How the CCP Kills 100,000 Americans a Year: Drug Expert Michael Brown

the cartel sat back and they looked at the American America's addiction to prescription drugs if we can infiltrate the prescription drug Market with fake pills and put fentel in them we can force that transition from prescription drugs to fentel Michael Brown was a special agent for The Drug Enforcement Administration for over three decades so we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars being laundered through chinese-based companies in the United States counts in China back to Mexico now he's Global director for counternarcotics technology at Raku analytical devices then we have the gang level violence entire communities of young men killed over drug trafficking is what's happening really an aspect of terrorism this is American thought leaders and I'm Yan Kell Michael Brown such a pleasure to have you on American thought leaders thank you so we're going to talk about the fenel crisis in the United States affecting so many people why don't you give me a sense of the the broad picture very briefly of where we're at that's such a broad topic because there's so many individuals so many different paradigms being affected by a Mexican cartel fenel I'll start with a new paradigm um fake pills right fentanyl pills that are designed to look like oxycotton Aderall per cetes and volumes the cartel sat back and they looked at the American America's addiction to prescription drugs there's a lot of people in America who will never transition to illegal narcotics I.E meth the heroin or cocaine but they'll take prescription drugs if we can infiltrate the prescription drug Market with fake pills and put fentol 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 oxycoton or a vicadin and it was a fentanyl pill with more than two milligram 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 fenel in some states such as Massachusetts drug users are only seeking out fentol now because it's so strong so really it has changed a number of drug user paradigms to bring in people who were generally speaking they were not predisposed to using illicit narcotics so for those of us that are not familiar with uh cartel strategy of getting people addicted to drugs if you could explain a little bit why is it that you know there's a sort of 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 and Fentanyl sort of seems to be on top of the chain well you know historically when you talk about the distribution of Narcotics you know 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 alter that's being sold in terms of addictive qualities we're talking about potency right fentol 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 fenel 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 fental death are taking what they think is a anex maybe the first time or the second time and it's got that 2 milligrams of fentanyl in it and they die all right um you hear the stories all the times about you know parents going into their kids' room kids slumped over in bed they find what they think is an Aderall under the pillow and it turns out to be a fentanyl pill with 2 milligrams of Fenty DEA has said now that seven out of 10 pills have a lethal dose of fentol in it and when you think about the millions of fentanyl pills which are distributed right seven out of 10 that's 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 seven out of 10 pills are lethal according to Da statistics what they're seeing now is seven out of 10 pills have at least 2 milligrams of fental in it when you think about the cooks in Mexico who are preparing these pills they're not using you know formulas and special equipment it's a pinch of this a pinch of that mix it up and push it out so 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 the look at the law enforcement response they don't see anything happening in China they don't see anything happen significantly in Mexico so really there's no deterrent um you know in the 60s and 70s unfortunately 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 you know I think in the last s to 10 years You' they've killed 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 uh their business model I just want to talk a little bit more about this equation because I had assume that seven out of 10 are dying but um some are have become a climatized to the drug already maybe can take the 2 milligrams explain to me again how all this works forget you know 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 seven pills that have 2 milligrams of fentil in it when you look at the pill distribution itself you know the cartels are cutting the pills with manitol they're cutting it with xylazine benzo aipan 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 becoming they're falling into a deeper web of addiction right 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 nar canning them back so they're not dying if Naran was not on the scene right now I think you'd see 10 out of 10 people dying right but Naran people understand that it can kill you people don't use a loan 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 you know harm reduction model and how it plays into um this whole dynamic that you're just outlining for me you know when we talk about harm reduction that's a big field right and 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 um in order to reduce the the spread of of bloodborne diseases such as HIV hepatitis Etc but in the process it provided clean need 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 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 3 years it's been a complete disaster they've had to call back that bill because they saw increased fentel 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 New York has a harm reduction program where you can actually go into what they call Safe site injection locations and use d 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 you know from what I understand people that are in these what are I think fairly called open air drug Market type scenarios the life expectancy is very low there because you know just it's just a matter of time before someone overdoses or you know gets hurt by other people that are that are that are there um Everybody I've spoken with that has made it out has said that some kind of intervention where someone said if you don't stop this you're going to die I'm going to help you but you have to stop like something like that happened and hence they credit that for them being alive not these so-called harm reduction policies you know I have a um a podcast called the opioid Matrix and I recently had on a guest who was addicted to narcotics and in until she went to jail that was the defining moment in her life and when I spoke to her she said if I hadn't gone to jail I would be dead right now because I was going to commit suicide using narcotics so I I went in to do something to steal some stuff to buy drugs to commit suicide and I got arrested and I went to jail and in jail I was born again she became a Christian and now she's been out I think she's been clean for a number of years she's running a drug rehabilitation program and she said to me she said Mike you know our secrets can kill us meaning she had this whole life of trauma she never talked about she didn't have anyone to talk to and because of that trauma she got into drug addiction and almost lost her life but a lot of the individuals I talk to have who have come out of severe drug addiction came to a moment of self-realization that this is not what I want for my life right and of course we understand a lot of people don't have that self-determination and we have to be there support them but we cannot support them by saying we accept your dangerous drug usage we're going to enable your dangerous drug usage and if you live and come through it maybe you'll get clean well and of course there's the 12-step program right and for for decades alcoholics an effective program but a pillar of that program is you never touch the stuff right that is the staple of of uh the 12-step program you have to stop drinking completely I've never heard of an AA program Alcoholics Anonymous where they say well it's okay come into the bar and we'll give you a drink and we'll drive you home that's not going to work and if you talk to any alcoholic they will tell you if they take that drink they're going to fall back into that web of addiction so why do we treat those who are addicted to narcotics differently than we treat those who are addicted to to alcohol if you can outline for me the entirety of this fenel supply chain all the way from the precursors to to these different products that are sometimes you know fake fake pills if you can explain that to me sure let's let's imagine you're a um precursor chemical broker in Mexico you work for the caloa cartel you can go on your phone app and go through your contact list and you can reach out to one of several chemical brokers in China say look I need uh four pounds of some precursors for for fentanyl they will then go to a chemical supplier purchase those chemicals and then send them to you Air Cargo or Express parcel with an international Courier so you get a tracking number you can track your package and if your package doesn't arrive they'll send you another package so let's imagine the broker then coordinates um some fentanyl precursors to be sent from a broker and a company in China to caloa in Mexico all right that will come to a to an individual's house they'll take that to the cartel the cartel will then take those precursors to one of the clandestine Laboratories what will then be produced into fentanyl powder or pressed into pills if I can just jump in for a sec are the precursors legal to import or not well see that's where we get into very complex uh very complex conversation because a lot of the essential precursors are restricted even in Mexico so what the cartels have done they've hired chemists and they've created secondary routes where they can use what's called dual-purpose chemicals for example there's a precursor chemical that's used to make an anti-parkinson's medicine that same precs cursor is an intermediate that can be used to make the precursors required to make fenel so the cartels have been able to Sid step around the restricted chemicals and then go to unrestricted chemicals in order to make the precursors necessary to make fentanyl and I saw this with methamphetamine when I was working in myar my last overseas post where the the cartels in Mexico in myar had figured out a way to make aeteran pseudo aedin and other essential precursors with non regulated precursors and for example xylazine is a scheduled to um substance that's used as a veterinarian cative so how do you regulate something that's already regulated if someone decides to use it for an illegal purpose so you could go in a Home Depot or Not Home Depot any any hardware store and you can pick up a substance that's legal and if you know how to convert it to an illegal process you could use it so now we're into a very complicated process of managing things that really can't be regulated okay so they've gotten their chemicals somehow and so let's continue with that with the how the supply chain works okay so once we produce the fent laboratory we'll then take it to a special shop and we used to call these a shop where vehicles have hidden traps right and trap is simply a hidden compartment that's built into the vehicle where a fenel can be located and smoke across the border a lot of CBP custom Border Protection seizures they're searching vehicles and they're finding millions of pills hidden in real Wells dashboards um engine blocks and then those cars are generally going to the United States they're taken apart drugs are taken out so again as I said earlier we know 95% if not more of the fentanyl pills being smuggled into the country are smuggled in vehicles um commercial cargo or we see Backpackers also coming across the border as part of the god ways right but the majority I would say is coming right across the border because it's bulk shipment in order to make money cartels have to move billions of pills millions of pills at one time distribute them have those profits come back to Mexico now what about these you know at what stage is it kind of decided where whether you're going to make you know these fake pills to get people addicted or you know some other way I don't I don't I'm not I don't even know you know what the ways that people consume fentanyl in the first place now like what which what should you kind of be careful with here right well you know if you're if you're a cartel you're looking at what prescription drugs are people using the most are they using perco setes are they using Xanax um are they using um Adderalls right and if you identify let's say the top 10 prescription drugs being used in the United States from teenagers all the way to someone on cancer medication then you're going to say okay let's press out Sentinel pills that look like these top 10 pills and distribute them into the market um now if you're using uh fentanyl let's say you're a substance abuser and you're using fentanyl well you can you can smoke it you can inject it you can mix it with other narcotics for example the cartel's mixed it in with Heroin most people use heroin by injecting it but you can also you can also smoke it but the injection gets it into your system the fastest but then smoking for example crack cocaine gets it into your your brain much faster than you would injecting it so depending on what type of drug you're using determines the the ingestion methodology and this these two milligram pills that you were describing earlier that can kill you um or likely to kill you how is that typic is that also used in all these different ways like I just don't know how all this works well you're talking about 2 milligram let's just say a deadly dose of fentanyl is 2 milligrams or more so in a in a regular siiz pill it'll mostly be combined with say manitol and maybe a binding agent and then they'll put in that 2 milligrams of fentanyl mix it up and press it into a pill and you're popping that and that's what somebody who thinks it's an adderal they're taking that pill and that 2 milligrams is going to most likely kill them within 30 seconds how are they finding these pills like how are how is how are the pills getting into the drug the normal drug supply chain or do they or these are just off the Street or how does it work well there's already an illicit prescription drug supply chain there are people there are dealers out there selling you know legitimate oxycotton legitimate ader rols legitimate XY not xine but legitimate um Xanax so the the supply chain is already there the method of distribution is already there they're just simply now putting in new substances into that existing supply chain which are being distributed so if you're looking if you're going to buy a a non-prescribed um perc from your your local dealer he may not even know he's selling you a perco set that's actually fental so the dealers in Mexico whoever is actually mixing it are not necessarily telling their customer base or their redistributors that hey these pills have fentol in it you know and of course we have the domestic drug trafficking groups who are buying fentanyl from the cartels and then mixing in some of these substances and making their own pills for distribution so one of these paradigms as you do the new paradigm is these you know putting it into these fake pills right another one is sort of the most more traditional way where you're you know adulterating other drugs with fenel or I suppose selling it Al just straight out right what are there other paradigms here or these are the main two those are I would say the main three right you have your long-term substance user you have your prescription drug user and then you have your occasional recreational drug user right you've seen a number of individuals who use cocaine recreationally have died because it had fentanyl in it I think the one of the most notable cases was the West Point graduates in in Miami some years ago uh bought some cocaine and had Fenty and it killed I think three individuals there is the risk right the cartels now see a larger market they see those individuals who use cocaine recreationally maybe a businessman or a housewife takes a hit of cocaine once or twice a month maybe once a year but now it could have fentanyl in it and the cartel's look at that much larger market and say maybe we can replicate with cocaine what we did with Heroin I don't think it's to that point yet but certainly we're seeing what I would call an experimental level of of drug alteration with fentanyl into cocaine and fentel into marijuana so tell me a little bit about your background how you've come to know so much about Fentanyl and the whole kind of you know landscape of the drug industry you know I recently retired from the us Drug Enforcement Administration approximately two years ago um I started in 1989 I had an opportunity to go to US army rangers school to qualify for South American interdiction program which I did for about 3 to four years and then I spent uh about 20 to 25 years working overseas and Drug production countries primarily the Middle East and Southeast Asia I spent my last two years at Thea headquarters working as part of the transnational uh task force on organized crime um um targeting precursor chemicals and in larger drug trafficking organizations and now I'm the director of counternarcotics technology for Raku analytical devices and basically that's a company that produces uh the term Ramen spectroscopy right complicated term basically it means they produce a device that uses a laser to identify unknown substances for example if a police officer was to stop a vehicle and they had a number of plastic baggies with an unknown powder in it using using that device you could quickly identify what that substance was referred to as a presumptive analysis well right because fenel has kind of changed the equation around you know how you can even tell if you could be dead just by touching right a substance absolutely you know and for for law enforcement every drug situation now is a Hazmat situation in my opinion because if you do find a baggie or a package with an unknown substance you don't want to open it up because could be fentanyl or another substance that could prove harmful to the officer or the individual who has it so using this Advanced Ramen technology you can scan that package and identify what it is in most cases without having to open it up fascinating you know I want to touch on the pre you mentioned you did this work in precursors right and of course we know that communist China is the source of a lot of the fenel precursors possibly others um so maybe tell me a little bit about that time well you can go back uh 20 or 30 years you know we've been following the precursors from primarily China to South America Colombia and Peru for the production of cocaine and heroin and of course Mexico now is the predominant um cartel on the Block right you have your top five or six cartels in Mexico producing heroin cocaine methamphetamine and now of course fentanyl all those drugs some of those are semi synthetics but Fentanyl and methamphetamine or synthetics which means they require precursor chemicals in order to produce well so you know our view here at the epoch times is you know communist China is uh has been engaged in all sorts of what are called asymmetrical Warfare techniques against the United States for decades and of course you know drug Warfare is is one of them some people have described it as a kind of reverse Opium War of sorts right so if you could just tell me a little bit how does the Communist Regime work with the cartels to to ultimately get the Fentanyl and Other Drugs into America well I would say right now there's no direct evidence that says the PRC is directly involved in working with the cartels but certainly we know that the PRC is aware of the cartel relationship with Chinese chemical producers and Chinese Brokers um you know we have a DEA office in Beijing that works closely with the PRC but I would say it's more a a concept of willful blindness understanding the situation and simply allowing it to happen saying well we're doing what we can but really the drug problem is a US problem it's an addiction problem it's a it's a demand problem the United States needs to deal with their own problem before they blame China and that's generally been the party line that I've heard over the years from China concerning the precursor chemical supply chain well given what we've seen over the past few decades I I'm deeply skeptical that the Communist Regime is going to be uh you know helping America in this in this respect you know I would say you know in 2019 2020 the US uh worked very closely with China the PRC and getting fenel regulated as well as it analoges to stop those companies chemical companies from shipping it to the United States that was a success but then China simply continued to work with the Mexican cartels right the Chinese companies in in China said well we'll just ship it to the cartels and then they'll do whatever they want to do with it that was the transition that no one saw coming right so China says hey we did our part we stopped it from coming to the United States but our relationship with Mexico has nothing to do with the United States what Mexico does with those chemicals is their own responsibility you cannot hold us responsible for that so that was the prc's way of saying hey it's not our problem we are simply selling legitimate chemicals to a legitimate country go talk to Mexico it's their problem so recently uh the DEA has actually taken and a number of Chinese Nationals to task around fenel enforcement I'm sure you're familiar with the case but you give me a sense of what happened yes yes DEA working with the task force uh did an undercover operation targeting eight Chinese companies and 13 Chinese individuals who were involved in an undercover operation to send Fenton land or its precursors to the United States that case was so successful that they got an indictment on the 13 individuals and they indicted the eight companies now in my opinion the true metric of whether China will assist the United States as they said they will is will they initiate their own investigation based on the indictments that DEA has provided them and believe me DEA if they get an indictment I guarantee you that case is 100% and those individuals in China are responsible for what the indictment says they did so we talked about you know the sort of the business model transitioning from you know using or or the business we talked about the conception of the business model of transitioning people who are addicted to uh uh I guess a lower strength opiate to something that's higher strength so then now they require this I guess elicit material because the other stuff just isn't good enough isn't going to fix the addiction isn't going to fix the problem um this is now kind of metastasized and I guess my question is you know there have been ways in the past some of which you've been involved with I believe right that have you know successfully um I guess tackled this issue but that we seem to be unable to deal with it today well you know I've spent 20 to 25 years working overseas in in several different countries and conducted numerous bilateral investigations which resulted in very successful uh operations arrest of targets seizures of narcotics but those S the success of those operations depend at 100% on the bilateral relationship we have with those countries for example DEA has two offices in Colombia and we work very well with the Colombian national government the military and their counter drug units so successfully that we were able to take down medine cartel run by Pablo Escobar and later the Cali cartel so that relationship was critical in taking those cartels down so we've been here before so again when we talk about fenel and and I to be specific we're talking about Mexican cartel fentel not medical use fentel sometimes there's a confusion there but when we're talking about degrading the ability of the cartels to acquire the precursor chemicals and to make the fenel and ship it across the border that will require a very strong bilateral relationship with the Mexican Government and with the Chinese government the fental problem as it is now has surpassed in my opinion the ability of US law enforcement to effectively degrade it at its center of gravity which is in Mexico for the production and China for where the chemicals originate so un last um we have a good relationship with either the Chinese regime or Mexico you don't think we can tackle this well we need both right because one is a source of the chemicals the other is a source of drug production and trans shipment into the United States so we really need a trilateral relationship with each country working together with the United States so what do we do if we can't achieve that because I I think I think that's a tall order well what we do is we we continue to do what we're doing we have investigations we make drug seizures we have harm reduction policies but we cannot keep up with the rate of addiction and treatment as opposed to the amount of Narcotics which are coming into this country at record levels we're basically drowning right now in narcotic addiction you know I'm immediately think of things like you know we have this you know extreme border situation which allows for I guess an ease of movement of drugs across the border there we have uh policies like demmin and fentel of course is so such small amounts are incredibly potent then you can easily kind of transmit it in ways that um you know basically evade detection in the process and there isn't even a custom step involved right so can't we tackle those types of things like wouldn't tackling the Border wouldn't tackling D Minimus wouldn't that have an impact I guess is my question when we talk about cartel critical capabilities and V vulnerabilities there are five right one being the ability to procure precursor chemicals from China the second is the ability to trans ship those chemicals to Mexico via maritime air cargo or Express parcel the third critical capability is the ability to produce the precursors into refined product the fourth the ability to smuggle it across the border and the fifth the ability to get the money profit from distribution back to Mexico so unless you can degrade two of those critical capabilities you're not going to be able to break that supply chain right now really in the current system that we have the most critical vulnerability that we have access to is the open border checkpoints that where is in my opinion where we need to concentrate our efforts in order to stop the crossb smuggling because we know 95% of all narcotics from Mexico come in concealed in vehicles or cargo right across the border into the United States and what would be the second one so let's say you know let's say if that that one is dealt with I mean it doesn't we I think we're seeing record numbers of people coming through at the moment which that means is that border uh uh security is basically completely consumed with dealing with the people not the smuggling that's happening that's not non-people smuggling right so but let's say that's dealt with what's the second the second pillar that you think could be tackled well there was that old saying I can only do what's in my control so the first three of those critical capabilities are outside of my control as law enforcement because they're in other countries so crossing the border customs has control of that we also have control of going after the money laundering aspect right because cartels are in business to do what to make money so we're talking about hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars being generated in the United States from narcotic sales which Chinese money laundering organizations move through businesses to China and then into Mexico my plan would be one strengthen up the Border capability and two initiate massive moneya laundering investigations to all Chinese Pro that are working in conjunction with the cartels in the United States so you mean and that's very interesting and we have covered both you know the Chinese drug component and the Chinese uh uh money laundering component on the show before but the there there's sort of involvement in two very distinct areas presumably by different players or at least on the surface by different players can you like explain to me how this money laundering component works so one of the most um usable applications what they call mirror transfers let's say I'm c a little cartel I have $100,000 that I want to repatriate back to Mexican accounts I'll take that $100,000 give it to my Chinese counterpart he will then take that money and break it down and give it to Chinese businesses in the United States say laundromats restaurants um other Industries those companies will then put that money into their Chinese accounts in Beijing or China they then wire that money back to the accounts in Mexico cartels go into the bank take it out it's completely clean so we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars being laundered through a remittance or mirror process through chinese-based companies in the United States accounts in China Chinese accounts back to Mexico if you were able to shut down that money train and deter uh Chinese moneya launderers or anyone involved in money laundering to assist the cartels they would back away because they're risking their businesses they're risking their livelihood and they're making a profit so take that away and that will I think discourage a lot of Chinese moneya launderers or moneya launderers in general from assisting the cartels and in that way we isolate the cartels because if their money is stacked up in the United States it's very difficult to smuggle bulk cash back into Mexico now one of the policy Solutions that's been posited has of course its own set of very serious problems is to designate these cartels as terrorist organizations right I think there's a probably a strong case to be made for that and that allows for certain type of activ against those you know military activity against those against those cels how do you view that you know again I said we've been here before and treating cartels as narot terrorist organizations we've done that before right we I mentioned the Pablo Escobar and the medine cartel but it requires the the the bilateral relationship it's it's it's key that you have the bilateral relationship because without the cooperation of the Columbian government Pablo Escobar maybe still would be still active possibly so when I'm thinking about this when I'm thinking about the possible outcomes of uh the Chinese regime Prosecuting these people you know involved in fenel in the US I I can't help but think of the Mexican defense secretary recently who was you know originally indicted here eventually released and you know I guess not much happened subsequently right you're talking about General s fuo um da initiated an investigation on him and identified that he was assisting some of the cartel and smuggling narcotics across the border um they got an indictment they then do a lure operation which they lured him from Mexico to the United States they arrested him and they were going to prosecute him um for assisting and aiding uh cartel activity of course the Mexican Government demanded his immediate release and said that the investigation was a sham and that if he wasn't released there would be serious diplomatic consequences um affecting the DEA country office in Mexico City and possibly Embassy US Embassy operations in general of course the this current Administration released sinuo um and he went back to the he went back to Mexico uh Mexican president said we'll do our own investigation and then later stated that the DEA investigation was fraudulent that the general had done nothing wrong and that was the end of the investigation so obviously General sfuo was operating at the highest levels of the Mexican Government and he was involved in working with cartels is that an indictment against against the Mexican Government I don't know but certainly he was in a position of extreme Authority and when he was caught and da provided the evidence the Mexican Government said they simply chose to ignore that evidence and of course president of Mexico um some months ago said uh there are no precursor chemicals in Mexico there's no fental production in Mexico and blame the United States saying the parents aren't raising their kids properly that's why kids were dying from drug addiction we've talked a lot about fenel and I get this sense that you know the drug dealers are trying to kind of you know progress people to fenel because it's so addictive right and and basically people are on it you know I guess until the end but can you give me a picture of just the whole picture of of drug use in America this illicit drug use yeah you when you think when you talk about substance users right there there are a variety of substance users some just like heroin some like crack cocaine cocaine some like methamphetamine um some like just marijuana right LSD phosy the the drug useage cultur is very diverse and cartels and drug users drug dealers know that so I mean imagine if you were going into you know a a market you have various items that you can select so drug dealers will tend to push that substance which is selling the best if you go back to the 80s and 90s when crack cocaine hit the market um crack cocaine was a phenomenal sales success CU it it addicted people fast the addiction wore off and then they wanted to buy more so for a drug dealer if I can sell you a substance that's going to get you high fast and you're going to come down fast you're going to come back for what they call the reup so I'm going to make more money the faster you come down with fentanyl the intoxication or the addiction is is very quick and it can last for maybe 30 to an 30 minutes to an hour but then if you put zyl in it the drug traffic can stretch that high out to maybe two or three hours or more then when the individual comes down there's no there's no recovery time that individual is coming right back for the reup and that's going to make me as drug dealer more money I don't want to sell you something that's going to keep you high for five or six hours and you're going to go home and come back two weeks later I'm not going to make any money that way so fenel really revolutionized I say Mexican cartel fenel revolutionized the drug game because it got people addicted quickly because it's very potent and you come down and you want it more and then we get into the the physical effects on the body right when you talk about heroin when you talk about cocaine and then you talk about methamphetamine all very addictive but not as strong as fentanyl fentanyl is one of the strongest narcotics out there until you go to car fentanyl which is 10 times more powerful than fentanyl right that would be the next level so in terms of the drug Market Mexican cartels realize we're selling more fentanyl now than heroin they're actually cutting back on the production of heroin and replacing it with fentanyl production for a number of economic reasons it's just a better drug it's cheaper you can produce more of it and more people will use it so again back to that business model distribution and production of fenel is a huge success for the cartels it's still and it's still astonishing giving the amount given the amount of death it causes I mean it's it it's it's the fenel that's responsible for the increase in drug related death primarily right and nonetheless people still keep going back to it that's the that's the addiction Factor right I mean people used to sarcastically joke with Heroin addiction it would take you 20 years to die with fentel it only takes that first time and in 30 seconds you could be dead but again from the perspective of the cartels they just look at drug users as profit they represent dollar signs there's no concern there's no Humanity involved in drug trafficking right we're deal you're talking about individuals who are some of the most dangerous and less sympathetic people uh in the world um drug traffickers and that's when we get back to the term narcot terrorism is what's happening really an aspect of terrorism right entire communities are being destroyed through the distribution of Narcotics then we have the gang level violence like in Chicago Philadelphia um Baltimore where we're seeing entire communities of young men killed over drug trafficking and then we talk about the the families of individuals who are using narcotics the devastation that that causes the families the community so not only is the drug user suffering but the entire Community is suffering how does addiction work I mean is it as simple as there being a just a physical you know something that creates a physical dependency and that's it or is there more I mean i' I've heard about various explanations of this and M what's your view you know when I was working uh when I worked in Detroit for a number of years and we worked I was on a crack task force uh you know I talked to a lot of individuals who were using crack cocaine and they the way they explained it is the first time they tried crack cocaine was the last time they tried anything else they said crack cocaine was so powerful it basically rewired the brain system the the dopamine right it's all about what causes the body to produce dopamine which is your Pleasant receptors crack cocaine without getting into the medical terms basically rewired those dopamine receptors to produce more dopamine very very rapidly which creates the addiction the body then becomes adjusted to a new stimulant that it says wow that was really good I want that and then the user basically loses control of that and he has to feed that addiction that's why crack cocaine distribution was so successful for almost 20 years even now now we're seeing a resurgen of crack usage uh in cities like New York Chicago and and out on the west coast so you know we're repeating the mistakes of the past we're falling back into the same web of addiction that we've been trying to get out of for at least as long as I've been on the job and that was 32 years we seem to be losing that battle though especially with fentel you know i' I've spoken with a number of people who have you know view addiction more like a kind of a social disease like the people who are prone to becoming addicted are people who don't have very good social connections for example or perhaps ways to to kind of get out of it if they first get um pulled in through one of these fake drugs or something there's examples of you know something that's often described as a success story is Portugal you know decriminalizing a lot of drugs um having programs that Foster Community for those people that are that are prone at how how do you view that I think first you have to look at the difference between Portugal and the United States the States is a multi-diverse uh country with many ethnic groups you have African-American you have Hispanics you have Asians um a lot of groups are here Portugal is primarily all homogeneous culture right but we look at the diversity in America African-American communities and Hispanic communities have a much higher drug addiction rate uh arrest rate low economic status there's a number of factors in poor communities in the United States that lead to drug addiction Portugal does not have that same issue they do not have pockets of African-Americans Hispanics and other minority groups who are at the lower end of the social Spectrum that's one distinct difference the other difference is in Portugal you don't have the same gang and drug culture right it's completely different uh you don't see organized crime groups killing and causing a lot of violence in Portugal it's a different mentality the third issue is Portugal has said if you get caught using narcotics you don't go to jail but if you don't go to rehab you can lose your driver's license your passport your ability to work so most people say okay I'll go to rehab and I'll continue to use narcotics but what that hasn't done is reduced the amount of cocaine being distributed in Portugal Europe has seen dramatic increases in the distribution of cocaine because of these liberal policies so if you're sitting a little cartel you're sitting back you're loving decriminalization because it's not stopping the amount of cocaine coming into your country it may be managing addiction but it's not ending addiction and if you look at the rates of people who actually have been uh gone through detox and stopped using cocaine ask them what that number is and you will find I believe that you will see that a lot of people are now just long-term drug users fascinating is something I I kind of want to look deeper into as well uh on the show I'm very concerned about the fact that these drugs can be made out of precursors that might be legitimate through a multi-stage process and it almost feels like it's kind of impossible to disrupt that supply chain at least potentially do do you see any way through that you know I think we had an opportunity many many years ago to after the supply chain you know earlier I mentioned the precursor chemicals coming from China to Columbia to produce cocaine one of the primary precursors is acidic and hydr often referred to as AA and it has to be shipped Maritime in container because it's 55 gallon drums you're talking hundreds of of metric tons of acidic anhydride as being shipped from China to Columbia for the last 40 years to produce the amount of cocaine we never really we and I say US law enforcement or international law enforcement never really focused on disrupting that supply chain they always focused on the tail end going after the heads of the cartels going after the transportation networks in the United States never focused on the center of gravity which are the chemicals so that was allowed to and you use the term cancer it was allowed to metastasize to what it is now and with the invention of the internet um online chemical formulas many individuals have taken it upon themselves now to Simply teach themselves how to make their own narcotics and for example in the 1990s we saw bath salts right you go into a smoke shop it would say poperia not for human use but everybody knew you could go in there and you could smoke it or you could inject it and you would get a high well it would take DEA about 8 12 months to 18 months to regulate that particular substance but the traffickers knew within 18 months we'll create a new bath salt by changing the molecule structure just one molecule off and it's a new substance and now with the Advent of of AI right Artificial Intelligence coming on if I'm a chemist I can go in with a with a good AI program and I can make a restructured fentanyl formula that's completely legal and as you in law enforcement it'll take you 18 months to regulate that by that time I have another six formulas ready to go so now we see how the internet has revolutionized drug trafficking and made it much more difficult to investigate and to uh degrade you paint uh and and we haven't even talked you alluded to this a little bit earlier but you know the the sort of the relationship with drugs and gang violence and everything else in America which is something that you're also maybe maybe comment briefly on that I mean I I'm you're just the the whole picture I'm seeing is is kind of a very Grim one right that that's that's what I'm getting at here sure I mean again I I'll reflect back on my experience in Detroit um when crack cocaine came out every every street crew every gang wanted to sell cracked cocaine was that was the fastest way to make the most money and of course Detroit's a small City and the drug trafficking was condensed in certain areas but in those areas you could have five or six different groups so so now they're all struggling to increase their territory for distribution sales so we saw an increase in violence I think in an when I was working there they had homicides rates that exceeded 400 400 homicides a year if not higher it was one of the highest death rates in the country related to drug trafficking or gang activity so as a cartel even in Mexico you see the fight between the caloa cartel or the the Zetas or the Templars because they're all fighting for control of the plaz and the plazas are that Territory between Mexico and the United States whoever controls those entry points controls the kingdom I call it the Game of Thrones between cartels so the cartels have been fighting and killing each other for the last three decades you as I mentioned earlier in the last 15 to 20 years more than 30 or 40,000 people have been killed as a rate uh as a result of the cartel violence that has spilt over into America we're seeing now you know we have ms3 around the country killing people you have your Crips Bloods you have your Latin Kings you have your other groups who are at times fighting each other for expansion of territory to increase drug distribution which makes more money this is a very Grim picture Okay um as a typical person you know living a normal life how do you how do you avoid getting sucked into this whole world you know that's that's a that's a complicated question I mean you have to learn how to manage your stress I mean we live in a culture today you know I was looking at the internet and there's a new drug out that helps people manage their weight without exercising and it was like it's all the Rave I said this is America's problem we take a pill for everything we have we have forgotten the basics basics of self-management managing our stress managing our outcomes and relying on our own abilities to deal with those issues and granted some people may not have the the mental capacity or the economic ability to avoid that I understand that but we are so quick as a culture to turn towards medicating ourselves out of our problems and then we get addicted to the prescription drugs which created a window for the cartels to move in with their fake prescription drugs and now we have this 100,000 overdose rated 100,000 deaths a year right so again you know and as parents we have to talk to our kids right the the individual I had on my my talk show the opioid Matrix said you've got to have your kids you've got to talk to them you have to get them to open up so you can see where they're at and a lot of parents are saying hey I'm doing that and I still missed it unfortunately that's going to happen but I think as parents as relatives um we have to be more involved in the day-to-day lives of of our of our Circle so we can see those signs and we can get in quickly and try and get people help and as they say in harm reduction we want to meet you where you're at which I agree with and and I mean I think as you said and you know non-medication interventions as a as a alternative not not necessarily be seeking out for a medication solution for everything yeah I mean some of the stats I saw recently 25 million Americans were on some sort of prescription drug you know when I look back to time my father and my grandfather there was no prescription drugs it was just hard work put your you know you study you do hard and you succeed and that was the message that was passed down to me by my father um and certainly they had stress there were there were difficult situations but as you said it was a non-medicated aspect medicine had not evolved to the point that it was now where you can go to your doctor and get a prescription for pretty much anything that ills you which leads to a form of addiction you become dependent on that prescription drug for example um uh um what's the volume right it's overly prescribed uh ketamine to some extent was recently uh I think Matthew was it Matthew Perry recently his autopsy indicated that he had some ketamine in his system which was very unfortunate but there are a lot of prescription drugs out there that people are becoming or are addicted to and again that creates a window of opportunity for traffickers to slip something in um a final thought as we finish you know I think America has to realize uh the opioid crisis or what I call the fentanyl crisis is not going to resolve itself on its own it's going to take as I said earlier a serious bilateral effort with China and Mexico to at least degrade two or three of those critical capabilities I mentioned earlier if China and Mexico are unwilling to cooperate the question then for the administration is do we simply tolerate another 100,000 overdose deaths by the end of the year or do we look at looking at cartels as Narco terrorist organizations such as we did with medin cartel or the farc in columia and take more aggressive action that is the decision I think the administration and the American people have to make well Michael Brown it's such a pleasure to have had you on thank you for the opportunity thank you all for joining Michael Brown and me on this episode of American thought leaders I'm your host Yan Kell [Music]