The Peter Attia Drive - #243 ‒ The fentanyl crisis and why everyone should be paying attention ｜ Anthony Hipolito

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

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00:00:41.740 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay,

00:00:47.780 here's today's episode. My guest this week is Anthony Hippolito. Anthony is a deputy with over

00:00:55.680 24 years of experience in law enforcement. He retired in the summer of 2021 and was kind of

00:01:02.380 about to sort of move on with the next phase of his life when something drew him back into public

00:01:07.160 service. And that something was the growing concern over the amount of accidental overdoses,

00:01:14.940 poisonings effectively, on account of illicit fentanyl use. My wife and I heard Anthony speak

00:01:21.160 at a local school meeting a few weeks ago and we were really moved by the talk. In fact, it's a

00:01:27.360 really powerful talk and we'll link to the entire talk in the show notes here. By the way, the show

00:01:32.800 notes for this podcast will not be behind a paywall. So this one really is a public service announcement

00:01:37.560 in many ways and therefore everyone will have access to the show notes. But as soon as we saw the

00:01:42.080 talk, I realized that I wanted to do something to help amplify his message in any way that I could.

00:01:47.460 There was no better way to do that I could think of than to have him on the podcast. So this podcast

00:01:52.600 is not that long relative to most of our podcasts. We start the discussion, of course, by explaining

00:01:57.560 what's going on here, what the semantics are. I mean, what is fentanyl? How is it making its way

00:02:02.200 into drugs that are not fentanyl? I think there was a day when I just sort of assumed that people who

00:02:07.480 were dying of fentanyl overdoses, they wanted fentanyl, but they were taking too much. It turned out that's

00:02:11.700 not really the case. What's really happening is that fentanyl is being used as a feedstock

00:02:15.820 to produce other drugs because it is both so much cheaper and secondly, produces a better high.

00:02:23.280 And therefore, if you're trying to make sleeping pills or benzos or anything, unfortunately,

00:02:29.500 from Percocet, pain pills, which also produce a high, of course, to Adderall and things of that

00:02:34.920 nature, they're putting fentanyl into these things. And to be blunt, they're just getting the dose wrong,

00:02:40.560 getting it wrong by an enormous amount. And effectively, what's happening is kids are

00:02:45.900 accidentally taking something that they don't know what they're taking. So we kind of go through

00:02:52.520 the ins and outs of all of that stuff. I realize, and I say as much in the podcast, that I'm not

00:02:57.480 really speaking through this channel to the kids that are probably most at risk. Kids that are

00:03:04.040 unfortunately as low as middle school, but certainly high school and college. Probably not a lot

00:03:07.480 of people in that demographic listening. But who is listening are people like myself, right? People

00:03:12.040 who are parents. If you have kids, I think you really want to listen to this. The other thing

00:03:15.980 I'd say is if you ever yourself use illicit drugs, I know a lot of people that recreationally do use

00:03:21.680 illicit drugs. I think you want to listen to this as well. I don't think most people appreciate the

00:03:26.560 prevalence with which fentanyl is making its way into other drugs, such as cocaine. And again,

00:03:32.540 the intention isn't actually to kill the cocaine user. The intention is, as we'll discuss,

00:03:36.360 to produce a superior product. If you're used to listening to the podcast on audio,

00:03:40.860 this might be one where you tune into the video as well, because we include in this a couple of

00:03:45.940 videos that are quite powerful. You can certainly listen to them in audio and go to the show notes

00:03:50.960 after where we'll link to those videos separately. But if you're on the fence about whether or not you

00:03:54.640 want to listen to this one or watch it, this might be one to watch. We close the discussion really

00:03:59.160 with what can you do? What can you do as a parent? What can you do as far as talking to your kids,

00:04:03.760 monitoring social media, having Narcan around, knowing how to use it, all those sorts of things?

00:04:09.440 I think the final thing I'll say is that, and I didn't say this when we were on mic because I

00:04:13.280 didn't think of it until after, but after we finished the interview, I got talking to Anthony

00:04:17.440 and I was like, just again, kind of thanking him for all the work he was doing and how relentless it

00:04:22.300 is. He's basically like a one-man show traveling all over Texas, but now also being asked to go and

00:04:27.740 speak in New York and being asked to speak in other places. I asked simply, how is this being

00:04:32.100 funded? And I realized that it's only being funded out of the Hayes County Sheriff Office

00:04:36.380 Community Outreach Program. And they don't really have much money. So my wife and I are going to

00:04:41.860 make a donation there. And I thought I would just throw that out there in case anybody else who

00:04:46.000 listens to this thinks they want to figure out a way to at least get this message out there beyond

00:04:50.520 what we're doing now. And again, I would probably encourage you wherever you live to maybe connect

00:04:55.900 with your local sheriff's office and find the similar entity there to figure out how you can

00:05:01.780 get this message into the schools where you live. Because again, some of these stories are simply

00:05:06.640 baffling. Kids that are dying in class, you know, kids that are thinking they're taking Adderall to

00:05:11.420 help them study. And instead it's laced with fentanyl and they die right in front of a class of 24 other

00:05:17.680 children. I could say a lot more about this, but I probably already said more than I need to. And I think

00:05:22.060 the discussion with Anthony Speaks for Itself. But with that, let's turn to that discussion.

00:05:30.960 Anthony, thank you so much for coming over. Not just coming over, coming over on a Sunday.

00:05:35.560 I don't normally record podcasts on the weekend, but my wife and I saw you speak. I actually saw a

00:05:40.300 video of you speaking. We couldn't make it to the actual event. We were both so moved by it and thought,

00:05:46.060 you know, if there's anything that I can do to use sort of my platform to get this message out more

00:05:50.860 broadly, basically to everybody. Because it's hard to say that there's someone who doesn't need to

00:05:55.220 hear what we're about to talk about today. And basically, if I had tried to slot this into our

00:05:59.800 normal podcast schedule, we wouldn't be having this discussion until about June. And I was just

00:06:04.540 like, you know what, honestly, like if it makes the life of one person different by doing it now,

00:06:09.520 we're going to record this at the beginning of February and turn this around as quickly as possible.

00:06:12.820 So this will probably give listeners a sense of why this is an important episode. But let's just start.

00:06:18.180 Who are you, Anthony? What do you do? And why is it we're sitting here today?

00:06:21.680 Well, I appreciate the invite. I'll never say no to talking about that and all and talking about

00:06:26.180 the dangers it presents to everybody. It knows no boundaries, right? It's black, white, brown, 1.00

00:06:33.120 it's rich, poor. It affects anybody and everybody, not only in Hayes County, not only in Travis County,

00:06:39.100 Texas, but the entire world. So that's how prevalent this stuff is and scary. But again,

00:06:44.500 I appreciate the invite and I don't care if it's Sunday. So I really appreciate you fitness in and

00:06:48.580 getting this going. I've been in law enforcement for 24 years, worked at the Austin Police Department

00:06:53.380 for 23 years. I retired July of 2021. I grew up and basically lived my entire life out in Hayes

00:07:01.020 County. And I wanted to get out there and serve in the community that I grew up in, right? So I took

00:07:07.080 the summer off during the 2021 year and started in September. I've been friends with the sheriff out

00:07:12.140 there for a long, long time and he consistently recruited me to get out there. So I got hired by

00:07:17.180 the Hayes County Sheriff's Office September and I've been there just 18 months or so now.

00:07:21.560 I'm currently assigned to the community outreach unit during my time at APD. APD is a large

00:07:26.620 department, right? So you're able to do a variety of assignments. Obviously you have to start out on

00:07:30.960 patrol, but I worked patrol several stints. I promoted twice. So each time you promote, you got to go

00:07:35.980 back to the patrol division, you know, answered 911 calls and all that good stuff. But I worked in

00:07:40.660 organized crime. I worked in public affairs. I did internal affairs. I did some undercover work.

00:07:45.640 I worked mounted patrol, bike patrol on Sixth Street. So in a larger department, you're able

00:07:50.100 to specialize a lot. So I was able to experience a lot and learn a lot about the department,

00:07:55.560 the inside, what makes it tick and all that good stuff. But it was just time for me to move on and

00:07:59.820 reach the point where I was able to retire. So I jumped out to Hayes County and again, I'm on side

00:08:04.300 of the community outreach unit. And all we do is get out in the community and visit and show

00:08:09.540 the citizens of Hayes County that we're human. We're police officers. Yes. Or sheriff's deputies.

00:08:15.320 Yes. But we're humans. Our job is to get out in the community and reach people and talk to them.

00:08:20.080 And we do that through a variety of ways. We have a citizens police academy. We do junior deputy

00:08:25.200 academies during the summer. We visit HOAs. But obviously now over the last, since about August,

00:08:31.220 it's all fitting all, all the time, just because of what's going on.

00:08:34.020 So you retired in the summer of 21. Up until the point of your retirement, how big an issue

00:08:39.740 was fentanyl making its way into other drugs?

00:08:44.480 Yeah. So at that time, fentanyl was around. At the time I retired, I was an organized crime. I was

00:08:50.120 a sergeant over the criminal interdiction unit. And that's what we did on a daily basis was battle

00:08:54.540 the Mexican cartel. Obviously, I-35 runs up and down through the middle of Hayes County,

00:08:59.000 through the middle of Austin. I had about 10 officers that were assigned to me. And we had

00:09:04.500 officers that did interdiction work up and down I-35. We had officers that worked at ABIA. We also

00:09:10.980 had officers that worked with FedEx, with UPS, with the postal service to try to interdict not only

00:09:16.920 drugs, but money, guns, and any type of criminal element. So at that time, I think I did about three,

00:09:23.840 three and a half years in that assignment. And we started seeing fentanyl probably 2017, 2018,

00:09:29.100 but it was more on the black market. People would order that in the dark web and it would be sent

00:09:34.840 from China, be sent FedEx or UPS. And the majority of our seizures at that time were through FedEx and

00:09:40.760 USPS. We would work with the postal inspectors and security folks with UPS and FedEx. And we would

00:09:45.680 intercept boxes and boxes of illicit counterfeit pills. So that's where we started seeing it.

00:09:50.500 What's going on now is the Mexican cartel, being that they're very competitive and they want to

00:09:55.980 own the drug market, they have gotten into the fentanyl game. And that's why we're seeing it

00:09:59.980 become more and more prevalent over the last number of years. Now, I've kind of been sort of asleep at

00:10:04.460 the wheel here and haven't paid a lot of attention to this until maybe the past six months. Back when I

00:10:09.680 worked in a hospital, we used fentanyl all the time. It was a very potent intravenous narcotic. So you had

00:10:17.000 morphine, which you would typically give in milligram doses, right? So if a patient was having a lot of

00:10:23.140 pain, you would use an intravenous infusion of morphine, one, two, three, four, five milligrams,

00:10:30.820 right? So, you know, thousands of a gram of morphine. Fentanyl was much more potent, came on quicker,

00:10:37.440 and it was dosed in micrograms. So now you're talking about it's a lot smaller a dose. And it was a very

00:10:45.540 good drug for pain and sedation. So if a patient was having even something like a colonoscopy,

00:10:51.820 for example, you would use maybe 100 micrograms of fentanyl. So that's 0.1 milligram and say a

00:11:01.120 couple milligrams of another drug called Versed that kind of makes you drowsy and makes you forget

00:11:05.680 what's going on. Anesthesiologists use this all the time in the operating room. So it's one part of

00:11:11.120 anesthesia is the pain part is the fentanyl. But again, I never knew it existed outside of a liquid

00:11:16.960 form. And I had no idea that it was being put into other drugs. So when did that transition take

00:11:26.140 place? What is it about this drug? And I guess we could maybe, why don't you explain to people

00:11:31.380 how these drugs work and why we're even having this discussion? What's the problem with them? Is it just

00:11:36.440 that they make people high and it's bad to be high? You explained it perfectly how powerful this

00:11:41.320 fentanyl is when you're talking micrograms. And that's the difference between the fentanyl that

00:11:46.020 the doctors would prescribe and what the Mexican cartel is making in their labs in Mexico. The

00:11:52.240 difference is what they're making is synthetic opioid, the same molecular, whatever that is,

00:11:58.480 molecular structure, whatever structures is all the same. It's just, they don't need the poppy plant

00:12:03.020 to make it. That's the difference. The big difference is the dosage. They don't know how

00:12:08.260 to control the dosage. I don't think they really grasp how powerful fentanyl is. And when we're

00:12:13.500 talking two milligrams can kill you, right? Oh my God, two milligrams. I mean, that's beyond lethal

00:12:18.700 dose, right? Beyond lethal dose. And that's, we're seeing more and more of that as we're learning,

00:12:22.340 as we're getting more toxicology back from these victims. Tell folks just so they understand,

00:12:26.860 like, why does this drug kill you? Is it giving people heart attacks or what is the actual thing

00:12:31.460 that's killing people? How it works is when you take the fentanyl and it has a lethal dose and it

00:12:36.380 basically attacks your respiratory system, right? It slows everything down. You get that euphoric high,

00:12:41.740 but you don't realize that it's shutting your body down. And once your respiratory system starts

00:12:46.340 shutting down, your heart rate starts going down and you can be dead in an instant. And that's how

00:12:51.120 powerful and scary this stuff is. And I'll tell you, even in the hospital, we saw that. That was not

00:12:56.160 uncommon. In a hospitalized patient that you accidentally gave too much, you misjudged a

00:13:01.840 person's sensitivity and you gave them a hundred milligrams, a hundred micrograms, I'm sorry,

00:13:07.140 when they probably should have only had 50 or 75 because you didn't understand some other factor

00:13:12.200 about them. And all of a sudden they would slow down their breathing rate to the point where

00:13:17.540 you would either have to put a breathing tube in them to breathe for them, or you would have to give

00:13:22.560 them something like Narcan to reverse the effect. Again, there were actually examples in the hospital

00:13:29.460 I trained in where patients had narcotic overdoses completely by accident, but due to the potency of

00:13:37.500 these drugs, especially to fentanyl, less common with morphine, more common with fentanyl. And so you

00:13:42.200 think, gosh, if that can happen in a hospital, how much more likely is it if you get this dosing

00:13:48.040 schedule wrong outside the hospital? And as we're about to discuss, they're not off by 10 or 20%. I

00:13:55.160 mean, they're off by an order of magnitude in this. Okay. So let's go back in time. And again,

00:14:00.860 think about this over the course of your career. What was the bread and butter of the DEA and law

00:14:08.820 enforcement when it came to illicit drugs? Like when I think about this, I'm thinking it's cocaine,

00:14:14.080 it's marijuana, methamphetamines, like heroin. Those would be your big four. When did it turn

00:14:22.560 into other drugs like Percocet and legal drugs, but being used illicitly and sold illegally? When

00:14:31.740 did that transition take place? I think when you look back at it, I think it's 2010, 2011-ish,

00:14:36.980 2011, when you started seeing the pain management doctors recklessly prescribing the oxycodone,

00:14:43.040 the Vicodins, the Percocets. And there was no regard for anybody. You know, that's how powerful

00:14:49.440 all these pills are. People get addicted to it. So that's why a lot of people, when they have

00:14:54.100 surgery, they don't like taking these pain pills because they're so addictive and they're afraid

00:14:57.700 they're going to get hooked on them. And once we started seeing that in 2010, 2011, people would

00:15:02.200 doctor hop. If one doctor wouldn't prescribe, they would go find another doctor. And once they found

00:15:06.040 that doctor, they would continue to go back to them and they would just stockpile the stuff.

00:15:10.140 We started seeing that probably 2010, 2011, that the opioid addiction was pretty prevalent.

00:15:15.540 This is the fallout of it. The fentanyl game has just elevated the opioid crisis to a whole,

00:15:21.360 just an entire new level.

00:15:23.980 And why is it that we think that fentanyl is being even put into these things? I guess one of the

00:15:29.420 things I understood from your talk was that once the military and police authorities kind of crack down

00:15:36.560 on Mexican cartels, the poppy fields are getting harder and harder to grow, but you can now make 0.99

00:15:41.420 this stuff synthetically. Presumably that's cheaper, less labor, easier to do.

00:15:46.780 Correct.

00:15:47.740 Did that immediately shift production to China?

00:15:50.300 When the Mexican cartels, when they found out about what China was doing over there,

00:15:54.580 they started buying the precursor chemicals from China to start making this. Again, it's synthetic,

00:15:59.340 so it's an illicit, pure fentanyl. They want control of the drug game. They want that.

00:16:03.680 And it's much cheaper for them to make the fentanyl than it is the cocaine, the heroin,

00:16:08.140 the methamphetamines, simply because they don't have to worry about the poppy plants. They don't

00:16:12.060 have to worry about the weather. They don't have to worry about the labor. They don't have to worry

00:16:14.600 about a variety of things when they're trying to grow the poppy plants. So when they found out they

00:16:18.860 can make it synthetically and make it just with chemicals, that's when they started buying from

00:16:23.800 India and China. What we're learning now and what I've heard, they're starting to make the

00:16:27.600 precursor chemicals themselves in Mexico as well, which is obviously making it cheaper. They don't have

00:16:33.640 to buy it from overseas so they can make it much cheaper and much faster. Once they get that

00:16:38.340 fentanyl by the kilo, they just ship it across to their counterparts here in the US.

00:16:43.160 Maybe before we go any further, because there's so much more I want to probe on this,

00:16:47.300 let's kind of bring it back to a story. We'll show a video now that you shared that night when

00:16:51.880 you gave the presentation here at the school district about the parents of a boy who lost

00:16:56.480 his life. So let's let folks watch that now.

00:17:01.860 This is Kevin McConville. He was 17 years old.

00:17:06.400 And he was my baby boy, my pride and joy.

00:17:16.020 Born May 9th, 2005. Amazing kid. Full of life and love the outdoors. Very creative.

00:17:27.980 He was planning a career in the military and possibly becoming a welder.

00:17:36.220 He would have been a senior this year.

00:17:39.660 He has a little sister that he loves very much.

00:17:41.820 The night of August 2nd, he asked if there was any more pizza. And I told him no, unfortunately,

00:17:54.140 I could make him his tuna. And he said, no. He said, I'm just gonna go upstairs and go to sleep.

00:17:59.820 And I said, I love you. He said, I love you too.

00:18:06.540 Following day, I found him in his bed asleep. What appeared to be asleep. But he was gone.

00:18:18.140 And I couldn't bring him back.

00:18:19.180 Later, we found out that after their investigation, they said that there was a pill found next to Kevin

00:18:29.980 in an Altoids tin can with a pill in a bag. It was a light blue colored pill with the M30 logo stamped

00:18:39.420 into it. And they said they're believed to be fentanyl. These are the counterfeit pills that are going

00:18:45.340 around. I contacted one of his friends shortly after he had passed away to let him know that Kevin was gone.

00:18:58.780 He was very heartbroken. And he had told us that Kevin confided in him that he was taking

00:19:07.580 Percocet and Xanax to help him sleep.

00:19:12.380 I think one of his, I don't want to call him a friend, I can't call him a friend,

00:19:18.220 was doing it as well. And that friend originally gave him the pills because he probably confided in

00:19:31.100 that person. And Kevin probably took them before and nothing happened. And so he continued to take

00:19:41.980 them. I can't tell you how many times because I don't know. But it doesn't matter how many times

00:19:50.060 you can take it. It could be your first time. It could be your last time. And no parent wants to

00:19:58.220 see their child in that position and that he looked like he was asleep.

00:20:15.260 That's a hard video to watch. Very hard. And it's powerful. That's one of the reasons I put it

00:20:20.300 at the beginning of our presentations, because I want that to be the attention grabber. I want kids

00:20:25.980 specifically to sit back in their seats and really bring it home, personalize it a little bit,

00:20:31.580 because that's somebody their age that has fallen victim. Because not everybody knows somebody that

00:20:36.620 has died from the fentanyl, because although it's very, very prevalent, these deaths really in the

00:20:42.540 kids hasn't been as prevalent as what we're seeing these days. I think the other thing that you made a

00:20:47.820 really important point of in your talk is we really want to talk about these as what they are,

00:20:54.220 right? These are accidental deaths. These are not people that are intentionally taking a dose that

00:21:01.900 is so high to end their life. This is someone who thinks, in the case of Kevin, that they're taking

00:21:07.500 something to help them sleep, and then they don't wake up. Do we know, by the way, what dose was in

00:21:12.460 Kevin's system? I don't think toxicology has come back on Kevin's case quite yet. But as you mentioned,

00:21:18.460 he was taking Xanax, or what he believed to be Xanax, because he needed help sleeping. So whatever

00:21:25.260 he was battling personally led him to seek these pills to help him sleep. We all battle our own

00:21:31.900 demons. We all have our own stories. We don't know what Kevin was dealing with personally. Did he have

00:21:37.260 issues at home? Was he getting bullied at school? Was his girlfriend just break up with him? Is he getting

00:21:42.700 bullied on social media? The kids these days battle so much more than what we had to deal with simply

00:21:47.580 because of social media. So that's what I tried to relate to these kids is I want to get rid of the

00:21:52.140 stigma. Let's figure out why you're making that decision. Why were you needing Xanax to sleep in the

00:21:57.420 first place? And why are you seeking this thing out? And it doesn't mean you're druggy. I preach

00:22:01.580 that over and over. Because I'm not trying to do a say no to drugs talk. I'm trying to personalize it. I'm

00:22:06.700 just trying to bring as much awareness to this crisis. And it is a crisis in what we're dealing

00:22:11.340 with. I want to be able to personalize it. And we have to get rid of the stigma. We want kids to

00:22:18.460 be able to come forward and ask for help. And whatever Kevin was dealing with led him to take

00:22:22.940 these pills. His parents had no idea what was going on until his mom or his dad walked into his room the

00:22:29.420 next morning and he was lifeless. And they've been very brave. They've joined us in several presentations.

00:22:35.180 It's very hard for her. But I think it's also good for her and other parents to talk about it.

00:22:40.380 They're very therapeutic and they're very passionate about saving somebody's life.

00:22:45.580 They'll never know why. That's the hard part for them. I still talk to them on a regular basis.

00:22:50.540 They're actually having a celebration of life here in May for Kevin back home in Nevada. That's where

00:22:54.780 they moved from. So that's what I really truly want to focus on for not only kids, but adults. Like

00:23:00.540 why? Let's figure out the why. I did the calculation the other day. I was with my wife and my daughter,

00:23:05.820 and I just did some numbers in the back of it. Does my calculation come out right to you?

00:23:10.140 By my calculation, every five minutes, someone accidentally overdoses in the United States,

00:23:16.860 meaning dies as a result of an accidental overdose. Does that sound about right to you?

00:23:21.340 Yes. Five minutes sounds pretty accurate. I think I heard that this morning on another,

00:23:25.360 I just happened to be going to the gym this morning to work out and I popped in my phone and it was a

00:23:28.940 podcast about fitnil. Like I didn't pull it up. I was wicked being that I was coming here today to

00:23:33.580 talk about fitnil and that stat was there. So that's it. Yeah. I mean, I basically just looked

00:23:37.580 at the last 12 months of CDC data on how many people have died. And again, it's important to

00:23:43.580 understand this is not including people who overdose as a way to end their lives. This is people who think

00:23:50.860 they're taking either just a straight up recreational drug like cocaine or something that's laced.

00:23:56.220 They take too much of it or they're in the case of what we're seeing now, more and more of those.

00:24:00.080 Do you have a sense of what percentage of accidental overdose deaths today are attributable to fentanyl

00:24:07.320 directly? Fentanyl is in the drug that they are taking? I think two thirds, about two thirds.

00:24:12.480 God. Yeah. That's why we don't, I catch myself because I say overdose a lot. You bring it up again

00:24:17.460 to poisoning. They're not intentionally trying to kill themselves. They're taking a drug for whatever

00:24:21.680 reason. They're not waking up. So they're being poisoned by these drug dealers, by the Mexican 1.00

00:24:26.940 cartel. And that's sad. Yeah. It's insane. Maybe I'm silly for trying to apply logic to this, but

00:24:34.660 if I put myself in the head of the drug cartel, the goal is they just want to make as much money as

00:24:41.160 possible. Killing your customers can't be good business. So I'm asking you a question you can't 0.74

00:24:48.220 possibly answer, but just sort of thinking about this, like why in the world haven't they figured

00:24:52.900 out a way to get the doses right? I mean, cause again, they're not off by a little when they get

00:24:58.160 it wrong, they get it absurdly wrong. As you pointed out, you might as well be giving these people

00:25:04.680 cyanide pills. If I'm understanding you correctly, there are kids that are taking two, four, even eight

00:25:11.340 milligrams of fentanyl in a single tablet.

00:25:14.200 Yes. And that's very scary. Just so people understand, like this is a hundred times a

00:25:19.520 lethal dose. You might as well have cyanide. One of our 15 year olds that passed away in August,

00:25:25.040 August 21st, Noah Rodriguez, a sophomore at Johnson high school. This is Janelle's.

00:25:30.440 This is Janelle's son. We won't watch that video now because it's a bit long, but it's very moving.

00:25:34.920 We'll link to Janelle's talk, which we saw at the district there. He took some Percocet,

00:25:41.780 what he believed to be Percocet. And his mom got a call at midnight, August 21st to someone

00:25:47.860 screaming on the other end of the line saying, Noah, we believe Noah's overdosed. We believe

00:25:52.420 he overdosed. So I'm doing CPR. Janelle was in Buda. The overdose of the poisoning took place down

00:25:58.060 in St. Marcus. So by the time she got there, her mom and dad had already made it to the scene.

00:26:02.480 She got out of the car and her mom just shook her head saying he's gone.

00:26:05.520 So what she has since learned, as you mentioned, Noah had eight milligrams of fentanyl in his system.

00:26:13.660 They got toxicology back just a week or two ago and it was pure illicit fentanyl that was in his

00:26:19.360 system. That's four times the amount that it takes to kill somebody. It's insane. It makes no sense.

00:26:26.000 I get, I get that question all the time. Every person, like, why are they killing their customers?

00:26:29.420 And to me it's happening so often they don't care what they do. Obviously they don't want four kids

00:26:36.000 to die in a four week timeframe because that's when they get the attention of the DEA and other

00:26:40.420 law enforcement. But if they kill a person here or a person there, to me, they don't care because

00:26:45.620 someone they don't care. I mean, yeah, there's no question that they care, uh, care about the kids.

00:26:49.760 I just think even if you were thinking about this through the lens of having a business empire,

00:26:55.200 how about just floating below the radar and not killing anybody? And as you said, I mean,

00:26:59.420 the numbers are exploding 10 years ago. If you said to me, what is the greatest threat to a

00:27:06.340 young person's life? A young person, I mean, under 40. I said, it's two things. It's only two things

00:27:13.600 that matter. Everything else is noise. The only two things that matter is dying in a car accident

00:27:18.420 and suicide. You're going to take your own life or you're going to die in a car. And again, we can get 0.99

00:27:26.080 into all the whys. It's alcohol. It's, you know, there's a whole bunch of reasons. But as you know,

00:27:31.100 today, accidental overdose dominates those two, like they're now the rounding errors.

00:27:38.260 100%.

00:27:38.660 In one decade?

00:27:40.280 Numbers have gone up exponentially since about 2010, 2011.

00:27:43.160 And I just want to make sure listeners understand you're not using the word exponentially

00:27:47.760 hyperbolically. You are absolutely correct. It is not a line. It's an exponential line.

00:27:54.640 I think somewhere here, I even have these numbers. I couldn't believe when I saw it.

00:27:59.860 In 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, just looking at fentanyl seizures, you go from 200,000 to 1.5 million

00:28:08.900 to 4.1 million to almost 10 million.

00:28:11.600 You brought it up in 2021. If you're between the ages of 18 and 45, fentanyl was the number

00:28:17.780 one killer. It wasn't gun violence. It wasn't car crashes. It wasn't suicides. It wasn't COVID.

00:28:22.220 It wasn't any of those things. It was fentanyl poisonings. And unfortunately, I think when we

00:28:26.920 get the 2022 numbers back, it's not going to be 18 anymore. It's going to be 13 or 14 to 45.

00:28:34.040 That's strictly because I believe, and the DEA believes that the Mexican cartel are specifically

00:28:39.320 targeting our young folks. And that's what we're seeing.

00:28:41.980 Can you say a bit more about what that looks like? How are they doing that?

00:28:44.980 One of the ways they're doing that is they started making what we call in law enforcement and DEA calls

00:28:51.640 is a rainbow fentanyl or candy fentanyl. And it's made to look just like candy. It looks attractive

00:28:57.280 to the young folks. It looks pretty, right? It won't kill me. It won't happen to me. And they're

00:29:02.720 also targeting young folks because they want to get people addicted a lot younger. So they have that

00:29:08.440 customer base a lot longer. Tell me what the chain looks like. So you're saying like if 13-year-olds

00:29:13.540 and 10-year-olds are potentially now being targeted, you're going to expand your market.

00:29:18.580 Who's the drug dealer in that situation? How is it getting its way from a Mexican cartel

00:29:23.340 to distribute these much more friendly looking drugs? It's no longer a shady looking

00:29:28.700 Percocet with a stamp on it. By the way, I think we're going to link to some photos of these that you

00:29:34.160 shared. Yes. Because this is the other thing that surprised me is how good the counterfeits are.

00:29:39.940 You can't tell. They're indistinguishable. Yes. I always assumed when people were getting

00:29:43.560 counterfeit Percocet, I was always like, well, they just don't know what real Percocet looks like. And

00:29:49.200 that's why they're being fooled. But that's not true. Nope. This is color matched, printed,

00:29:55.440 identical, which by the way, Anthony, you'll have to forgive me. This brings me back to my frustration.

00:30:00.880 You figured out how to color match, perfectly stamp, and manufacture this, and yet you're off

00:30:07.400 by a dose of 1,000 on the active ingredient? It just boggles my mind. I'll never understand.

00:30:12.880 But so back to the question. We're now seeing this in middle school. Is that right?

00:30:17.360 Yes. As a matter of fact, our most recent death in Hayes County was a middle school student. She was

00:30:22.800 13 years old. It's all related back to that. So how did this drug get into, how did she acquire

00:30:28.020 this drug? So basically, the majority of the time, they'll make the illicit pure fentanyl in

00:30:33.140 Mexico, smuggle it across the border to their counterparts here in the United States. And 0.90

00:30:37.200 then it just gets distributed to every major state. Tell me how that happens, by the way. I'm

00:30:40.520 so ignorant of this. So the fentanyl is coming over in a powder form? For the most part, yes. And it's

00:30:45.960 blocked in a kilo, just like a brick of cocaine would come across. A kilo of fentanyl, what is the

00:30:51.620 wholesale price for that? I'd have to look that up, to be honest. I don't know what that price is.

00:30:55.480 But it's cheap compared to a kilogram of cocaine, a kilogram of heroin, a kilogram of any other drug

00:31:01.380 based on the fact that you get to make it synthetically. Correct. Okay. So your feedstock

00:31:06.400 comes to Mexico now from China. They synthetically manufacture pure fentanyl. It gets shipped and it's

00:31:13.980 cheap as hell. They get it across the border. Again, walk me through that. What's the most porous

00:31:18.920 part of the border that brings this stuff into the United States? Vehicles.

00:31:22.680 In small batches? It depends. Various ways, right? So they'll load cars up. They'll load

00:31:27.860 semis up. They'll strap it to people's bodies. They'll send it via airplane. Drones are real

00:31:33.300 big now getting across the border. So drones that fly at what altitude?

00:31:36.860 High enough to get over the wall. High enough to not be detected. Just they have grown their

00:31:41.720 business models. I mean, if they were innovated in other ways, we wouldn't have traffic problems.

00:31:46.860 I mean, it's insane. They're so ahead of the game of law enforcement. Some of this stuff's

00:31:52.060 not even getting detected by x-ray. Some of this stuff's not even being detected by narcotic dogs.

00:31:55.860 They're finding various ways to smuggle it in. When I talk about the candy fentanyl or the rainbow

00:32:01.040 fentanyl, they're actually smuggling it into the country inside Skittles, inside nerd boxes, inside.

00:32:07.520 It doesn't have Skittles in it, but it's full of- Wait a minute. You mean in Mexico, 1.00

00:32:11.140 they make things that look like Skittles or they're just putting pure fentanyl into a Skittles

00:32:15.060 box and shipping the Skittles box? Yeah. They're making the fentanyl pills look like a candy.

00:32:20.040 And putting them into a real candy box. Into a real candy box.

00:32:22.400 And then that just comes over in a regular truck. Comes over in a regular truck. You would never even

00:32:25.740 know. So unless you've got a sniffing dog or if you do a random inspection at the border-

00:32:29.860 I think I heard a stat to where the folks down at the border probably intercept five to 10%

00:32:34.460 of the narcotics that go across the board. Again, not to get so off on these tangents, but

00:32:39.240 is that a staffing issue? Is it simply a numbers game where unless you're willing to stop

00:32:44.340 and seize every vehicle crossing, which would of course make

00:32:47.180 transport over the border impossible? That's all you can get?

00:32:50.400 I mean, it's just, there's so much of it. And it is a staffing issue, but it's a variety of things.

00:32:55.400 They're so smart in how they get it across the border that we're not able to detect it. I heard

00:32:59.780 a stat this morning, actually it was between five and 10% that they actually were able to intercept

00:33:03.960 at the border. So that leaves other law enforcement entities throughout the country to try to intercept it.

00:33:09.280 And just from a jurisdiction perspective, the border seizure is the responsibility of border

00:33:15.180 patrol or DEA? It's the border patrol. So the second it's, they make it across the border,

00:33:21.640 it's a DEA law enforcement issue. It's an every law enforcement issue, 100%. Once it gets across

00:33:26.540 the border, yes, it's a DEA, it's the FBI, it's the ATF, it's local law enforcement, federal law

00:33:32.320 enforcement. It's anybody and everybody that specializes in tackling this narcotic game.

00:33:36.800 And just so I understand the logic, they're going to put these things in Skittles because the idea

00:33:42.600 is a kid that tries one of these Skittles, even if they're 13, is going to get high and getting high

00:33:48.920 feels good. And they're going to want more of those Skittles. Is the impression that the kid thinks

00:33:53.620 it's a Skittle or pretty quickly realizes this is no Skittle, but whatever it is, I love it. And I just

00:33:58.280 want more of it.

00:33:58.940 I think they do that specifically just to smuggle it into the country.

00:34:02.540 So it's not that they're selling Skittles.

00:34:03.860 So they're going to break it apart when it's a Skittle and turn it back into pills. 0.94

00:34:08.320 Yes. It's a Fitnol pill and that's how they'll sell it.

00:34:10.900 All right. So let's go back to this girl in seventh grade. How did she come into possession

00:34:15.900 of this stuff? Was it through an older sibling or was she the direct person who got it from a dealer?

00:34:21.360 I don't know the specifics on her case, but how it works today in today's world, it's social media.

00:34:26.820 And that's how a lot of this stuff is sold. It's how it's bought. It's social media. It's Facebook.

00:34:33.000 It's Snapchat. It's Instagram. They're very blatant about, especially on school campuses,

00:34:37.860 if they bring it to school, all they have to do is put an emoji up on their Snapchat. All the kids

00:34:42.700 know so-and-so has pills today. Or they're downloading these encrypted apps, telegram signal

00:34:50.000 to where once these messages are sent and received, they disappear. So it's hard for us to go back

00:34:54.780 and try to trace where these pills are.

00:34:57.400 That's kind of the issue with Snapchat as well.

00:34:58.940 Correct. So anytime in Hayes County that we have an overdose that's Fitnol related,

00:35:04.100 our narcotic folks actually go respond to that scene to try to get the phones, talk to the witnesses,

00:35:10.000 talk to the friends. Their sole goal is to try to trace back where these pills are coming from

00:35:15.000 and to see if they can find out who specifically sold these pills to these kids to put them in

00:35:20.100 federal prison. The people who are selling pills to kids, do you have a sense of how many steps

00:35:26.520 they are removed from the guy that receives the brick of fentanyl? Is that two layers, three layers?

00:35:32.060 It's multiple. It's not a two or three. It's multiple. There's different plugs in each city.

00:35:36.680 It's just a whole enterprise on how it's distributed throughout the country. It's pretty insane.

00:35:41.460 Let's talk a little bit about what happens to a person when they overdose.

00:35:45.000 There's another video you shared from an elementary school, actually. It was a surveillance camera.

00:35:51.500 So again, Anthony, these are hard videos to watch, but I don't think we're going to shy away from

00:35:55.540 that. I think it is important that people understand how uncomfortable this is.

00:35:59.680 There's probably a lot of mixed emotions that are going on around the person who stops breathing.

00:36:06.360 On the one level, there's the obvious fear and panic and, oh my God, what is happening?

00:36:11.100 On the other level, is there some sense that you get from talking to people who have been there

00:36:16.600 that there's a hesitation to call police or paramedics for fear of reprimand? Because,

00:36:24.260 hey, we're obviously doing something wrong here.

00:36:26.400 In this particular video, the passenger that wasn't getting poisoned, I think it was several,

00:36:31.600 20, 25 minutes, I believe, before he even called 911. And I think that's specifically attributed to not

00:36:37.300 wanting to get in trouble and not believing his friend is dead. So I think that's the big...

00:36:42.760 What is the law with regard to that? How clear is the law on prosecution of people who are...

00:36:48.720 Let's just say someone calls the police immediately, calls the paramedics, everybody shows up.

00:36:53.820 Are they going to be prosecuted for drug use?

00:36:56.860 If they're in possession of it?

00:36:58.000 Yeah, let's say they are.

00:36:58.860 So if they are in possession of it, yes. We had a young man who overdosed on one of our high school

00:37:04.340 campuses that had, I want to say, three or four illicit counterfeit pills on him. At the time,

00:37:10.920 he pretty much died in class. And I think that's still in criminal proceedings. Yes. If you're in

00:37:16.700 possession of it, obviously, we want to save your life and we'll deal with the criminal part later.

00:37:21.980 But when you're in possession of it, yes, you're more likely going to get charged.

00:37:24.580 I know this is beyond both of our pay grades, but is that the right solution to the problem

00:37:29.740 in that situation? I don't know if you heard this. I just read it this morning. British Columbia being

00:37:34.620 the latest example of, at least in this case, a province or a state is decriminalizing from a

00:37:41.040 personal possession standpoint, any drug. So this is going to be their attempt to say,

00:37:46.120 how are we going to address this problem? Now, it's not entirely clear to me how that fixes the

00:37:49.880 problem. I can see scenarios where it makes things better. For example, it would presumably

00:37:54.460 reduce any friction to someone calling for help the moment someone is down because you now don't

00:38:01.260 have to fear that you're going to be prosecuted. But what are your thoughts on that? If you go back

00:38:05.860 to the case of that kid who basically died in class, it's a miracle he's alive. Taking off your

00:38:11.420 law enforcement hat, just from a personal sort of philosophical standpoint, do you think that's the

00:38:16.060 right thing to do? I think it's probably on a case-by-case scenario from a law enforcement

00:38:21.300 perspective and there's laws that we have to follow. If we have to end up putting that young

00:38:26.000 man in jail, it doesn't mean he's going to spend the rest of his life in jail. It doesn't even mean

00:38:29.660 he's going to be in jail. We have to file the appropriate charges, right? But also our main

00:38:34.240 concern is to make sure he's alive, make sure he gets the help he's needed. So we don't necessarily

00:38:39.160 arrest him that day. Like that young man went to the hospital and got treated, and then we turn

00:38:43.960 those pills in, get them tested. If it comes back with illicit narcotic in it, then we would look at

00:38:48.840 filing charges at that time. Filing charges and putting somebody in jail or at that immediate

00:38:53.780 moment is not a priority. Our priority is obviously life. I don't think I'm close enough to the data

00:38:59.880 because I know that Oregon has done this. You see it now in British Columbia. Portugal did this 20 0.59

00:39:06.500 years ago. Portugal, I believe, I think it was Portugal, basically decriminalized for any personal

00:39:11.620 possession, any drug. And interestingly, their accidental overdose rate dropped to lower, I

00:39:20.840 believe, than any country in Europe. Now that said, it is on the rise again, along with this problem. So

00:39:26.660 in other words, the fentanyl is raising all boats at the moment, including even Portugal. And truthfully,

00:39:32.040 I just don't know where I stand on it. Because there's a part of me that still thinks that's a

00:39:35.760 band-aid. And I think what you said at the outset is the problem. Even though it sounds like a cop-out,

00:39:39.840 it's not. I think it is the problem, which is why do you need fill-in-the-blank drug?

00:39:45.420 100%.

00:39:45.780 Why do you need Percocet? Why do you need Xanax? Why do you need whatever it is? And without the

00:39:53.260 answer to that question, I think it gets very difficult to think about this.

00:39:58.220 100%. Again, it doesn't make you a bad person. If I have to arrest you today because you have three

00:40:02.860 pills on you, I have a job to do. But I still need to treat you with respect and I need to try to help

00:40:08.940 you. Like, I'm going to put you in jail today. When you get out, let's figure out a way to

00:40:13.040 get you the help you need or find you someone to talk to you to figure out, again, why? Why are

00:40:17.820 you making that decision? Without that why, that person will never be able to get the help that

00:40:22.820 they need. Specifically, they don't know the why.

00:40:24.820 Do you see that that side of the equation is getting as much attention? I would like to believe

00:40:29.740 that with all of the attention this is starting to get. And once you're at the point where every

00:40:34.420 five minutes, one of your citizens of a country this size is killing themselves accidentally with

00:40:41.360 poison, that should be enough to get attention. Do you feel that most of that attention is being

00:40:46.540 channeled into seizure, stopping the cartels, the law enforcement side of it? Do you feel like

00:40:52.940 enough of it is going into that side of it that you're talking about, which is the mental health

00:40:57.280 side? No, I don't think so. I think because it's becoming more and more prevalent, more and more

00:41:02.940 people are starting to ask for help. And we're starting to learn that there's not enough rehab

00:41:08.120 places for these people to go to. Several kids have come forward at HACY ISD and asked for help.

00:41:13.620 They've talked to their pediatricians. They've talked to counselors and teachers. And some of

00:41:17.100 the issues they're running into is they're being told, well, give me six weeks and I'll have you

00:41:20.620 a bed or give me three months and I'll have you a bed. That's not acceptable. It's not just a law

00:41:25.920 enforcement thing. It's not a school district thing. It's a community that needs to collaborate

00:41:30.120 together to try to figure out ways to help everybody, to help the folks that are struggling.

00:41:35.680 We're not going to save everybody. We're just not. I've been a cop for 24 plus years. I've arrested

00:41:41.140 many people that have had drugs or put drug dealers in jail. So we're not going to save everybody.

00:41:46.400 The war on drugs, we're never going to win. We're just not. But if we can take 10 pills off the street

00:41:52.100 a day, that's what we're seeing now is probably six people that we've saved because six out of every

00:41:57.340 10 illicit counterfeit pills have enough fentanyl to kill somebody. So if we can take 10 pills off

00:42:02.800 the street, we're potentially saving six lives. And if I can go talk to a group of 300 students

00:42:07.920 and I can keep one kid from making that decision to take a drug, or if I can get one of those kids

00:42:13.880 who's struggling with an addiction to say, hey, I need help, then I think I can sleep well at night

00:42:18.520 knowing that we're doing something to help.

00:42:21.700 So I want to talk about that because I think that's sort of why we're sitting down here today,

00:42:25.540 which is one of the things that moved us about kind of your presentation was just how much you

00:42:31.900 were putting of yourself into this, like how much you're going around just talking to random parents

00:42:36.240 like us, going to school meetings, doing all this kind of stuff. But it's so much of what you talked

00:42:41.660 about blew my mind. I want to get to a few more of those things before I come to the nuts and bolts

00:42:45.920 of it. I have a lot of technical questions about Narcan and all that kind of stuff, but I've been hearing

00:42:50.880 some other really frightening things. So talk to a friend, a couple of weeks, I was talking to a

00:42:55.240 friend of mine who goes to Burning Man every year. As you know, Burning Man is a place where a lot of

00:42:59.180 drugs get done. And he said, maybe I heard him wrong, or maybe he got his facts wrong. So maybe

00:43:04.800 someone listening to this will correct this. But he said that at Burning Man, there were at least

00:43:09.620 two deaths attributed to fentanyl in drugs that normally would never have fentanyl on them.

00:43:15.780 One was cocaine, and one was ketamine. Ketamine, of all things. Ketamine is a perfectly legal drug.

00:43:22.240 Now, it probably was being used off-label, so to speak. But clearly, this was a person who was using

00:43:28.020 counterfeit ketamine. What is the breadth of drugs that you're seeing this? So we've already

00:43:33.300 established it's going into every single counterfeit pill out there, potentially. So that's

00:43:39.060 going to be all of your pain meds, of which I'm guessing Percocet, Oxycodone, Oxycontin,

00:43:44.720 and Dilaudid are your big boys. Then you've got it going into the benzos. That's your Ativan,

00:43:50.840 your Ambien. Is it going into sleeping pills and stuff as well? Adderall.

00:43:54.100 Adderall, stimulants.

00:43:54.940 Any pill.

00:43:55.880 Anything that's a pill that kids want is going to be laced. That's frightening because I can hear

00:44:01.220 this from my daughter saying, it's not uncommon for kids to say, I need something to help me study.

00:44:06.040 I need something to help me sleep. Where else is it going? Has this crept its way into anything that

00:44:11.260 has to do with marijuana? Yes. We're talking every illicit recreational drug that's out there,

00:44:17.760 cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, moly pills, X, marijuana. We haven't seen this particular

00:44:24.280 here in Central Texas yet, but DEA says, you guys know how prevalent vapes are throughout the country

00:44:30.120 in all the schools. It's just a matter of time before we start seeing it in Central Texas, but

00:44:34.120 they're starting to see vape pens that have the THC in it also contain fentanyl. So any illicit drug,

00:44:41.200 any vape pen. And again, just to be clear, there's no reason to do this unless you're trying to get

00:44:46.060 people higher than normal. That's the only reason. There's no cost benefit to putting

00:44:50.960 fentanyl into THC. They're totally different agents. Correct. So they're basically saying,

00:44:56.360 we're betting that you're going to like this THC so much more because somehow it's going to get you

00:45:02.120 the marijuana high, which is totally different from the opioid high. And we're going to make a

00:45:08.780 more addictive product. And yet again, they screw it up and put too much in. It's a competitive market.

00:45:13.560 So they want people to seek them, them being the drug dealers out for this particular drug.

00:45:19.980 This drug dealer has the strongest cocaine on the market. Everybody go to him or her. These folks

00:45:25.660 are thinking they're taking cocaine, not realizing that when the pure fentanyl gets here to the country,

00:45:31.040 that the drug dealers on this side of the border are starting to put fentanyl in all their drugs.

00:45:36.140 So when they sell it, they want their stuff to be more powerful. They want that street cred

00:45:40.060 because it goes out on social media. So-and-so has the strong cocaine, go see him or her.

00:45:44.920 That's the only reason they do it because they want to stand out above the rest.

00:45:48.860 Is there any drug this has not made its way into yet?

00:45:52.120 No.

00:45:52.880 So right now we're sitting here in central Texas. It hasn't shown up yet,

00:45:56.260 but do you think that's just a matter of time?

00:45:58.660 In the vapes, it hasn't shown up.

00:45:59.420 In the vapes, yes.

00:46:00.040 Yes, but fentanyl has been seized throughout.

00:46:01.560 Yes, yes, yes. I just mean in vapes. And is it showing up in cocaine? Is it showing up in

00:46:05.440 other drugs here?

00:46:06.420 100%. It's in cocaine. To me, if you buy cocaine on the streets today, the chances of fentanyl in it

00:46:12.300 is probably 90 to 99%, if I had to bet.

00:46:16.000 And most of the time you probably get away with it because it's not a lethal dose,

00:46:20.520 but you're playing Russian roulette.

00:46:22.560 And I bring that up in my presentations, specifically regarding the pills.

00:46:26.960 Because six out of every 10 illicit counterfeit pills has enough that not to kill you.

00:46:31.620 I stress it to the parents and the kids. You're playing Russian roulette by taking a pill that

00:46:36.120 you don't know where it came from. Because we're seeing so many deaths and poisonings throughout

00:46:40.480 Central Texas and the country that, yes, you're playing Russian roulette and there's no other

00:46:45.540 way to put it. It's just be blunt. Yeah.

00:46:48.100 I would guess that the majority of people listening to this podcast are parents. Or they're going to

00:46:52.740 share it with someone who's a parent, right? I got to be honest with you. I don't think there's

00:46:55.400 a 13-year-old listening to us right now. I don't think there's a 19-year-old listening to us.

00:46:58.220 They don't like listening to cops either.

00:46:59.560 Yeah. But there are a lot of parents listening to us. What can we do? So let's start with,

00:47:05.640 you're just talking to me and my wife. We've got a 14-year-old daughter,

00:47:08.500 eight-year-old, and a five-year-old boy. So that's one of the reasons I'm pretty

00:47:12.740 passionate about it. I've got kids. I got a freshman in high school and a senior in high

00:47:15.860 school. I've seen firsthand how it's affected my community. But as parents, we have to be nosy,

00:47:22.180 right? We have to take off the blinders and we have to stop saying, my kid won't do this.

00:47:26.440 How many of the parents, Anthony, that you've met who have lost a child were so shocked

00:47:33.500 that it was, I never even knew this was happening? Versus, I'm sure there are some cases where

00:47:40.440 my son has struggled with drugs his whole life. How many are in that former category where

00:47:44.840 they literally are dealing with two complete shocks, the loss of their child and the fact

00:47:52.060 that they had no idea their child was in need or in use of this? How often is it that case?

00:47:56.960 You hear it a lot. I don't have an exact percentage, but you hear it a lot. It may

00:48:01.440 not be because they don't know. It's that they refuse to believe it. And I get it. It goes back

00:48:06.520 to the stigma. I'm embarrassed if my kids are doing drugs. I'm embarrassed if my kids are druggie.

00:48:11.740 So I stress the stigma. We have to stop with the stigma, to stop with the judging. And we have to

00:48:16.580 work together as a community to get this as low as possible. We're not going to get rid of it.

00:48:21.740 But if we can move it around a little bit, then we're doing what we can. But yeah, I hear it too

00:48:26.800 much. And as a parent, I catch myself sometimes, nah, not my kid. But I have to remind myself

00:48:33.980 because I see it so often. It could be my kid. Social media, both my kids have phones. They

00:48:39.420 have social media. Actually, my freshman no longer has social media, but you have to be nosy.

00:48:44.860 Luckily, my 14-year-old's not on social media. We're going to try to keep it that way as long as

00:48:48.700 possible. You mentioned it like, this emoji means this, this emoji means that. Is there any chance

00:48:53.780 a parent is going to figure that out? When I talk about social media to the parents,

00:48:57.900 when I go talk to the PTAs or I go to HOA meetings, I stress, if you're going to give your

00:49:03.320 kid a phone and if you're going to give your kid social media, you better learn as much as you can

00:49:07.880 about every single app that's out there. Because I guarantee you, your kid knows more about that app

00:49:13.940 than you do. So if you give them Snapchat, you better have it on your phone as well. And you

00:49:18.760 better learn as much as you possibly can and figure out the tips and tricks that they probably know

00:49:22.660 on how to hide things. They're always going to be more savvy than we are, but it's our duty as

00:49:28.000 parents. If we're going to hold them responsible for that, we have to learn about it. And I stress

00:49:33.180 that so much. It's not only the apps, it's the games, the Roblox, it's the encrypted apps,

00:49:37.900 Signal, Telegram. I try to put as much information in my presentation in regards to social media,

00:49:43.020 just so it gives parents something to think about. I showed that slot.

00:49:47.000 We'll link to a lot of these videos in this as well. So we're going to have people going to leave

00:49:51.300 all these resources in there for folks to go to. Tell us about Narcan. So we used to use Narcan in

00:49:57.680 the hospital. Mostly the use was at the end of surgery. If a patient needs to be brought back and

00:50:04.260 you mistimed the opioid dose, you would use it. A lot of times you'd use it in the situation I

00:50:08.880 described earlier, which is, oh, you accidentally gave that person 120 or 125 micrograms of fentanyl,

00:50:15.640 but in reality, that was a bit too much for them. Their breathing rate is slowing. We got to back

00:50:19.580 that off. I've already forgotten how long Narcan lasts for, but if a kid is down and you give them

00:50:26.660 Narcan, are they out of the woods or is there a chance that they have so much drug in them that even

00:50:33.320 though they start breathing again, they're going to crash? And that's one of the things we try to

00:50:37.460 talk about because kids have started going out and buying Narcan and carrying it with them and

00:50:43.000 saying, hey, I'm going to pop this pill. Talking to their friend, hold my Narcan. I'm going to

00:50:46.800 snort this pill. If I fall out, can you please shoot me up? What they really don't understand is 1.00

00:50:51.540 this fentanyl is so powerful. One injection of Narcan or one nasal spray of Narcan is not helping

00:50:57.240 because it's so fast acting. I don't think there's a set time because everybody's different,

00:51:01.380 right? Everybody is built differently, metabolism different. There's not a set time. I try to

00:51:06.400 explain that in my presentation as well, but the quicker you get Narcan into that person's system,

00:51:11.300 the better chance they have to live. But what we're seeing in a lot of these overdoses and

00:51:15.880 poisonings throughout Hayes County is one injection is not working. We had a kid two weeks ago that took

00:51:20.880 15 doses of Narcan. 15 doses? Yes. In the field? In the field before they were able to. It's just to

00:51:28.480 play ignorant. I'm sorry. Paramedics are not yet there. They're there, but they don't want to 0.55

00:51:32.480 intubate yet. Correct. Paramedics are there. And they're not intubated. All our deputies throughout

00:51:36.400 Hayes County carry Narcan as well. So usually if we're first there and we know it's a fentanyl

00:51:40.900 related overdose or poisoning. Presumably you're just giving Narcan no matter what. Correct.

00:51:45.240 The guy could be drunk. It's so prevalent. And you're just going to give him.

00:51:47.780 Because it's not going to hurt them if they're not. We try to play it safe. And if we even suspect

00:51:52.220 there might be some kind of poisoning, we're going to shoot them up with Narcan. It's very easy. 0.99

00:51:56.100 Do you do intramuscular or intranasal? It's a nasal. Just like an afferent. You're battling

00:52:00.360 allergies. The same thing. But this stuff is so powerful. And depending on how long it's been,

00:52:06.020 their respiratory system could have slowed down to where the Narcan is not going to get through.

00:52:09.640 So that's where the CPR comes into play. Not only with the Narcan injection, but the CPR just to get

00:52:15.300 the blood flowing again. And that way the Narcan can get in there and attach to these opioids.

00:52:19.760 So should parents, I mean, lesson number one we're taking away is

00:52:23.420 be really hypervigilant about social media. I've read horror stories of, yeah, drug dealers on

00:52:30.000 Snapchat are basically offering drop-down menus, right? It's like, do you need something to make

00:52:35.420 you feel happy? Do you need something to help you sleep? Do you need something to help you study?

00:52:39.680 I mean, it's very banal language. Yep. And they're not shy about it.

00:52:43.440 But every one of them is fentanyl. It's some derivative of fentanyl into some other pill.

00:52:47.620 It's going to be stamped as a different pill. And then these kids die. And the few times that

00:52:52.780 kids have taken screenshots of their Snapchat is the only way that these stories are coming to light,

00:52:57.880 where you're making the clear link to this innocent little high school kid is sitting

00:53:01.740 there studying and wanted something to help them study, you know, wanted Adderall or wanted this

00:53:06.760 thing or the other and that's life is over. So that's lesson one. How long does Narcan last? Does

00:53:12.260 it have an expiration date on it? I don't think so.

00:53:14.260 You don't worry about it. So is it something parents should have in their house? Is it something

00:53:17.500 kids should be carrying around with them in case they... If your kids are going to a party,

00:53:21.000 would you tell them to carry Narcan in case something goes wrong with some other kid there?

00:53:24.360 I have mixed feelings about that. But I tell the parents, if you have kids, middle school or above,

00:53:29.780 have Narcan at home, somewhere where you can find it under stress. We all react differently under

00:53:35.260 stress. So it's very important to have Narcan on hand.

00:53:38.480 Don't have it in the box, in the garage, in the top corner where you need the ladder to go up and get it.

00:53:42.540 Have it somewhere where you know 100% where it's going to be and you're able to use it

00:53:46.160 right away. Because it may not be your kid that's battling whatever they're battling.

00:53:51.720 But little Johnny could be spending the night with you that weekend and hanging out with your son or

00:53:55.300 daughter for the weekend. But you don't know that he or she is battling anxiety. You don't know that

00:54:00.620 their parents are going through a divorce. You don't know if that person can get bullied or they

00:54:04.400 simply need medication to help them sleep. And they've gotten pills off the street because they're

00:54:08.540 going to go spend the night at somebody's house and they're battling anxiety. It may not be your

00:54:11.940 kid, but if somebody's spending the night at your house and they start getting poisoned and they

00:54:16.440 start showing signs of an overdose, if you don't have Narcan on hand, you're going to feel really bad.

00:54:21.820 Can Narcan be purchased without a prescription?

00:54:23.800 Yes. You can go to websites. The federal government will mail it to you. It's becoming more and more

00:54:28.100 prevalent. You can go to Walgreens and buy CVS.

00:54:30.500 So we should all be just going out, buying Narcan, having it in the kitchen drawer where it's

00:54:34.220 under any situation you can access it. It's sad that we have to do that, but it's the world we

00:54:39.760 live in. You almost think of this like you, we have, you know, fire extinguishers and fire blankets

00:54:43.400 in the house in case one day the grill catches on fire or there's an oil fire. So you just sort

00:54:47.540 of have it. Tell me why you have mixed feelings about if your son is going to a party and let's

00:54:53.020 just assume, even though we should never assume, that you feel very confident that your son's going

00:54:58.260 to break some rules, but not this rule. Your son's probably going to have a beer. He's not going to

00:55:02.220 take a pill that he doesn't know what it is. Do you worry that that's sort of a, well,

00:55:06.380 tell me what your reservations to me, it's almost like you're giving permission in the same hand.

00:55:11.340 It's almost like the designated driver that Narcan is your designated driver. So I guess if you're

00:55:16.980 going to take drugs, you're doing it responsibly, I guess, but they're legal.

00:55:22.020 I was just thinking more of, you're not even saying to your kid, like it's okay to take drugs.

00:55:26.500 You're saying if somebody else does and they get into trouble, you could almost do it through a

00:55:30.640 selfish lens, which is, I don't want you to have to experience this tragedy that will change your

00:55:36.100 life forever. You know, you watch a video like that one we saw and you think there's two lives

00:55:41.200 that are lost. There's the kid who dies and there's the kid who watched.

00:55:46.240 100%.

00:55:46.600 And if you can take that away.

00:55:48.240 In that aspect, 100%, I'm completely on board with it. What I have mixed feelings about is-

00:55:53.060 Take your drugs and have your Narcan on the table.

00:55:54.860 Yeah, pay home my Narcan.

00:55:55.700 I completely agree.

00:55:56.300 That's where I have mixed feelings.

00:55:57.380 As do I, because, and my mixed feelings aren't even ethical. They're practical, which is how

00:56:01.900 do you know your buddy's going to give you the Narcan correctly? How do you know you have enough?

00:56:05.800 Like you're really playing with fire in a dangerous way there. Anthony, anything else parents can be

00:56:11.680 thinking about here? Because I have to be honest with you, there's a part of me that's, and maybe

00:56:16.000 this is just the skeptic in me that's thinking, wait, Peter, don't overreact to this. Don't freak

00:56:20.340 out. I mean, of course you can believe it. I had a discussion with our eight-year-old,

00:56:23.760 right? And I'm like, okay, Reese, if anybody ever gives you candy at school, unless it's in the

00:56:29.080 wrapper, you don't eat it. I don't know if you're as old as I am, Anthony, but I don't know. How old

00:56:33.140 are you? 47.

00:56:34.060 Yeah. See, I'm older than you, but I bet you still remember when we were kids, do you remember all

00:56:38.800 the panic about never eat an apple at Halloween because the razor blades in it?

00:56:42.680 I talk about that in my presentation because of the candy fit and all. Right before Halloween,

00:56:47.660 I would get the question all the time at every presentation, should I let my kids go trick-or-treating

00:56:51.460 or can I go trick-or-treating? And what I told them is like, your neighbor's not trying to poison

00:56:55.500 you. Go out and have a good time. Let your kid go trick-or-treating. But then I referenced the

00:56:59.220 eighties when I was trick-or-treating, I had to come home and dump it out because of the razor blades.

00:57:03.380 Razor blades. Yeah. So you grew up in Texas. I grew up in Canada. It's amazing to think that

00:57:07.560 everybody was putting razor blades in apples apparently across the globe, right? It probably

00:57:11.660 happened three times and yet it somehow created a moral panic. And I guess I think about this

00:57:17.360 sometimes, right? Where's the line here? I think when I look at these stats, it's hard to say this

00:57:22.660 is a moral panic. When you think of other examples of moral panics, things that were, there was a very

00:57:27.760 prominent one, right? Which was like all the satanic cults that were like killing babies all over the

00:57:32.560 place. Remember that whole thing? That was kind of another eighties weird thing. Turned out not to

00:57:36.440 even be the case. This is different. This is real. You have the bodies. This is one body bags there.

00:57:41.000 You've got more than a hundred thousand body bags in the past 12 months. It'll be very interesting to see

00:57:46.160 what the 2022 numbers are. I keep waiting for those to come and I'm, I'm not looking forward

00:57:50.680 to them because I know they're going to be scary, but they're real. This is not a panic. I'm not

00:57:56.420 trying to scare people when I go and talk to them. I just tell them what I owe because it's real.

00:58:01.960 It's not going anywhere. Going to become more and more prevalent. And unfortunately, we're going to

00:58:06.680 start seeing stuff that's stronger than fentanyl because they're starting to change different

00:58:10.400 structures and the molecule structure to make stuff stronger than fentanyl. We haven't seen it in

00:58:14.680 central Texas, but up and down the East coast, they've seen like nitazines and I think it's

00:58:18.860 called isotopes. There's some other stuff that's exponential. There's another variant of it called

00:58:22.500 sufentanil that is... Sufentanil, carfentanil. Sufentanil is like insanely potent. I was told from

00:58:29.140 somebody on the inside that it's the single greatest regret of the FDA was that they authorized

00:58:37.680 sufentanil. Sufentanil, I think is technically a schedule two drug, meaning it's highly, highly

00:58:44.300 controlled, but still medically can be used for cancer patients and things like that. But I've been

00:58:50.220 told that they have enormous buyer's remorse at having authorized it, allowing it to become legal

00:58:56.140 in that setting because it makes fentanyl look weak. And you've sort of opened up an awful Pandora's

00:59:01.960 box. And that aspect, they're also trying to create the Narcan, like a super Narcan to try to

00:59:07.460 battle what's coming. And unfortunately, it's just a matter of time before we start seeing that here

00:59:12.640 in central Texas. Anything else, Anthony, that you want to get across to, I think specifically to

00:59:19.040 parents, either for them directly or things that they can talk with about their kids. Obviously, the

00:59:24.380 most important lesson I take away from this is being very open with your kids. I mean, the first thing

00:59:29.620 that I think we said to our daughter was, anything you have a question about, well, let's just talk

00:59:34.020 about it. Because I'm not going to give you like a legal answer. I'm going to give you a medical

00:59:38.220 answer. I'm not going to tell you this is right or wrong. I'm just going to give you the medical,

00:59:42.520 this is the no judgment view of what this is. I don't know if that's enough.

00:59:47.180 It's something though. And that's what I don't think probably enough parents are doing.

00:59:50.600 Like I said, I have two kids, I have two daughters. I've seen so much in my 24 years of law

00:59:55.800 enforcement. There's a ton of stuff that I want to unsee, but I've always been up front with them

01:00:00.600 about the world and what I encounter and what's out there on the street, because I want them to

01:00:06.080 know, and I'm not trying to scare them. I want them to know exactly what's going on and how it

01:00:10.660 affects you. So we need to start in elementary school. You mentioned talking to your eight-year-old.

01:00:15.740 It's huge. The schools out in Hays County have started hanging signs and posters that are age

01:00:21.360 appropriate. Talking about pills, talking about fentanyl to where that conversation is starting

01:00:26.400 at a younger and younger age. We haven't gone into the elementary schools and talked to the kids,

01:00:30.740 but we go and talk to the parents. We go to the PTAs. We hold public presentations because I want

01:00:35.940 those kids, the parents of those elementary school to start having those conversations at that age.

01:00:42.000 That's where we'll start seeing the difference. The more knowledge they have, the more right decisions

01:00:46.480 I think will be made. And again, I don't try to scare people. High school kids don't want me to go

01:00:51.180 up on stage and preach to them. I just try to humanize the badge as much as I can and just try

01:00:56.240 to show them I care about you guys because it affects first responders too, right? We go to

01:01:01.700 these calls and we can never unhear the mom screaming because their kid's lifeless on the

01:01:07.180 ground. I can't unsee that. And that affects not only officers, but firefighters, paramedics,

01:01:12.560 doctors, the stuff that we don't want to deal with either. We don't have to experience that.

01:01:16.860 We sign up for it. Yes, we're going to try to save everybody, but yeah, just start those

01:01:20.460 conversations as much as possible. I never, never not think that your kid won't do that

01:01:25.800 and just be nosy. Really? You just have to be nosy. Unfortunately, never believe your kid

01:01:31.120 won't do it. I just have to stress that a lot because I've heard it too many times. I never

01:01:35.760 knew my kid would never do that. And as parents, we want to believe that. I don't want to believe

01:01:40.740 my kid did what they did, but they did. Let's figure out why, you know, your kid better than

01:01:45.740 anybody. If you start seeing the different signs, their friend groups are changing. The

01:01:50.700 grades start suffering. They're losing too much weight. They're gaining too much weight.

01:01:55.520 You know, when your kid's off, I mentioned my freshman, not having social media. I gave her

01:02:00.260 social media at a too young of age. I tried to compare her to my older daughter who was much

01:02:04.500 more mature and it affected her because she battles anxiety, depression, some other things. And I took

01:02:09.940 social media away from her probably about two months ago. She came up to me and she's like,

01:02:14.080 I want to thank you for taking TikTok away from me because I'm so much happier. I didn't realize

01:02:19.420 how much it affected me because all she would do is sit in her room and scroll. It's just mindless 1.00

01:02:23.720 stuff. It holds so much power over your kids. Just be mindful of that. Get to know your kids.

01:02:28.980 Sounds funny to say you should know your kids, but some parents, they don't. Get to know your kids

01:02:32.780 and when you start seeing something's off, start having those conversations.

01:02:37.440 You know, the way I think about what you're doing, Anthony, you're a guy walking down a beach and it's

01:02:41.680 not just you. There are a lot of people doing this, but I think this has become your life's

01:02:44.800 mission now. You're a guy walking down a beach with another guy. I'm borrowing this from a story

01:02:50.500 and there's a hundred thousand starfish washed up on the beach. And you're walking with this guy.

01:02:58.500 Every few steps, you pick one up and you throw it back in the ocean. And the other guy says to you,

01:03:03.020 Anthony, what are you doing? And you said, well, the tide is out and all these hundred thousand

01:03:09.440 starfish on this beach are going to die if they don't get back in the water. You pick one up,

01:03:14.240 throw it in. Guy looks at you funny and he says, Anthony, you can't possibly save all these starfish

01:03:19.860 out here. You can't possibly make a difference. You pick up another starfish, you throw it in,

01:03:24.400 you go, made a difference to that one. And so I don't know how many you're going to save,

01:03:29.560 but if you save a hundred, if through your work, a hundred lives are saved, that's a hundred lives

01:03:38.100 that are saved. Most people go their whole lives don't save a life. Yeah. So I want to thank you

01:03:43.920 for what you're doing. I want to thank you for taking time on a weekend to come here and talk

01:03:47.420 with me about that. And we're going to put in the show notes for this, we're going to have all sorts

01:03:51.880 of additional resources based on anything that you tell us we should link to for other folks. So

01:03:56.120 thank you, Anthony. Yeah. I appreciate you having me. I thank you so much. It means a lot.

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The Peter Attia Drive - February 20, 2023

#243 ‒ The fentanyl crisis and why everyone should be paying attention ｜ Anthony Hipolito

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