December 9, 2021 • 53 mins
Journalist and author Sam Quinones joins Joe to discuss his latest book, "THE LEAST OF US: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth'.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Journalists. Sam ken Units is the author of a new book,
The Least of Us True Tales of America and The
Hope and Hope in the Time of Fentyl and Meth
joins us for Armstrong and Getty extra Large because four hours,
simply enough, this is Armstrong and Getty extra Large. Sam,
(00:21):
How are you, sir? Terrific? Thanks? It really excited to
be talking to you today. I apologize that my co
host is not with us. He is uh. He added
surgery yesterday and was ironically under the influence of powerful painkillers.
How anything like that and died well. I hope you're
doing well well, thank you. So I've admired your work
for a very long time, um, and so this is
(00:42):
it's great to talk um. Sam might be best known,
if not for writing for The l A Times for
a decade from about two thousand two thousand fourteen, for
then for his his best selling book in dream Land,
which was about the opioid epidemic in the house and
Where's and wins of that? When when you were wrapping
(01:03):
that book up in I'll bet you couldn't dream of
the reality we're dealing with now. That's in fact the case.
I had I was. I've been a I've been a
crime reporter for a lot of years, and um, really
I just could not imagine what you would write about
after Heroin, right, It just seemed to me like that
was about as bad as it could dead. And then
(01:25):
the book comes out, it generates I think, a lot
of awareness and a lot of interests across the country.
I began to do a lot of speaking over the
next several years, and along the way I figured out
what comes after Heroin, and out of course is as
fretnal and so that that led in in large parts
to the to the book I just put out. Well
(01:46):
we uh. I read with interest the excerpt from your
new book in The Atlantic entitled I don't know that
I would even call it meth anymore. And we've spent
a lot of time talking about that, partly because the
show is based on the West Coast, and there is
hardly a West Coast city of more than six thousand
people that does not have a serious problem with quote
unquote homelessness or homeless camps and that sort of thing. Uh.
(02:08):
And I think to a very large extent, those are
are junkie camps, their meth camps. But before we get
to the meth thing, which is fascinating, UM, let's talk
a little bit about opioids and heroin and fentanyl, which
we're not for the COVID thing, I think would be
an international conversation, it would be the leading conversation on earth. Probably. Yeah, well,
(02:31):
it's it's it's certainly um extraordinarily important and perhaps because
because of COVID not really getting the attention uh it deserves. Basically,
stuntonol is suttinol is a is a wonderful um drug.
Medically speaking, it's highly likely that your your your colleague
is being given sutonol as we speak at revolutionized surgery.
(02:54):
It allowed for anesthesia that that really wasn't possible before that.
And of course that's all of the medical context. But
once in the hounds of the underworld, it's it's, it's
a whole other story. Fentinol is very powerful, much more
powerful than morphine, much more powerful than than than than
than heroin. And um, it's part of on the street
(03:17):
and it's part of the Mexican trafficking worlds. Uh shift
you might say, away from what they traditionally focused on,
which were plant based drugs, marijuana, course, first opium poppy
too um away from plant based drugs and towards synthetics. UM.
This happened with methem fettlement. But then as the opioid
(03:39):
epidemic took took shape in our country, lots of people
began shifting to heroin. They began producing heroin Downto Mexico,
more of it than they've ever had before. And along
the way they discover centinel. This is a synthetic heroin.
You make it with chemicals only. The benefits of synthetic
drugs over plant based drugs to a trafficker are many. Right,
(04:01):
you don't need land. You really just need a warehouse
or some kind or some place to to put your
your lab. That's very small. And then you don't need rain, sunshine,
you don't need farmers to harvest it. You don't need
um just a lot of things, pesticides, etcetera. All you
really need is access to shipping ports. Once you have
(04:24):
access to shipping ports, which they do on the Pacific
coast of Mexico, there's two major ports right down there.
Um you you get you can get access then to
all the world the world chemical market, which is vast
and teage and and it comes from China, but it
also can come from like almost any country. Really, once
you have which you have a port to receive it
(04:45):
uh in. And so that is what's been going on.
It really their their their move a wave towards synthetic
drugs really begin with method fettlement years ago and that's
changed to recently, as I wrote wrote about in the
book and in the extra Your Front tip Um. But
and then along the way they discover funnel and another
story that I talked about in the book, how the
(05:06):
Solwer drug Cartel discovers funnel very interesting tale um largely
due to one one underground chemist in particular. But what
that means is that they can produce now drugs um
all year round. There's no seasons anymore, right, there's no
summer and fall when you have synthetic drugs. And if
(05:26):
you can get the chemicals that you need UM, you
can produce it in just studying quantities. And that is
really what's happening. They they control when at least when
it comes to those those chemicals, they they control the
traffic at the at these courts. They're able to produce
both sentinel and methem petomen in quantities that are absolutely
(05:47):
um staggering, just unprecedented quantities, so much so that they've
done something that is really unprecedented in this uh, in
this country where one source underground underworld's source has been
able to effectively cover the entire country with these with
(06:08):
these two drugs, and in methem sediments case, the prices
has collapsed, so in many areas the price of methem
fedoment is lower than it was a few years a
serious back. But whatever the case, they now have these
drugs are now all across the country. There you know,
New England never had any methem fedoment and now it does.
(06:28):
You know, notton always found everywhere. And so this is
the the enormous uh fact that we are now having
to contend with as a country. Well, I was going
to say one of the obvious advantages to smuggler is
that the stuff is so incredibly powerful. A small amount
will get many many people high. But it sounds like
it's so profitable that that they're taking the risks such
(06:51):
as they are to ship enormous amounts of this stuff. Hey,
remind us, I think we've all heard anecdotal you know,
the bits of quote unquote trivia about how you know
an ounce of fentinel can kill X number of people.
It's really quite astounding, isn't it. Well, fentanyl is is um, yes,
it's you know, a few grains of salt is what
you're talking about, normally to kill a person who is
(07:14):
UH doesn't have any tolerance to the drug. Again, this
is an opioid, like heroin, like morphine. It develops, you
develop tolerance on it. But if you have none, um,
you know, a few grains of salt is all it's
really going to take that. What that means is that
this is more profitable than any other drug that the
underworld has ever encountered. However, what it also means is
(07:36):
that to access that profited they need to now mix
it with something. It is not commercially viable to sell
a few grains of salt on the street, you know
what I mean, So you have to mix it with powder.
The problem is they're extraordinarily bad at mixing UH this
kind of stuff. They don't know what they're Most people
on the street don't know what they're doing. Some people
(07:57):
in Mexico seem to maybe know, but but not but
not the majority. And so right and clearly the margin
for air is so incredibly small with something that powerful.
Exactly right early on in the book, UM, I tell
the story of how early on when fentinel first started
coming over here from China being mailed through the mail
or largely and you know, kilos or half kilos or
(08:20):
pounds size, it is not very large. Um. People here
didn't know how to mix it either, UM, and they
the myth grew that you could mix it best with
a magic bullet blender. The magic bullet blender that you
see a target for, like I guess I think it was.
We We only one at our house, UM, and they
make it's great for making smoothies. It is really bad
(08:40):
machine for mixing fannel, largely because fentinel is normally a potty.
You're trying to mix it with other powders, other white powders,
so that you can then sell it. The problem is
when you mix it that way m with a magic
bullet blender, it's got a blade. The blade mixes liquid,
it doesn't mix powders at all. And so what you
began to see where these clusters of overdosees, you know,
(09:01):
twenty fifty in a weekend in Cincinnati, seventy in a
weekend and Huntington, West Virginia. UM. Uh that that that
kind of thing. And it's just this this drug is
so difficult to mix that it's by itself because of
that very very um dangerous And every every time you
use it's it's it's a crapshoot and uh, you know,
(09:24):
it's a it's a Russian game of Russian Roulette almost
every time. Now, So to what extent is it still
being manufactured in China And to what extent is it
being cranked out of lambs in Mexico? No, No, it's
all shifted to Mexico. Now, the two thousand nineteen, the
Chinese government put a put a rule in place UM
only certain companies can produce it, and all these other
(09:47):
ones had to stop. And they're pretty scared of the
government there, so they did. And but they still sell
the ingredients, you know, the rest of the ingredients in channel,
they're still sold out of China. And the major uh
customers for that to believe that are the folks in
Mexico who have now learned how to do that. They
know now how to make UM. In fact, the truth
(10:09):
is you would not be able to cover the country
with centinel. The waste sentinel is covering the country now. Um,
with the mounts that we're coming in from China in packages,
you know, small packages, you know a pound here, a
kilo there. That's not that would never be able to
do the coverage. It's it has to be with a
(10:30):
with a country with which we share a two thousand
mile border. That that which with which we have free trade,
and so we have all that that stuff is coming
through walls, it's all coming through border crossing is most
heavily guarded stuff in the quarter. Crossing is almost in
the in the world outside maybe Korea and North Korea.
But um, but it's it's it's getting it's getting through
(10:51):
in quantities that never you could never really feasibly mail,
you know, from from from from China. So what's happening
now is because that shipment I'm saying that that source
has shifted to Mexico. So before we get more into
the logistics of the thing, help us understand the toll.
How many people are dying of fentinel overdoses, Oh my goodness,
(11:14):
a great, great numbers, a hundred thousand a year every
till they have they just came out with statistics. The
CDC did that between April one, April twenty and Ape
a hundred thousand people died of overdoses. That's the record
that we've never gone over a hundred thousand before in
the history of this country. Um. It's it's a very
(11:37):
high numbers in many many states. There's a few where
it's dropped off. But I mean this is happening constantly
all across the country, and largely, Um it's because of
the mixing. It's also because the trafficking world, particularly at
the street level, has turned to making into mixing Fentinel
into other drugs. So I don't believe there's any cocaine
(12:01):
anymore in America, actually trust not to have Fentinel in it.
Um Uh, it's it's it's like almost everything. You know,
the great actor who was in The Wire, Michael Michael
Kay Williams, he had a cocaine problem he was struggling
with for many years. Um he died. Uh, not from
the cocaine, but from the from the Fentinel that was
in his in his the batch or the packet or
(12:21):
whatever is that he bought. You see these things happening
frequently all across the country. He was a celebrated case,
but I mean there's many, many, many cases all across
the country. It's also the way through which the African
American community has been dying of in the opioid epidemics.
When I wrote Dreamland, I could safely say I didn't
speak with any Black people for Dreamland because it was
(12:43):
really a white issue. It was like cent of all
victims were white, right. But with Sentinel, what's happened is
dealers at the in the in the black community have
figured out if I could ask dealers have all across
the country, I put my Futinel, which is dirt sheet,
but they're very cheap. A little bit of Fentinel into
a cocaine all of these them will boost it. But
(13:05):
also what it'll do is it's almost like a business
um expansion move. So if you have a cocaine buyer,
normally those folks will buy every few days, maybe it
take a week vacation from the dope or whatever, maybe
even a month vacation whatever. They're not consistent buyers. But
once you have an opioid addict, that that that person
(13:26):
has to buy from you every single day, no vacation
because the dope sickness is a bear, and they're trying
to keep the dope sickness await. And so what what
ends up happening is from a cocaine customer, you had
Sentinel to the cocaine. Pretty soon you have an opioid addict.
And this is happening all across the country. Uh as well,
what's happening now is the people who have survived their
first exposure to Sentinel, now they're addicted to to to
(13:51):
the drug and they need Sentinel. So now heroin is
almost worthless, right, Hero's worthless because there's no um it
won't it's two mild to keep the dolt sickness away.
Now you need Sentinel, and the problem is there again,
as I was saying earlier, the mixes is frequently so unpredictable,
and the only thing that really predict about it is
(14:11):
that it's going to be bad eventually. Whatever you use
will eventually be a bad mix and and we'll will
kill you. And that's kind of what's happening now all
across all across the country. Used to just be happening
in the area where the opioid epidemic was bad. You know,
the first state really, Ohio was the place where it
first started. That in in my in the book The
Least of Us and in the book that just published,
(14:35):
I focus on Acron and Cleveland and some of these
other towns where where this first hit in two thousand fourteen,
Cincinnati and then into West Virginia as well. It didn't
really hit, didn't pardon me, the West coast, I would say,
until maybe you know, two eighteen, it's it. It took
takes a while before it kind of catches up. Yeah. Well,
and I know enough about drugs and addiction, and some
(14:57):
of my musical heroes have died of overdoses that when
when folks stumble on the road to recovery, they decided
to go back and have another hit or whatever, often
their tolerance is down from where it was, and they'll
take the same hit, for instance, of heroin that they
used to it'll kill them. Well, this has got to
be that affect times, I don't know, ten times a
hundred in terms of the risk of having one more hit.
(15:20):
That's the thing. There's no more um in America, there's
no more surviving recreational drug use and one that's that's
the bottom line. I have to say that that. You know,
I'm sixty two. I grew up in an era when
it was almost like rude not to you know, take
a line of cocaine and some parties, and and the
truth is that, um, that that is uh those days,
(15:43):
I mean every every every line of cocaine, every uh
you know, Uh, it's it's it's these are um, you know,
it's Russian roulette, right, so he listen, those old ideas
are gone. I realized this could be the topic of
another book or books. But in your opinion, and because
I know you've written about studied Mexico in terms of
the drug trade and a hundred other issues for a
(16:04):
long time, to what extent is Mexico a functioning government
and to what extent is it a narco state? Um,
that's a hard question to answer because there's certainly many
parts of the country that are auctioning. Clearly, UM, there
are certain areas and certain attitudes within certain elements of
the government government that I say, let's say lend itself
(16:26):
to um to something along those lines where you just
can't really um, you know, you can't that they are
functioning freely and and UM, in the state of Sinaloa,
I have to say parts of the state of meat
Can where I used to go very very freely. I
lived in Mexico for ten years and I would travel
(16:47):
to metro Con very often, mostly to do stories about immigration,
because there's a lot of immigration coming out of meat Con.
Now it's really it's a state I wouldn't go to
any more. Certain areas of the border like this in
parts of uh Of around the Golden Triangle, what they
call the areas that to waw Wa, durrangos in Aloa,
(17:08):
the hill, the mountain areas there. Um, you know, these
are areas that are that are not safe and and
those areas keep on shifting to according to who's fighting
whom and you know, so the cartel world down there,
I would say, when I was in Mexico, it was
very clear. You could draw the border, and you could
divide up the border according to like the way they
(17:29):
used to do with the Italian mob the five Families
in New York and Jersey and so, and you could see, okay,
this is the Colombo, this is the Banano family. You
could do the same with the Houara's drug cartel that
you want to drug cartel. All these guys were from
sin a lawa, but they controlled parts of the border
far away from far within the Say, what's happened now
in the last fifteen years, really maybe longer? Really is
(17:51):
that all those easily definable groups of fragmented and now following,
who is a cartel? And where these cartels are? And
I don't even call them carts tells anymore because here's
the difference between a cartel. I studied economics and college,
and a cartel is a group that that that the
restricts product to drive price up. And that is the
(18:12):
opposite of what's happening in Mexico now. And that is
because they're not cartels in that strict sense. They are
groups that are kind of loosely affiliated and you know,
sometimes fighting al among themselves, but loosely affiliated, but who concerned.
There's nobody really controlling production of these starts that everyone
(18:34):
was kind of free to do what they want. A
lot of the guys have taken like those like those uh,
those merchants who sold the gold miners their shovels and
tents during the gold rush. They're selling them the chemicals.
That's how people are probably most likely getting getting wealthy.
And it doesn't matter. They want people to make more,
and so you have these collapse and prices. It's amazing
(18:54):
thing with methempedomen Methempedoman's prices effectively dropped by about a
d percent. It depends on the region, obviously, but about
eight percent all acroass the country, even as they covered
the entire country. You know, So there's meth in Vermont
and New Hampshire that never used to be there, and
the prices all over the country are below what they
what they've what they've been historically, according to the d
(19:16):
e A and agents who talked to you you on in
these different areas. I'm in Nashville. At the moment, a
pound of an ounce of let's just say, an ounce
of matthews to be hundred fifty dollars. Now it's like
about two d Wow. At least the price of something
is dropping, he says, fully cognizant of how distasteful that
joke is. Uh so, um, if you were dragged in
(19:39):
front of Congress to the White House or whatever and asked,
what in the world can we do to stem the
flow of fentinel into the country, because the death toll
is just astounding. Is there anything we can do well,
I think I think there's a few things on the
national level that we we absolutely need to do. I
was overwhelmed by this feeling when I lived in max
(20:00):
to code that we have never established the relationship. Our
relationship with Mexico is ought to be equal in the
minds of our policy makers, in our government and so on,
and the political class, and so to any relationship we
have in the world to England, out we have with England,
with Japan, with Russia, with China. It's fraud, it's difficult,
(20:23):
but we need to make it a priority of the
equal to those countries that I just said. And when
we do that, we don't like you know, how many
people can actually Americans can actually name the six Mexican
border states with the United States and that that kind
of basic stuff. We just don't know about Mexico. You know,
it's just not even there. And and so I believe
(20:45):
that once we have this relationship, we can't There are
lots of Mexicans I know who would be very happy
to have their government pushed to address the horrible corruption
in there um in a criminal justice. So really it's
almost not just even corruption, it's just simply the institutions
(21:07):
are unbelievably weak. It's not anything like we have here
in the United States, except for maybe in the smallest
town kind of shriff corrupt sheriff kind of idea, you know,
or stuff that we used to have in the thirties
under al Capone. It's that kind of thing, you know.
And I think that that many Mexicans are begging for that.
This is not something that is a debatable point. I
(21:28):
don't think in Mexico. We absolutely this is this is
running our country into the ground. Um. The other thing
I think we need to do as a country in
the United States is this is a binational problem, and
that is that the guns that are purchased easily here
are what ensures that impunity down in Mexico. So many
of those guns are smuggled into Mexico, smuggled south, uh
(21:51):
and usually in small quantities, not big truckloads of hundreds
of guns or anything like That's usually you know of
the five, ten, twenty here and there, and and but
over period of years it adds up and that is
what ensures their impunity. The price of of an a
K forty seven made in Eastern Europe sold legally here
into into the United States and then bought here illegally
(22:13):
in the United States and then smuggled south. The price
of that is too is meth and petomen for two
dollars a pound, or announced rather in UM in Nashville, Tennessee. Boy,
you want to talk about a topic that will take
another book. I mean, that's that's a big one and
full of twists, turns and difficulties. Obviously, yeah so so
(22:36):
um incredibly troubling and deadly obviously. But let's turn to
uh the P two P meth. That was the main
topic of the excerpt from your book that was in
The Atlantic. The Jack and I talked about a great
deal we for what it's worth, you know. We we
definitely swing conservative politically speaking on most things. I hate labels.
Labors are for soup games. But um, it's also true
(23:00):
that we don't hate anybody. We're not. We try not
to be condescending unless it's intentional for the purpose as
a humor. And we have quite a number of listeners
who are either uh former drug drug addicts, recovering drug addicts,
former homeless people, tweakers, people with all sorts of sins
and all because they know we're not preaching at them.
(23:20):
We understand people make choices, sometimes they make bad choices,
and sometimes life goes sideways. It happens, you can't happen
to anybody. You just have to take responsibility for you know,
the way you live your life is our point of view.
So we've talked to a hell of a lot of
people who have been on the streets or are currently
on the streets who say, everybody's a tweaker out here.
Everybody in the tent camps is doing meth. And they
(23:41):
don't mean literally every single human being. But there was
a report out of Portland. They had a couple of
guys who are now turning their lives around working for
the city. Is actually a really nice story. But they're saying,
oh my god, he's so called homeless temps are meth.
The homeless camps rather are meth camps. How did we
get to this point? And what effect is this new
(24:01):
meth which is actually kind of the old meth, this
P two P meth, what what effect is it happen? Right? Well,
this the roots of all this are the are in
the fact that the Mexican trafficking world, a few folks
who are in particular who are instrumental in all this
I talked about in the book. Um begins to understand
(24:22):
and learn how to make methum fedomen in the late eighties,
mostly in the San Diego Tijuana area, um uh and
um they make it. They were able to learn because
it's a very simple process. Then it uses a chemical
called the federan, so decongestent. It's found in pseudo fed
pills and all. That's why, that's why you can't buy
those things very easily, have to sign and there's a
(24:43):
behind lock and key and all. The ephedrian is a
very easy chemical. It's very effective and good decongestent, but
a couple of chemical tweaks and it becomes methum fedoment.
It's not really hard to do um so any almost
anybody can make and that it really democratizes how how
of uh meth can be made. But the folks who
(25:05):
really take greatest advantage of that, our Mexican trappickers increasingly
into the into the nineteen nineties, the labs that they
call them men super labs. That that acount sounds like
a bizarre term now given those quantities coming out of
Mexico today, but super lab would be fifty to one
hundred towns every time you cook that kind of thing.
And you began to see this stuff in in the
central Valley of California, San Diego, to Mecuela, up in
(25:28):
the Bakersfield friends, and also and then also down into
into Mexico, and they really specialized and they industrialized this,
so they're able to produce the very large quantities of
stuff of this stuff, but it's always limited by the
amount of a phederan they can get. For a long
time it was legal. You could get hundreds of tons imported,
(25:48):
hundreds of tons of imported in Mexico, and significant part
of that make methal and funniment. But there was never
enough to really cover the entire United States increasingly, really
it was just a lot of the West during you know,
I say it's it never went east to the Mississippi River. Um,
A federal meth was a very euphoric drug. You would
stay up for several days, you wanted to be around
(26:09):
people gathering away, you know. Um. Your withdrawals from it
would be you basically slept solid for two days, you know,
and just we're out and then you were coherent. You
kind of returned more or less to your saying mental
state that you were before that, although over time clearly
it degraded your body and your mind. It took several
(26:30):
years to do those. But so to be in a
state where you really weren't functional, you would have to
abuse it for years, for a long time, and stay
up for many days. Once you stayed up for many days,
you began to see these what they call shadow people frequently.
You know there's somebody over there and you looking. Actually
there's nobody, but you know it's that kind of your
(26:51):
mind playing tricks on you, so to speak. In two
thousand and eight, all that changes Mexico in two thousand
and eight, prompted by a number of of political reasons
that I go go into in the book where they
did this, but they make a veederan illegal except for
a few pharmaceutical companies to possess and use in their processes,
(27:11):
and and with that the Mexican trafficking world has to
figure out how to make the federan. I mean, I'm
not em fedoment. I'm sorry. Another another way, they've actually
been seeing this writing on the wall for a couple
of years by then two thousand six, and when they
first begin to start experimenting with this, by two thousand
and eight, the whole the wall shut slam shut, and
(27:32):
they now have to figure out a new So there
is another way of making me fedoment. It's it's really
not very easy. It's smelly, it's messy, a lot of
different chemicals. UM, it's not anything you'd want to use,
except for if you can't get a federan and so
and in this UH method uses a precursor known as
P two P penal to propanon, very commonly known in
(27:56):
the meth making UH world. UH. This method has one
benefit to traffickers over the Federman and that is that
you can make P two P easily and with many
different kind of chemical recipes or chemical hacks, using chemicals
that are widely available in industry. They're all industrial, they're
all legal, easily available in the world world markets. Half
(28:19):
most of them very highly highly toxic. Which if so,
if the government cracked down on this recipe of making
P twop, you can come back with this other one
and this one, and there's there's apparently dozens. In fact,
I think they never stopped inventing new ways of making P.
Two P. What this means is if you have access
to to chemicals, which the Mexican trafficking world does, as
(28:40):
I said, through these two ports on the Czivic coast
of Mexico, you can begin to make this stuff all
year round and in quantities that dwarf anything you were
capable of making with the pedment. And that's what begins
to happen. It not right off the bat, It takes
a couple of years, takes a few years when people
get used to this new reality. But certainly by two
thousand twelve thirteen fourteen, you begin to see quantities, just
(29:05):
staggering quantities coming through and marching across the country. So
in l a Portland's west coast, basically two thousand thirteen fourteen,
you're seeing this stuff. It hits the Midwest across the
Mississippi River for the first time. It hits the Midwest
by two thousand seventeen, and then hits the east coast
and up into New Windland, which never had any meth
(29:25):
in two thousand nineteen, roughly in eighteen nineteen um and
so at the same time, as I said, it's producing
such quantities that the price drops to not only covered
the country, the price drops, but this, this methem fetomen
has been shown to be accompanied. And I use these
words carefully and I'll explain line a little bit is
accompanied every place along the way, according to my reporting
(29:49):
talking to people in all these different areas, by not
just not just this staying up line. A lot of days,
it's no longer a euphoric drug. It's a very sinister
It turns you inward. It's accompanied by um symptoms of schizophrenia.
So you see people of extraordinarily paranoid, very intense paranoia,
(30:11):
like everyone's out to get you, no one can be trusted,
and you're running because somebody, you think, somebody looks at
you strange, you know, and at the same time, very
very florid, intense hallucinations. Now, now, Sam, let me let
me just jump in and ask you, because we've had
some folks weather and law enforcement around the streets say, well, listen,
it's not as much about the chemical nature of it,
(30:32):
but just it is so cheap and so powerful these
days that it's overwhelming people's brains. So is it one
or the other? Is it really both? Well, here's the thing.
Here's the thing. The reason I said accompanied by and
not cause causes us is because there is no neuroscience
on this. Nobody understands really what's it work? At least
of all me. Okay, I don't want to be putting
(30:52):
myself out there. What I'm giving you is street reporting. Okay,
I'm going I'm talking to people, you know, e er
docs in these hounds and drug counselors over here and
recovering addicts over here. Um, no one has actually studied
P two P meth the way it's made in Mexico
right now. There's no rat studies, no my studies, there's
no journal reports. I'm simply telling you that this is
(31:15):
the reporting I've done in these various areas and keep
on doing even though the books published. I'm I'm still
talking to people. I'm probably gonna talk with a person
there Albuquerque, New Mexico and later later today on this
very topic. But over and over and over, you just
hear this all the same, the same stories. People go
out of their minds, they're raving, they're incapable of living
(31:37):
with anybody, so very quickly they're homeless, and the place
they least want to be as a homeless shelter, because
in a homeless shelter, everybody seems to be a threat.
You know, you're you're surrounded by people who are who
are almost like themselves, a little bit out of their mind,
and everyone's confined, and you've got to the rules, and
there's all this stuff that's so so along with that
(31:58):
comes this very you're um accompanied by all this method
foundom comes as very severe mental illness and then along
as well as a homelessness, and along with that then
comes the tent encountenance. Tents become perfect lodging. If you
are in the state of mind where you think the
(32:19):
entire world is a threat, the last thing you want
to do is be around other people. So a little
it's a little pod in which you can kind of
exist with what is stuck in your brain and all
the those are ideas that are coming through through through
through your brain. This is homelessness. Is A is A
is a. There are many kinds of homelessness. There are
many reasons why people end up homeless. A lot of them,
(32:42):
you know, shredded safety net, homeless people who lose a
job and have surgery, can't find can't afford a house,
and the surgery that that kind of story is also
part of it. There's the sex register at homeless who
in a registered sex offender is only a few places
in his in his town or as county where you
can where you can live, and frequently they end up homeless.
You know, there's a lot of reasons. However, my reporting
(33:04):
I believe has convinced me and shows that did a
major force behind those tent encampments and the homeless of
from the delirium that people are often suffering from and
all that is this method set them and has come
out of Mexico over the last eight ten eleven years
and in many parts of the country, certainly eight or
(33:25):
nine years, many and almost all the country. Um, it
is made with this P two. Why is it? What
are the neuroscientific reasons for it? I don't know that
hasn't been studied in the least. Do we have any
and I want to Yeah, I was gonna say, do
we have any idea whether some of the mental health
problems you're talking about? Uh, can they go away in
the brain heal once you discontinue the Matthew, Sir, These
(33:48):
people just damaged for life. I realized it's early days,
but it is it is early. But I would tell
you this. I spoke with a woman who is the
who is a director of a homeless shelter in the Midwest,
UM and she spent many years on skid road working
with almost folks, and she was graphic about this stuff.
She's saying. Used to be we could teach people how
(34:09):
to repair their lives. We're almost like life coaches. Basically,
you know how to get a driver's license, how do
life for a job? All these kinds of that. You
could teach people all these ways of recovering and getting
back into life. But the problem is the effect nowadays
of the meth is so devastating. This is the woman
of thirty years on the job. Okay, this is she
is a not born yesterday and the stuff. And she
(34:30):
was telling me that that we no longer use life
coaching because the people who we see who even though
they're sober, they're not on meth, they are not capable.
They their brains have been so devastated that they're not
capable of following these simple societal rules. As frequently their
memories shot too. They're just not able to function the
(34:52):
way you need to function in a in a in
a in a society, you know, so you have all
of this kind of um combined. So it's still not clear.
But the initial indications, and I asked your question, seemed
to be that there is in many people, uh, permanent,
at least semi permanent, at lasting, let's say, damage to
(35:16):
one's brain. And one woman I quote in the book
in the least of this my latest book, says that too.
She she you know, she was barking like a dog,
she said, and went out of her mind on the stuff.
She gets sober. She's been sober two years by the
time I spoke with her, And but she still knows
she's not the same as such a point in interview,
she says, I'm hoping they can study this stuff, because
(35:39):
you know, meditation helps, quiet time helps physical exercise health.
But there's she's still not the same. She knows this,
and she said, I just would love to know what
I can do, what more I can do to help
heel my brain. And and I think that's what's really
going on out there. And it's there's so many folks.
The longer they're left in presence of this myth, the
(36:02):
more damage it's going to do. And the other promise,
even if it doesn't create your homelessness, even it's not
the root cause of why you're on the street, the
fact that you are on the street, and it is
so prevalent and so cheap and many, so many areas
of this country that frequently people fall into using it
sometimes to remove themselves from the reality that they happen
(36:25):
to be living, and so they don't feel that reality,
and so it but that means it serves to keep
you homeless and make homelessness more durable, more endurable. Kind
of Well, it strikes me that all of us who
grew up in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, maybe
we're part of yours, maybe not conservative, liberal or whatever,
we need to just to completely reapproach the question of
(36:46):
drug use and legalization and what's partying and what's not.
I mean, all the facts have changed. I mean, other
than I'm thinking back to when you know, when I
was a kid or a you know, college student whatever.
If you overdid L s D, you could really screw
your mind. And ecstasy was just coming on the scene
when I was in college, and there were definitely some
people who did themselves serious damage. But I mean, whether
(37:09):
it's the much much more potent pot or what we've
been talking about is just that the equation, all the
factors in the equation have changed. That's that's absolutely verioustuet observation.
I think that that's actually the truth all the all
the myths that we used to scoff at, frankly, because
frankly a lot of more myth they were silly, you know,
um back in the thirties, fifties, seventies, whatever it was.
(37:31):
You know, I got some of this stuff when I
was in school too, and I knew it wasn't really
true what they were saying, you know, so I laughed
at And well, all those myths have become reality. You
can die from a line of cocaine. One hit of
myth can lead to you going out of your mind, uh,
you know, by repotent pot can lead you to be
um uh you know, yeah, send you twenty r with
(37:55):
psychotic episode. Heroin does kill One hit of heroin does
kill you. You know, that is the reality of today.
And so the facts have changed, but frequently are um
our how shall I put it? Our thinking has not. Yeah,
there's so this idea that that you know, we shouldn't
(38:17):
arrest people for this stuff. Frequently about the only place
that people are safe. And I hate to put it
this way because it's it's it's a nuanced idea, but frequently,
but the only people are people are safe away from
this damaging, these damaging to trouble and cheap drugs is
in jail, you know, Sam, Just let me jump in
and point out. We read an email on the air
(38:38):
the other day of a guy who's turned his life
around after a fairly prolonged meth addiction, and it was
so interesting how he phrased one aspect of his journey.
He said that uh meth was essentially decriminalized right after
he got arrested, and he said, thank god I dodged
that bullet. It was only being incarcerated it that stopped
(39:00):
his use, and he's so grateful for it. And you
know that's not some sort of idiotic ham handed to
arrest everybody argument, but it's it's true. It just is
it is. And I can tell you I've been doing
this now nine years and the number of has heard
this so many times in long interviews and short and
new casual conversations, on and on and on and every
(39:22):
Drug Council has heard it as well that the best
day of my life, the best thing ever happened to
me was that I was arrested, got off the streets. Um.
In fact, in Dreamland, my previous book, a guide almost
ordered me to quote him and I did. Uh in
in in New Mexico and Santa Fe saying, um, the
(39:42):
I want to thank the d E H for arresting me,
because I would be dead otherwise. Now he's doing very well.
He's that we're stolen contact on Facebook, and he's doing
very well. And but that happened because he was taken
off the street. Jail is not the way we do
jail today needs to be changed. That can I'm confessed.
(40:02):
I think I think there are um uh, they're in
fact in my latest book that there's chapters on this
one county in Kentucky that is experimenting with how to
do jail differently. Have a pod of recovery, of recovery
pod as part of the jail and G E D
classes and Criminals thinking classes and all that. Because jail
(40:23):
has largely been this anchor around our neck. If you
go in a criminal mentally ill or addicted, you're gonna
come out worse. You know, we need to approach this differently,
I believe, or at least a offer a different option
to folks in jail who want to follow it. And
and that's happening now in many counties, particularly in those
areas where the opioid epidemic was worse Kentucky, Ohio, places
(40:44):
like that. But um, even the fact of just getting
off the street if you if you buy the homeless
UM shelter administrators comment to me that the folks who
are out there on the street now that that that
they are using this stuff when they stopped, that their
brains are perhaps permanently at least long term devastated and
(41:06):
her words, um, then then more exposure to that stuff
is going to lead to further u devastation. Of course,
with frontinol risk almost every day basically every day, um
uh death. You know. So the idea that of decriminalizing
the stuff COVID was simply I've taken as saying COVID
is simply a year long, unplanned, completely obviously unplanned experiment,
(41:31):
and decriminalizing drugs on the street when those drugs on
the street our frontinl and math and so you see
the record overdose deaths. You see. My my opinion really
the real expansion of mental illness and homelessness. Uh, that's
driven I believe my reporting shows by by by this
method phetom and that's coming out of Mexico and its
unprecedented quantities. Wow. What a great point. So final thought,
(41:55):
you've scared the crap out of us, in appropriately so.
But the tital of your book, the Least of Us,
true tales of America and hope in the time of
fentanyl and meth. Where's the hope coming from? Well, this
is always the problem I get into with interviews like that.
I love talking about all parts of this book. This
part of the book is really most of the book. Um,
(42:19):
it's it's more than half the book is taken up
with stories, and so it really I hate to put
to say that, but it really warrants a full conversation
of another hour. And I'm happy to do that at
another time if you wish. But but the the I
really did view this as as a as an opportunity,
this whole thing, and and and and in part because
(42:41):
I thought that one of the main reasons for the
opioid epidemic and all the problems we faced um uh
and in terms of trucks, has a lot to do
with our turning our back or ignoring or shredding. Yeah,
the what bonded us? What bonds? You know, if you
think about why we humans survived and prospered as a
(43:03):
species for whatever millions of years, what is the thing
that held it held made that possible? And I would
argue to you that it is our feeling that not
of community that we need. It's not a nice thing,
it's an essential, but it's what kept us alive, allowed
us to survive. And and we have decided in America,
(43:24):
I would say, I don't know about other countries. Maybe
it's also true, but I'm just talking about the country
right now. In America, we have decided in the last
forty years that that's not necessary. You know, we don't
really need to be around other people, or we can
just be around certain kinds of people. We don't need
to you know, um, the community banks that can be
swallowed up and buy big banks and who cares. You know,
(43:45):
there's we could go on for like literally an hour
talking about all the ways in which American our culture
we have shredded, destroyed, ignored, unfunded, whatever things that brought
us together that were really the bulwarks of the sense
against the stuff. And now we we find ourselves so
vulnerable because why my my feeling is because we're so isolated,
(44:09):
and we we got away from the idea that a
community is built by small acts, gaily act, not worrying
if you're saving the world, not worrying if you're if
you're some noble person out there doing everything and getting
all the credit, and you're just And so what I
did was understanding believing that this was the case. I
decided I was going to fill my book, actually half
(44:31):
of the book with the stories of Americans involved as
many stories of quiet active the quiet work, daily work
of Americans involved in community repair that I could find,
not necessarily working only with addiction. Now the idea that
we need to be outside among each other, overlooking all
these reasons why we're supposed to hate this other person,
(44:54):
race or or or political persuasion or all these kind
of clapp and when you get down to the bottom,
local grassroots level, you find a lot of that just
does not matter at all. And it's very exhilarating to
do that. So, for example, just give you one example
there's many in the book because this was this became
my main focus, not the not the dope. The dope.
(45:15):
I I understood it, I understood noting all. I understood nothing.
And I told those stories without blinking. But the real
stories that exhilarated me, that made me feel like, damn,
this is work doing, you know, and and this is
the heart and soul of what I'm trying to learn.
There are stories of this small kind of stories of
community repair. One of them had to do with a
guy named Bird Mike mckissic and the small Southern South Muns,
(45:38):
Indiana South Monthly neighborhood surrounded by what used to be
enormous transmission plants and transmission Capital of America Munthsly Monthly
once was well, as those plants, you know, are really
on the verge of dying out. They've been dwindling for years,
and how they're about to die out. The city fathers say,
you know what, we can't afford to keep open these
community centers that we have three of him around, and
(46:00):
one of them was right across the street from Bird's house.
He had worked there for a while. So the city
fathers he went on the budget, you know, it is
not possible anymore. And so they closed the centers, and
they think that's the end of it, except except that
Bird keeps the key. Right, the bird keeps the key,
doesn't tell the city lead there's anything about this. He
just becomes a community center unto himself, as his neighborhood
(46:24):
suffers from this real economic stress. And then of course
the opio thing on top of that. I mean, all
of this is happening at the same time. And he
keeps the key, and he goes over and he opens
the door for the kids when I want to play basketball.
He gives him a place to hang out amid all this,
you know, devastation all around them, the community center without
any money and pains that Clay continues to function as
(46:46):
a community center. And of course he he he keeps
the he keeps the he mows the lawn outside, he
keeps the toilets fixed, all this kind of stuff. He
allows his community, his his neighborhood to whether this powerful,
these powerful storms, and come out kind of the the
the other, the other side. So I tell three chapters
(47:07):
in the books about Munsey, Indiana and Bird Makissic who
later who dies. He's a strange man, no doubt. He's
a man who literally, like psychologically, had some issues and
and literally never could leave his neighborhood. He was afraid
to leave his neighborhood, but he was. He was like
the mayor of the South Mundsy neighborhood, and he kept
it a lot. It's those kinds of stories that I
(47:31):
believe I wanted to tell, not because they're a prescription.
I don't know what every county in America needs to
do about this stuff. I just think that it's very
important to understand that we have gotten away from this stuff.
That is our life saver, it's our it's our life
rep and that is the feeling of repairing community, making
that strong again. Boy, I'm starting to get a sense
(47:52):
of why you juxtapose those two major things in your book.
But it's it's interesting to me that you did in
that way. And by the way, these issues are stuff
we talk about all the time, substituting the empty calories
of say, online engagement with actual human contact and if
a Facebook friend is anything like a friend, etcetera center. Yeah,
(48:14):
exactly what an idea, you know, I'll face to face contact,
My god, it seems like radical in the in the
context of America, of America today. Don't you think I
mean to me? But to me this is and and
and the idea is to get to cross this idea.
We are only as strong as the most vulnerable. We're
only as strong. We learned during the pandemic, all of
a sudden, our lives relied on that beat packing worker
(48:36):
in Kansas, we who, all of a sudden we discover
is actually an essential worker, every bit as essentials as
some paramedic, you know, because so is the food supply
dies we do you know, what about the grocery store clerk?
All of these things and and along the way, just
to explain the title. You know, I'm not Christian, but
I was reading the Bible during writing this, and I
(48:58):
read the Gospel of mass You, and of course that's
a very powerful gospel, particularly in certain parts of it.
Um several parts, but one of them, of course, one
of the most powerful, is one of Jesus says to
his disciples that would you do for the least of
my brother? And you do for me? And I And
that hit me. It was something I'd read years ago,
but I came back to it for some reason. And
when in the middle of it, I realized kind of
(49:20):
why I had done that, and that that that seemed
to me also this perfect messing of the of the
ideas I was trying to get across. What is the
defense against not only not only the sinister drug craft
that's coming up, but all these other uh addictive substances
and stuff that we are constantly bombarded with sugar and
(49:41):
fast food and social media and you know, Twitter and
Facebook and all the rest, and and cable TV news
and and pornography and gambling and video daancity go on
and not take the alcohol? What is our best defense?
These are all the same kind of thing. They're all
a bunch of groups whose job is to week whatever
they're selling so that we will need, we will feel
(50:03):
like we have to have it. Send a lot a
drug cartel, McDonald's Facebook, you know, uh scuser's gambling has.
You know that it's kind of all in the same
uh continuum. I believe in so to me, I think
Jesus understood that the important idea that had allowed people
(50:23):
to survive up to his time and have allowed us
to survive as a species ever since, and that is
that we have to understand how important it is to
be with each other. So in some sense that community idea,
he understood that. You may not have understood the neuroscience
of it, but he's certainly understood the idea there. And
so at some point these these solutions maybe even become
(50:45):
fairly low tech, you know, like how about just getting
out of the house, have a barbecue with your neighbors,
get to know that person always seems like such a commudgeon.
Maybe actually get to know maybe he's actually a nice guy,
you know, not worrying about whether that person has a
Trump or Biden sign in s front yard anymore. You know,
once you get beyond that, get beyond that established let's
(51:07):
face to face relationships, so we we what we've lost
so much of in this country. I think, yeah, you know,
at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon myself, I'm
I'm concerned that though there's an enormous amount of awareness
of the things you're talking about, um that number one,
the pace of change makes it very difficult to come
up with cures as quickly as the disease has happened.
(51:28):
And number two, the greatest minds of our our generations
are devoted to the very endeavors you're talking about, which
are you know, utterly heartless and soul less in in
their effects. But no, I agree with you completely. I'm troubled.
You know, it's funny there are there are no chimpanzees
sitting around discussing how chimpanzees will clearly be their own doom,
(51:49):
whereas human kind of think has been aware of that
since you know, when people started tossing ideas around the campfire.
It's not clear whether it's going to be a virus
or a nuclear weapon, or or drug or Facebook. But
by god, I've often said that Sam that Homo sapiens
are my least favorite species. It's mosquitoes are second to
(52:11):
the bottom, But Homo sapiens, I don't know what to
do with us. You know what, I don't particularly no either.
I don't claim to have any answers here. I'm just
saying the stories I tried to write. We're saying this
is what people are doing. Maybe that attitude is something
you might want to think about. Well, that's the most
of the journalists can really do. I think I love
(52:33):
the idea of getting together again and chatting about that
theme of the book, the connectedness and things that we
can do on small and medium scales. Uh, and not
just get on Twitter and announced that anybody who disagrees
with me as a piece of crap um or worse.
But you know, what can we do in our own communities?
You know, there's there's a number of the great philosophers,
religious figures who would point out that start with your
(52:56):
own soul, then perhaps your family, your household, then maybe
your block. Why don't you deal with that and then
start crying the problems of the globe and not worry
that what you're doing is not in some noble, virtuous
way of saving the world. And how it be enough
that you're doing it down your block, your church, your
(53:19):
pt A, your school, your kids school. That kind of thing,
to me so often gets in the way, like I'm
not Oh, there's all these other problems you ask, So
what just do like work with your own garden, so
to speak. Yeah, yeah, save the one starship. It's a
metaphor that's both cliche and incredibly powerful. The starfish. Rather,
we're not stay saving starships, were not Captain Kirk in
(53:42):
the scenario star I think you know what I'm talking about. Uh, Sam, Hey,
it's been great to talk, and we will will absolutely
do it again. Extra large
Journalists. Sam ken Units is the author of a new book,
The Least of Us True Tales of America and The
Hope and Hope in the Time of Fentyl and Meth
joins us for Armstrong and Getty extra Large because four hours,
simply enough, this is Armstrong and Getty extra Large. Sam,
(00:21):
How are you, sir? Terrific? Thanks? It really excited to
be talking to you today. I apologize that my co
host is not with us. He is uh. He added
surgery yesterday and was ironically under the influence of powerful painkillers.
How anything like that and died well. I hope you're
doing well well, thank you. So I've admired your work
for a very long time, um, and so this is
(00:42):
it's great to talk um. Sam might be best known,
if not for writing for The l A Times for
a decade from about two thousand two thousand fourteen, for
then for his his best selling book in dream Land,
which was about the opioid epidemic in the house and
Where's and wins of that? When when you were wrapping
(01:03):
that book up in I'll bet you couldn't dream of
the reality we're dealing with now. That's in fact the case.
I had I was. I've been a I've been a
crime reporter for a lot of years, and um, really
I just could not imagine what you would write about
after Heroin, right, It just seemed to me like that
was about as bad as it could dead. And then
(01:25):
the book comes out, it generates I think, a lot
of awareness and a lot of interests across the country.
I began to do a lot of speaking over the
next several years, and along the way I figured out
what comes after Heroin, and out of course is as
fretnal and so that that led in in large parts
to the to the book I just put out. Well
(01:46):
we uh. I read with interest the excerpt from your
new book in The Atlantic entitled I don't know that
I would even call it meth anymore. And we've spent
a lot of time talking about that, partly because the
show is based on the West Coast, and there is
hardly a West Coast city of more than six thousand
people that does not have a serious problem with quote
unquote homelessness or homeless camps and that sort of thing. Uh.
(02:08):
And I think to a very large extent, those are
are junkie camps, their meth camps. But before we get
to the meth thing, which is fascinating, UM, let's talk
a little bit about opioids and heroin and fentanyl, which
we're not for the COVID thing, I think would be
an international conversation, it would be the leading conversation on earth. Probably. Yeah, well,
(02:31):
it's it's it's certainly um extraordinarily important and perhaps because
because of COVID not really getting the attention uh it deserves. Basically,
stuntonol is suttinol is a is a wonderful um drug.
Medically speaking, it's highly likely that your your your colleague
is being given sutonol as we speak at revolutionized surgery.
(02:54):
It allowed for anesthesia that that really wasn't possible before that.
And of course that's all of the medical context. But
once in the hounds of the underworld, it's it's, it's
a whole other story. Fentinol is very powerful, much more
powerful than morphine, much more powerful than than than than
than heroin. And um, it's part of on the street
(03:17):
and it's part of the Mexican trafficking worlds. Uh shift
you might say, away from what they traditionally focused on,
which were plant based drugs, marijuana, course, first opium poppy
too um away from plant based drugs and towards synthetics. UM.
This happened with methem fettlement. But then as the opioid
(03:39):
epidemic took took shape in our country, lots of people
began shifting to heroin. They began producing heroin Downto Mexico,
more of it than they've ever had before. And along
the way they discover centinel. This is a synthetic heroin.
You make it with chemicals only. The benefits of synthetic
drugs over plant based drugs to a trafficker are many. Right,
(04:01):
you don't need land. You really just need a warehouse
or some kind or some place to to put your
your lab. That's very small. And then you don't need rain, sunshine,
you don't need farmers to harvest it. You don't need
um just a lot of things, pesticides, etcetera. All you
really need is access to shipping ports. Once you have
(04:24):
access to shipping ports, which they do on the Pacific
coast of Mexico, there's two major ports right down there.
Um you you get you can get access then to
all the world the world chemical market, which is vast
and teage and and it comes from China, but it
also can come from like almost any country. Really, once
you have which you have a port to receive it
(04:45):
uh in. And so that is what's been going on.
It really their their their move a wave towards synthetic
drugs really begin with method fettlement years ago and that's
changed to recently, as I wrote wrote about in the
book and in the extra Your Front tip Um. But
and then along the way they discover funnel and another
story that I talked about in the book, how the
(05:06):
Solwer drug Cartel discovers funnel very interesting tale um largely
due to one one underground chemist in particular. But what
that means is that they can produce now drugs um
all year round. There's no seasons anymore, right, there's no
summer and fall when you have synthetic drugs. And if
(05:26):
you can get the chemicals that you need UM, you
can produce it in just studying quantities. And that is
really what's happening. They they control when at least when
it comes to those those chemicals, they they control the
traffic at the at these courts. They're able to produce
both sentinel and methem petomen in quantities that are absolutely
(05:47):
um staggering, just unprecedented quantities, so much so that they've
done something that is really unprecedented in this uh, in
this country where one source underground underworld's source has been
able to effectively cover the entire country with these with
(06:08):
these two drugs, and in methem sediments case, the prices
has collapsed, so in many areas the price of methem
fedoment is lower than it was a few years a
serious back. But whatever the case, they now have these
drugs are now all across the country. There you know,
New England never had any methem fedoment and now it does.
(06:28):
You know, notton always found everywhere. And so this is
the the enormous uh fact that we are now having
to contend with as a country. Well, I was going
to say one of the obvious advantages to smuggler is
that the stuff is so incredibly powerful. A small amount
will get many many people high. But it sounds like
it's so profitable that that they're taking the risks such
(06:51):
as they are to ship enormous amounts of this stuff. Hey,
remind us, I think we've all heard anecdotal you know,
the bits of quote unquote trivia about how you know
an ounce of fentinel can kill X number of people.
It's really quite astounding, isn't it. Well, fentanyl is is um, yes,
it's you know, a few grains of salt is what
you're talking about, normally to kill a person who is
(07:14):
UH doesn't have any tolerance to the drug. Again, this
is an opioid, like heroin, like morphine. It develops, you
develop tolerance on it. But if you have none, um,
you know, a few grains of salt is all it's
really going to take that. What that means is that
this is more profitable than any other drug that the
underworld has ever encountered. However, what it also means is
(07:36):
that to access that profited they need to now mix
it with something. It is not commercially viable to sell
a few grains of salt on the street, you know
what I mean, So you have to mix it with powder.
The problem is they're extraordinarily bad at mixing UH this
kind of stuff. They don't know what they're Most people
on the street don't know what they're doing. Some people
(07:57):
in Mexico seem to maybe know, but but not but
not the majority. And so right and clearly the margin
for air is so incredibly small with something that powerful.
Exactly right early on in the book, UM, I tell
the story of how early on when fentinel first started
coming over here from China being mailed through the mail
or largely and you know, kilos or half kilos or
(08:20):
pounds size, it is not very large. Um. People here
didn't know how to mix it either, UM, and they
the myth grew that you could mix it best with
a magic bullet blender. The magic bullet blender that you
see a target for, like I guess I think it was.
We We only one at our house, UM, and they
make it's great for making smoothies. It is really bad
(08:40):
machine for mixing fannel, largely because fentinel is normally a potty.
You're trying to mix it with other powders, other white powders,
so that you can then sell it. The problem is
when you mix it that way m with a magic
bullet blender, it's got a blade. The blade mixes liquid,
it doesn't mix powders at all. And so what you
began to see where these clusters of overdosees, you know,
(09:01):
twenty fifty in a weekend in Cincinnati, seventy in a
weekend and Huntington, West Virginia. UM. Uh that that that
kind of thing. And it's just this this drug is
so difficult to mix that it's by itself because of
that very very um dangerous And every every time you
use it's it's it's a crapshoot and uh, you know,
(09:24):
it's a it's a Russian game of Russian Roulette almost
every time. Now, So to what extent is it still
being manufactured in China And to what extent is it
being cranked out of lambs in Mexico? No, No, it's
all shifted to Mexico. Now, the two thousand nineteen, the
Chinese government put a put a rule in place UM
only certain companies can produce it, and all these other
(09:47):
ones had to stop. And they're pretty scared of the
government there, so they did. And but they still sell
the ingredients, you know, the rest of the ingredients in channel,
they're still sold out of China. And the major uh
customers for that to believe that are the folks in
Mexico who have now learned how to do that. They
know now how to make UM. In fact, the truth
(10:09):
is you would not be able to cover the country
with centinel. The waste sentinel is covering the country now. Um,
with the mounts that we're coming in from China in packages,
you know, small packages, you know a pound here, a
kilo there. That's not that would never be able to
do the coverage. It's it has to be with a
(10:30):
with a country with which we share a two thousand
mile border. That that which with which we have free trade,
and so we have all that that stuff is coming
through walls, it's all coming through border crossing is most
heavily guarded stuff in the quarter. Crossing is almost in
the in the world outside maybe Korea and North Korea.
But um, but it's it's it's getting it's getting through
(10:51):
in quantities that never you could never really feasibly mail,
you know, from from from from China. So what's happening
now is because that shipment I'm saying that that source
has shifted to Mexico. So before we get more into
the logistics of the thing, help us understand the toll.
How many people are dying of fentinel overdoses, Oh my goodness,
(11:14):
a great, great numbers, a hundred thousand a year every
till they have they just came out with statistics. The
CDC did that between April one, April twenty and Ape
a hundred thousand people died of overdoses. That's the record
that we've never gone over a hundred thousand before in
the history of this country. Um. It's it's a very
(11:37):
high numbers in many many states. There's a few where
it's dropped off. But I mean this is happening constantly
all across the country, and largely, Um it's because of
the mixing. It's also because the trafficking world, particularly at
the street level, has turned to making into mixing Fentinel
into other drugs. So I don't believe there's any cocaine
(12:01):
anymore in America, actually trust not to have Fentinel in it.
Um Uh, it's it's it's like almost everything. You know,
the great actor who was in The Wire, Michael Michael
Kay Williams, he had a cocaine problem he was struggling
with for many years. Um he died. Uh, not from
the cocaine, but from the from the Fentinel that was
in his in his the batch or the packet or
(12:21):
whatever is that he bought. You see these things happening
frequently all across the country. He was a celebrated case,
but I mean there's many, many, many cases all across
the country. It's also the way through which the African
American community has been dying of in the opioid epidemics.
When I wrote Dreamland, I could safely say I didn't
speak with any Black people for Dreamland because it was
(12:43):
really a white issue. It was like cent of all
victims were white, right. But with Sentinel, what's happened is
dealers at the in the in the black community have
figured out if I could ask dealers have all across
the country, I put my Futinel, which is dirt sheet,
but they're very cheap. A little bit of Fentinel into
a cocaine all of these them will boost it. But
(13:05):
also what it'll do is it's almost like a business
um expansion move. So if you have a cocaine buyer,
normally those folks will buy every few days, maybe it
take a week vacation from the dope or whatever, maybe
even a month vacation whatever. They're not consistent buyers. But
once you have an opioid addict, that that that person
(13:26):
has to buy from you every single day, no vacation
because the dope sickness is a bear, and they're trying
to keep the dope sickness await. And so what what
ends up happening is from a cocaine customer, you had
Sentinel to the cocaine. Pretty soon you have an opioid addict.
And this is happening all across the country. Uh as well,
what's happening now is the people who have survived their
first exposure to Sentinel, now they're addicted to to to
(13:51):
the drug and they need Sentinel. So now heroin is
almost worthless, right, Hero's worthless because there's no um it
won't it's two mild to keep the dolt sickness away.
Now you need Sentinel, and the problem is there again,
as I was saying earlier, the mixes is frequently so unpredictable,
and the only thing that really predict about it is
(14:11):
that it's going to be bad eventually. Whatever you use
will eventually be a bad mix and and we'll will
kill you. And that's kind of what's happening now all
across all across the country. Used to just be happening
in the area where the opioid epidemic was bad. You know,
the first state really, Ohio was the place where it
first started. That in in my in the book The
Least of Us and in the book that just published,
(14:35):
I focus on Acron and Cleveland and some of these
other towns where where this first hit in two thousand fourteen,
Cincinnati and then into West Virginia as well. It didn't
really hit, didn't pardon me, the West coast, I would say,
until maybe you know, two eighteen, it's it. It took
takes a while before it kind of catches up. Yeah. Well,
and I know enough about drugs and addiction, and some
(14:57):
of my musical heroes have died of overdoses that when
when folks stumble on the road to recovery, they decided
to go back and have another hit or whatever, often
their tolerance is down from where it was, and they'll
take the same hit, for instance, of heroin that they
used to it'll kill them. Well, this has got to
be that affect times, I don't know, ten times a
hundred in terms of the risk of having one more hit.
(15:20):
That's the thing. There's no more um in America, there's
no more surviving recreational drug use and one that's that's
the bottom line. I have to say that that. You know,
I'm sixty two. I grew up in an era when
it was almost like rude not to you know, take
a line of cocaine and some parties, and and the
truth is that, um, that that is uh those days,
(15:43):
I mean every every every line of cocaine, every uh
you know, Uh, it's it's it's these are um, you know,
it's Russian roulette, right, so he listen, those old ideas
are gone. I realized this could be the topic of
another book or books. But in your opinion, and because
I know you've written about studied Mexico in terms of
the drug trade and a hundred other issues for a
(16:04):
long time, to what extent is Mexico a functioning government
and to what extent is it a narco state? Um,
that's a hard question to answer because there's certainly many
parts of the country that are auctioning. Clearly, UM, there
are certain areas and certain attitudes within certain elements of
the government government that I say, let's say lend itself
(16:26):
to um to something along those lines where you just
can't really um, you know, you can't that they are
functioning freely and and UM, in the state of Sinaloa,
I have to say parts of the state of meat
Can where I used to go very very freely. I
lived in Mexico for ten years and I would travel
(16:47):
to metro Con very often, mostly to do stories about immigration,
because there's a lot of immigration coming out of meat Con.
Now it's really it's a state I wouldn't go to
any more. Certain areas of the border like this in
parts of uh Of around the Golden Triangle, what they
call the areas that to waw Wa, durrangos in Aloa,
(17:08):
the hill, the mountain areas there. Um, you know, these
are areas that are that are not safe and and
those areas keep on shifting to according to who's fighting
whom and you know, so the cartel world down there,
I would say, when I was in Mexico, it was
very clear. You could draw the border, and you could
divide up the border according to like the way they
(17:29):
used to do with the Italian mob the five Families
in New York and Jersey and so, and you could see, okay,
this is the Colombo, this is the Banano family. You
could do the same with the Houara's drug cartel that
you want to drug cartel. All these guys were from
sin a lawa, but they controlled parts of the border
far away from far within the Say, what's happened now
in the last fifteen years, really maybe longer? Really is
(17:51):
that all those easily definable groups of fragmented and now following,
who is a cartel? And where these cartels are? And
I don't even call them carts tells anymore because here's
the difference between a cartel. I studied economics and college,
and a cartel is a group that that that the
restricts product to drive price up. And that is the
(18:12):
opposite of what's happening in Mexico now. And that is
because they're not cartels in that strict sense. They are
groups that are kind of loosely affiliated and you know,
sometimes fighting al among themselves, but loosely affiliated, but who concerned.
There's nobody really controlling production of these starts that everyone
(18:34):
was kind of free to do what they want. A
lot of the guys have taken like those like those uh,
those merchants who sold the gold miners their shovels and
tents during the gold rush. They're selling them the chemicals.
That's how people are probably most likely getting getting wealthy.
And it doesn't matter. They want people to make more,
and so you have these collapse and prices. It's amazing
(18:54):
thing with methempedomen Methempedoman's prices effectively dropped by about a
d percent. It depends on the region, obviously, but about
eight percent all acroass the country, even as they covered
the entire country. You know, So there's meth in Vermont
and New Hampshire that never used to be there, and
the prices all over the country are below what they
what they've what they've been historically, according to the d
(19:16):
e A and agents who talked to you you on in
these different areas. I'm in Nashville. At the moment, a
pound of an ounce of let's just say, an ounce
of matthews to be hundred fifty dollars. Now it's like
about two d Wow. At least the price of something
is dropping, he says, fully cognizant of how distasteful that
joke is. Uh so, um, if you were dragged in
(19:39):
front of Congress to the White House or whatever and asked,
what in the world can we do to stem the
flow of fentinel into the country, because the death toll
is just astounding. Is there anything we can do well,
I think I think there's a few things on the
national level that we we absolutely need to do. I
was overwhelmed by this feeling when I lived in max
(20:00):
to code that we have never established the relationship. Our
relationship with Mexico is ought to be equal in the
minds of our policy makers, in our government and so on,
and the political class, and so to any relationship we
have in the world to England, out we have with England,
with Japan, with Russia, with China. It's fraud, it's difficult,
(20:23):
but we need to make it a priority of the
equal to those countries that I just said. And when
we do that, we don't like you know, how many
people can actually Americans can actually name the six Mexican
border states with the United States and that that kind
of basic stuff. We just don't know about Mexico. You know,
it's just not even there. And and so I believe
(20:45):
that once we have this relationship, we can't There are
lots of Mexicans I know who would be very happy
to have their government pushed to address the horrible corruption
in there um in a criminal justice. So really it's
almost not just even corruption, it's just simply the institutions
(21:07):
are unbelievably weak. It's not anything like we have here
in the United States, except for maybe in the smallest
town kind of shriff corrupt sheriff kind of idea, you know,
or stuff that we used to have in the thirties
under al Capone. It's that kind of thing, you know.
And I think that that many Mexicans are begging for that.
This is not something that is a debatable point. I
(21:28):
don't think in Mexico. We absolutely this is this is
running our country into the ground. Um. The other thing
I think we need to do as a country in
the United States is this is a binational problem, and
that is that the guns that are purchased easily here
are what ensures that impunity down in Mexico. So many
of those guns are smuggled into Mexico, smuggled south, uh
(21:51):
and usually in small quantities, not big truckloads of hundreds
of guns or anything like That's usually you know of
the five, ten, twenty here and there, and and but
over period of years it adds up and that is
what ensures their impunity. The price of of an a
K forty seven made in Eastern Europe sold legally here
into into the United States and then bought here illegally
(22:13):
in the United States and then smuggled south. The price
of that is too is meth and petomen for two
dollars a pound, or announced rather in UM in Nashville, Tennessee. Boy,
you want to talk about a topic that will take
another book. I mean, that's that's a big one and
full of twists, turns and difficulties. Obviously, yeah so so
(22:36):
um incredibly troubling and deadly obviously. But let's turn to
uh the P two P meth. That was the main
topic of the excerpt from your book that was in
The Atlantic. The Jack and I talked about a great
deal we for what it's worth, you know. We we
definitely swing conservative politically speaking on most things. I hate labels.
Labors are for soup games. But um, it's also true
(23:00):
that we don't hate anybody. We're not. We try not
to be condescending unless it's intentional for the purpose as
a humor. And we have quite a number of listeners
who are either uh former drug drug addicts, recovering drug addicts,
former homeless people, tweakers, people with all sorts of sins
and all because they know we're not preaching at them.
(23:20):
We understand people make choices, sometimes they make bad choices,
and sometimes life goes sideways. It happens, you can't happen
to anybody. You just have to take responsibility for you know,
the way you live your life is our point of view.
So we've talked to a hell of a lot of
people who have been on the streets or are currently
on the streets who say, everybody's a tweaker out here.
Everybody in the tent camps is doing meth. And they
(23:41):
don't mean literally every single human being. But there was
a report out of Portland. They had a couple of
guys who are now turning their lives around working for
the city. Is actually a really nice story. But they're saying,
oh my god, he's so called homeless temps are meth.
The homeless camps rather are meth camps. How did we
get to this point? And what effect is this new
(24:01):
meth which is actually kind of the old meth, this
P two P meth, what what effect is it happen? Right? Well,
this the roots of all this are the are in
the fact that the Mexican trafficking world, a few folks
who are in particular who are instrumental in all this
I talked about in the book. Um begins to understand
(24:22):
and learn how to make methum fedomen in the late eighties,
mostly in the San Diego Tijuana area, um uh and
um they make it. They were able to learn because
it's a very simple process. Then it uses a chemical
called the federan, so decongestent. It's found in pseudo fed
pills and all. That's why, that's why you can't buy
those things very easily, have to sign and there's a
(24:43):
behind lock and key and all. The ephedrian is a
very easy chemical. It's very effective and good decongestent, but
a couple of chemical tweaks and it becomes methum fedoment.
It's not really hard to do um so any almost
anybody can make and that it really democratizes how how
of uh meth can be made. But the folks who
(25:05):
really take greatest advantage of that, our Mexican trappickers increasingly
into the into the nineteen nineties, the labs that they
call them men super labs. That that acount sounds like
a bizarre term now given those quantities coming out of
Mexico today, but super lab would be fifty to one
hundred towns every time you cook that kind of thing.
And you began to see this stuff in in the
central Valley of California, San Diego, to Mecuela, up in
(25:28):
the Bakersfield friends, and also and then also down into
into Mexico, and they really specialized and they industrialized this,
so they're able to produce the very large quantities of
stuff of this stuff, but it's always limited by the
amount of a phederan they can get. For a long
time it was legal. You could get hundreds of tons imported,
(25:48):
hundreds of tons of imported in Mexico, and significant part
of that make methal and funniment. But there was never
enough to really cover the entire United States increasingly, really
it was just a lot of the West during you know,
I say it's it never went east to the Mississippi River. Um,
A federal meth was a very euphoric drug. You would
stay up for several days, you wanted to be around
(26:09):
people gathering away, you know. Um. Your withdrawals from it
would be you basically slept solid for two days, you know,
and just we're out and then you were coherent. You
kind of returned more or less to your saying mental
state that you were before that, although over time clearly
it degraded your body and your mind. It took several
(26:30):
years to do those. But so to be in a
state where you really weren't functional, you would have to
abuse it for years, for a long time, and stay
up for many days. Once you stayed up for many days,
you began to see these what they call shadow people frequently.
You know there's somebody over there and you looking. Actually
there's nobody, but you know it's that kind of your
(26:51):
mind playing tricks on you, so to speak. In two
thousand and eight, all that changes Mexico in two thousand
and eight, prompted by a number of of political reasons
that I go go into in the book where they
did this, but they make a veederan illegal except for
a few pharmaceutical companies to possess and use in their processes,
(27:11):
and and with that the Mexican trafficking world has to
figure out how to make the federan. I mean, I'm
not em fedoment. I'm sorry. Another another way, they've actually
been seeing this writing on the wall for a couple
of years by then two thousand six, and when they
first begin to start experimenting with this, by two thousand
and eight, the whole the wall shut slam shut, and
(27:32):
they now have to figure out a new So there
is another way of making me fedoment. It's it's really
not very easy. It's smelly, it's messy, a lot of
different chemicals. UM, it's not anything you'd want to use,
except for if you can't get a federan and so
and in this UH method uses a precursor known as
P two P penal to propanon, very commonly known in
(27:56):
the meth making UH world. UH. This method has one
benefit to traffickers over the Federman and that is that
you can make P two P easily and with many
different kind of chemical recipes or chemical hacks, using chemicals
that are widely available in industry. They're all industrial, they're
all legal, easily available in the world world markets. Half
(28:19):
most of them very highly highly toxic. Which if so,
if the government cracked down on this recipe of making
P twop, you can come back with this other one
and this one, and there's there's apparently dozens. In fact,
I think they never stopped inventing new ways of making P.
Two P. What this means is if you have access
to to chemicals, which the Mexican trafficking world does, as
(28:40):
I said, through these two ports on the Czivic coast
of Mexico, you can begin to make this stuff all
year round and in quantities that dwarf anything you were
capable of making with the pedment. And that's what begins
to happen. It not right off the bat, It takes
a couple of years, takes a few years when people
get used to this new reality. But certainly by two
thousand twelve thirteen fourteen, you begin to see quantities, just
(29:05):
staggering quantities coming through and marching across the country. So
in l a Portland's west coast, basically two thousand thirteen fourteen,
you're seeing this stuff. It hits the Midwest across the
Mississippi River for the first time. It hits the Midwest
by two thousand seventeen, and then hits the east coast
and up into New Windland, which never had any meth
(29:25):
in two thousand nineteen, roughly in eighteen nineteen um and
so at the same time, as I said, it's producing
such quantities that the price drops to not only covered
the country, the price drops, but this, this methem fetomen
has been shown to be accompanied. And I use these
words carefully and I'll explain line a little bit is
accompanied every place along the way, according to my reporting
(29:49):
talking to people in all these different areas, by not
just not just this staying up line. A lot of days,
it's no longer a euphoric drug. It's a very sinister
It turns you inward. It's accompanied by um symptoms of schizophrenia.
So you see people of extraordinarily paranoid, very intense paranoia,
(30:11):
like everyone's out to get you, no one can be trusted,
and you're running because somebody, you think, somebody looks at
you strange, you know, and at the same time, very
very florid, intense hallucinations. Now, now, Sam, let me let
me just jump in and ask you, because we've had
some folks weather and law enforcement around the streets say, well, listen,
it's not as much about the chemical nature of it,
(30:32):
but just it is so cheap and so powerful these
days that it's overwhelming people's brains. So is it one
or the other? Is it really both? Well, here's the thing.
Here's the thing. The reason I said accompanied by and
not cause causes us is because there is no neuroscience
on this. Nobody understands really what's it work? At least
of all me. Okay, I don't want to be putting
(30:52):
myself out there. What I'm giving you is street reporting. Okay,
I'm going I'm talking to people, you know, e er
docs in these hounds and drug counselors over here and
recovering addicts over here. Um, no one has actually studied
P two P meth the way it's made in Mexico
right now. There's no rat studies, no my studies, there's
no journal reports. I'm simply telling you that this is
(31:15):
the reporting I've done in these various areas and keep
on doing even though the books published. I'm I'm still
talking to people. I'm probably gonna talk with a person
there Albuquerque, New Mexico and later later today on this
very topic. But over and over and over, you just
hear this all the same, the same stories. People go
out of their minds, they're raving, they're incapable of living
(31:37):
with anybody, so very quickly they're homeless, and the place
they least want to be as a homeless shelter, because
in a homeless shelter, everybody seems to be a threat.
You know, you're you're surrounded by people who are who
are almost like themselves, a little bit out of their mind,
and everyone's confined, and you've got to the rules, and
there's all this stuff that's so so along with that
(31:58):
comes this very you're um accompanied by all this method
foundom comes as very severe mental illness and then along
as well as a homelessness, and along with that then
comes the tent encountenance. Tents become perfect lodging. If you
are in the state of mind where you think the
(32:19):
entire world is a threat, the last thing you want
to do is be around other people. So a little
it's a little pod in which you can kind of
exist with what is stuck in your brain and all
the those are ideas that are coming through through through
through your brain. This is homelessness. Is A is A
is a. There are many kinds of homelessness. There are
many reasons why people end up homeless. A lot of them,
(32:42):
you know, shredded safety net, homeless people who lose a
job and have surgery, can't find can't afford a house,
and the surgery that that kind of story is also
part of it. There's the sex register at homeless who
in a registered sex offender is only a few places
in his in his town or as county where you
can where you can live, and frequently they end up homeless.
You know, there's a lot of reasons. However, my reporting
(33:04):
I believe has convinced me and shows that did a
major force behind those tent encampments and the homeless of
from the delirium that people are often suffering from and
all that is this method set them and has come
out of Mexico over the last eight ten eleven years
and in many parts of the country, certainly eight or
(33:25):
nine years, many and almost all the country. Um, it
is made with this P two. Why is it? What
are the neuroscientific reasons for it? I don't know that
hasn't been studied in the least. Do we have any
and I want to Yeah, I was gonna say, do
we have any idea whether some of the mental health
problems you're talking about? Uh, can they go away in
the brain heal once you discontinue the Matthew, Sir, These
(33:48):
people just damaged for life. I realized it's early days,
but it is it is early. But I would tell
you this. I spoke with a woman who is the
who is a director of a homeless shelter in the Midwest,
UM and she spent many years on skid road working
with almost folks, and she was graphic about this stuff.
She's saying. Used to be we could teach people how
(34:09):
to repair their lives. We're almost like life coaches. Basically,
you know how to get a driver's license, how do
life for a job? All these kinds of that. You
could teach people all these ways of recovering and getting
back into life. But the problem is the effect nowadays
of the meth is so devastating. This is the woman
of thirty years on the job. Okay, this is she
is a not born yesterday and the stuff. And she
(34:30):
was telling me that that we no longer use life
coaching because the people who we see who even though
they're sober, they're not on meth, they are not capable.
They their brains have been so devastated that they're not
capable of following these simple societal rules. As frequently their
memories shot too. They're just not able to function the
(34:52):
way you need to function in a in a in
a in a society, you know, so you have all
of this kind of um combined. So it's still not clear.
But the initial indications, and I asked your question, seemed
to be that there is in many people, uh, permanent,
at least semi permanent, at lasting, let's say, damage to
(35:16):
one's brain. And one woman I quote in the book
in the least of this my latest book, says that too.
She she you know, she was barking like a dog,
she said, and went out of her mind on the stuff.
She gets sober. She's been sober two years by the
time I spoke with her, And but she still knows
she's not the same as such a point in interview,
she says, I'm hoping they can study this stuff, because
(35:39):
you know, meditation helps, quiet time helps physical exercise health.
But there's she's still not the same. She knows this,
and she said, I just would love to know what
I can do, what more I can do to help
heel my brain. And and I think that's what's really
going on out there. And it's there's so many folks.
The longer they're left in presence of this myth, the
(36:02):
more damage it's going to do. And the other promise,
even if it doesn't create your homelessness, even it's not
the root cause of why you're on the street, the
fact that you are on the street, and it is
so prevalent and so cheap and many, so many areas
of this country that frequently people fall into using it
sometimes to remove themselves from the reality that they happen
(36:25):
to be living, and so they don't feel that reality,
and so it but that means it serves to keep
you homeless and make homelessness more durable, more endurable. Kind
of Well, it strikes me that all of us who
grew up in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, maybe
we're part of yours, maybe not conservative, liberal or whatever,
we need to just to completely reapproach the question of
(36:46):
drug use and legalization and what's partying and what's not.
I mean, all the facts have changed. I mean, other
than I'm thinking back to when you know, when I
was a kid or a you know, college student whatever.
If you overdid L s D, you could really screw
your mind. And ecstasy was just coming on the scene
when I was in college, and there were definitely some
people who did themselves serious damage. But I mean, whether
(37:09):
it's the much much more potent pot or what we've
been talking about is just that the equation, all the
factors in the equation have changed. That's that's absolutely verioustuet observation.
I think that that's actually the truth all the all
the myths that we used to scoff at, frankly, because
frankly a lot of more myth they were silly, you know,
um back in the thirties, fifties, seventies, whatever it was.
(37:31):
You know, I got some of this stuff when I
was in school too, and I knew it wasn't really
true what they were saying, you know, so I laughed
at And well, all those myths have become reality. You
can die from a line of cocaine. One hit of
myth can lead to you going out of your mind, uh,
you know, by repotent pot can lead you to be
um uh you know, yeah, send you twenty r with
(37:55):
psychotic episode. Heroin does kill One hit of heroin does
kill you. You know, that is the reality of today.
And so the facts have changed, but frequently are um
our how shall I put it? Our thinking has not. Yeah,
there's so this idea that that you know, we shouldn't
(38:17):
arrest people for this stuff. Frequently about the only place
that people are safe. And I hate to put it
this way because it's it's it's a nuanced idea, but frequently,
but the only people are people are safe away from
this damaging, these damaging to trouble and cheap drugs is
in jail, you know, Sam, Just let me jump in
and point out. We read an email on the air
(38:38):
the other day of a guy who's turned his life
around after a fairly prolonged meth addiction, and it was
so interesting how he phrased one aspect of his journey.
He said that uh meth was essentially decriminalized right after
he got arrested, and he said, thank god I dodged
that bullet. It was only being incarcerated it that stopped
(39:00):
his use, and he's so grateful for it. And you
know that's not some sort of idiotic ham handed to
arrest everybody argument, but it's it's true. It just is
it is. And I can tell you I've been doing
this now nine years and the number of has heard
this so many times in long interviews and short and
new casual conversations, on and on and on and every
(39:22):
Drug Council has heard it as well that the best
day of my life, the best thing ever happened to
me was that I was arrested, got off the streets. Um.
In fact, in Dreamland, my previous book, a guide almost
ordered me to quote him and I did. Uh in
in in New Mexico and Santa Fe saying, um, the
(39:42):
I want to thank the d E H for arresting me,
because I would be dead otherwise. Now he's doing very well.
He's that we're stolen contact on Facebook, and he's doing
very well. And but that happened because he was taken
off the street. Jail is not the way we do
jail today needs to be changed. That can I'm confessed.
(40:02):
I think I think there are um uh, they're in
fact in my latest book that there's chapters on this
one county in Kentucky that is experimenting with how to
do jail differently. Have a pod of recovery, of recovery
pod as part of the jail and G E D
classes and Criminals thinking classes and all that. Because jail
(40:23):
has largely been this anchor around our neck. If you
go in a criminal mentally ill or addicted, you're gonna
come out worse. You know, we need to approach this differently,
I believe, or at least a offer a different option
to folks in jail who want to follow it. And
and that's happening now in many counties, particularly in those
areas where the opioid epidemic was worse Kentucky, Ohio, places
(40:44):
like that. But um, even the fact of just getting
off the street if you if you buy the homeless
UM shelter administrators comment to me that the folks who
are out there on the street now that that that
they are using this stuff when they stopped, that their
brains are perhaps permanently at least long term devastated and
(41:06):
her words, um, then then more exposure to that stuff
is going to lead to further u devastation. Of course,
with frontinol risk almost every day basically every day, um
uh death. You know. So the idea that of decriminalizing
the stuff COVID was simply I've taken as saying COVID
is simply a year long, unplanned, completely obviously unplanned experiment,
(41:31):
and decriminalizing drugs on the street when those drugs on
the street our frontinl and math and so you see
the record overdose deaths. You see. My my opinion really
the real expansion of mental illness and homelessness. Uh, that's
driven I believe my reporting shows by by by this
method phetom and that's coming out of Mexico and its
unprecedented quantities. Wow. What a great point. So final thought,
(41:55):
you've scared the crap out of us, in appropriately so.
But the tital of your book, the Least of Us,
true tales of America and hope in the time of
fentanyl and meth. Where's the hope coming from? Well, this
is always the problem I get into with interviews like that.
I love talking about all parts of this book. This
part of the book is really most of the book. Um,
(42:19):
it's it's more than half the book is taken up
with stories, and so it really I hate to put
to say that, but it really warrants a full conversation
of another hour. And I'm happy to do that at
another time if you wish. But but the the I
really did view this as as a as an opportunity,
this whole thing, and and and and in part because
(42:41):
I thought that one of the main reasons for the
opioid epidemic and all the problems we faced um uh
and in terms of trucks, has a lot to do
with our turning our back or ignoring or shredding. Yeah,
the what bonded us? What bonds? You know, if you
think about why we humans survived and prospered as a
(43:03):
species for whatever millions of years, what is the thing
that held it held made that possible? And I would
argue to you that it is our feeling that not
of community that we need. It's not a nice thing,
it's an essential, but it's what kept us alive, allowed
us to survive. And and we have decided in America,
(43:24):
I would say, I don't know about other countries. Maybe
it's also true, but I'm just talking about the country
right now. In America, we have decided in the last
forty years that that's not necessary. You know, we don't
really need to be around other people, or we can
just be around certain kinds of people. We don't need
to you know, um, the community banks that can be
swallowed up and buy big banks and who cares. You know,
(43:45):
there's we could go on for like literally an hour
talking about all the ways in which American our culture
we have shredded, destroyed, ignored, unfunded, whatever things that brought
us together that were really the bulwarks of the sense
against the stuff. And now we we find ourselves so
vulnerable because why my my feeling is because we're so isolated,
(44:09):
and we we got away from the idea that a
community is built by small acts, gaily act, not worrying
if you're saving the world, not worrying if you're if
you're some noble person out there doing everything and getting
all the credit, and you're just And so what I
did was understanding believing that this was the case. I
decided I was going to fill my book, actually half
(44:31):
of the book with the stories of Americans involved as
many stories of quiet active the quiet work, daily work
of Americans involved in community repair that I could find,
not necessarily working only with addiction. Now the idea that
we need to be outside among each other, overlooking all
these reasons why we're supposed to hate this other person,
(44:54):
race or or or political persuasion or all these kind
of clapp and when you get down to the bottom,
local grassroots level, you find a lot of that just
does not matter at all. And it's very exhilarating to
do that. So, for example, just give you one example
there's many in the book because this was this became
my main focus, not the not the dope. The dope.
(45:15):
I I understood it, I understood noting all. I understood nothing.
And I told those stories without blinking. But the real
stories that exhilarated me, that made me feel like, damn,
this is work doing, you know, and and this is
the heart and soul of what I'm trying to learn.
There are stories of this small kind of stories of
community repair. One of them had to do with a
guy named Bird Mike mckissic and the small Southern South Muns,
(45:38):
Indiana South Monthly neighborhood surrounded by what used to be
enormous transmission plants and transmission Capital of America Munthsly Monthly
once was well, as those plants, you know, are really
on the verge of dying out. They've been dwindling for years,
and how they're about to die out. The city fathers say,
you know what, we can't afford to keep open these
community centers that we have three of him around, and
(46:00):
one of them was right across the street from Bird's house.
He had worked there for a while. So the city
fathers he went on the budget, you know, it is
not possible anymore. And so they closed the centers, and
they think that's the end of it, except except that
Bird keeps the key. Right, the bird keeps the key,
doesn't tell the city lead there's anything about this. He
just becomes a community center unto himself, as his neighborhood
(46:24):
suffers from this real economic stress. And then of course
the opio thing on top of that. I mean, all
of this is happening at the same time. And he
keeps the key, and he goes over and he opens
the door for the kids when I want to play basketball.
He gives him a place to hang out amid all this,
you know, devastation all around them, the community center without
any money and pains that Clay continues to function as
(46:46):
a community center. And of course he he he keeps
the he keeps the he mows the lawn outside, he
keeps the toilets fixed, all this kind of stuff. He
allows his community, his his neighborhood to whether this powerful,
these powerful storms, and come out kind of the the
the other, the other side. So I tell three chapters
(47:07):
in the books about Munsey, Indiana and Bird Makissic who
later who dies. He's a strange man, no doubt. He's
a man who literally, like psychologically, had some issues and
and literally never could leave his neighborhood. He was afraid
to leave his neighborhood, but he was. He was like
the mayor of the South Mundsy neighborhood, and he kept
it a lot. It's those kinds of stories that I
(47:31):
believe I wanted to tell, not because they're a prescription.
I don't know what every county in America needs to
do about this stuff. I just think that it's very
important to understand that we have gotten away from this stuff.
That is our life saver, it's our it's our life
rep and that is the feeling of repairing community, making
that strong again. Boy, I'm starting to get a sense
(47:52):
of why you juxtapose those two major things in your book.
But it's it's interesting to me that you did in
that way. And by the way, these issues are stuff
we talk about all the time, substituting the empty calories
of say, online engagement with actual human contact and if
a Facebook friend is anything like a friend, etcetera center. Yeah,
(48:14):
exactly what an idea, you know, I'll face to face contact,
My god, it seems like radical in the in the
context of America, of America today. Don't you think I
mean to me? But to me this is and and
and the idea is to get to cross this idea.
We are only as strong as the most vulnerable. We're
only as strong. We learned during the pandemic, all of
a sudden, our lives relied on that beat packing worker
(48:36):
in Kansas, we who, all of a sudden we discover
is actually an essential worker, every bit as essentials as
some paramedic, you know, because so is the food supply
dies we do you know, what about the grocery store clerk?
All of these things and and along the way, just
to explain the title. You know, I'm not Christian, but
I was reading the Bible during writing this, and I
(48:58):
read the Gospel of mass You, and of course that's
a very powerful gospel, particularly in certain parts of it.
Um several parts, but one of them, of course, one
of the most powerful, is one of Jesus says to
his disciples that would you do for the least of
my brother? And you do for me? And I And
that hit me. It was something I'd read years ago,
but I came back to it for some reason. And
when in the middle of it, I realized kind of
(49:20):
why I had done that, and that that that seemed
to me also this perfect messing of the of the
ideas I was trying to get across. What is the
defense against not only not only the sinister drug craft
that's coming up, but all these other uh addictive substances
and stuff that we are constantly bombarded with sugar and
(49:41):
fast food and social media and you know, Twitter and
Facebook and all the rest, and and cable TV news
and and pornography and gambling and video daancity go on
and not take the alcohol? What is our best defense?
These are all the same kind of thing. They're all
a bunch of groups whose job is to week whatever
they're selling so that we will need, we will feel
(50:03):
like we have to have it. Send a lot a
drug cartel, McDonald's Facebook, you know, uh scuser's gambling has.
You know that it's kind of all in the same
uh continuum. I believe in so to me, I think
Jesus understood that the important idea that had allowed people
(50:23):
to survive up to his time and have allowed us
to survive as a species ever since, and that is
that we have to understand how important it is to
be with each other. So in some sense that community idea,
he understood that. You may not have understood the neuroscience
of it, but he's certainly understood the idea there. And
so at some point these these solutions maybe even become
(50:45):
fairly low tech, you know, like how about just getting
out of the house, have a barbecue with your neighbors,
get to know that person always seems like such a commudgeon.
Maybe actually get to know maybe he's actually a nice guy,
you know, not worrying about whether that person has a
Trump or Biden sign in s front yard anymore. You know,
once you get beyond that, get beyond that established let's
(51:07):
face to face relationships, so we we what we've lost
so much of in this country. I think, yeah, you know,
at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon myself, I'm
I'm concerned that though there's an enormous amount of awareness
of the things you're talking about, um that number one,
the pace of change makes it very difficult to come
up with cures as quickly as the disease has happened.
(51:28):
And number two, the greatest minds of our our generations
are devoted to the very endeavors you're talking about, which
are you know, utterly heartless and soul less in in
their effects. But no, I agree with you completely. I'm troubled.
You know, it's funny there are there are no chimpanzees
sitting around discussing how chimpanzees will clearly be their own doom,
(51:49):
whereas human kind of think has been aware of that
since you know, when people started tossing ideas around the campfire.
It's not clear whether it's going to be a virus
or a nuclear weapon, or or drug or Facebook. But
by god, I've often said that Sam that Homo sapiens
are my least favorite species. It's mosquitoes are second to
(52:11):
the bottom, But Homo sapiens, I don't know what to
do with us. You know what, I don't particularly no either.
I don't claim to have any answers here. I'm just
saying the stories I tried to write. We're saying this
is what people are doing. Maybe that attitude is something
you might want to think about. Well, that's the most
of the journalists can really do. I think I love
(52:33):
the idea of getting together again and chatting about that
theme of the book, the connectedness and things that we
can do on small and medium scales. Uh, and not
just get on Twitter and announced that anybody who disagrees
with me as a piece of crap um or worse.
But you know, what can we do in our own communities?
You know, there's there's a number of the great philosophers,
religious figures who would point out that start with your
(52:56):
own soul, then perhaps your family, your household, then maybe
your block. Why don't you deal with that and then
start crying the problems of the globe and not worry
that what you're doing is not in some noble, virtuous
way of saving the world. And how it be enough
that you're doing it down your block, your church, your
(53:19):
pt A, your school, your kids school. That kind of thing,
to me so often gets in the way, like I'm
not Oh, there's all these other problems you ask, So
what just do like work with your own garden, so
to speak. Yeah, yeah, save the one starship. It's a
metaphor that's both cliche and incredibly powerful. The starfish. Rather,
we're not stay saving starships, were not Captain Kirk in
(53:42):
the scenario star I think you know what I'm talking about. Uh, Sam, Hey,
it's been great to talk, and we will will absolutely
do it again. Extra large
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