marijuana and
everything else in between.
And so, dr Morabot, you knowI'd love to hear you talk a
little bit about.
So we're here today to talkabout your documentary that
you're the senior producer for.
It's called Fentanyl DeathIncorporated really powerful
(02:22):
documentary on the fentanylcrisis and what the country's
facing as it relates to thatcrisis.
So before we get into thatthough before we kind of dive
into that documentary, I'd loveto know you started out working
on homelessness nationally.
Talk to me about thatexperience and then how it led
to your interest in the fentanylcrisis.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Well, when you look at homelessness, there's no way
to talk about homelessnesswithout talking about substance
use disorders and addiction.
That you just can't.
75% of the street-levelhomelessness in America has some
sort of substance use disorderand that is based off the
largest study ever done by thePublic Policy Lab Not a
(03:04):
right-wing think tank, actuallya left-wing think tank, a
combination of UCLA and UCBerkeley and they did the
largest study ever of thehomelessness community and 75%
had in their clinical chartsserious substance use disorder,
(03:24):
more often than not with theco-contributing untreated mental
illness.
So there was a lot ofself-medicating going on.
But what was even a biggersurprise in this is 50% of that
study self-reported.
That substance use disorder wasdirectly the loss of their
housing, and anytime you get aself-report north of 50, I think
(03:49):
it was 51%.
That's amazing because we allknow that those sorts of surveys
under report.
And so that's to me how I wentfrom homelessness into prior to
fentanyl it was meth, coke,crack, k2 spice, but then now
I've moved, now it's really justfentanyl now.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, it's really obviously a dangerously potent
drug that is wreaking carnageacross American families.
So talk to me about the journey, then, that you made so you
identified this trend washappening.
Talk to me about the journeyfrom you're working on
homelessness, where did you thengo?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
And then, how did you fall into this documentary?
Well, when I started working onhomelessness, you just start to
realize if you don't deal withthe root causes, if you just
deal with the bandaid, I lost myhouse, I lost my job, I lost my
car.
You're not going to solve it.
So if I could get your car back, I could get you some housing
back, I might even get you a jobsomewhere else, but then you're
going to lose those again.
(04:51):
So if you really want toaddress homelessness in the
right way, where it's long term,moving people towards
self-sufficiency, you have todeal with substance abuse.
You have to deal with substanceabuse.
And how I jumped from sort ofbeing a wonky nerdy, you know,
(05:14):
white paper writer and all thatand you need that.
I mean, I don't want to takeaway from that, but I was
meeting with a senator while Iwas still at the White House and
he's a good friend.
I met somebody I really admired, really trusted, you know,
really thought well on this, andI made a comment about fentanyl
.
This is about four and a halfyears ago and I said fentanyl is
(05:37):
starting to really take overthe street away from, and I
specifically mentioned meth andhe said, yeah, fentanyl is just
a stronger version of meth.
And I'm like here's a senatorwho's on the right committee,
who's friendly, I mean, you knowhe's a good guy.
I don't want to name names toembarrass, but fentanyl and meth
(06:01):
are almost opposite sides offamily and for those who don't
know, meth is like sort of likehyperactive.
You know anything in the?
You know?
Speaker 1 (06:12):
It's a stimulant.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Stimulant world.
I mean it's like caffeine times1,000 times.
And fentanyl actually paralyzesyour chest cavity.
Without getting too technicalabout it.
It paralyzes your chest cavity.
That's why you see the fentanylbend or the fentanyl fold,
where somebody's standing up andthey're bent over and their
(06:35):
chest cavity is paralyzed.
And then that affects yourheart.
It slows your heart rate downto a point where sometimes you
die because it stops your heartrate.
And the same thing with yourlungs.
So it slows your lungsbreathing capacity.
It paralyzes your chest cavityand slows your heart rate down
to a point where many people diebecause you either stop
(06:58):
breathing or the heart stopsbeating or both.
And so I realized I wrote allthese white papers, I was
sending it in to him and hisstaff and he said a comment like
that and I go.
I now realize that white paperscan only move people so much
(07:18):
and that storytelling andHollywood movies and
documentaries are the way to thefuture to start moving people
and storytelling in shorterformats.
And so that's where I reallyrealized I need to make that
jump and still be grounded infact, and use the white papers
(07:41):
as the framework or the skeletalframework.
But if you don't havestorytelling with it.
You're not going to move thegeneral population.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That's great.
So tell me, you know, obviouslyit's one thing to say, okay, we
need to do more broader-basededucation, we need to kind of go
back to the basics.
A film would be helpful, butyou know it's pretty hard to
pull off a, you know, reallyprofessional and beautiful film
like the one that you've pulledoff.
So talk to us about how thatkind of came together.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well, the great thing is when Warner Brothers, we
signed a tentative distributiondeal or a framework of a deal on
June 28th of last year and, bythe way, warner says this is the
fastest movie or documentarythey've ever seen developed and
I got a team together and I saidthis is about life and death.
(08:31):
We have a chance to save a lotof lives, both from a broader
policy what we need to do butalso at a family level how to
help families deal withaddiction inside their family or
in friends, and so we reallywanted to do that.
So I got a group of peopletogether and literally the day
(08:52):
we signed with Warner Brothers,I call up our director of
photographer in our editor and Isaid all right, we got to have
this done by October 15th.
He says July 1 is this weekendand we don't have a single
person set up to be interviewed.
How in the world do you thinkyou're going to do it?
And so we decided to donormally a documentary you take
(09:16):
a crew of seven or eight peopleand you move them around the
country to meet with one person.
So I had a hunch that so manypeople were dedicated on this
issue.
If we did it a littledifferently and do one shoot a
week for four weeks.
So we shoot all day long, picka place, change the background
in the set, and it's a differentway to shooting a documentary
(09:38):
and it might become the waypeople start thinking about it
differently.
So instead of moving a crewaround, I put a crew in a
location.
Then we set it up and StephenWoolworth, our director, and I
sort of like hey, this may be,you know, we were doing it
because out of need andnecessity, which often creates
(09:58):
innovation, and so we called upeverybody we were going to
interview and said we're goingto shoot in San Diego, we're
going to shoot in this location,this location, when can you
come?
And of everybody we wanted tointerview, we got them
interviewed and they flew in.
So we would fly them in ratherthan a whole crew.
(10:19):
And what was so unbelievableabout it and this wasn't
intended is the first day aperson come in and then they
listen to the next.
And then another person came inearly and they listened.
People weren't leaving our set.
Everybody said, oh, I have areal tight schedule, I can only
come in for an hour, and byabout 1.30 in the afternoon we
(10:43):
had five or six people who hadprior been interviewed and
they're watching all theinterviews and we started
realizing we had some of thesmartest people in the world,
literally on fentanyl.
So after Stephen and I asked thequestions, we turned to the
peanut gallery.
That were people we interviewedearlier in the day and said, do
you have any questions?
And so we had to get thembehind the camera so people
(11:06):
would keep the sight line.
And so we had other guestsinterviewing the other
interviewees and it was the mostincredible thing, and to a T,
each of our four major shootings.
They all set up subgroups tostay in touch and so we had
people from foreign intelligenceofficers you know intelligence
(11:27):
world that we had to hide.
We had, you know, fbi, dea,local law enforcement, state law
enforcement policymakers.
We had two fentanyl doctorslike research anesthesiologists.
So we have parents and familywho sadly lost people to
(11:47):
fentanyl and so we had the sortof science, the chemistry, the
law enforcement, the familystory, the loneliness story,
psychologists, and they allstarted cross-pollinating and it
made the movie in thedocumentary way better than we
could have ever imagined.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And it sounds like just an explosion of creativity
and kind of organic informationjust coming out of that process.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
It was amazing.
And then within within 28 dayswe had had all the principal
photography shot.
Now we had some pieces weneeded to pick up and we knew we
needed to do.
You know, up front we had wewanted to do one little sort of
micro feature.
So we went to Arkansas just forthat one.
But we got everything shot in amonth and our my director was
(12:36):
like.
He was like I can't believe wegot the in in everybody.
We sort of picked five people inevery category and we said, all
right, we hope to get two ofthe top five In every category.
We got the top two person andin some categories we were
worried we weren't going to get.
So we invited like maybe fourdeep.
Everybody said yes, everybodysaid yes.
(13:00):
And the only one person we werehoping to shoot was the deputy
police chief of Mexico and hewas on our list and sadly he was
executed by the cartels whilewe were filming our project and
he was the only one.
So we get, we talk a little bitabout him and sort of honor him
(13:22):
for what his hero.
I mean, this is an incrediblehero.
If you're in Mexico and you'restanding up to the cartels, we
need to thank you andacknowledge you, and he was the
only person we didn't getinterviewed that was on our list
.
Everybody else came in and wasinterviewed and we had a
fabulous diversity of talentthat are so much smarter than
(13:46):
any of the crew or theproduction team was.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
That's fantastic.
So I want to get further inthis documentary, but real quick
, because I know everyone'swondering this at this point,
which is where can they watchthis?
Where can they find it?
Speaker 2 (13:59):
We're about ready to go to national streaming and
we're going to be in theatersthe next six weeks for like a
one night only theaterexperience in New York, starting
next Friday, and then we'regoing to go in and do Atlanta,
then Nashville, little Rock andwe're going to move that around,
and then we're going to begoing to national streaming.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Fantastic, okay, okay .
So everyone's got to eithercheck out those cities and look
up the documentary I'm assuming,and you know they can find out
where it's being played or, um,sit tight for the streaming
services, which I know it'sgoing to be really exciting to
to be able to watch that, andthat should be happening within
about 68 weeks here and you'llsee the plan that that warner
brothers has is.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
It's going to be you won't miss it type of deal.
It will be everywhere.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
That's exciting, that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
And so Fentanyl Death Incorporated.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, fentanyl Death Incorporated Okay, great.
So, given we can't all watch itand get all the big themes out
of it at this point, can youkind of tell us what you think
are some of the key themes ofthe documentary that it explores
and maybe the big messages thatyou want folks to take away
from this?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Well, the big message is fentanyl is an existential
threat to our country, and somepeople have made fun of me
because I've I've remind peoplethat fentanyl has killed more
people in America than Mussolini, tojo and Hitler combined, and
most people stop and go no way.
(15:27):
You know, in terms of AmericansNow, worldwide, that's a
different deal.
But when you look at it, moreAmerican men and women have died
from fentanyl overdose andpoisoning in the last four and a
half years than all Americanmen and women in services to our
last hundred years of war.
(15:48):
So if you start at World War II, korea, vietnam, global War on
Terror, gulf War I, gulf War II,afghanistan, iraq, kosovo and a
few smaller UN actions, add upthe entire death in theater and
directly to theater.
So we're using the wider KIAterm Still more people have died
(16:11):
in fentanyl in the last fourand a half years than 100 years
of Americans at war.
And if that doesn't get yourattention, it is just crazy, and
I know you've been doing thisfor a long time.
And the death rate insidesubstance use disorders
basically, has increased sevento eight times just in the last
(16:35):
five years because of fentanyl.
And so then that gets you to.
What do you do about it.
One you got to get tough onChina.
China is bringing in theprecursors.
You got to get tough.
You got to get tough on theMexican cartels.
Hopefully we'll get anarrangement with Mexico, the way
we did Colombia to go afterPablo Escobar.
You need that level ofintegration and you don't want
(16:58):
to do it unilaterally unless youhave to.
You might have to, but you hopeto have an integrated program.
The other is brand new, justduring the time of our shooting
of the movie is how much hasgone through Canada now?
The biker gangs in Canada arereplacing the cartels in many
ways and the US-Canadian borderis the longest linear border in
(17:22):
the world between two countries,a land border.
So we've got to focus on Canada, it can't just be Mexico only.
And then we've got to go afterthe local gangs who are doing
the local distribution.
And finally and I know this isvery much up the line that
you've spent a lot of time.
You and I have known each othertwo or three years now and you
(17:44):
talk a lot about it.
Why do Americans, citizens whoare 4.25% of the world, you know
(18:04):
, less K2, spice and everythingup?
United States citizensgenerally are consuming 30 to
40%.
Right now we're consuming about38% of the fentanyl worldwide,
yet we're under 5% of thepopulation.
We got to have an honestconversation about why United
States has gotten to that pointand the Mexican president who we
(18:31):
were trying to film and weended up getting he gave us some
great clips.
He points out and I think thisis very important if America
keeps over-consuming at our rate, he said I'll knock that, and
this is the prior president ofMexico.
He said if I can take down onecartel, another cartel is going
to pop up and fill that supplyUnless you, united States, get
(18:53):
serious about the internal.
Why are we over consuming thesedrugs?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, and I think you make great points there,
because we have to have thesupply reduction, but there's
multiple legs of the stool andthe stool can't stand without
all the legs.
So we have to do a better jobwith supply reduction because it
is bringing poisonous chemicalsand precursors into our country
that are contributing to this.
But we also have to deal, asyou allude to, with the demand
(19:20):
as well, and how do we deal withthat demand?
And I think you make a greatpoint there and so love to kind
of hear your thoughts on kind of.
You know you make a great point.
You know why is America such amassive consumer of drugs?
And it's interesting.
You know there was some talkthe other day about how our
economy 70% of the Americaneconomy is a consumer economy.
(19:42):
You know we're not.
So the vast majority of oureconomy is based on consumption
and people buying goods andservices, and so we have an
environment that is just pushingconsumption.
And you blend that with whatyou were talking about earlier
about the loneliness andisolation, and then you have our
mental health crisis, whereit's pushing people to consume
(20:03):
as a way to fill some of thoseholes.
So I'd love to, I guess, justhear you opine a little bit on
that dynamic and how that'sdriving demand in this crisis.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And this is that fifth conversation that we
failed to have too much.
We need to have thisconversation as much as we're
talking about the Mexicancartels, the Canadian biker
gangs and the China.
They all have to talk about itand part of the United States'
issue when we got into it withthe real experts and think of
(20:34):
this in terms of homelessness.
Most of the people who areco-presenting so they have an
untreated mental illness andthey have a substance abuse.
Most started out with untreatedmental illness and became
self-medicating.
That's the real truth.
It's a myth to think youstarted out as a substance use
(20:56):
and developed a mental illness.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
That's a powerful statistic.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yeah, there's probably 6%, 7%, 8% that started
out as a recreational drug userand then developed a mental
illness.
But that's the exception, thatis not the rule.
So why do we have a-funded bedsfor mental illness in America?
(21:30):
And one side of the aisle saidwe're going to stop funding,
that we don't think that's apriority.
Government should not be in themental illness game.
So one side started doing that.
Then the other side said wedon't want to criminalize mental
health, we want todeinstitutionalize mental health
.
They were watching when it FlewOver the Cuckoo's Nest, thought
(21:51):
it was a documentary rather thanfiction and they went to try to
close down all mental healthbeds.
Now the place that's looselydeveloped around.
When it Flew Over the Cuckoo'snest there were two of them but
one was out on Long Island andI've been out to that site and
it is a creepy site.
I mean it is creepy and thatplace needed to be closed down.
(22:16):
But you don't close down theentire system, you fix the
system, you don't close it down.
So think about our country is 40to 50% bigger in population,
higher number than in 1950.
And during that time we've gonefrom 500,000 government funded
(22:37):
beds to under 30,000 beds andall are forensic, meaning if law
enforcement, judge doesn't putyou there, you are not there.
And so some people argue ournumber of beds is closer to zero
.
But I think we got to be honestbecause that would get you
tripped up if we don't talkabout the real facts.
(22:58):
But we've gone from a halfmillion beds to under 30,000
beds, even though our country ismuch, much bigger.
Where did they go?
To the street, to jails, tosome extent state prisons.
That should worry us because weall know how bad that is.
(23:27):
We know that doesn't work, weknow that's not best practices
by any imagination, but that'swhere we have come, and so we
need to bring treatment andrecovery back.
I have a mantra and I knowyou've heard it before and I
really believe it, and to me itdrives my policy and it drives
(23:50):
like if I work in a local cityor big policy.
Right now in America we'remaking it so easy to get high
and so hard to get treatment.
We need to flip it on the headand make it easy to get
treatment and hard to get high,and if we are only to do one
thing, that's it.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Right, and there are so many policy instruments that
come with that right.
It's the demand reduction we'vetalked about in terms of the
borders and foreign issues, butthat's also at home, reducing
the supply of availablecommercial addictive drugs,
which, as you know, is what ourorganizations work on.
We shouldn't have legalmarijuana, psychedelics and
whatever other drug is next onAdvocates Playbook to become
(24:31):
legally and widely available andadvertised.
And so I think, as long as wecontinue to prey upon those
behaviors and I think thatstatistic you gave is a really
critical one that so many of thefolks who are now either dying
of fentanyl overdoses or are nowsuffering of homelessness and
addiction started with anunderlying mental health
disorder that they are nowtreating.
(24:51):
And you know I couldn't helpbut think of, you know, medical
marijuana, where we have peoplesaying, well, this is treating
whatever my mental health issuesare.
And now we're seeing that withpsychedelics as well, where
people are self-medicating theirmental health disorders and, in
many cases, are making it worse, and so I think that you know
that's a really critical point.
I think that a lot of peopleare missing.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
And doctor-led, based off of best practices treatment
is what we need.
The last thing you need isself-medication from people who
have no idea what they're doing,or it's political bumper stick
jargon.
You know, let's let you know,weed kills nobody, and so it
(25:35):
becomes a bumper sticker and itbecomes political jargon.
That is the worst thing weshould be doing.
But we also should realize whyis our country over consuming?
And some of that is you know we, we've done so poorly on
untreated mental illness.
Some of it is we're a consumerbased society that you hit just
(25:58):
perfectly, set that up and thenyou add our country is sort of a
uh, you know, take one pill foreverything.
You got a learning disability.
You take a pill.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
You got the easy button solution.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
You take a pill and, rather than dealing with, let's
go to yoga, let's go to workout,let's go to the gym, let's get
better sleep, let's eat better,let's hydrate, let's take a pill
instead and try to find theeasy, fast way out.
And I think all that togetherand then you combine that with
(26:31):
the epidemic of loneliness andin some ways, you know these
things, you know these phones,you know one of the things we
talked about, a couple of ourspeakers talked about in our
documentary, is the need to putyour phones down.
Have family dinners togetherwhere you talk to each other,
you listen to each other, you doit and my family and my kids,
(26:56):
like at first, like you're like,but you know, dad, you're being
too strict.
You know my girlfriend'scalling, my boyfriend's calling.
I'm like, put your phones downto a point now that they like it
so much.
Your phones down to a point nowthat they like it so much when,
when, like I'll, my phonestarts ringing.
The other day my one of mydaughters like she said, hey,
(27:16):
put your phone down.
You know you can get it whenyou get upstairs.
You know we're doing familytime now.
I thought, hey, it's working.
I'm now being called out by mydaughter on on the need to put
the phone down, called out by mydaughter on the need to put the
phone down, and so we need tocommunicate more and listen more
in our families and friends,and that also helps part of it.
(27:37):
So I don't think it's one thingonly.
You know, it's a package ofthings.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
It's a package of things for sure.
And actually you know, thisconversation around isolation
and kind of finding ways formeaningful connection and
meaningful outlets to kind ofavoid getting into that spiral
of disorder made me think of Idon't know if you were following
the news a few days ago there'sa town in Kentucky that is
using some of the opioidabatement funds, based on the
Icelandic model of prevention,providing other kinds of
(28:06):
community outlets for people,and so what they did was part of
the expenditures, a very smallpercentage of it.
It was $15,000.
They put in to build an iceskating rink for kids to go and
meet up at, but they wereactually taking some flack in
the press for doing that insteadof just purchasing around 330
doses of Narcan with that moneyand I just was scratching my
(28:29):
head at the story, thinking it's$15,000.
It's not the entire sum offunds and what they're trying to
do is invest in the problem ofisolation by fixing it, by
providing opportunities forcommunities to come together.
And it'd be one thing ifthey're spending all the money
on it, but they're spending justI mean, it's not nothing, but
just $15,000 of that money toprovide an outlet for kids.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
And if you can get a thousand kids to go, that's way
better than all these otherthings that are talked about.
And I got to tell you some ofthe opioid money on the West
Coast in particular and I hateto pick on California,
washington State and Oregon, buta lot of that.
(29:11):
They're talking about moneygoing towards safe consumption
of drugs.
So we're using money from asettlement that missaid drugs
when it be addictive and itwouldn't be so powerful and it
ended up being more deadly thanever and more addictive than
ever.
So the why that came with it sowe're going to use that
(29:35):
settlement to give you more ofanother type of drug is just
mind boggling to me, and it goesback to my mantra why are we
making it easier to get high?
We need to make it harder toget high and easier to get
treatment.
So any dollar of the opioidsettlement that goes to healthy
alternatives and treatment to meis just a way better use than
(30:00):
saying we're going to do theclean needles.
We're going to do this and thatand harm reduction has been
hijacked, now that to me it'senabling drug use in most parts
of the country, and I reallythink if we have compassion
without accountability itbecomes enablement.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yep, you're absolutely right about that and
that's a principle that you'vestuck to throughout your years
of service to the country and wevery much appreciate that you
have.
So I know we're kind of runninglow on time, but I wanted to
give you a chance to maybe sharewhat you thought was maybe the
most powerful story that comesout of your documentary that I
guess really left an impact onyou and you want to share with
our listeners before we wrap ourpodcast.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Gosh, that it's hard to pick one because we had so
many family members we talked toabout the loss of their child.
Sometimes it was addiction,sometimes it was overdose,
sometimes it was poisoning.
We have a mom that we have inthe documentary whose
three-year-old son died becausethere was fentanyl dust on a
(31:07):
countertop and they put food onand and, probably with the
cookie, picked it up and ate it.
So the the sad stories of thefamily are are just so powerful
and everyone's a littledifferent and every family
member you know it, it it just.
And so much of it is poisoningand accidental.
(31:28):
Some of it's addiction, I getthat, but those were all sad.
The one thing that was reallyshocking as we outlined the
movie and we sort of said, whatdo we want to get?
And we wanted to make sure itwas one hour so we can play it
in classrooms.
And, to our absolute surprise,we interviewed 65, 68 top
(31:51):
experts in their field and allwe asked was a question if you
were king or queen of the day,what would you do to make change
?
What policy, what things wouldyou do?
And we're expecting everybodyto say get tough on China and go
after the cartels and go afterthe biking, and we got some of
that.
And go after the cartels and goafter the bike gangs, and we
(32:11):
got some of that.
But two-thirds of the people weasked that question across the
board all brought up breakdownof the family.
We weren't asking that question.
We didn't ask about breakingdown of the family, but that's
what two-thirds of our expertsacross all sorts of
sub-disciplines on the fentanylcrisis came back and said we
need to rebuild the family.
(32:32):
We need to have the familylisten to each other, be there
for each other, spend qualitytime with each other and
quantity time not just qualitybut quantity time and have us be
there for each other.
That was a surprise to usbecause it came from our
intelligence officers, it camefrom our anesthesiologists.
(32:55):
Of course it came from families.
Of course it came from thepsychology, but it also came
from the FBI and the DEA and thelocal law enforcement.
And that was probably ourbiggest aha moment is how
important rebuilding thoseconnections and it could be a
very formal, traditional family,but it could also be a family
(33:18):
made up of deep, deep friendsand rebuilding that connectivity
.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
That's beautiful.
What a powerful conclusion tothis.
Thank you, dr Marbutt, for thegreat work you're doing.
And again, everyone.
It's Fentanyl, deathIncorporated.
It's going to be coming tostreaming services soon.
It's going to be in some selectcities for theatrical showings.
Dr Marbutt, before we leave,can you share with folks where
they can find you online any waythey can follow the work that
you're doing nationally?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
If you go to fentanyldeathincorporatedcom or
fdicom FDI movie there are acouple of ways you can get to us
and just type in that and youwill get our website and from
there you can see where ourscreenings are.
You can get tickets, you'llknow what we're doing on the
streaming services.
When we get to there you cansee some features from the
(34:07):
movies and we really feature ourexperts and I got to think you
know we got 60 of the top ineach subfield of this issue.
And the coolest thing that I'veenjoyed on the movie is
everywhere we've showed it.
You know we've shown it to a lotof experts, shown it to a lot
(34:30):
of experts to a T.
I thought they were all goingto come in and say I heard that,
heard that, and I was hopingthey would say oh, you packaged
it nicely.
But every single expert we'veshown it to they said I had no
idea.
And then they have a take thatthey knew their area well but
they didn't know another part ofthe issue well.
And that's so exciting whenreal experts in the field are
(34:50):
saying we learned something.
We learned something different.
We learned something outsideour lane.
We also learned how importantwe all need to.
All these subgroups need to beworking together Because if you
do this with law enforcementalone, it will not work.
They're a critical piece, butthey're not the only piece to
make this, to solve this issue.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
That's great.
Well, thank you so much forjoining us at the Drug Report
Podcast.
Keep up the good work, DrMarbutt, and thank you to our
listeners, as always, for yoursupport.
Please leave us a review andfive-star rating.
We always appreciate that, andhave a great rest of your week.
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