 and welcome to Books, Books, Books, a talk show on books that we think you should know about. I'm your host, Mihaila Stoops, and today's book is The List of Us, True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth by Sam Quinones. My guest today is Ken Shaw. He's a 36 years law enforcement veteran who spent most of his career in drug enforcement and drug policy. Currently, Kent is the executive director for Western States Information Network, an entity that supports law enforcement agencies in the states of California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii. And prior to this appointment, Kent was the chief for California Drug, I'm sorry, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and Bureau of Investigation. Kent, thank you so much for joining me today and for recommending such a good book. My pleasure and thank you very much for having me. Well, let's just dive into it. First, let's start this discussion with the first question and that is why the author calls it a opioid epidemic. Yeah, I think it's just really because of the sheer scope of the issue as it grew. And again, Sam addresses this issue really in his first book, which was Dreamland, which addressed specifically the opioid epidemic issue, really the diversion of legitimate legal pharmaceutical drugs that were being diverted into the black market. And he touches upon that in his book in a number of different places, which I think is important to do so because obviously that largely has given the segue to the issue that we're now experiencing with the synthetic drugs and fentanyl and methamphetamine. And so there also has been some developments in the courts after the post-production of Dreamland in terms of addressing some of the internal communications which were obtained through a lot of those prosecutorial efforts and the settlements that took place. They actually see those internal communications as confirmed that more or less that these companies were in fact profiting off the misery of this issue as these drugs were being overprescribed and flowing into the black market and resulting in just horrific outcomes in terms of addiction and death. So I got quite an education on drugs, I have to say. I've learned that we basically have moved from drugs that were produced from plants to synthetic drugs and designer drugs that are produced in labs from chemicals. And the author states that just in 2020 alone, 17 new designer drugs or synthetic drugs were identified. I can only assume that there's been even more since then and they come with their specific challenges and sets of issues. Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, these organizations are brilliant business people, right? And they're always figuring out the way to build a better mousetrap and to increase their profits. And so the reality is that a lot of the, particularly early in my career in terms of drug enforcement, we were dealing with these what you could refer to as plant-based products. I mean, cocaine comes from the coca plant and heroin coming from the poppy and also marijuana obviously being grown. And so, but we long, particularly here in California, dealt with methamphetamine, which of course is in synthetic drug. But I think these organizations have learned that rather being relegated to dealing with growing, which was vulnerable to a lot of attack by law enforcement and your seasonal issues and things of that nature, if you go to synthetic where you can manufacture it in a warehouse somewhere, you have a virtually unlimited production capabilities and a year-round basis. And so that's really why we see this segue going from as the people were really addicted to products that were coming from plant-based to these synthetic products which have then taken their place. And then of course, methamphetamine, they talk about a resurgence of it. It never really went away, but it's really kind of a whole new product in terms of what's taking place now. And the production that used to historically take place in the United States and California and places like super lab where it was being manufactured by hundreds of pounds and other places in the Midwest where they were using smaller, like what they call shake and bake, small amounts. But nonetheless, that was happening here and then that shifted back down to Mexico. And so that's really what we're confronting these days. So fentanyl was discovered in the seventies in Belgium and then China started producing it in mass quantities. In 2019, fentanyl was, I mean, China outlawed it. So now it's not okay to produce fentanyl in China but they produce other substances similar to it. They cannot ship it to the US, they send it to Mexico. So Mexico is again, the preferred route of drug traffickers. So we have two culprits so far. We have China, we have Mexico, but we also have the US demand for these drugs and also a supply that is always available and always enticing. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of those connections, the international ones really were already established. Even if you go back to when a way of manufacturing methamphetamine more than a decade ago, which was the ephedrine reduction process, which used pseudo-ephedrine or ephedrine, pure ephedrine, a lot of those chemicals were being imported into Mexico via not only China, but India and Germany. So the Mexican cartels had long reached out and established those relationships in other places throughout Europe to access the basic precursors and chemicals that they needed. Of course, the most prominent route for smuggling those drugs once they're manufactured is coming out of Mexico into the Southwest border. And so as they moved and took the manufacturing, for example, of methamphetamine and brought that back down into Mexico, that was a shift there. And then they also increased all that production capability for the fentanyl now to come in and seize upon the growing opioid epidemic that existed. And it was a perfect storm for them to be able to seize that opportunity and for where they're producing now. And it's a matter also of marketing these substances. Most recently, we saw on the news that you have fentanyl pills that look like smarties, like candy, which some could take by mistake, for instance. And there's also a matter of, like once the drugs are in the West, there's stories in the book of kids that order these pills online on Snapchat because the messages disappear quickly and nobody could track those or at least the parents can't. And the pills get delivered at the kid's house at 3 a.m. Yeah, sad but true, but yes. And as I mentioned earlier, in terms of there being brilliant business folks, marketing is a big component of that. And the pills that they smuggle into this country here will look virtually identical to pharmaceutical grade pills. They'll make them look like Xanax or Oxycontin pills or any of the other ones with the same markings on them from the manufacturers here in the United States that certain numbers on them, the coloring that they do is they use pill presses down there to manufacture these. And of course, these pills don't have any of the legitimate substance that they purport to, they're full of fentanyl and other binders and things of that nature. But as you mentioned, we see this at different times. We've seen it also with nothing fun. I mean, when it was colored, I don't know if that was popularized because of the movie Breaking Bad where the lead manufacturer on that show, his signature was blue methamphetamine. There's times that they'll manufacture that. And so with these pills, we saw this big wave of these kind of rainbow colors and things that they know will be more attractive. And yeah, and unfortunately, these folks can readily go on to social media sites. And in order, it just like they're going to their favorite fast food restaurant and looking at a menu and seeing all the wonderful, colorful things that they'll be able to order. Of course, they have no idea of what is gonna be delivered to them and they're going to consume. And that's really the issue is, Sam touches upon it in the book where he said that he spoke with folks that had been heroin addicts for decades. And I certainly encountered a lot of those folks in my career, but they were able to maintain what they did. They had to get up and get well in the morning to avoid withdrawals, but by and large that are able to function, they knew how to get along. But when fentanyl comes along, a lot of those long chronic users were dying very quickly. Some literally within the first couple of uses of the drug. And so it's to the point now where, and as the DEA has their kind of slogan that they have out now, one pill can kill and that's the truth. Some of these people aren't chronic users. They may have only used for the first time and that may be all it takes, particularly when they're naive levels to deal with addiction. So what's a parent supposed to do? I'm a parent of a teenager and what am I supposed to do to prepare my daughter to warn her about this? Yeah, I mean, education is critical that they actually have these discussions to let them know what they're confronting, that the sheer danger of these things and the fact that although these things may look like legitimate pharmaceutical drugs, there is no telling what they are. They probably contain some deadly level of substance. And there's no consistency in terms of one pill to the next. You could have two pills sitting next to each other look identical, but they could be very different. And to, again, people who are naive opioid users, these things are extremely dangerous. And also when you're used in conjunction with other things like alcohol and other substances that just kind of expoach, it's that they increase dramatically the effects that you have from one substance being put in combination with others. And so really that's a big part of it because if you look at that three-legged stool, prevention is absolutely credible keeping people from ever becoming in the grips of addiction, but in this case from perhaps using for the first time and then never living to see another day. One of the interesting things that I read in this book is among many, but there's quite a bit of research or information on neuroscience and addiction. And I've learned that 30% of us are genetically inclined to be addicted to something. It could be a substance or it could be a type of feeling or emotion. And that once one is dependent on one substance, he or she is primed to become dependent on another substance. So it seemed like one thing is gonna lead to another. And I'm surprised that the author doesn't talk much about marijuana in this book and I wonder why. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, if you think about it, just think of alcohol that, somebody who's under the influence of alcohol that lowers your inhibitions, you're far more likely and people probably have those unfortunate stories of goofy things they did when they were intoxicated on alcohol, they wouldn't have done otherwise. And so these drugs all do the same thing. They lower your ability to reason, that part of your brain, the cerebral cortex, the decision making parts of your brain. And these other drugs in particular, we talk about fentanyl and then the methamphetamine, they rewire your reward pathways and they change the way that you think. And Sam talked about it in here that folks actually lose their memory, their ability sometimes to communicate. It completely changes that. And that brain chemistry takes long, long periods of times to try and overcome that for those folks to come back to some reasonable level. Sam touched a little bit on marijuana in here in terms of kind of the cautionary tale of the legalization aspect or the decriminalization. And we've seen this first marijuana being legalized for the purposes, medicinal purposes, and now we see the spreading trend for recreational purposes. And I think that is shown kind of as a bellwether because we all warned, of course those who tried to pass those laws or initiatives told everybody that this would be the silver bullet that would end gangs being involved in marijuana and the cartels would no longer be involved. And this would, of course, have nothing, but the opposite has come to be is that the black market is flourishing now perhaps even more so than it was before in the marijuana industry. And more young people seek treatment for the addiction to marijuana than they do any other substance, controlled substance. And so the issue being is that, the two biggest killers are legal substances, tobacco and alcohol. And so if you have something that is more readily available, it is going to be a bigger problem. And that's just the reality of it. And we're seeing that happening even in the marijuana industry now. And so he touches briefly upon that when he addresses those issues. But I know that the focus of this book specifically for him was the synthetic aspect of the fentanyl and the methamphetamine in terms of how that is having its profound impact on really our society and how we wove it into the explanation for the growing homeless issue that we have with these tent cities all over and how it's correlated. Yeah, that was a very interesting approach in the book, the correlation between drug abuse and homelessness and also what was even more interesting to me, the correlation between the police, number of police shootings and the use of P2P meth, which is a substance that makes people paranoid, act erratically uncontrollable. I haven't heard of this kind of ideas before where there's a correlation between the two. And I wonder what do you think about it? Yeah, there's no doubt that there's often discussion of the chicken and the egg argument. People look to these vast homeless issues that we have that really have been dramatically increasing and not only just in the major metropolitan areas but other parts around the country. And then the issue people say, well, of course, housing cost or two exorbitant that's driving people to homelessness is a legitimate issue. But they also say, you know, we don't have the mental health services and I think that's legitimate as well. But the reality is that a lot of the folks and as Sam pointed out, folks that he interviewed, including some of the research that he did and certainly been my experience, that a lot of these folks are not people who have mental health issues before. It's psychosis and issues that are being generated from their drug abuse, you see what you're saying. They've even found that these people, once they get off it and they get into long-term treatment or long-term recovery and they haven't used for some period of time that all of those symptoms that they had before go away. So unfortunately, the issue that we're experiencing a lot of the stuff are folks that it's really kind of a drug-driven issue really more so than anything else. There's kind of those two distinct populations that I think it was the mayor of a war, Colorado, who went out and did an experiment. He was a, he went out and posed as a homeless veteran, he wasn't in fact a veteran but he wasn't homeless. And he found that the population was divided between two areas, one was those in the shelter. Those people who voluntarily went there, who there's rules that are there, you have to follow in terms of cure or curfew, no drug use, don't commit crimes. He said he felt extremely safe, he didn't ever saw any violence. He felt very comfortable in those locations. And then he went to the tent cities and it was completely the opposite. It was violence, it was rapid drug use. He had stuff stolen from him. He said he felt scared to death the whole time he was there. And he discovered that the populations never talked to each other. He never found anybody in a shelter who had ever been in a tent city and nobody in a tent city had been there. And the issue is they try and find these solutions that it's like a one fit all. And these are distinct different issues than people who may be lost or job and are trying to get back on their feet and are going to a shelter versus somebody who's living intentionally in a tent city and has no interest of ever getting out of that. And it seems that recovery is quite challenging and just sending people to traditional jail may not be enough that they actually need more support. And there's some places that have experimented with that by having a special jail where the inmates get activities and classes and they're taught all over again. So at the end of the day, as Sam points out it is the community that's going to fix this. And some of our viewers may ask why is this called, why is this book called The Least of Us? Well, the impressive part and I recommend our viewers to at least read the one chapter before last which is titled The Least of Us. And the wording actually comes from the Bible from Matthew where Jesus is quoted saying in as much as you have done it onto one of the Least of These, my brethren, you've done it onto me. So the idea is that we the community can help solve this crisis and these people are victims in our community and we're gonna have to deal with it. Yeah, absolutely. And you touched on a great topic so I served on an alcohol and drug advisory board in the county here in California and all my colleagues that were on that board were substance abuse treatment folks. And as is the case oftentimes they were all in long-term recovery. They make the best folks, right? They've been there, they've done it and they're terrific at the job that they do. But when some of these propositions were being passed to decriminalize the personal use quantities of some of these controlled substances they were very supportive of it and I cautioned them. I said, look, if you think about it how are most of the people coming to your facilities being referred there? They're not voluntarily going there. The people who are in the grips of addiction and trying to hit the bottom they're being referred there because of the criminal justice system, the vast majority of them. I said, when that goes away you won't have people coming to your facility and that is in fact what ended up happening. And so in Sam touches on it I never spent my career trying to put drug users in jail. I went after traffickers and dealers and people were involved in violent crimes and jail isn't necessarily the place just for somebody who's using. Of course they're committing a host of other crimes when they're under influence and sometimes violent ones but the jail facilities are doing a better job and more needs to be done in terms of providing services to support them and even wraparound services to give them so they can have a license when they get out and some basic job skills and things of that nature. But treatment is an important component of this whole thing and we have a saying, law enforcement we're going to deal with some of these very unexplicable problems. We say, we're not going to arrest our way out of this. Well, guess what? Sam had said in the book we're not going to treat our way out of this issue either. It's going to take a holistic approach in these communities to address these issues from all these problems. And as I mentioned earlier it's a three-legged problem or stool. It's prevention, it's treatment and it's enforcement. And if you take any one of those away it's a recipe for disaster. And so drug courts have been very successful in terms of people committing crimes. They can hold that over their head. There needs to be some level of accountability to get those folks into treatment because it doesn't work the first time, the second, third or sometimes even the fourth or fifth but they need to have that accountability and somebody to force them into that area so those folks can separate their brain from the drugs and get it to some level of commitment or treatment away from that issue and to start recovery. And it's going to take really looking at this issue from all three of those perspectives. And as the data shows, we cannot wait until these addicts hit rock bottom because with fentanyl around us that rock bottom may be death. So again, we need to do everything we can as early as possible, including prevention and education. So I wanna thank you again for joining me today and for recommending this book. It is a tremendous read and I wholeheartedly recommend it to all our viewers. It's gonna be an education in many perspectives. So thank you again, Kent for joining me. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Glad to share, but what I have to share. Wonderful. Well, until next time to our viewers, read as many books as you can and learn as many things as you can. A hui hou. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.