 Good evening. We're on the air again with another edition of Pacious on the News. I sometimes say we've been doing this 16 years. I think it might even be 17 years, every month except for the two summer months, year after year. And we have a guest tonight, David Packham is his name. We're going to talk briefly at the beginning about him and his day job and what he is doing in this state in a non-profit way. And I want to tell you, David got in touch with me. We talked on the phone about a month ago. I didn't know what he was involved in. He described it. He's provided me with information on it. I've looked into it. And I would say in the 16 or 17 years that we've been doing this show, we've done some really good ones. We've had some people on who really were interesting and mostly about politics and government and public affairs. This program, this interview is in my judgment the most important one we have ever done. The most important and it's about addiction. And I've learned things that shocked me. I really do have been shocked. So, David, thank you for getting in touch with me. I am absolutely delighted that you are bringing your important message to our audience. Thank you for having me this evening. Delighted to be here. This is a message about addiction, about alcohol, drugs and kids and all the people that are watching this show. Every last one of them have children, parents, relatives, grandchildren who are affected by the message that you have. And so I am absolutely grateful to you for coming on this show and I think people watching this show will be grateful to you. First, before we get into what you're doing and your message, I have known you a long time. I know your grandfather, when I was going to high school in Cape Elizabeth, your grandfather had a drug store right up the street from the high school. A lot of kids I knew worked at your grandfather. Nelson Packham. Nelson Packham. So this is, I should say, David Packham, Nelson's grandson. Yeah, that's right. And David, you grew up in Scarborough. Grew up in Scarborough, right? We battled against you Cape boys all the time. And then you went to the University of Maine. Yes. And then you went to graduate school at BC. Correct. And got a master's in finance. Yes. Got a master's in finance. And then what did you do? Well, I came back to Maine. I got a job at Bath Ironworks. And ultimately, you became director of finance at Bath Ironworks. Director of finance and my last job was vice president of contracts. Vice president of contracts, which is the business contracts. Yes. Billions of dollars worth of contracts. Right. So you dealt with the Navy on contracts and disputes and things of that sort. Yes. And we had lots of disputes. You had lots of disputes. And billions of dollars of disputes. Yes, indeed. And then you left there and what did you do? I ran a telecommunications company in Standish, Maine and combined it with some other companies. I worked for the owner. I did that for a few years. Then I started with... Was that Standish? It began at Standish Telephone. It was called, yeah. It was called Utilities Incorporated. Yeah. And then... But then they went into cable and all kinds of things. We did. And then I broke off and started a software development company that did back office billing and other services for telecommunications companies. And I ran that with my two partners for about 10 years. And then what are you doing now? Today I'm the chief executive officer of Pineland Farms, Natural Meats. And so you have cattle out there at Pineland? We do have some cattle there, but we have... We've got cattle all over the eastern seaboard, as far west as Ohio, as far south as Georgia. Really? Yeah. And you process meat, you raise cattle, you process meat, and you wholesale it. And retail it? Yeah. And retail it. And it's called Pineland Natural Meat? Yes, Pineland Farms Natural Meats. And you run that? Yes. And you told me before we started with the cameras were on, you told me that, for instance, I asked you where you marketed, you said, for instance, Whole Foods between Maine and Washington, D.C., all the Whole Foods stores carry your product. Yes, that's right. Yeah. We're the largest natural supplier in those regions to Whole Foods. Not the only, but the largest. The largest one. Yeah. Isn't that something? I didn't know that. It's a good Maine company. Yes, I didn't know that. So you'll become, in your spare time, an expert on addiction. Will you want to tell us how this happened to you? Well, I'll stop short of calling myself an expert. I have been doing a lot of study. Yeah. But several years ago, my wife Karen and I learned that our son was an alcoholic. He was 32 years old at the time. He was the director of finance at Tufts Medical in Boston. But he could not stop drinking. And that threw us for a loop. There was really very little we could do to help him. He had to go to rehab. He had to find a way out of that difficulty. And what we could do was to try to better understand it. And we studied and we researched and we started to understand how the brain works and how young people are especially vulnerable to addiction. So when we thought we understood it a little bit better, we thought that if we could understand it, then other people could understand it. And we developed, we started an organization called Students Empowered to End Dependency. Because first and foremost, nothing ever changes with respect to addiction in our communities if students are still using at the rate they use. Because they are the next generation. So it's focused on students and dependency. The acronym is SEEDS. Correct. SEED, yes. And we decided to have a project. And we decided that we would develop a documentary series where we would interview people who had direct experience with addiction. And we would allow them to tell their stories. And we would ask experts, medical experts and other experts to comment on what they were experiencing from a strictly scientific and a medical standpoint. And what we thought might be an hour or 90 minutes is growing into about 12 hours of documentary. Today we, actually tomorrow night at 8 o'clock on main public, Episode 1 will air. It's an hour long show. And we will air six episodes that are all finished and done. And then we will run six more episodes. Now would you say episodes are they an hour long? Yes. They're an hour long. They're hour long shows. And featuring kids. Local people. Local people. Mostly young who have had serious addictions. The first show is called In the Beginning I Liked It. Because one of the things that I remember a high school student telling me was, he said, Mr. Packham, the kids won't listen if you try to scare them. Just tell them the truth. And I said, well, what do you mean by that? And he said, well, the first show you've got to say in the beginning, we liked it. Because everyone has had an experience where they won a state championship and they went to the bonfire and they had some beers and they smoked some pot and they were with their friends and they were bonding. And weeks later, they're still talking about it. And they didn't view that as a dangerous activity. Unfortunately, today, the products that are out there are so much more powerful that the idea of experimentation is gone by the board. We can talk a little bit about marijuana. But marijuana has become, in my estimation, in my opinion, the most dangerous thing that's happening in the state of Maine today. Because we have embraced it. We have jumped into the marijuana business with both feet. Is there a difference between the marijuana that existed when you were in high school and the marijuana that's being sold? If you go back to the 60s, the THC is the psychoactive component, which is shorthand. THC, back in the 60s and 70s, it was 1% concentrated. And up until about the 90s, it only got to about 5%, botanists would cultivate it to make it stronger. People wanted a stronger high associated with marijuana. But it's pretty weak. In the 2000s, it has grown to about 20% concentrated THC in the flower. But what the scientists were able to do, chemists, is they were able to isolate the THC molecule and they were able to distill it and concentrate it so that they could put it into oils and gummy bears and cookies and drinks and it could get to more than 90% concentrated. So we have in our, one of the groups we're working with is an awesome health teacher in Scarborough and we'll be showing her in our episode 7, talking to a group of students and she's holding in her hand a vape pen. Because we've all heard about vaping and how that's, tobacco has made a resurgence because kids can vape it. Well, they can also vape marijuana and the concentration in the vape pen that she has in her hand that they just took out of the bathroom in Scarborough High School was 82.7% concentrated. That's a dangerous, highly potent drug. It's not unlike, that process is not unlike how cocaine became crack cocaine or crystal meth. It's a process that is designed to make a product very addictive. And it's quite cynical in my view and why I think it's so important that we get this word out because the people who voted for marijuana in the state and that's behind us, I think they thought that they were getting the marijuana from the 60s and the 70s in the 80s. But what the marijuana companies have delivered is a highly potent product that is dangerous. And when I say dangerous, it's not only much more addictive and we see, we're seeing this in the schools. You'll, you'll meet someone from USM who is the director of counseling there that calls it a tsunami of problems from her, her freshman students coming in who are using too much cannabis. It's been linked to schizophrenia and psychosis. It's been reviewed, linked to violence. It's been linked to a number of mental health issues that quite honestly our kids just can't, can't take on top of, you know, staying home for two years from, from the pandemic. We have a video and I think we ought to show the audience just to put everything in context. And then after the video, we're going to get back and ask you some specific questions, which I think people watching this show would ask themselves if they were sitting here. But why don't we begin if we're ready with showing this, this video that puts all of this in context. In September of 2018, we realized that our son was suffering with alcohol use disorder and we want to share what we've learned with other folks in hopes that their loved one may be assisted as they pursue recovery. I wanted to understand the science. I wanted to understand what happens emotionally, what happens spiritually. Eventually I met Reggie and we started interviewing many, many people who truly understood addiction, people who had severe addiction. They, they got it and they were in recovery and they told us their stories. I've been a video and film producer in Maine for the last 40 years and nothing has been more important to work on than this TV series. It's really an honor to be part of it and I'm looking forward to the impact. And what this series represents to me is the possibility of the happy ending and the people who have been so courageous, the young people who have shared their stories of resiliency and sharing their personal way out of addiction. I'm hoping that that will have a ripple effect. This documentary series is really what storytelling is about. It's about connecting with other people who are going through hardship and helping them tell their story and it's been really moving and it's been a really spiritual experience. These are topics that are really challenging for adults and for teens, for children to talk about and to be able to hear others' stories and to be able to share and process different experiences and to know that in a way so much of this is a normal part of life and that needs to be taken out of the shadows. So showing segments of voices of hopes has really helped students really see factual, real stories from real manors that are relatable, personal and it makes it okay to talk about mental health issues, substance use disorder and these issues that a lot of our kids are struggling with either themselves or their friends or their families and gives them an idea of how to talk about it, where to get help and that help is possible and that recovery is possible. Just by its nature I think it creates some feelings in you that make you wonder about these issues and these stories and these people and just by starting that process I think it takes you somewhere because we all have these experiences in our lives where none of us are immune either to addiction or mental illness or any of the kinds of issues that plague us in this culture. I think it gives people an insight and a window into how do we deal with these issues. So David how did you get the main public here in this local area channel 10 to agree that's pretty good, one hour in a series for several weeks. Well we showed them the show and it wasn't hard to convince them that it was important. I agree once you see this and once you understand what's going on in our community you want to do something and I'm sure the main public wanted to do something. Let me just set the stage a little bit about marijuana in Maine and let me start by telling you that the world is also dealing with marijuana and most countries per capita usage of most countries is less than 10%. Less than 10% of the population uses marijuana. There are a few countries that are very high. Chile is very high about 38%. Canada, Israel about 27% of its population uses marijuana. The United States is about 16%. Well Maine did a survey last year and they concluded, and I don't know how accurate it is, but they concluded that 41% of the state's adult population is using marijuana and half of those people are using every day. Now we know that 90% of all the marijuana sold in the state of Maine and around the country is what's considered high potency marijuana. What percentage is high potency? Well over 90%. It's high potency marijuana. Does that mean it's more addictive? Yes. More addictive and more psychoactive. More powerful in its impact on the brain. What happened in Maine is that we have jumped into it with both feet. We have the sales in 2021 were about $775 million, which makes it bigger than the state's lobster business. So you think about the lobster business which is sold globally. We sell lobsters all over the world. But marijuana has to be grown within the state. So in just a few years we have eclipsed the lobster business with marijuana in Maine. And two thirds of our kids, because we survey our kids, our school kids, two thirds believe that it's safe to use this very highly potent product once or twice a week. That combination of facts, in my mind, is that we're going to have a very big problem in the state of Maine for a number of years unless we get the message out to our parents, our grandparents, and our kids. So that's the message. Now you have to deal with some variables here. First of all, there will be people watching this show that say, look I use marijuana three times a week, daily, whatever. I'm fine. I'm not addicted. And that might be true. And for a young person listening to that do you also have to say but there are other people for whom it is a disaster. And you don't know which of those people you are. Absolutely true. But here's another statistic for you. If you ask people who have had a substance use disorder 90% of them tell you that they started in their teens. So this is a fact that all addiction businesses understand so well. The undeveloped brain is particularly vulnerable to addiction. And we can understand this. I'll use a little metaphor about riding a bicycle. When you're sex, you can learn how to ride a bike in about a week or two. And you'll never forget how to ride a bike. I don't know how, when was the last time you rode a bike out there at Kettle Cove? Yeah, it's been a while now. You could do it though. You could get on a bike and ride it. You'd never forget. We can learn languages when we're young. The plasticity of a young brain is a sponge for learning. It's actually quite hard to develop an addiction if you haven't used the substance in your 20s or teens. Really? Yes. In other words... Your brain is already wired differently. Your brain is already set up largely for what it wants to engage with. Yeah. The electrical systems and such and what they react to. So, the younger you start, the more likely you are to be addicted? Absolutely. The earlier you start, the more you use, the higher potency you use. That's the trifecta. Say that again, the trifecta. The earlier you start, the more times you use and the higher potency you use is the trifecta. And I'm going to say it right out loud. The industries understand this better than anybody. That's why we had candy cigarettes. Get the kids started early. That's why it's gummy bears. Because if that's earlier, you get them started better chances that you'll have them for a lifetime. You got it. You got it. So, yes, you can have people in their 40s and 50s who are using some marijuana products. They're affected the same way as a young person. And once a young person's brain becomes attached to liking that substance, it changes their future forever. Certainly addiction is a big part of that. But we know that people who start early on average lose 8 percentage points on their IQ. Just think about that for a second. IQ is really critical. How do we know that? They've studied it all over the world. They've looked at people longitudinally that have used marijuana and compared it to people who have not. And they have measured their IQ early and late and determined that it's been reduced by 8 points. Because of the effect on the brain. I'm not a scientist, but I can read research. There are many impacts that it has. Here's a fact that I'm sure nobody knows. But, Maine Health, they operate emergency rooms around town. In the last three years there have been 19,500 events. People came to the emergency ward because they had an adverse effect from using cannabis. Adverse effect to marijuana? Yes. Often it's uncontrollable vomiting. Often it is psychosis. They're hearing voices. They're seeing things. They're hallucinating. 17 per day. We don't really hear about that. If I were in the newspaper business, I would be singing that from the mountain tops. I find this fascinating. I had a good friend in college. I went to Princeton. He then became a psychiatrist. He was Canadian. He became a very well-known psychiatrist. He's my age, which is old. 86, in case anybody's interested. This guy's my age. He is today the best-known person in America for studying the brain. In fact, this is off point. He got in a lot of trouble with authorities because he was collecting brains. People died. There was a system where he would call them and he'd pay for their loved one's brain. He and his group of scientists have been studying the brain for a very long time. 50 years. He has a lot of narrative about this. A lot of stuff that he's written about the brain and the impact of these things that we do to ourselves, to our brains, and how we condition the brain by external things that we bring to the brain. The country has a big addiction problem. I think it's about 25% of our adult population is affected directly. There's about 260 million adults in the United States. About 26 million people are in recovery, long-term recovery from some substance. We also know that about 12.7% of the adult population are alcoholics. You add on top of this people who have a cannabis use disorder, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines. You get to 25% of the adult population. One in four. One in four of our adults has somehow compromised their lives and the lives of their families and their friends because they have become attached to a substance and lost a lot of control. When we interview all the people we've interviewed, I would say that generally speaking, these are all people who are in recovery, usually. They generally have sacrificed about 10 years of their life and they're prime, prime of their life. They absolutely know it. 17 to 27, 19 to 29, 15 to 30, they have had those 10 to 15 years of their lives taken away from them because all they could really imagine day in and day out was using a substance. So your program is also about hope. You talk about in these episodes, which are going to be on main public, and hopefully people will watch them, first one tomorrow night at 8, about hope. Voices of hope. Thank you for reminding me about that, Harold, because this is a tough topic. But we end every show on a high because we interview people who have made it, who have come through hell and they have developed their own personal methods that can be modeled by others to how to recover from these serious illnesses. We looked at addiction as a moral failing. And science knows today that that's not the case. It's physiological. It is absolutely brain changes. You can see an MRI of someone who has a severe addiction and you can see a damaged brain. What's wonderful about the brain is it heals. If only the person can stay away from the product and whatever methods they use, I'm going to say AAA is probably one of the best we've seen. The AAA community here in Portland is very strong. If they can hold on for months and years and keep going to meetings and staying with their home group, they can make it. You know, David, when I worked in Washington a lot of the Washington reporters were known as hard-drinking people and a lot of politicians. Same thing. I knew many in AAA in Washington. I knew many. I was always shocked at the number of people I knew. One thing I observed, they did it many of them every day at the beginning at least once a week, AAA meetings. I came to think this thing works for some, not everybody. There was a guy, he'll go nameless now, but he was well known in Maine. He was a good friend of mine. He's dead now. He was a state senator. He was a big leader in the legislature, he was a Portland city counselor. He went to AAA all the time and he told me when he was a very young man, he started drinking. He went in the Navy after high school and he came back and he said he was on the streets of Portland because he said I was drunk all the time and I couldn't hold a job so I would do it all day long. Outside, more than I slept in a bed. How's that? Down and out. In those days, you'd get arrested for public drunkenness in Portland. They'd put you in the cell in this police station overnight, let you go in the morning, you start out all over again. The police knew him and one time he was in a bar at 10 o'clock in the morning in Portland, Maine. The guy said to him in the bar, some guy that he knew, I'm going to call Mr. Welch and have him pick you up. Who's Welch? Welch was a lawyer here in town, Vincent Welch. He had a son who was a big time lawyer incidentally in Washington who made a huge amount of money and came back here and did some very nice things for our community, died relatively young. Mr. Welch came in his car to the bar, which was on out of Congress Street, picked up this guy, brought him to his house, started him in AA. Welch was the founder, I believe, of AA Chapter in Portland and this guy, he was a young man telling me this story. He said, and here I am now 48 years later, I've never touched a drop. I have to go to AA. It is my home. It has kept me off the stuff. He's worked two jobs. He had a night job and then he had day job and then he had the legislature and kept him busy. And he said, it saved me. I'm so glad you told that story. I mean, we talked about careers a little bit. I've met a lot of impressive people over the years. I have interviewed probably 30 to 50 people in recovery over the last three years. They are, by far, the most impressive and inspiring group of people I have ever come across. They will keep me going because I've hired these people and they have become kinship to me because they're so inspiring. Tell me one other story. A lot of the people watching this show watched, we're talking about public television. Mark Shields. Mark Shields was on television every Friday night on the PBS News Show. He's a very close friend of mine. Shields was an alcoholic and he was another one. Never touched a drop for 30 years. Another well-known reporter, columnist in New York, Jimmy Breslin, also a friend of mine, he was an alcoholic. So the two of them used to go out drinking and then they stopped. They went to AA and they became recovering alcoholics and they were devoted to AA. They didn't see each other because he used to drink together so they didn't see each other if he is. So one time they didn't talk to each other for all those years. Their social bond was gone and so one time Breslin, I said to Breslin, you know I was talking to Shields and he wanted me to say hello to you and the first words out of Breslin's mouth were, does he drink? I said no. I told the story to Shields and I said that was his first question. He said, well let me ask you about Breslin. Does he drink? I said no. When we think about these particular people, they have lived in hell. They have experienced having no choices in their lives. We are going to have over 10,000 overdoses in 2022. When the numbers are all in there will be over 10,000 overdoses. In this small state. Now about 700 of them will turn out to be fatal but these people who are experiencing that life and it's not that much different when you can't control your drinking or you can't control your marijuana or you don't feel normal if you're not using these substances. When they finally surrender to recovery then they experience something that I think the normal person doesn't experience and they really start to love life and they become very inspiring people. Now we've touched on hope and success. What can we do? What do you do? You're educating people and you're educating young people about this. We're trying to get more and more schools interested in this program. But even if they're interested and even if they tell this story I'll give you an example. We have a school teacher who uses our clips in her classroom and she surveyed the students before she used the clips. What percentage of you think it's safe to use marijuana once or twice a week and the answer is about two thirds. Think it's safe. She does her segment. She shows our clips. She is a big advocate of the clips because it brings the stories to life. It brings the science to life. And then two months later she asked the same kids what percentage of you think it's safe to use marijuana once or twice a week and only five percent say they think it's safe. So we've gone from two thirds down to five percent. The teenager is educated and understands the science of all of this that they will be less likely to engage in it. Even with peer pressure? Here's the other thing that people learn a little bit. Nobody wants to get played. When you understand the science a little bit and then you understand the marketing all of a sudden you begin to go, I'm getting played. This product can make me high but can also hurt me. And they understand that it's all about marketing. It's all about developing a customer, a lifelong customer. And even the bad guys who market the criminals who market drugs, some very potent drugs, they're in the marketing business. Their whole idea is to get you hooked because they're going to get a lot of cash. And I'm not here to tell you it's going to be easy because we're about in the sixth inning and we're down about six to nothing. And we need a marketing campaign in this state, a messaging campaign for moms, grandmoms, and kids in every school that is just as imaginative and robust marketing campaign that says use our product, eat our gummy bears, eat our cookies, our popsicles, our drinks. We need something just that bold to counteract what's out there because we're way behind. On one of the local news programs in the last two or three days they talked about the number of children, three, four, five-year-old children who have been hospitalized because of these gummy bears. Huge numbers. They're candy. They're designed to look like candy because they want a young user. Because the younger they are, the more they'll chance to be addicted and become a great customer. Absolutely. That's the deal. If you look at big marijuana today, country-wide, who are the biggest investors? Tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals. I asked you about fear because at one point earlier in this interview you were told you just can't scare the kids. Right. Right. I think about what you said. When I was a kid, we didn't have much marijuana around. I was fearful. Why? Afraid. So fear... you've got to be a little bit afraid of this. Well, I think you have to be knowledgeable. I don't think we do a very good job in our culture raising kids to be kids. It seems like we're always trying to push them along. That five-year-olds, we want them to be eight. And eight-year-olds, we want them to be 12. And 12-year-olds, we want them to be 18. And that teaching kids to just love, love being kids, and playing, like all the ball fields or whatever, playing a piano, is so much more important than always marketing to these kids so that they always want to be older. Always want to be older. I think that's also sort of a cultural dysfunction that we have. Sometimes in the summer when I pass through the park during Oaks and you see all the people out there, and you do see people with needles. And you see people sprawled out unconscious and so forth. I say to myself, well, if some kid is in a car and goes by and sees this, he doesn't want to be in this situation so doesn't the kid get scared? You read about people dying from overdoses who nobody wants to die so don't they say, oh no, I'm not going to touch that stuff because I never want to be in a situation where I might die from it. Maybe if they think about it, but you know when we see things and I'm sure your friend, the scientist, would tell you it becomes normal, we get desensitized to it. Go back five years, we did not see the number of people standing on street corners begging like we do today. During Oaks, five to ten years ago didn't look like during Oaks looks today. But it's almost become normal almost acceptable and that's a big danger for us and it's not going to get better if we are this loose with our marijuana policies because hard drugs lead to other hard drugs and so we know that we've got a big opioid problem in the state of Maine and the state's doing a lot at trying to curb it. How do they curb it? Well, they have more recovery operations going on around the state. Places where you can get treatment. But the numbers go up every year. So we're not gaining on that problem and in my estimation the reason we're not gaining on that problem is because it's marijuana is the minor leagues. It's where we start. Now that doesn't mean every kid who uses marijuana is going to end up using opiates, but a percentage of them will without a doubt. That's a feeder system for the next generation of opioid abusers. It depends on their wiring and so you don't know how you're wired. If I were 16 years old I have no idea how I'm wired. I might be wired where I could take these drugs and not become addicted for the rest of my life. Or I might be wired where I would become and I don't know. Genetics plays a role. Yeah. Genetics plays a role. Genetics plays a role. In about half the cases there's a genetic predisposition to a particular addiction. Both drugs and alcohol. Interesting. I can understand that genetics particularly with alcohol you see it families suffering from it. Sure. Going back about five generations in my family my estimate is about half of the adults were alcoholics and about half of them were successful in recovery. That's interesting. About half of them were successful in recovery. Do you think that your son probably is some genetic basis to his addiction? I have no doubt about it. No doubt about it. No question about it. He doesn't have any question about it either. We eliminated any alcohol in our home as soon as we had kids. We taught them that we could have a lot of fun without alcohol. One of my sons took to it. One of the interesting things when you watch our show I remember people will say this about how when they got started the first time I used alcohol, the first time I used marijuana I liked it. I really liked it. Red flag. Because you've met people who said yeah I could take it or leave it. That person's not going to have a problem. You're saying something that I understand so well because I had peer pressure growing up and they have a beer. But I never liked it. I have a drink. I have a gin and tonic from time to time. Not very often but I do. I'm sociable but I don't like it. But I know people that really like it. Need it. That's what you're saying. That's different. That's different. Yeah need it and like it. Let me give you another statistic. We're probably running out of time. Our business is based on this addiction as well. They did a study about 20 years ago and I think it's held up. They looked at how much do people drink. Well really about 2 thirds of the adult population either doesn't drink or drinks very little. Like how you describe it. 10% of the adult population drinks about 74% of all the alcohol that's sold in the United States. People like it and some people are not crazy about it. What it means is that people who have become attached to the product they fuel the business. And everybody in the addiction business understands this. Colorado looked at marijuana. 4% of all the users in Colorado by 65% of all the marijuana sold in Colorado. And that business understand that. They know that we need users who will use every day and that means we need people who are addicted to our product. And the best way to get people addicted to our product is start them early have them use regularly and have them use a high potency. That's the trifecta. The trifecta. You know I liked that episode you're going to show tomorrow night. And one young lady said you know when I was 15, 14 my friend said try this. You'll like it. I like it. And she said and I liked it. And then she said but you know I had limits first of all the very thought of putting something up my nose. Creeper out. Creeper out. Cringe. And no one. The needle. And it had a guy on. A young man. Needle. The very thought of it. The point that they made was they set limits. I would never do this. And guess what? They said what they wouldn't do because of the addiction. Because of the addiction they broke that limit and they did it all including needles. And Brittany describes it very well where she says I have a brain even after all these things I've done terrible things I've done stolen from my grandmother on her death bed I have a brain that tells me it's okay just one more time. You can handle it now. And when our brain actually turns on us and convinces us that the addiction is in control then that's when people lose total control of their lives. And that's how they go to needles. That's how they have multiple overdoses. And that's how they can't stop no matter how many times their family and their friends ask them. All the promises they make. They have to get into a serious recovery program. And I think AA is probably the best one I've heard of. So there's a book written by a man I know named Cope Moyers. William Cope Moyers. His father Bill Moyers was my boss in Washington. His father was a very famous journalist. Bill Moyers. Cope was brought up, his father was the publisher of Newsday, then he was CBS television news guy and famous. And Cope was brought up with all the advantages and he became a drug addict starting in high school. Wow. And seriously addicted. His parents went through a horrible time with him. In the book he describes how his mother, and his mother told me this story herself, how she and a lawyer friend of hers was helping them went in Harlem to a crack house. And there was people, he had nothing in common with the people other than it was a place to get high and took him out of there. And then he relapsed. He went to work for CNN as a reporter in Atlanta for CNN and was doing very well, relapsed, was in the crack house down there. And his father with some people that he had hired found him and brought him out of the crack house. And he tells the story of sitting in the car with his father after he got him out of the crack house. And he said to his father, who loved him dearly, coming through all of this to save him, said you probably hate me. And he said my father paused because he was so upset and so angry. So Cope Moyers struggled in and out of treatment and then he went to Hazelton in, I mean, in St. Paul. And he has been clean for 25 years. And he is actually a senior vice president of Hazelton in charge of external relations. He came to Portland to speak one time on drug addiction. And I'd rather put you in touch with Cope. I'd love to speak with him. So I guess the point there is it can happen to anyone, all the people that are out here who have children, grandchildren, sisters, brothers, they know it can happen to them and in their family. I know it can happen to me and in my family. So it's important for all of us to learn a lot about us and all of us to be on the alert. Well, we've got to get bold. We've got to be as bold as they are. We've got to increase the amount of education in our schools. They don't necessarily have to use our programming, but they've got to use better programming. We still have a lot in rural Maine. We still have a lot of good lacrosse coaches that teach health. Well, then they're not qualified for that. We need people that have the qualifications to teach the science and do so in a manner that is interesting and engages young people. Our project is to engage young people. We do not preach to these young people about drugs and alcohol ever, but we put them behind the camera. We let them do transcriptions. We let them do interviews. We let them do animation. You're saying the kids that you're working with actually run the cameras. We give them projects. We give them as many projects as they can handle. And what happens is they meet the people and all of a sudden they think, wow, this is really something. Never once have we ever said to a kid, you shouldn't be using marijuana. But they learn from the people they meet. So how do you find the kids that tell their stories about their own addiction? It's been unbelievable. I can ask that question in your moved. They come out of the woodwork, Harold. Somebody tells their story and then somebody hears that they told their story. I want to tell my story. We've got more people that we need and they are they're unabashed. But how do you connect? They call your office, they hear about it, and they call you up in your office? I work with the Portland Recovery Center on my board. I've got people who are in recovery. I hire people who are in recovery. The people in recovery are crucial to this education program. We need to have them into some of these schools being able to answer questions of young people. We have a lot of young people. I hear from principals who say the family comes to me and they've got a real problem with this. I don't know what to say to them. One of our projects is to take a team of 6-8 of these very well vetted people who are in recovery young in their 20s who can go into these schools and talk to these kids and help them. So the name of the program is SEEDS. Students Empowered to End Dependency. And if somebody is interested in watching is interested, there's two or three things they can do. One, watch this series beginning tomorrow night on main PBS. But suppose they had somebody who a person member of their family who was suffering from addiction and they wanted to talk to you or somebody that you work with. How did they do that? They were on the website. They can contact us. Take this down everyone. Voicesofhopeandrecovery.org Voicesofhopeandrecoveryallrundegether.org And you can leave us an email that's how the ways you can contact us right off the website. Can they access online some of these episodes? Watch all the episodes online. The first six episodes are all there. We're working on the next six episodes. The name of the first episode is In the beginning I liked it. The second episode is the slippery slope. I'm glad that you contact me. I'm so glad we had you on. And I will be following the work of SEEDS and looking at these programs you're doing on main public. I wish you well. I can't think of more important work than the work you're doing. Thanks for coming, David. I appreciate it very much.