 Hello, my name is Ben Joseph. This is the Judge Ben Show. This is a program in which I interview guests about things that concern legal system in Vermont. This is the first time I've done this remotely. So if I stumble around please understand that I'm not quite used to this. I'm sitting in my home computer trying to look into the camera and look into what I'm seeing on the screen. My guest today is Dr. John Brooklyn. Dr. Brooklyn is a physician who does a lot of work in Burlington and has dealt with a lot of people with drug cases. So Dr. Brooklyn, how long have you been in Vermont? I have been here on and off since 1975. A little break to go back to medical school in Rhode Island, but essentially I've been practicing here since 1992 after I did my residency. Wow. Wow. Are you working mostly in the Burlington area? Three days a week in the Burlington area and two days a week in St. Albans. Wow. Okay. And during that time, have you had patients who've had drug problems? Well, in fact, most of my work tends to be with people with substance use issues. Since 1992 when I graduated have been working in the field of addiction medicine. Wow. Studies looking at the use of buprenorphine suboxone to treat opiate addiction. I've been involved with studies treating cocaine, nicotine, but routinely as a general practitioner family medicine doctor, I routinely take care of people who have the spectrum of substance use issues. Yes. Wow. Well, then we're talking about thousands of people you've dealt with who have these problems. I have. Yes. Many thousands. That's really very interesting. Well, just to get right to it, I want to go back to my topic outline to see I don't forget anything. There was a recent radio report that over 100 people had died in Vermont in the last year because of overdose. Do you think that's accurate? Well, for the last three or four years, we've had about 100 to 105 cases of what are deemed opioid overdoses because of opioids. I think what you may have been referring to is this year with the coronavirus, we've actually seen an increase in people who've died from overdose. So I'm not surprised at all based on what I know from firsthand experience and all the issues that have come about from coronavirus isolation, drug use, drug access. It's kind of a twin pandemic as we're calling it these days. Oh, really? So you think COVID has caused an increase in the number of people who died because of substance abuse? Yes. It's a fact in the state of Vermont and nationwide. There's probably a 30% or 40% uptake this year. And the belief is kind of three from what patients have told me. Some of it has to do actually with the excess stimulus money that was presented to people who used it to buy lots of cocaine or heroin. We also know that because of the drug supply not coming up from Mexico, which is our typical access point for heroin, there's a lot more fentanyl now. People have told me all kinds of stories about funny looking powders that they've been sold. So I think that there's a real change in the market forces where previously you might have known who your supply was. And now it's becoming the supply chain has been affected in many ways. And so people are using things they're not familiar with, a lot of despair, a lot of things happening. And so unfortunately we've had, we've seen that. However, we haven't seen a reduction in people seeking treatment. So one of the things I want to make sure listeners understand is that opiate use disorders is adequately treated with suboxone and methadone. And all of the programs in the state have remained open and have continually taken people in. So it's not because of lack of access to treatment, but more use patterns amongst our population. Wow. Well, so would you say that the COVID pandemic has caused an increase in the number of people you're seeing with these problems? I'm not so sure it's an increase. I think it is, in many ways, magnified the problem for many people. I mean, let's face it, many people who end up using substances do it out of despair or emotional distress and deaths of family members, lack of good jobs, difficulty in being isolated. I think it's a natural incubator for people to feel despondent and perhaps increase the amount of their use. We've had people who've been doing well for a while who've relapsed and begun to use more and begun to use dangerously. So it has definitely had an effect on the psyche of the population in general. And you see more and more of it in the substance use world. I've, for a long time, I've thought that the inequitable distribution of wealth in this country is an underlying cause of substance abuse. Do you agree with that? Well, I think that it does not discriminate. I have taken care of well-to-do people. I have taken care of people who grew up in poverty because, remember, the human brain, once it's exposed to opioids, sometimes gets changed in such a way that people cannot stop. So people like you or I who were given pain medication by a physician, perhaps, and we were prescribed for too long, we could theoretically also develop a problem with substances. And so certainly we know that people who have had adverse childhood events are more at risk, but it does not discriminate in terms of who ends up being affected by it. By adverse childhood events, you mean sexual abuse? Well, sexual abuse, physical trauma, emotional neglect, poverty, bullying, you know, a variety of things that happen to children at a very young age that in many ways affect them as they age and many times drugs make people feel better. Well, I think you mentioned OxyContin and some other medications that are used as painkillers. Is that right? Yeah, OxyContin in the 90s and the 2000s, it was just rampant in terms of its use around the country. And it's interesting, many of the people that I talked to, I always like to know how old they were when they started. And it is so common to hear that people as teenagers read a prescribed painkillers by pediatricians or orthopedists and they would continue for a period of time or they had access to friends and families pills recreationally. But clearly that fueled a significant uptick in the number of people with opioid use disorder, probably by four or five fold. Four or five fold? Yeah, I mean, typically the data showed in the early 90s for decades, there were about a million daily heroin users. In fact, during the height of the HIV epidemic, that was a number that was bandied and banded around was about a million daily heroin users. And after the uptick in prescription opioids and the wholesale pharmaceutical marketing of them, somewhere around five to six million people ended up being opioid dependent because of painkillers. So the numbers grew exponentially after the introduction of those medications. I've been told repeatedly that manufacturers of OxyContin really promoted its use. Is that true? Yes, I believe so. It was a wonderful article in the New Yorker a couple of years ago about the Sackler family and it really exposed their techniques of education and manipulation, the different benefits that they gave to doctors. In fact, a number of years ago, I think when Bill Surrell was attorney general, I think a law was passed. I know a law was passed in Vermont, which limited any pharmaceutical company from if they gave a doctor more than $25 or $50 and something or other had to be declared as a public record. I remember a couple of years ago, it was a little embarrassing to find out some of your colleagues who are getting tens of thousands of dollars in dinners and trips and all these different perks from the opioid manufacturers. So it was a helpful strategy to perhaps publicly shame some of us into not taking the lucrative offers, which obviously affects the way that we prescribe. Given samples of medication or you're given some kind of a benefit, it just fuels the prescribing by docs, even though it may not be indicated. And then we just recently had that federal settlement, which showed that people were being steered towards prescribing OxyContin that was orchestrated by Purdue Pharma. I remember reading that article you mentioned and the Sacklers and the staggering amounts of money that they made. I mean, they literally made billions, as I recall. Yeah, and there's some beautiful parts of the Metropolitan Museum and New York and wings of other museums around the world that they have philanthropically donated to and now it's all called into question. Yeah, well, do you think that these prescription pancreas like OxyContin should be made available without prescription that people should be able to buy them if they want them. That's a really interesting question and I'll tell you why I was watching a movie the other day and someone was in Mexico, and they wanted a prescription and the pharmacist said oh no it's over the counter you don't need a prescription for it. So I know that in Canada even Tylenol with codeine you can purchase without a prescription so certainly we in the United States don't take that position that these things should be made available. But I think the experience in other countries it would be interesting to see whether people are any more likely to become users when it's over the counter I think you know my training and my upbringing is that you need to very closely regulate the drugs that will put people at risk for having difficulties. But again, I have to say I'm biased by my education in my training and I'm not super familiar with what does happen in other countries where they are less restricted. The judge I certainly go with a lot of people who've had endless grief because of substance abuse and you know I've been involved in treatment I order people into treatment programs as a condition of release and it was remarkable how successful that treatment was. So maybe you think there's some hope for this it's not it's not all futile. You know here's the interesting thing if I prescribe narcotics pain medicine for you. You go to the drugstore and you say my doctor gave me this is a legitimacy around it and for many patients. The doctor kept prescribing long after the person needed it and the person became physically dependent. So that dynamic drove a lot of people to becoming physically dependent. You hurt yourself and you went to the pharmacy and you could buy a prescription painkiller without a prescription. Maybe you buy three or four of them maybe you take a few and that would be it. You wouldn't necessarily have somebody in authority saying it's okay to take these. And so you wonder whether the dynamic of that has made things worse by being prescribed versus having it widely available and you take it if you need it and if you don't need it you never go and near it. I mean that's it's a plausible explanation but I think what you're saying is that we have a nation of drug takers and people who like to medicate and so and you've encountered people who have opiate use problems and I take care of thousands of them and treatment is very very effective with methadone or suboxone is very very effective for for taking care of people whose brains have been altered by being exposed to opioids for a little too long. Well my impression is that as part of the treatment if there's some kind of counseling or some kind of contact with a physician or someone who's trying to help the person that that's a real plus. It's not just a question of being given pills. It's a question of being told that being encouraged to overcome the addiction. Do you buy that? Do you think that's true? Well I guess I'm going to challenge a little bit when you say overcome the addiction because when it comes to opioids and probably alcohol the brain is in many cases changed in some ways permanently. Wow. You can't cure it. We can help correct it but I have taken care of people who my treatment has failed to help them. I've given them methadone. They continue to use opiates. I've given them suboxone. They continue to use opiates. They've been put in jail. They come out. They continue to use opiates and I look at it like I do cancer. There are some patients I've taken care of who've died of lung cancer despite being given chemotherapy. It's not an absolute. We have to think about substance use disorder as being manageable but not curable in the case of opiates and alcohol. When it comes to cocaine, methamphetamine, there's no medication that I can give somebody. We know that there are certain therapies and treatments that work but not everybody's going to take them and I'm sure even in your case you remand people to treatment. You send them to prison. They come out and they may continue to use despite all of those negative effects. So it's baffling sometimes as to why some people get it and some people don't and I don't have an answer as to why it doesn't happen all the time. Well in my experience, I put large numbers of people into treatment as a condition of release and there was a study done retrospective to what had happened. And the first 172 people I put into treatment, three years later they were checked up on and 80% of them had stopped using. And this was for what substances though? I think that matters. This was for painkillers, OxyCotin and large amounts of THC of marijuana and 80% stopped. And then there was a part of the study they took a group of 300 defendants, same drugs, same high dosage of experience and in that group there was no treatment. But they had an 84% recidivism rate in the three years following their first contact with the courts. So I think there's something, I don't think it's futile. I just think it's something that should be paid for. A society should come up with the money and say, hey, here it is. I'm just hoping to find answers to help people. I think your experience is such that we do know that people are able to stop using cannabis at a much greater rate than they're able to stop using opiates on their own because people don't tend to get sick. And we also know that heroin really is different than painkillers in terms of how it changes the brain. So there's got to be subtleties and nuances. But it sounds like those results were pointed towards the fact that treatment does work. I think that's the bottom line and getting help through counseling and therapy in addition to medication certainly can increase your likelihood of remaining abstinent and doing well. And so I think your results bear that out. Well, I'm just, it makes me think we just got to try harder. It's because I think the social cost of these problems is staggering. The number of people who lose their jobs, lose their families, harm other people. I think I've been seeing that there's more fentanyl being distributed in connection with heroin. Is that true? Yeah, it's almost impossible to find fentanyl-free heroin. Almost every powder that someone is using, whether it's supposed, I don't even call it heroin anymore. I say some opioid, some white powder that has opioid in it, it's almost exclusively fentanyl. There's very little heroin. We're finding it a lot in cocaine now, fentanyl. We're finding it sometimes in methamphetamine. We're finding it pressed into look-alike sedatives. It looks like you're taking a sedative, but it's really fentanyl that's been pressed to look like a benzodiazepine. And so it's very, very dangerous. People are very scared. They don't know what's in their drug supply anymore. It's a real tragedy to see how many people are using and dying because they just have a great difficulty in being able to determine how much is in it. Where does this fentanyl come from? It's been coming predominantly from China, but I was listening to a report the other day that said that the U.S. and China have somehow brokered a deal where China has been restricted on sending fentanyl to the United States. I mean, clearly you can still get it, but what's happening now is apparently it's being routed through Mexico. So fentanyl is now coming from China to Mexico and then making its way into the United States or coming through Canada into the U.S. Previously, you could import it into the U.S. right from China. In fact, it was interesting. They said you could even go onto the Internet in broad daylight and order fentanyl and have it shipped to the U.S. That's how brazen some of these distributors were. Now I think a lot of those sites, or at least I've read, have been restricted or cut down. And that's predominantly where my understanding is where it's coming from. Is it something that's instantly addictive? Is it something that causes an aggravation of someone's condition? Well, it's highly addictive. It's a very powerful opiate. They use it in anesthesia all the time. I mean, if you go in for a simple procedure in the hospital, you need to be put asleep, you'll get some fentanyl to relieve the pain. It's very fast-acting. It is certainly a drug of desire because it works very quickly and gives an intense euphoria, so people really, really like it. But the problem is that under conditions that it's not monitored, if you get a powder, you're just at the whim of some backyard chemist making it up as he goes along, as opposed to a U.S. pharmaceutical company that's giving you a certain amount of fentanyl in the IV that you're getting. So I think that's really the danger. A very small amount of fentanyl is enough to get an entire city supply for a period of time. You don't need much. You can walk in with a small fanny pack full of fentanyl in an entire city could be using that amount as opposed to kilos of heroin, which you need. Oh, it's that much more powerful. That much more powerful. Absolutely. You take a pen, the tip of a pen, you don't need much more than that to get an effect from it. A single dose. Wow. Wow. So, you know, when we restrict pills, people then turn to heroin and, you know, you don't get heroin, you're down to fentanyl. It's really astounding. Well, what do you understand by, you know, there's these public articles that are written about talking about decriminalization, legalization. Do you think there's some best way to try to manage this distribution of these addictive chemicals? Well, I think I've come to realize over the decades that our brains are wired, you know, we're sort of, our brains are wired for novelty. Humanity has advanced through new ideas and finding new things, but for many people, they're just waiting for the next new thing. The difficulty is, I don't think it should be a crime. I don't think you should sit behind bars for doing a drug for experimenting. I think what happens is that people become so frustrated with citizens' use, depending on what it is. They get behind the wheel, they drive drunk, you know, you're so aggravated, we put them behind bars because we're angry at them and maybe that's a reasonable approach. But I think that criminalizing it has not solved the problem. However, making treatment much more widely available and without stigma, to me, helps answer the question about, well, what do you do for people that are using substances? And I think it was Jim Douglas that talked about, or Peter Shumlin talked about the three-legged stool in Vermont. You want education, you want treatment, and you want prevention. But putting people behind bars or charging them with criminal offenses wasn't part of that three-legged stool. So from my perspective, people are going to do what they want, they're going to try different things, and if they get in trouble, they should get help. But not necessarily make it legal, but also not necessarily make it criminalization. So I think a decriminalization policy is not a bad way to go, at least from where I sit as a physician. I haven't sat in a courtroom as a judge, but that would be my perspective is to put a lot more effort into prevention and education and then treatment. Well, what I have found is, well, the experience in Vermont is that 80% of the people who are charged with DUI 1 are never charged again. They stop. Okay. They learn. They've been arrested, they've been brought in, they've had to look at someone like me, so sorry, and they stop. No, they stop. And it's the 20% that get arrested again that go on. And you have these people who, I mean, I know vacationers and they guys charge you DUI 5. And then, you know, they're killing people. Yeah. More than 10,000 people a year die in the United States because of alcohol related crashes every year. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, it's really hard. Yeah, it is. And I think what happens is that we haven't done a good job of identifying those people. And, you know, there's actually some pretty good evidence-based treatments for alcohol use disorder, but if there's no follow-up and no ramification for it, people tend to stop. And we also know that there are some people for whom alcohol is just a toxin for them and they're going to spend the rest of their life fighting that demon. And the issue becomes, if you have someone, and I mean, I have patients who are given the Alka sensor in their car and they have somebody else blow into it to get the car started. You know, there's all kinds of ways around these things and it's a shame. But I think for some people, no matter how many consequences they have, they won't be able to stop. And as you say, for most people, one consequence is enough. But, you know, one deadly crash is one too many. Yeah. You know, we have fairly liberal alcohol laws. Some countries, the BAC is 0.04. Yeah. In the U.S., it's 0.08, it came down from 0.1. Yeah. So, you know, we're pretty generous still, unfortunately, with our alcohol use and our driving. Well, when you deal with someone like this, is the treatment usually, I mean, is there medication and counseling? What do you think is most effective? Well, we know that for people who have alcoholism, the alcohol use disorder that, you know, the use of anti-abuse clearly will stop people from drinking. If they take anti-abuse every day and they drink, they'll get sick. There's another medicine, naltrexone. That's an injection. Once a month, it reduces the amount that people drink, reduces the cravings. There's a couple other medications. They have to take them every day. They can do counseling. I think if you're really going to be serious about it, you have to have, you know, some pretty solid teeth in this. If you're really going to help people not drink, maybe they need to, you know, again, wear some kind of an alka sensor on a regular basis. And if something gets detected, there's a result. There's also all these fascinating studies that continue to be done to try to untangle why people can't stop drinking, what happens in the brain. And still, I got to be honest, a bit of an unknown as to why some people just can't stop. And we still don't have enough tools in our tool bag to help every person who's got alcohol use disorder. But some people do stop. Most people do stop. I mean, even under the advice of the physician, a lot of times, you know, you say to somebody, I think you've got a problem with alcohol and it's affecting this, this, and this. Just that simple little bit of advice with some work. People will significantly reduced the amount of alcohol that they drink. Absolutely. Well, I've always thought that probation was often successful. I would put someone on probation in one of these cases. And I would never see him again. You know, now some of them like the probation officer come in and say he's done this, she's done that, and you don't have to deal with it. But I always thought that the threat of incarceration often will deter people from abusing substances. Do you think that's true? I think, you know, knowing humans like I think I know humans, I think the fear of punishment works. It does work in many ways. I mean, it's what drives most of us to do the right thing. It's the common law called specific deterrence. I like very fancy language. There's also general deterrence. Yeah, it's an example that other people will look to and think we're better not do that. You know, that kind of thing. But it's it's just hard. It's just hard. Do you think there should be education about this in schools? Do you think children should we talk talk talk to about this? One 13 year old should be given counseling. You mean be taught about substances? Yep. I think it would be good to have people have a better understanding of how their brain works and how drugs work in the brain. I'm not talking about project there. I'm not talking about scaring people. I'm just saying, giving some information. And the other thing that I've been always interested in is, you know, doing a decent amount of screening in very young children to understand, are they at risk? We have ACEs, adverse childhood events that's going to put them at risk as they get older for substance use disorder. And how much attention do we do we pay to that? You know, we talk about takes a village. You have counselors in schools, you have teachers in schools, they see kids that are having difficulties and problems. The resources aren't always there, especially in in states like Vermont, which is, you know, not necessarily resource rich. And we do have people that sort of fall by the wayside and end up turning to substances. And you wonder if you would intervene early and perhaps had some alternatives, whether or not you could have prevented them from from moving on to substance use. I take care of a lot of people that are fathers and mothers of young children and the fathers and mothers I'm treating for drug and alcohol use. And I talked to them about, you know, what do you think the risk for your child is? What do you do to, you know, do you do you worry that your child's going to turn to opioids or turn to alcohol? What kinds of strategies have you employed? And it's always interesting to hear the different points of view about how they struggle with what to do and how to, if possible, prevent their kids from ending up like they did. Do they try to counsel the children? What practically, what advice do you give them? Well, I think what I've said is, you know, first of all, have you ever, it has the conversation about drugs and alcohol come up in your family. And I'm not a fan of necessarily telling war stories to your kids like, oh yeah, when I was your age, I was getting, I was doing this and that because I think sometimes kids think, well, dad or mom did it, it's okay if I did it. I think really exploring with the kids, you know, what they know about substances, whether their friends are using, what's it, how do they feel, you know, when they're around this person, do they think that they might want to try it? Do they know much about it? And really trying to help the parents educate the kids versus pretend they're in an AA meeting and they have to share all the dirty details that they had because I'm not so sure that's helpful. And then if it looks like the person, the child, the teenager is starting to drift off, think, well, what other, what pro-social activities can we do together? How can I perhaps spend more time or do more things? How can I step in as a parent and say, no, you can't go to this house unsupervised or you can't go with this person here and, you know, act like a parent and try to protect your children from what inevitably is waiting around the corner for them? If the parents are using substances, you think it makes it more likely that their children will do that? I do. I do. And I think it's a risky situation because they're not paying as much attention as they could. And obviously if a child sees a parent doing something, it immediately legitimizes it. I mean, they say, well, you know, in fact, I say to them, even if right now, you know, you don't think that your child knows you're smoking, you know, cannabis to go to bed at night, they can kind of tell there's a smell in the air. They might find your pipe and, you know, it's only a matter of time. What are you going to say when they confront you about that? What are you going to say? And so those kinds of conversations we have a lot and it gives people things to think about as they continue to use. And in many cases, people will make a decision to stop using or continue using, but then, you know, have a conversation with the children at some point. If it does arise, it won't always go well. You know, they get confronted and said, well, you know, especially when it comes to tobacco, I mean, you think about smokers, you know, the worst of all habits, the most dangerous of all, the most deadly of all. And I have parents who are still smoking in front of their kids and I've just baffled as to how they do that, although they do try to, you know, not smoke around their kids smoke outside, but they get grief all the time from their kids. Like mom, dad, why can't you stop? And, you know, that sometimes is enough of an incentive for them to think about at least reducing what they're smoking or at least make them think about it. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Well, what are there any additional resources that you'd like to have in dealing with these people? Well, I think, you know, Vermont being a very rural state makes it difficult for patients to sometimes get to treatment. You know, fortunately, our state has put funding into transportation, getting people to clinics and doctor's offices and all that. I think that from my perspective, we've done a very good job. I mean, we're the envy of the nation when it comes to treating opiate use disorder. We've got more people per capita in treatment than anywhere else in the United States. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, we have the hub and spoke model, which is trying to be replicated around the United States. Alcohol use is actually kind of on the rise with COVID. I think that, you know, the isolation is really doing a number on people and I'm concerned that when we come out on the other end, there are an awful lot of people who are going to struggle with the amount of alcohol that they've been consuming. And I think the other thing that's going to be really important is to make sure that we keep training our physicians, our nurses, our social workers to be good when it comes to screening for substance use, because people will hide it. They won't want to talk about it. There are people who return to use or embarrassed. And so having people feel comfortable talking about their drug use and alcohol use, I think, is really important. Otherwise, it's a hidden. You don't know about it. Well, just, just, I think I certainly agree with just what you're saying. My question is, where do we find, is there an agency set up? Should there be like a counseling branch of the courts or how would this work? Well, I guess if you think about it from a court perspective, we have, I think we have three drug courts now in the state. I think every, I think every county should have a drug court, and I think the federal courts, I think there's one that's, I think Judge Sessions has a, Judge Crawford, I think one of them may have a drug court of sorts, but I do believe that all counties and all our federal jurisdictions should have drug courts that support people being on medication assisted treatment if they need it. I do believe that diversion is much more valuable. I know our Attorney General believes that, you know, diversion is much more important than criminality. But I don't know the mechanics of the court system to know why we don't have more, you know, why we don't have a drug court in each county. The resources around that I'm just not familiar with it. Well, it's not, it's not mysterious, you know, there's just, there's just not enough money, I think, and just, you know, the old expression money talks, it's hard, very difficult. I mean, I do, I will say I have lots of people who I take care of who end up back in behind bars. And in Vermont now, if you're on methadone or buprenorphine up until two years ago, you often had to come off of it. And you went in and you were detoxed in jail. And now treatments continued. And that's been an amazing change. But I'm always baffled. And perhaps you can answer when I have somebody, it looks like they're doing pretty well in treatment. Their urines are negative. But they've obviously got, you know, criminal charges, they've been in out of jail. And then they suddenly go back to jail, they get violated. And I guess I would ask, well, what's the cost of that incarceration? You know, what's the value of putting someone behind bars? What's the cost to us? And if we had more money that wasn't for incarceration, but more for keeping people out and perhaps figuring out a way to get them to do what they're supposed to do, would that be a way to save money for more treatment versus incarceration? Again, I'm not sitting in the probation officer. I don't know if probation officer says, hey, you can't go down to that person's house or, you know, you've got to be in by six o'clock at night or you can't lose your housing, all these different things that sometimes can be very challenging for people. And if they don't achieve them, they end up going back to jail. Well, is there an alternative to that in terms of a shifting of costs? I would ask that question. Well, and also I think it's very hard to generalize about this. Each case is unique to its facts. Each person has a different history. You know, sometimes people have been through probation and counseling over and over again, and then they do something really dreadful. And so they're punished. Not because, I think, speaking for myself, not because it's fun to punish people, because you think you just have to do it. You know, you just have to. And frankly, some of the most rewarding things I've experienced as a judge is when people come back to me and tell me, you know, you put my kid in jail, thank you. Yeah. You know, I remember one case was extraordinary, where, you know, the kid was fixing my garage door, and I make a long story short, he thanked me for putting him in jail. Oh, my God. The first time you met me and put me on probation. The second time I did something really awful, and you put me in jail for nine months. And they looked me right in the eye. I said, Judge, that was eight years ago. And since I got out, I'm not using drugs. I'm married. I've got a four year old son. And then he looked me right in the eye and said, thank you. Uh huh. So it's just not all futile. Yeah, right. Not all futile. And I think we just got to, we just can't be vindictive about this. I think that's really important. What I was trying to answer was, is there, you know, the resources? Is there, are there some cases that perhaps are not as, to the extent that you're mentioning, but a relatively low level re-infraction, someone goes back to jail? What are the nuances of that? I never really know. And, and you're right, some of them are complex, but you wonder whether or not there are some opportunities still that exist in the system, perhaps to divert some of those people from going back. Well, I think, I think the answer is, my comment would be, you try to exhaust all the non-jail alternatives. Yeah. And then if you, if you decide you've got to use jail, you do what I call the short hit. You put somebody in for 30 days. You don't say, oh, probation failed, it's two to five years to serve. That doesn't necessarily, that doesn't sound good to me. Right. Well, look, we've, we've run, we've got almost an hour, my friend. Oh, why? You're terrific. I want to thank you for what you're doing. Well, thank you. It's, it's terrific what you're doing. And I think it's a, it's a great thing you've done. And I hope you can keep it up. God willing, me too. And thanks for having me. It's been enjoyable. Okay. And I want you to understand, if you've got something that comes up that you want to tell the world about, call me and you'll be on a judge bench show. Okay. Thank you. You're someone I would like to speak to more than once. And I want to thank the people who have looked in today. I hope this works out. This is a, this remote screening is very different. I wish we were in a studio face to face, but we've got to do the best we can under these difficult situations. Yeah, noticing the light guy didn't come to my house because all of a sudden it's dark in this room and I look like I'm just, I look like you're doing fine. I didn't think about the lighting. I probably have too much light, but whatever. Thanks again, John. Thank you very well. You too. Stay safe.