 Hi everyone, I'm Ed Baker and I'm your host producer here at the addiction recovery channel at town meeting TV I couldn't be more excited today. We have two Incredibly interesting and talented committed guests. We have Jim raw and we have run at leave Thank you so much for being with us Jim raw is the founder of families against fentanyl He's a powerful leader and advocate. He's involved on many levels of activity and advocacy He's currently lobbying the US Congress to declare fentanyl and it's many analogs a weapon of mass Destruction and rightfully so. Thank you. Thank you Jim for your work Thank you for having me on we also have run eat love MD. She's a board certified in emergency and addiction medicine Ranit is the current executive director of the independent emergency physicians consortium And she was the first chief medical officer at the White House Office on National Drug Control. That's quite a distinction. Congratulations for any Thank you. Pleasure to join you. Yes Dr. Lev is an energetic leader with a passion to assist communities in preventing and treating addiction She hosts the podcast high truths on drugs and addiction Which I've watched a number of times and is an excellent an excellent podcast I'd like to just kind of set the stage for what we're going to talk about today in the 12-month period ending October 2021 in America there have been at least I mean the the official estimate is a hundred and five thousand 672 deaths to drug overdose now this the the great majority of these deaths involves fentanyl The remainder involve for the most part methamphetamine and other stimulants This is a truly like an unprecedented American tragedy it could not be more urgent I want to congratulate you and I want to thank you both for your work to do something about this your tireless work To do something about this and I want to begin with Getting to know you I would like my audience to get to know you a little bit So Jim why don't you start? Can you tell us a little bit about what it was that got you involved in this? Commitment got you involved in your mission to do something about this My son was killed With fentanyl poisoning in 2015 he was given a dose of pure acetyl fentanyl It would have killed hundreds of men Without his knowledge thinking that he was going to receive some heroin it killed him instantly After that when the Corner told me the type of material I was stunned I began to investigate what this material was then the justice department followed up and did the Unbelievable amount of work to trace that poisoning all the way back to China and The Zang drug trafficking organization that supplied the material and indicted the Chinese nationals for the murder of my son and went over to China and prosecuted prosecuted them they were subsequently let go and our Prosecutors came back from the justice department empty-handed and that got me engaged in the situation Understood understood and I can see as a father myself. I can see how Justice was not done and it's your mission to bring justice to that International drug cartel and I and I respect that and I will help you in any way I can to do that Jim I read about Tommy and Samkin Ones's book the least of us. I read about him a Viking of a son Long yellow ponytail The oldest of your five wasn't he? He was the oldest of my five children the leader of his little group of followers and He had followers everywhere that he went. He was a very dynamic and energetic young man You're very creative, you know, you know, because I'm involved in the field and I care deeply I Sometimes I can feel it. I can I can feel the grief and Sometimes I think about it and I think about you know, how unspeakable it is and to try to magnify it to multiply it by a hundred and five thousand six hundred and seventy two for twenty twenty one It's it's just it's almost hard to conceptualize The emotion that this country is containing as a result of Fentanyl and what's happening. It's just incredible. It's it's horrific if this happened in 2015 and The Zings were indicted in China. They prosecuted them and then the Chinese government let them go Yeah, after after they had all of this proof and they've continued to kill ever since at the time of that indictment was written They reportedly were making 16 metric tons a month of fentanyl and you can you can see that you can see that and what's happening in America today And we'll get to that in a little while the DEA warning on on mass overdose incidents The level of fentanyl contaminating the drug supply. We're gonna we're gonna get to that But first run eat. So welcome to the show Dr. Lev run eat what what what got you what was it that that pulled you into this, you know Pulled you into this area. What was it that attracted you or compelled you to dedicate yourself to this? So I want to be a doctor since I was in eighth grade. I just wanted to help people make the world better and I became an emergency physician and Early in my career. I was a follower, right? He said that we knew we have to follow the pain scale We're not I was told we're not giving enough opioids as an emergency physician I was criticized for my profession of not treating pain adequately until I met parent victims whose children died of prescriptions that I could have written and I studied that When that was brought to my attention it said that that can be how could you know my job is to help people the worst possible thing a doctor An emergency physician could ever find out what people always say. Oh, there's any doctor. What's the worst case? You've ever seen the worst case is learning that you screwed up No, and I think our profession itself Made a mistake And I learned that from these parent victims and became an advocate in the medical profession in improving our opioid prescribing and safe prescribing and that led me to the Becoming an addiction specialist as well that that that is a That is refreshing to me To hear you say that because I I do reflect on that at times, you know I think the American Medical Association, or I know that that the president actually Apologized public apology of a public public apology. I forget what year it was and Accepted some responsibility as a profession for contributing to the opioid crisis that we see in America today But I always felt that that was a little shy of really what had what should have been done and You know like perhaps Medical doctors prescribing opioids during that period would would would voluntarily contribute a certain number of thousands of dollars each To combating the opioid crisis in America that somehow there would be kind of like an acceptance of responsibility and then like an act of amends made to the American population and I don't I don't I don't see that happening But but I see people like you and I know others like you Individuals who are not afraid to accept some kind of responsibility and do something about it So I want to I want to thank you I do want to defend my profession because I don't I think you know Doctors go through a lot of heartache to become doctors Nobody means to like I said the worst thing ever to find out that you hurt someone with your medical care and But we're just human right so we follow whatever we're told to do when the people think that you know doctors Maybe you know should know better, but we didn't I didn't know better. I was following what I was taught I was following the the laws that were passed At the time so I actually think that I've done amends I and I continue to do amends for this day and and What happened with the opioid prescription epidemic is it brought the medical community into the equation while Addiction was this very stigmatized problem because we became part of the problem We also became part of the solution and the people I have Haven't seen make amends and say that they are the people who passed the laws Which are still on the books today that created the problem in the first What laws are you referring to? Patient bill of right laws Pain as a right law in California Six twelve hours of education just on pain. These are all still on the books in California They're still in order to get your license renewed throughout America. You need to take pain education So they you know we add laws, but we rarely take them away So the bad laws are still there, you know, it seems I mean talking along these lines about responsibility and amends It seems like the they'd like fix the Sackler family Purdue pharmaceuticals some of the opioid Wholesale distributors they have they've all been held to account and they are you know being forced To pay sizable amounts of money to do something about the crisis that that they created I would just like to see that go a little further and um, I had a conversation with Sam Kenones about it Holding China and Mexico, you know responsible for their international crime organizations and governments That allow these things to happen to find a way to hold them responsible and he he Reflected on it a little bit and said that seven years ago if if anybody would have said that A group of attorneys general in America could band together and create class-action suits and hold the Sackler family Responsible people would have said that's impossible These people have so much money that they're untouchable. You will never get to them, but we did we did get to them so I'm thinking that in the future maybe Initiatives such as gyms to get at some of these countries that are housing international crime organizations Will will prove successful. I certainly hope so. I'd like to go from here We need specifically I'd like you to talk a little bit because we're going to talk about fentanyl a lot And I know you're a scientist and a medical doctor, so Help my my audience to understand we've had heroin in fact Jim's son Jim your son was using opioids for 10 years When fentanyl came it changed the game It was deadly a killer. What is it about fentanyl? That's different than heroin. That's different than oxycodone What what is it? What makes it such a I think Sam Kinonez calls it a fanged drug Unbelievable potency just unbelievable potency Fentanyl in itself is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and then you have Analogs of fentanyl acetyl fentanyl acryl fentanyl car fentanyl is a hundred times stronger than fentanyl So you're getting killed by micrograms. And so, you know, we have a material that's More deadly than plutonium Yeah Mine my mind Yeah, mind-boggling in some ways opioids are Act the same part of the brain and Jim is absolutely right. It's all a matter of dosing, right? so You know hydrocodone octycodone heroine fentanyl They all work on the same receptors of the brain. They're the same class of medicine Or drug and they work on the opioid receptors of the brain and deep with enough dosing They stop your breathing and that's how people die. They just stop breathing and go into a cardiac arrest Right, but taking a little bit can relieve pain Taking too much and you die instantly, which is what happened to Tommy So it's all a matter of dosing and just a little bit of you know As they say to be the salt of pure fentanyl in can kill you and it's very easy to produce So we have a lot more of supply So we got you know the dosing the potency the increased supply and that's why we have like an airplane a day falling out of the sky of people from Using fentanyl every day in the United States and really a tragedy and an airplane a day falling out of the sky Now that that is something to to create urgency. I reflect on it And it was 105,000 deaths. It was the equivalent of 35 world trade centers in in one year I also understand about fentanyl that it has a very quick onset That's one of the reasons why it's such a valuable medical pain killer because the onset it gets into the mood receptors really quickly and binds very strongly and when you combine that with with potency when people inject it especially there's like instant Overdose and if there's not someone around to administer Narcan that person is sure to die. Is that the case? Well, it's still the same type of receptor We have to be careful not creating Panic for rescue, you know, you're not gonna you know, there's some misinformation You're not gonna just touch it and and die you have to get it into the body by smoking it or injecting it And it's the amount it's the the quantity and the potency which can be in a small little amount that that that kills you Thank you. Thank you. I think Jim I would I would compare it with ether and In the old days, they would take a little dab of ether, you know The first anesthetic put it on a cloth put it on over your face The face and you'd pass out almost immediately very fast onset very very quick to be knocked out. This is this is reacts very quickly along the same lines Immediately cuts off pain and you have a very quick onset very and it's related the same chemical Yeah, you know and by the way, Jim is a chemist I know in his profession. So not not just a victim, but also knowledgeable in in the science Understand that so we're need to tell us a little bit about I know you're on the front lines. You're in the emergency room What are you seeing in the emergency room where you are? We're seeing Regular exposures to fentanyl. I just before this call saw Data from our children's hospital with an alarming rise of babies under the age of five being exposed to fentanyl because their parents are using their kids are Are using and so we had Presentation where back in 2019 there may be been three cases total in San Diego County and now in 2021 they've been 40 Maybe under the age of five being well exposed to fentanyl. So it just saw that that just devastating and Because it's aerosolized for them for these little babies. They can get exposed As well in the emergency department where I work There's good news too. It's not all bad news. We see a lot of people coming in saying I'm addicted to Fentanyl and I need help And we are able to provide buprenorphine and connect to the treatment give them the lock zone Talk about their addiction and so there's good news happening as well I like the fact that people are open With their addiction and therefore they're you know, we can create Treatment and connections for them and tragically we see people die If they're lucky to get into the emergency department, you know There's there's a bell shaped curve of whether you get in a lock zone Early on and an overdose and reverse everything and you're you're fine and you go home or Being dead and I don't see them in that sense They go to the medical examiner or in between you're you're on the ventilator or have lung damage That's really why anybody who suffers any overdose and you use naloxone You have to call 911 because you don't really know how much damage has has happened. Yeah I think that's an important point for the audience to hear That that if you administer naloxone to someone who's overdosed to call 911 and get them there because there may be Additional medical care. That's necessary in Vermont. We have what's called good Samaritan laws Where you you know, you can be at a scene where there's paraphernalia and there's drugs You can call emergency workers and they can come and you're not going to be Accused of a crime. Nothing's gonna happen to you. In fact, where you should be thanked for calling some Forgetting the right kind of personnel involved and maybe saving maybe saving a life So you're on the front lines and you see it that I didn't know that about children under five that there had been Additional exposure that's that's new and information for me and certainly something to be very concerned about You know Jim, I think that part of your research Weren't didn't you come up with the the statistic that fentanyl is the number one killer of Americans between the age of 18 and 45, isn't that you? Yes, our our team Come through the CDC data After looking at New stories for quite a long time. We conjectured that this was impacting demographic of people we Confirmed that by pouring through the CDC data and we discovered that it's the number one killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 and That demographic is widening. It appears that it's now moved to 13 to 50, but we're having trouble getting real-time data. We're approaching the CDC asking them to give us more granular data Running is right. We're seeing babies being killed Weekly about a year ago. I'd seen maybe one or two in the whole year That were made the news, but now I'm seeing them almost on a weekly basis of baby of children under five dying through the incidental contact and and this is a indicative of of You know the prevalence of the material in our society That we're being flooded with this material and it's killing the innocent by incidental contact You know this is really Something and I I mean if you pay attention to the data and you look at the the trend over time You see this incredible It's like an escalation of Velocity you see the velocity of these incidents not only increasing But but but but more quickly over time over the past ten years And it's double in it's doubled in the United States in the last two years. Yeah, that's an incredible problem Yeah, and it's tripled in teen deaths and maybe more. It's up five times in black American deaths It's targeting the black American communities This is showing epidemiological growth that's Extremely alarming and beyond that the seizures that are showing are coming in are more than all of The addicts could use in the history of addiction that we're being flooded with an amount that's Unbelievable just unbelievable and really kudos to Jim and His research team at families against fentanyl for taking the data that the CDC has But compiling in a way that the public could understand and showing you that more people die from fentanyl than from COVID Because the last couple years that's all we heard about is Yeah, I always say I'm jealous of infectious disease because it we should be talking about fentanyl fentanyl fentanyl Well, you know, that's that's interesting that you mentioned infectious disease because I I think I remember one of my conversations with you saying that We should apply an infectious disease model to the fentanyl Epidemic do you want to talk about some of the ways that we might do that some of the ways that Might help us to do something about what's going on on the street Yeah, so I've always been jealous for infectious disease because they they get a lot of the attention They get a lot of resources from public health. It started even before the pandemic when we talked about, you know I know what zip code we have more gonorrhea chlamydia and syphilis it and we give partner treatment to those Infectious diseases and we sent alerts and bulletins to the medical community about, you know, tuberculosis or salmonella But we don't do that for for overdoses. Um, so number one is mapping those infectious diseases have mapping We have mapping for COVID. We should have mapping Universally for overdoses for whatever the the drugs is because you can't tackle a problem without that data So that's number one. Number two, we do we know about contact tracing for COVID right, you know, I don't know how effective that has been but we we do that we also know that for every Person we're seeing that with every person who overdoses. There's other people at risk other children at risk other family members Other friends at risk and so that's a time of of intervention So I would take every overdose and make that into a contact tracing moment to see who else is at risk and what prevention can be done Um at at that moment and those are the kind of of and eradication So what what, uh, you know, we had to drain the swamps to get rid of malaria, right? Or or we had vaccination programs for polio We can apply those some principles to infectious diseases, right? We can eradicate these spirit purses, which is what families against fentanyl is trying to do. That's the ultimate um, I think solution Um at that level and in the meantime, you know, deploy treatment deploy primary prevention Um, uh, do contact tracing the same kind of models we've done, you know For kelvitt and other infectious diseases that we apply to to issue of drugs that that is fascinating to me and I I certainly hope That that that kind of approach gains in popularity and gains in support so We we have a lot of attention on on the the micro level, which is You know good We have narcan. We have buprenorphine. We have methadone. We have treatment We have residential, you know in hospital outpatient in vermont. We have a system of hub and spoke where we have we have a lot of buprenorphine being utilized in vermont. We have low access to buprenorphine We have good harm reduction here. We have harm reduction centers that will um, You know provide fentanyl testing strips our narcan Uh a wound a reduction kits all kinds of education. I mean we're doing we're doing, you know We have a robust response here in vermont on that on the micro On the micro level and different states have different levels of that. We we're doing pretty well we we we we the the The literature and the conversation has been on that we you know Part of what you hear is there'll always be a supply as long as there's a demand So we need to work on the Demand side work on people with addiction educate kids so our next generation doesn't want drugs This is all well and good, but what's happened with fentanyl? It's a game changer It's changed it. It's so urgent now because we have so many people dying that I I I'd like jim to focus on this activity not on the demand side But activity on directly on the supply side Directly on where these drugs are coming from and how they're coming into America, what is it? What is it that your your experiences? How are you being guided by your experience specifically in regard to that jim? The the council on combating synthetic opioids Just convened and gave their report It's a bipartisan group that of senators and luminaries military people admiral wendell various people Are on it they concluded that This is a Travesty this this is a purposeful poisoning of the american public That's being done with malice It's a slow motion weapon of mass destruction in pill form This material is Being the precursors are being made primarily in china shipped to various ports in mexico where they're being protected and brought into Very now very large Relatively Manufacturing facilities run by the cartels along with I believe the zang drug trafficking organization along with several other chinese nationals They're down there cooperating with this They're manufacturing this in mass quantities shipping it into the united states in Quantities that are indicative of stockpiling now According to that according to the council the total demand in the united states should be no more than three thousand pounds of of Fentanyl would would supply the whole country for a year They've seized tens of thousands of pounds of fentanyl Enough to kill the country several times over in riverside california this year. They found 21 kilograms of car fentanyl which is listed by the OPCW the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons as a weapon of mass destruction They found 21 kilograms of pure car fentanyl in riverside california. Yeah Now this is indicative of stockpiling The material is Not only being distributed in a slow motion weapon of mass destruction to our to the public from school children all the way through to the addicted to It is now present in a way that threatens our national security This material can be distributed or dispersed in mass casualty events, which is starting to show up in these fentanyl poisonings and under The under just straight physics Distribution goes to to dispersion no matter what through entropy But now it's starting to be done on purpose and It's going to start showing up in these as the as the dea said They're starting to have these clusters of of little mass casualty events and according to Epidemiology this should turn into something far far worse We're trying to get in front of that by declaring it a weapon of mass destruction and using every Amount of our governmental power to stop this before this worst-case scenario takes hold Let me let me ask you a question and that was uh, that's a beautiful Description of of of a reality that a lot of people have not seen yet There seems to be a reluctance to see that a reluctance to see the magnitude of what is going on The the addiction recovery channel has always been focused on deconstructing stigma It's our feeling here that stigma Is one of the main blockers of making progress in this area? And I I would like to know Do you do you see that do you see that? People being a little bit reluctant to move forward Because of this feeling that oh, it's you know, it's it's addicts You know, it's like it's not the general public You know, it's it's addicts, you know, like it's not it's not that important They see them as culpable in their own deaths They looked on upon them. They're in the people who are ashamed of them They're ashamed of themselves for letting for you know having an addict in the family They weren't a good parent. They didn't look after their kids. They you know, they filled this guilt You know for letting this happen um, it's it's buried underneath all this Quiet You know when a plane goes down or all this tragedy happens There's explosions and buildings are knocked over and there's drama This is quiet body bags being picked up in the dark and somebody taken away to the morgue where somebody may or may not claim them You know, and it's one after another after another another heartbreak that adds up to this horrible grief in the united states It's just raining the life out of us. But isn't isn't isn't it isn't that what we as a culture You know that we need to face isn't it and people like you People like ronete the the addiction recovery channel so many thousands of us today and more and more of us our voice Is becoming stronger and stronger our voice is becoming louder and louder. There are groups rising up saying wait a minute Wait a minute. We've had enough people to people. I know someone who died I know someone who may die tomorrow. We have to do more about this You know, that's what I love about you jim. I love about you that that you're not afraid of urgency That somehow, you know, um being callous and insensitive and cool about things Doesn't appeal to you You know what urgency means and it's it's I think there's a failure in america To embrace urgency somehow. We're afraid of it We're afraid to embrace what's really happening is and as long as we assume this position It will keep getting worse. It will keep getting worse. So I I couldn't Agree with you Agree with you more. It's been hidden But we're beginning we're beginning more and more to talk about it to face it and to feel it Like you just felt it and like I feel it too and i'm sure you do also ronete I think we should highlight the positive here because it's so grim. Um, because we We make improvements and then we forget about them and focus on the bat So we we have come a long way. Uh, we're not worse. We should be we could always improve But I think several things has happened. One is like I mentioned the the medical community is now at the table Dealing with the issue of of addiction and So I think that that's a positive number two It's a positive and a negative at the same time. Probably every family in america has been affected Right. So everybody knows somebody Who has an addiction or who has died And that's the sad part of it. But the positive part of it is that the issue of stigma Um, it's allowed people to speak up Um, and I just want to mention a little bit about stigma We have to really focus. I I do a whole course on eliminating stigma with clinical understanding And and that means if you understand the biology of addiction Then you understand that it's a chronic relapsing disease It has relapse rate just like asthma or hypertension or diabetes has it affects certain parts and chemicals of the brain And then you treat it as you would any other medical disease with the same type of compassion on the other hand I Don't want to normalize drug use. I don't think that that's okay We have to deal with primary prevention and there should be stigma on the product At least right what we don't want people to be using. I know we don't want people to be Getting addicted to drugs in the first place, right? Stigma You know help us stop smoking. You don't go. We don't want to be smoking now If you if you have addicted addiction to nicotine or your smoker I mean you're you know, it's still part of the family You just maybe ask to smoke in a different room or outside the house And um, so I just have to be we have to be careful when talking about stigma We still want it as a In a prevention primary, especially primary prevention tool But but compassion to the person who has absolutely when I when I talk about stigma I'm talking about the war on drugs punishing closing people You know making them feel ashamed like they're bad wrong immoral just looking for pleasure We need to punish we made we need to make it so uncomfortable for you that you're going to stop taking drugs You know and that just doesn't really work. We want to like embrace people with love and help them to you know Maybe use less drugs and maybe eventually if they want stop using drugs But to make them feel you know accepted and supported rather than You know pariahs and people who are are persecuted and that you know That still is happening in america to a great deal. I mean I agree with you There's been national movements statewide movements local movements. We're changing our language You know and everybody seems to be really catching on to that But I agree with you also that you have to understand the clinical Ways that addiction works because just changing our language is one thing But we need to have understanding down inside in our hearts Because that's what people with addiction feel you can use the right language But be housing stigma and they will feel it and they will not come back But if you're using the right language in your housing love and acceptance They'll feel that and they will come back and I know you know that because you're a professional in the field And um, I couldn't agree with you more. I feel really encouraged about what's going on in my country but um, I just think we need to we need to push we need to push now and um Because like like as jim is saying it's just it's it's it's it's overwhelming what's going on jim alcohol and drug addiction Are hereditary You know once in families. Yeah, people have people have a weakness to them and and you know, this has been uh taken advantage of The opium wars were waged against china and china is reversing the opium wars on us It's they know they know what our weakness is and they found a material that makes heroin This addicts you so much more quickly than heroin the the ability to break down a regular Community is extremely fast and your onset of addiction is extremely quick You go into compulsive behavior extremely fast it starts to compromise your you know your willpower So you're arguing with yourself trying to you know determined to get there how you're going to get back to your drug It's a nightmare And this is well known and the poison is so amazingly How should I say it maybe innocuous because it can be impregnated into paper into cloth it can be smuggled into any type of uh of uh environment and then deployed they can't they won't let mail into uh Prisons anymore because they're impregnating it into the paper and then smoking or using it like bladder They have a little piece of it and put it on their tongue So We've we've moved from a material that's been used to addict us and generate Billions and billions of dollars a year We have a 250 billion dollar a year elicit drug supply And now fentanyl is made up at least 15 to 20 percent of that so we're shipping 20 30 billion dollars a year To the to the worst possible people You know and fuel and fueling their evil And this whole thing is just taking off this whole monstrous perspective of Mass amounts of material being made shoved into our country People of an unknown origin or whatever whatever forces are are able to infiltrate our Country and we have a a mass poison available to be used against our public You know, we're in a very bad situation. I I I see that as clearly as you do jim, but I wanted to just For one second go back to something that renate was saying because I tend to sort of get overwhelmed with the gravity of what's going on And sometimes begin to miss the positive But I want to I want to agree with you and I want to accentuate that a little bit Oh over the past three weeks. I think there's been three or four The high level conferences on this topic harm reduction conferences Leadership conferences different types of conferences webinars I've never seen this kind of activity before It seems to be like everyone really is beginning to talk about this now It's terrible that had that it had to get to this point Before we began talking about it, but it is no longer like a silent Kind of secret thing that's operating under the surface So I want to agree with you about that, uh, renate and I I also want to You know commend all the the many, uh recovery coaches and medical doctors and asam The different types of treatment organizations certainly the 12 step groups out there Everybody who's been dealing with this on a on a daily basis, you know We're we're coming together as a as a as a culture and um It is it is a very positive thing and we tend to do that As americans, you know, we we we do when we're threatened we we do come together well, you know Jim, I'd like you to talk a little bit Talking about coming together well and joining together and doing something You know, I mean you have a movement that you've begun that I think is important And I'd like you to talk about this a little bit families against fentanyl. What is families against fentanyl? Well, first of all what I want to say is If it weren't for the actions of first responders people like ronny whatever the administration of narcan This would be so amazingly much worse. Yeah, there have been hundreds of thousands of people's lives saved with narcan And the first responders every one of them that you'll talk to what they do majorly now is run around administrating Narcan that's one of their major things that they do They're on that every day every fireman every every Ambulance driver every policeman. They're all carrying it. They're all administrating this That's covering up, you know, a great deal of what of the horror of what's happening. Yeah, so Thank god for the first responders. Thank god for all all these people. They're working You know trying to abate this horror that's happening to us So I I take my head off to them. That's not like nobody's doing nothing. This is uh being pursued with the vehemence and Loyalty of people that you know are putting their Their time and their effort and everything and just saving lives of of our fellow citizens Moment by moment. Yeah, I know a lot of people who are working a lot a lot of overtime You know, exactly right along those lines. What about families against fentanyl jim Families against fentanyl We have 30 000 signatories on our on our petition now we have non-partisan group of people that are working to influence the government from Letter to president biden asking him for an executive order that's been signed by people from John Brennan to utam dillon former head of the DEA and various other luminaries We're we're pleading to the president to please execute this as quickly as possible. We're building supporting congress and in the senate We've had the commission for combating synthetic opioids and trying to influence those We're moved towards the office of national drug control policy and try to influence dr Gupta who who has a very good understanding of what's going on with a very strong experience over in west virginia and We're trying to implement the wmd designation so we can do the things that are necessary to stop this You were talking about cutting off the money wmd designation gives us the ability to stop the bank The banking the treasury can consenction the money the the Government can hold the other governments accountable. It breaks the foreign sovereign immunity act It gives us powers that will enable us to intercept Wire transactions all over the world and trace them What what orient where they came from where it's going they can trace the chemicals They can find the manufacturing plants they can react to them and shut them down Say that, you know, you have you have a thousand manufacturing plants That's way easier than to shut down a thousand manufacturing plants than there is to to arrest a 400,000 dealers Yeah, yeah You know I work in a in a trauma center. So we give you know, somebody is bleeding we give them blood We need transfusion. That's important that the narcan the treatment for addiction That's the blood transfusion. But if we want to stop the bleeding in the first place We got to cut the source We have to uh, and that's so important cutting the source before even hits, um, the united states because that's just predatory on our population It's it's science it'll it it'll reduce supply you raise the price It's that's going to happen the first thing And so and so you it becomes scarcer and scarcer and scarcer and scarcer and you're able to shut this down But you're able to to seize their day money And really that's that's that's going to put the the fear of god into them right away And that isn't that I mean just to kind of elaborate, you know, I don't really I'm not familiar with this level of activity But but it makes so much sense. Dan Ciccaroni A researcher at the university of california, um, san francisco It he calls it a supply side shock like usually Demand affects You know the supply and this has been a reversal It's the supply is controlling the demand and the supply is coming from international crime organizations So in this case, we need to do something about the supply But you know in your model What's interesting then with all this interdiction and wire, you know and and and and freezing people's assets And cutting off supply We we and i'm sure you've thought about this and talked about this with the people you commiserate with We have to be ready to deal with the people on the ground who actually have addiction So if we control the supply We have to meet them where they are and we have to supply Something that is going to help them to maintain stability While they you know regain their their their their their physical medical mental Mental health that would have to be like a major part of the program Oh, absolutely treatment treatment of the addicted Continuous education um I don't know of any way to Completely stop the demand or or the supply We can have major effects upon it. Yeah, we can we can possibly control One of my greatest fears is having this be deployed by somebody of the likes of timothy mcbay of the oklahoma city bomber or the fellows that used it did the Boston marathon bombing or one any of the other insidious terrorists that have uh Come to the united states This this presents an opportunity for uh civil unrest Of epic proportions and we need to get ahead of it I don't say we're already there. I mean, yes You know, we could have that, you know, boston Bombing or a big event like that, but this is more subtle. This is more like covet, right? We've got a little case is everybody, right? And so we're just killing, you know, two and a half people a day in san dieo county and only a few people here, but but But collectively this is way bigger than a boston marathon. It's way bigger and we're paying them to do it Right. They're taking our money out. Do we get killing this? I don't need I don't think we need to wait in fear of something like that happen I need to think we need to open our eyes and realize it's happening in front of our eyes right now I hear you. I agree with you. There's that urgency that I love. There's that urgency again And I really I really want america to feel exactly That urgency, you know, it Renit the the statistics last year 2021 It's one person every five minutes Is is dying of of overdose one person every five minutes the length of this show You know, what what is it one hour? So You know, many people have died while while we were interacting on this show and that goes on And it's getting more frequently as we move Forward so I I I think that both of you and your movement Jim families against fentanyl Couldn't be at a more perfect time. Thank you so much For for for for seeing the need and for acting on the need We're going to run a slot. We're going to run a slide as as far as so we can get people in touch with you What were you going to say? um The indictment that the u.s. Government did um Put me in a position that was unique I be I had represented the public They they went Prosecuted the zangs the zangs were set free They're still in they're still manufacturing this according to fortress management in Mexico City Who I spoke to a private investigative firm These are puppets of the chinese government This is being done with malice to our public When I read that indictment saw that they were making 16 metric tons a month in china and shipping it over here I said that's enough to kill everybody in the country every month. What what the in the world? So there's no way for me to Turn my back on it knowing what I know of physics science chemistry And what potential this is and what it's doing now in real time. We can stop this. This is doable and We've Stigma has blinded us Turn their backs on us and now we and we have to reawaken the politicians who have the ability to do this their number one duty Of the united states government is to protect its citizenry That's it's number one duty and we're being killed with malicious intent for money I hear you jim. I hear you and I'd like to put in a plug of what the medical community can do And I think jim What we're saying is again, we need to cut the supply off from from from the source and hold people And nations accountable Instead of poisoning and killing americans And medical community, you know, like I said, we we should be at the table with solutions in one solution We have in california tyler's law. Oh, yeah or Which would require every hospital in california to include fentanyl and part of the drug screening Most of america is not doing that It's simple you pay 75 cents per reagent and you include it in your drug screen if you're screening for whatever reason We're not telling people how to practice medicine But if you're getting a drug screen and you're checking for cocaine and pcp and meth It should also include fentanyl and that's not happening now and I'm hoping that this will pass in california and and also nationwide Congratulations on that. We're neat. Nice. Nice going. I read the bill and it's also It's a really educational piece to read. It's beautiful and then it's educational and I think it passed unanimously In one chamber of congress Yeah, it passed senate health with unanimous bipartisan support in california, which is amazing Congratulations So jim, you know if somebody wants to join uh families against fentanyl, we're going to put up a slide They can get in touch with you. What do they do? They fill out an application. What do they do? How do you join? Uh, just sign our petition that's on on our website Come sign the petition your You can email us. We're open to any help Um, we're inclusive we're trying to Avert The continuous disaster that's happening. As I said, it's doubled in two years. This is following an epidemiological trend That's just so shocking. It's unbelievable We can't have it double again and if and believe me if it weren't for the excellent work of The people on the ground the first responders everything else It um It it would it would be totally uh chaos By now Thank you. Thank you so much and and i'm i'm i'm proud um To have you here in vermont to have you both here in vermont to be present in vermont We'll get this show out as as as widely as we possibly can And hopefully we'll we'll gain a little bit more support for uh families against fentanyl We're neat. I i'll get some people to you know, we'll be tuning in to high truce I certainly will be watching it and addiction. Yeah conversations that you know, hopefully move Um an agenda and also on my website if anybody Listening needs a prescription for naloxone and can't get it for whatever reason Frankly, it should be over the counter But if not, I put a free prescription on my website just download it use it Um No questions out. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much And you know for the viewing audience. I mean, you know, how how lucky are we to have uh People like this on the show just coming on because they care You know, this is what it's all about. I read a an interesting quote by paul tillich. He's uh a philosopher theologian and his main point in a paper one of his papers is You have to have love before help Help without love becomes a problem But help after love is effective and that's the way I see you too I see you too as really offering love Uh to this particular population and as a result of that You're capable of of helping them and helping us So thank you for for contributing as much as you do And I will look forward to following you and maybe having you on the show Again at some point in the future Because you inspire me and I'm sure you've inspired many of my uh my audience. So again, thank you. Thank you so much Thank you very much ed. It's a pleasure being on. Yeah. Thank you. We're neat. You're great. Yeah Yeah, and thank you too And it's an honor to be part of the families against fentanyl team and ed. Thank you for your show and your passion As well of bringing solutions to this problem. Thank you. Thank you