[CLIP] How Drug Cartels Infiltrated the Prescription Drug Market with Fake Pills: Michael Brown

I'll start with a new paradigm. Fake pills, right? Fentanyl pills that are designed to look like Oxycontin, Adderall, Percocets, and Valiums. The cartels sat back and they looked at America's addiction to prescription drugs. There's a lot of people in America who will never transition to illegal narcotics, i.e. meth, heroin, or cocaine, but they'll take prescription drugs. If we can infiltrate the prescription drug market with fake pills and put fentanyl in them, we can force that transition from prescription drugs to fentanyl. And again, they were very successful in creating that new paradigm. A large majority of the overdose deaths we see now are people who thought they were taking an Oxycontin or a Vicodin, and it was a fentanyl pill with more than 2 milligrams of fentanyl, and it killed them within 30 seconds. So the cartels realized they were on to something, so then they started putting fentanyl into the cocaine supply. We're seeing it in the marijuana supply. They understand that fentanyl is so powerful and that the draw to the individual who is addicted will transition to fentanyl. In some states, such as Massachusetts, drug users are only seeking out fentanyl now because it's so strong. So really, it has changed a number of drug user paradigms to bring in people who, generally speaking, were not predisposed to using illicit narcotics. So for those of us that are not familiar with the cartel strategy of getting people addicted to drugs, if you could explain a little bit, why is it that there's this graduation from, say, a heroin or cocaine or something to fentanyl? How does that actually work? Because they seem to be pushing in that particular direction always, right? And fentanyl sort of seems to be on top of the chain. Historically, when we talk about the distribution of narcotics, we're talking about heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and of course now fentanyl. Each one of those drugs, in and of itself, is highly addictive. But fentanyl right now is the most addictive synthetic narcotic out there that's being sold. In terms of addictive qualities, we're talking about potency, right? Fentanyl is 10 times stronger than heroin, 100 times stronger than morphine. So as a drug trafficker, I want to sell a product that's going to bring my customers back as frequently as possible. And that means I'm going to sell them, or I want to sell them, the most potent substance I have. And right now, the cartels have figured out that fentanyl right now is king of the game. The more fentanyl they can distribute, the more addiction they can attribute to that, and that means more profit for the cartels. Unfortunately, most people who die from an overdose-related fentanyl death are taking what they think is a Xanax, maybe the first time or the second time, and it's got that 2 milligrams of fentanyl in it, and they die. You hear the stories all the time about parents going into their kid's room, kid slumped over in bed, they find what they think is an Adderall under the pillow, and it turns out to be a fentanyl pill with 2 milligrams of fentanyl. DEA has said now that 7 out of 10 pills have a lethal dose of fentanyl in it. And when you think about the millions of fentanyl pills which are distributed, right? 7 out of 10, that's a blue pill, red pill selection, right? You take that wrong pill for the first time, and your life is over. When I was growing up, kids smoked marijuana, they did some beer, you woke up the next day, you had a headache. Now if you make that mistake, you could lose your life. Did I hear you correctly that 7 out of 10 pills are lethal? According to DEA statistics, what they're seeing now is 7 out of 10 pills have at least 2 milligrams of fentanyl in it. When you think about the cooks in Mexico who are preparing these pills, they're not using formulas and special equipment, it's a pinch of this, a pinch of that, mix it up, and push it out. And the cartels know this, but they know if they lose 100,000 people, they're going to gain 300,000 new customers. So it's a cost-benefits analysis, again, back to a business model. That actually yields growth? That yields sales, right? Because they know more people are going to use the narcotic than die. And then they look at the law enforcement response, they don't see anything happening in China, they don't see anything happening significantly in Mexico, so really there's no deterrent. In the 60s and 70s, drug dealers were concerned about killing their clients because they didn't want to kill their clients. But the client base today is so vast and diverse that they can lose 100,000 and still make hundreds of millions of dollars. And of course in Mexico, I think in the last 7 to 10 years, over 30,000 people have been killed in cartel violence. Specific violence, right? So when they look at someone taking a pill and dying, to the cartel, that's just the cost of doing business. When they're willing to go out and kill 15, 20 people a day in order to maintain their business model. I just want to talk a little bit more about this equation, because I had assumed that 7 out of 10 are dying, but some have become acclimatized to the drug already, maybe can take the 2 mg. Explain to me again how all this works. Well, you know, there's a couple things that affect that. Roughly, when you look at 200 people a day are dying across the country, those are 200 people that got those 7 pills that have 2 mg of fentanyl in them. When you look at the pill distribution itself, the cartels are cutting the pills with mannitol, they're cutting it with xylosine, benzodiazepines and other substances which break down the toxicity of the pill. So a lot of individuals are surviving, they're not dying, but they're falling into a deeper web of addiction. Until they get that one bad pill. And of course also people are using Narcan now. So people are overdosing, going into cardiac arrest, and their friends are Narcan-ing them back. So they're not dying. If Narcan was not on the scene right now, I think you'd see 10 out of 10 people die. But Narcan, people understand that it can kill you, people don't use alone anymore. So all these factors are coming into play which are extending the life of individuals who would actually be dead if they didn't have this outside assistance, in my opinion. Tell me a little bit about this harm reduction model and how it plays into this whole dynamic that you're just outlining for me. When we talk about harm reduction, that's a big field. The idea of harm reduction is policies and procedures that reduce the harm caused by narcotic use. One of the big examples is the needle exchange program, which was done 20 years ago, in order to reduce the spread of blood-borne diseases such as HIV, hepatitis, et cetera. But in the process, it provided clean needles, which allowed individuals to sustain their drug usage. So it reduced one harm but increased another harm, which is long-term drug usage. But now I think what we're seeing is what I call progressive harm reduction policies. And I'll give you an example. In Colorado in 2020, they initiated Bill 110, which decriminalized the personal use of narcotics, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and originally fentanyl, but then they took that back. It basically legitimized drug usage. In the last three years, it's been a complete disaster. They've had to call back that bill because they saw increased fentanyl usage, increased overdose fatalities, increased drug distribution in their city. So that harm reduction program was unsuccessful. But even then, Oregon is trying to do a harm reduction program that mimics Colorado's. New York has a harm reduction program where you can actually go into what they call safe site injection locations and use dangerous narcotics, and if you overdose, there's a staff member there ready to bring you back. Now they consider that a success. Of course, we want to save lives, but are we saving lives in order to let them die at another time, or should we be more progressive in getting people to abstain from drug use in whatever policies and treatment programs that that requires?