Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #112: Brian Townsend /Retired DEA Agent

Transcript

#112: Brian Townsend /Retired DEA Agent · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
• 0:14
  One. We're live with Brian Townsend.
• 0:17
  Welcome, Brian. I'm so happy that you're joining
• 0:18
  us today. Thank you so much man.
• 0:20
  Yeah. No, thank you.
• 0:21
  I look forward. To it so federal and state
• 0:25
  officer over 30 years of experience feels like does that
• 0:30
  feel like a snap of a finger to you What does that feel like Oh.
• 0:32
  My goodness, right? I feel like I started yesterday
• 0:34
  and you know, where did where did life go?
• 0:36
  I've just been been so blessed. I'm I want to start with, do you
• 0:43
  are you once you like see the the hot dog factory with the
• 0:47
  working with the with the with the feds and the federal
• 0:49
  government slash state government?
• 0:50
  Are you more inclined to trust it or less inclined?
• 0:53
  Do you think that's but you could be a good answer however
• 0:59
  you want. You know I'm not trying to put
• 1:00
  the. Interesting thing is, is when
• 1:02
  you see how the how the sausage is made you, you, you get a
• 1:06
  sense of all the things that it's not right all the
• 1:09
  conspiracy theories, all the, you know, I mean it's, it's
• 1:13
  people, it's not some system, right?
• 1:14
  It's just people who make hopefully good choices,
• 1:17
  sometimes bad choices. And so, I mean, I, I don't know,
• 1:20
  there's a lot of really good people who are amazing and who
• 1:23
  have, you know, good hearts and good intentions.
• 1:27
  But sometimes there's not. So I don't know, I think I'm
• 1:30
  more trusting. And I think that's my, you know,
• 1:34
  my, my, who I am, right? I'm, I'm more of an optimistic,
• 1:37
  trusting person. I want to see the good in people
• 1:39
  when I want to see the good in the world, right?
• 1:42
  Right, Right. Right.
• 1:44
  Definitely. I mean, I agree too.
• 1:45
  I just. I was just curious, you know,
• 1:46
  because I was like, you know, from someone, you know, someone
• 1:48
  standing on the outside and talking to someone that's on the
• 1:51
  inside, you know, I was always curious.
• 1:53
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:54
  You know, it's interesting because you hear all these
• 1:56
  things and see all these things and then when you when you're in
• 1:59
  the system working, you know, with the things that you hear
• 2:03
  about on the news or, or just, you know, through friends or
• 2:07
  family, you're like, yeah, that's not really accurate, but
• 2:12
  you. Know like I, I was kind of
• 2:13
  hoping to hear that by the way, because I think that that that
• 2:16
  that soothes some of my anxiety. I've been, I've been actively
• 2:19
  working on being a Twitter addict or an ex addict for a
• 2:22
  little while now. And I, I think it's just way
• 2:25
  unhealthy for my health. And, you know, and I just see so
• 2:28
  much speculation that's like that, like there's no, this is
• 2:32
  too fantastical. You know, I'm like, you know,
• 2:36
  but it's just hard to tell nowadays, you know, what's
• 2:38
  reality and what's not, You know, what people are, you know,
• 2:41
  what's a legitimate conspiracy and what's, you know, kind of
• 2:43
  just a little crazy. But you know, I'm just, I'm, so
• 2:47
  I'm, I'm excited to, to get a little bit of relief.
• 2:50
  Honestly, that's kind of what I'm hoping for.
• 2:52
  But so you started your career as a, as a, as a local law
• 2:58
  enforcement right state. I did, I, I, I grew up in, in
• 3:03
  Northern Virginia outside of DC and I left that area to go to
• 3:07
  the Midwest to, to Joplin, MO, of all places, right in the
• 3:10
  middle of the country to go to college.
• 3:12
  And I love the area. And when I was working on my
• 3:15
  graduate degree, I started my career in law enforcement as a
• 3:18
  police officer in Joplin. And you know, originally I had
• 3:22
  no intention of being a police officer, nothing against it.
• 3:24
  I end up being probably the best decision I made at that point in
• 3:27
  my life and, and I had some other opportunities, but, but
• 3:30
  that one was the most promising and, and it worked out really
• 3:34
  well because ultimately my goal was the the DEA, the Drug
• 3:37
  Enforcement. Ministry, that was your goal?
• 3:39
  Yeah, it was my goal. I was the entire time, and I
• 3:41
  didn't know how I was going to accomplish it, quite frankly.
• 3:44
  Yeah, absolutely my goal. So being a police officer was a
• 3:47
  great experience. First, we had a great
• 3:49
  department, great city, you know, just the people were
• 3:53
  wonderful and very supportive of, of what we did and, and the
• 3:58
  Police Department itself. So, yeah, it was great.
• 4:01
  It was, it was five years, it was short and it was over in a
• 4:03
  snap of a finger, right. And and how?
• 4:06
  Long was training for to become the home police officer.
• 4:10
  So to be a police officer, you typically have to go through
• 4:12
  some type of police Academy. So at that time we had a
• 4:16
  regional police Academy at the college and that's pretty common
• 4:18
  in the state of Missouri. There's a lot of regional police
• 4:20
  academies and they're usually in criminal justice departments,
• 4:23
  you know, colleges and universities.
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  And, and I don't remember how many, how long it was exactly.
• 4:28
  I want to say probably 3-4 months.
• 4:32
  And I of course had my degree, but you that wasn't a
• 4:34
  requirement. That was just kind of an added.
• 4:36
  It was kind of what? Was your degree in?
• 4:39
  I had an associate degree in law enforcement.
• 4:42
  My bachelor's degree was in criminal justice administration.
• 4:45
  Nice. My master's degree, and this is
• 4:46
  where everyone laughs, is in human resource development with
• 4:50
  an emphasis in training, which was exactly what I had.
• 4:54
  Yeah, which which we'll get to which you've done right.
• 4:57
  Yeah. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
• 4:59
  So you, you, you really you went each step of the way with.
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  I I somehow planned it out very well at a young age and probably
• 5:07
  frankly accidentally. Definitely, definitely.
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  How'd you, how'd you decide to get the human resources master's
• 5:14
  degree? What was that?
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  What was the decision making costs like there?
• 5:17
  Well, you know, I, I wanted to stay in the area in the, in
• 5:19
  Missouri Southern, where I went to for my undergrad at the time,
• 5:22
  didn't have any graduate degrees.
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  And I really liked that school a lot.
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  But nearby Pitt State, Pittsburgh State University,
• 5:28
  which is in Pittsburgh, Kansas, you know, maybe 45 minutes away,
• 5:31
  they, you know, they offered graduate programs and, and I
• 5:34
  didn't, you know, I didn't want an MBA and I didn't want
• 5:36
  anything. You know, I just, I looked at
• 5:40
  the human resources. I had a advisor at Missouri
• 5:44
  Southern that was just a great guy.
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  His name was Terry, and he he recommended it.
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  I looked at the program and I thought, wow, there's an
• 5:50
  emphasis in training here. And I've always had this, this,
• 5:53
  this interest in teaching. And I thought, well, this might
• 5:56
  be a good fit. And I didn't realize at the time
• 5:58
  that it was a perfect fit because, you know, like you
• 6:00
  said, we'll get into later. It was something that I would
• 6:03
  ultimately, you know, yeah. Go down that path.
• 6:06
  Yeah, Yeah. Really cool.
• 6:07
  Really cool. I can I ask you now?
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  I guess we'll get into a little later the administrative part of
• 6:14
  teaching as opposed to the classroom part of teaching.
• 6:17
  What do you, what do you prefer? Because I, I'm a teacher myself
• 6:19
  and I'm a little afraid. I love being in the classroom.
• 6:22
  I'm a little afraid to get into the administrative part of it,
• 6:25
  you know? Yeah, I know I prefer hands on.
• 6:28
  I've, I prefer to be, you know, in the classroom and, and, you
• 6:31
  know, the interaction even more so.
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  Like I know a lot of folks are doing the remote online teaching
• 6:36
  and, and I'm, I'm not, you know, against it.
• 6:38
  I just, I truly prefer being face to face with people.
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  I think that's where you really build, you know, beautiful
• 6:44
  connections and relationships. You know, the administrative
• 6:49
  part's important obviously, and and I have no I'll will to
• 6:53
  anyone who who wants to to go into those to to take that path.
• 6:58
  For me, though, I I like just to be I like to be a worker.
• 7:02
  I like to be on the ground. It's just even, even when I was
• 7:05
  at Dai, went into management, I missed, you know, being a worker
• 7:08
  and not that you can't work and not that you can't make a
• 7:10
  difference in management or administration, but it's a.
• 7:13
  Different type of responsibility, different type
• 7:15
  of role. It is right.
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  It really is and, and, and, and it's something, you know, if, if
• 7:20
  someone's listening, thinking, oh, I want to take that next
• 7:22
  step, you better think about it because it's going to, it's
• 7:25
  going to be a lot different than what you're doing now.
• 7:27
  Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, so you always wanted to be
• 7:30
  DEA. Was that because you wanted to
• 7:32
  fight bad guys, that because you had family that was in it?
• 7:35
  Is that because what was it? What was the motivation?
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  Inspiration. I actually saw what drugs were
• 7:40
  doing to people at an early age and it bothered me.
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  It really did bother me to the core where I thought, why are
• 7:46
  these people poisoning themselves?
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  You know, why are they hurting themselves, hurting their
• 7:50
  families, hurting communities? And I just made a decision that
• 7:55
  this was something that I wanted to be part of the solution and,
• 7:58
  and Drug Enforcement was it. And I didn't really know what
• 8:01
  the DEA was until about high school, but I and plus law
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  enforcement face it when you're young and you're looking at
• 8:06
  people driving fast cars and carrying guns.
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  I mean, you know, there's a field of that as well.
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  But but ultimately, deep down, it was the fact that you know
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  what, what can I do to serve my community and to help people who
• 8:18
  are struggling with with addiction or you?
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  Know right, right. So what So what are some so you
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  went so you went from school, grad school, police Academy five
• 8:30
  years police work and thank you for your service.
• 8:33
  Thank you for all your service. Is that a typical route for DEA
• 8:37
  agent? What is it?
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  What do people that you're with, how do they, how do they end up
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  there? You know, a lot of DEA agents
• 8:43
  don't have that type of background.
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  You know, at the time when I got hired in the late 90s, we had a
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  pretty good mix of prior law enforcement and prior military.
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  I mean, that's, that was pretty consistent.
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  And I think that still is. You still have a lot of police
• 8:55
  officers who want to work as federal investigators and a lot
• 9:00
  of military folks as well interested in this career path.
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  But I mean, I'm telling you, we've, we've had, I worked, I've
• 9:06
  worked with engineers. I worked with an engineer used
• 9:09
  to work on on fighter, fighter planes, you know, F fifteens and
• 9:13
  things and he. Just no way.
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  Yeah, he. Just had a change of heart.
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  He wanted to be ADA special agent.
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  I've worked with teachers I've worked with, I've worked with
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  folks who worked retail their entire career.
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  It really it's, it's, it's really not your background.
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  It's more about just how that, how that made your DNA, right?
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  How that, how that made you who you are today.
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  You know, did you, did you show up to work?
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  Did you have good relationships? Did you, do you ever get fired?
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  You know, I mean, what is your, what are your Co workers?
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  What are your bosses think about you?
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  You know, it's just what makes you who you are and how did you
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  handle yourself in a, in any type of career situation?
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  And, and I think that's more important than than exact than
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  what you did, because what you did or what you do now can be
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  trained. It's kind of who you are that
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  we're we're very interested in. Wow, and so that goes into the
• 10:03
  consideration and goes consideration when you wait for
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  the hiring process. So like, you know, I, I got a
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  creative writing and literature degree in college, which is
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  practically useless, right? As in, I mean, I, I love it, but
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  for the purpose of a job, for the purpose of job hunting, I
• 10:19
  got very lucky that my dad is a small business owner that, you
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  know, I had a family business that I could join and I had
• 10:24
  something to fall back on and I still work with him to today.
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  You know, we, we were very close, although we have to live
• 10:30
  in a different state to get along, but it's OK.
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  And you know, but, but we, we talk on the phone 100 times a
• 10:37
  day and we're always, you know, communicating.
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  But you know, one of the things that I noticed, and I actually
• 10:43
  had to figure this out when I was in college, I was going
• 10:45
  around trying to find jobs or internships and I had to, and
• 10:48
  everyone would look at my resume and kind of laugh when they saw
• 10:51
  the create, you know, creative writing, you know, major degree.
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  And so I got one of the business books, the business schools
• 10:58
  portfolio covers. So I was, I was walking around
• 11:02
  with the Business School portfolio and they'd look to my
• 11:04
  resume and I had a couple, I had a couple of internships where I
• 11:06
  did some business. Then they look at my degree and
• 11:08
  like, wait a minute, you get the Business School.
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  I don't know, but you know, I just, I got this, I got, I got
• 11:14
  this. And you know, I thought it'll
• 11:15
  help me get my foot in the door. But if you're telling me that
• 11:17
  the DEA would hire just based on any background, that's really
• 11:20
  cool. That gives people a lot of
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  opportunity. Yeah, absolutely.
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  And I actually like your degree because to me, you're using your
• 11:26
  brain. Writing is not easy.
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  And I love that. If I were in the hiring, if I
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  were someone who was hiring for DEA and you were in the hiring
• 11:35
  process, I would certainly look at that.
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  Yeah, because I'm thinking someone that can critical thing,
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  someone that can, you know, bridge decisions, I think
• 11:42
  outside the box and, you know, ultimately put those thoughts in
• 11:45
  onto paper and and describe situations and things like that.
• 11:49
  And I think that's important, especially in law enforcement.
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  People don't think about how much writing happens in law
• 11:54
  enforcement. I.
• 11:55
  Certainly. And I can tell you early on in
• 11:57
  my career, I was probably a horrific writer, really.
• 12:00
  Thankfully I had AI had a supervisor who who was an
• 12:03
  English major. There you go, and.
• 12:05
  He would basically take the red pen to my early reports at DEA
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  and, and you know, and I, I didn't, wasn't offended by it.
• 12:13
  He made me a better writer and I'm thankful for it.
• 12:15
  That's awesome. Yeah.
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  Yeah. One of the things I was thinking
• 12:18
  about the value of it is I, I teach English now in a, in a
• 12:21
  high school and, you know, and I struggle a lot with what's, what
• 12:26
  am I trying to teach, you know, especially with ChatGPT and AI
• 12:29
  and, you know, and five paragraph essays are going to be
• 12:32
  essentially useless, you know, in a couple, you know, by the
• 12:35
  time these 10th graders are in College in three years, you
• 12:37
  know, And so one of the, one of my main values is
• 12:41
  self-expression. Learning how to articulate
• 12:44
  what's AI is not going to be able to do that for you.
• 12:46
  You can't explain what's in here and what's in here, you know,
• 12:50
  with AI, but you can do it by practicing, you know,
• 12:53
  communication. And then comprehension is I
• 12:56
  could give you all the information that you need, but
• 12:57
  if you can't understand it or apply it in a creative way in
• 13:00
  your own life, then what's the point really?
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  You know, So I think that it's a skill set that we all need.
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  And then you could kind of just apply it to anywhere, anywhere
• 13:07
  that you go, you know, I hope at least.
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  I agree. I, I absolutely agree.
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  And I hope you can multiple, I hope folks that are in your
• 13:14
  classes multiply your efforts because that's exactly what
• 13:17
  young people need, 100% what young people need.
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  Because if not AI is going to take over the writing, it's
• 13:22
  going to take over the, the critical to think critical
• 13:25
  thinking and decision making. And and that's going to be a
• 13:27
  disservice to them and really to humanity.
• 13:30
  Yeah, definitely. It's actually funny you say that
• 13:32
  because I, my, my friends sent me A2 like a 2 1/2 minute voice
• 13:38
  note the other day and it was music and I was listening to it.
• 13:40
  I'm like, this is fine. It's cool.
• 13:42
  I like, what is this? He's like, oh, I'm in the gym.
• 13:45
  And I asked AI to write, to come up with a song with basic
• 13:48
  inspirational lyrics and just upbeat tone.
• 13:51
  And I can play it and, you know, while I'm working out.
• 13:54
  And on one hand, I was a little blown away.
• 13:57
  And on the other hand, I was like, thank God I didn't like
• 14:00
  this because I was here. I was because it did feel a
• 14:02
  little cold. It did.
• 14:03
  It did feel like it was missing something, you know?
• 14:05
  And today I was at a jog and I was listening to live
• 14:08
  Springsteen, you know, performance while I'm jogging.
• 14:10
  And I'm like, there is nothing like a live performance where
• 14:15
  you like hear like the magic of the, of the human relationship,
• 14:18
  you know, between the musician and the crowd and musician, his
• 14:21
  instruments in his band. I'm like, you can't.
• 14:23
  I don't know how you're going to be able to.
• 14:24
  I mean, maybe they will one day, but I don't know how it's going
• 14:27
  to happen. There's something too incredible
• 14:29
  about consciousness and sharing. That's, that's just human, you
• 14:32
  know? I absolutely agree That's it's,
• 14:35
  it's such an important part of us growing and learning and, and
• 14:39
  and just relationships in generals.
• 14:41
  Yeah. So what's the difference?
• 14:43
  I guess you could tell me based on your experience, the
• 14:45
  difference in people's response when you're a local law
• 14:50
  enforcement as opposed to federal law enforcement.
• 14:53
  What's reputationally or you know, even for yourself, even
• 14:56
  within your, I mean, you left the the, the police force to
• 14:59
  join the feds. Was that was that considered
• 15:02
  like a common thing or an uncommon thing or what is what
• 15:05
  do people respond to that like? People were very happy for me,
• 15:09
  you know, they were very supportive.
• 15:12
  The bad guys don't like the feds because really it comes down to
• 15:16
  punishment, you know, and more so now because a lot of, you
• 15:21
  know, a lot of very progressive prosecutors kind of moved into
• 15:24
  large cities. And I know there's been pushed
• 15:26
  to move them out thankfully, but they stopped prosecuting crime.
• 15:30
  And so when you're, when you have someone who's, you know,
• 15:33
  let's say if someone's been arrested and they're
• 15:35
  cooperating, there's no consequences for.
• 15:37
  So why would they cooperate? There's you're not looking at
• 15:40
  any time at all or, or maybe one or two days.
• 15:43
  So when they're like, well, OK, that's great.
• 15:45
  But we're going to bring the federal agents in now, because
• 15:48
  this is going to be a federal investigation.
• 15:49
  We're going to be working with the US attorney's office.
• 15:52
  The the pucker factor increases a little bit.
• 15:56
  That's good, that's good, that's good, that's good.
• 15:59
  Absolutely. And I know, and I know state and
• 16:01
  local officers who actually use that to their advantage.
• 16:04
  You know, when they're interviewing these folks are
• 16:05
  like, hey, that's OK, that's great.
• 16:07
  You don't want to cooperate, but you know this is going to this
• 16:10
  is going to go to the DEA or the FBI and.
• 16:13
  Yeah. Do people do do, is it like the
• 16:17
  shows or movies where people are territorial about their crime
• 16:20
  scenes or their, you know, whatever they're working on?
• 16:24
  You know, I unfortunately, I have seen that way too much in
• 16:27
  my career and I hate that I am, I am someone who absolutely
• 16:33
  believes in deconfliction and collaborating with other folks.
• 16:36
  I don't care who you work for, what your position is, if the
• 16:40
  goal is to put someone in jail or holds, hold someone
• 16:42
  accountable for what they did and that's the goal.
• 16:45
  You know, I, I can remember investigation we worked years
• 16:48
  and years ago and this department was just absolutely
• 16:51
  undermining what we were doing. And these were absolutely
• 16:54
  dangerous people. I mean, we knew they committed
• 16:56
  multiple murders, witness and intimidation.
• 17:00
  So, so law enforcement couldn't really do anything because the
• 17:03
  case would just fall apart, not because of the law enforcement
• 17:06
  because because the witness was so scared.
• 17:09
  And we had a really good investigation of doing some
• 17:12
  Title 3 investigation, which is wired, which is basically
• 17:14
  listening to telephones, right. And when we had this, this group
• 17:18
  dead to rights, but then this department was person in this
• 17:21
  department was actively, actively undermining our
• 17:23
  efforts. And I remember we sat down with
• 17:25
  the I sat down with, with their command staff and I said, look,
• 17:29
  I said, this is ridiculous. I said, we have a goal here.
• 17:31
  We have a, we have some bad people here.
• 17:33
  And it wasn't just one or two people.
• 17:34
  I mean, this was a this was an organization and this was a
• 17:38
  organization worthy of our attention and worthy of, of
• 17:40
  being accountable for the horrific things they were doing.
• 17:44
  And I said, I at the end of this investigation, if you want to
• 17:46
  get in front of the of the camera and tell everyone that
• 17:49
  this is your police department's case and leave us out, I don't
• 17:53
  care. I really don't care.
• 17:55
  You know, ultimately we need to work together to put these
• 17:58
  people in jail or give the prosecutors the best, you know,
• 18:02
  evidence in this case we can to put them in jail.
• 18:05
  And that's my motive 100% period, end of sentence.
• 18:08
  That's it. And and so it it infuriates me
• 18:11
  when I see people who hold the cards too close to the chest and
• 18:15
  don't share because it really does at the end of the day, hurt
• 18:18
  our communities when when people do that.
• 18:20
  And and so, yeah, I talked about that quite a bit when we do law
• 18:23
  enforcement specific training, you know, hey, look, we got to
• 18:25
  de conflict. We got, you know, there might be
• 18:28
  someone out there who guess what has a better investigation than
• 18:30
  you, you. Know, you think it's ego, you
• 18:32
  think it's wanting or do you think it's career building?
• 18:34
  Like, I mean, I, I feel like it kind of goes to both, you know,
• 18:37
  I mean, or, you know, and like you said, maybe publicity, you
• 18:41
  know, I don't know. You know, absolutely both I, I,
• 18:44
  I have seen, I've seen, I've seen people who are just mad,
• 18:46
  you know, I, I, I don't like DEA, you know, I don't like DI.
• 18:49
  So therefore I'm not going to share, which is silly, you know,
• 18:52
  And then when you dive deep and down, it's usually someone who
• 18:54
  applied and didn't get hired or something like that.
• 18:57
  I think this is ridiculous. You know, I grow up.
• 18:59
  You know what, this is an important position, what you're
• 19:02
  doing. This isn't, this isn't middle
• 19:03
  school. You know, your, your best friend
• 19:05
  asked the girl you like to to go skate with, right?
• 19:07
  I mean, this is silly. I've seen some ego driven as
• 19:10
  well. I've seen some folks who, you
• 19:13
  know, we call it the the blue rocket flame in their in their
• 19:16
  rear end and they're, and they're trying to get up into
• 19:18
  the organization as high and as fast as they can.
• 19:21
  And they'll step on people to do that.
• 19:24
  And, and not everyone will, obviously, but so I've seen a
• 19:27
  little bit both and it's, it's again, it's frustrating.
• 19:29
  And I actually had someone tell me once that it probably hurt me
• 19:32
  in my career that I wasn't more self absorbed and more taking
• 19:37
  credit for these things. And I've never, I've never let
• 19:40
  that bother me. I've never, I've never felt like
• 19:42
  I needed to change who I am. You know, I didn't want to
• 19:44
  compromise my morals, my principles, definitely.
• 19:48
  And, and ultimately I've always felt like if I could support my
• 19:51
  like, especially when I was in management, if I could support
• 19:53
  my team and give them the resources they need to be
• 19:56
  successful, then ultimately I'm going to look successful, right?
• 19:59
  And it's not for me. It's not, you know, it's, it's
• 20:01
  for the good of what we're doing.
• 20:03
  I really believe in in mission and team and and I tried to live
• 20:07
  my life that way. Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I
• 20:11
  think it's beautiful. I think we need people like
• 20:12
  that. You know, I feel, I feel
• 20:13
  similarly, you know, that, you know, I, I people tell, you
• 20:20
  know, I, I talked to, I talked to customers.
• 20:22
  I sell medical equipment, right? And I talked to customers and a
• 20:25
  lot of times I'll be like, listen, I'm going to give you
• 20:27
  some information or some advice. I'm going to make less money
• 20:30
  from it. But you know, my goal is like
• 20:33
  money is not just the end goal, like I need to support my
• 20:36
  family. I need to put food on the table,
• 20:37
  I need to pay my mortgage. And you know, obviously, you
• 20:40
  know, waves of you know, how easy or not it is to do.
• 20:44
  But at the end of the day, like I have what I'm trying to
• 20:47
  accomplish. I'm trying to raise a family,
• 20:48
  I'm trying to teach, I'm trying to put some positivity into the
• 20:52
  world. And I only and and money is just
• 20:55
  a means to an end to accomplish that.
• 20:57
  You know, and you know, everything else is just a means
• 21:00
  to an end, which is like what you're saying, you know,
• 21:02
  ultimately make the world a better place, get, you know,
• 21:05
  more drugs off the street, get people, hold people accountable
• 21:08
  for their behavior. What kind of drugs were you were
• 21:12
  you focusing on throughout your career?
• 21:13
  Is it things like marijuana or is it more like heavy, heavy
• 21:17
  drugs like fentanyl, coke, you know, heroin, whatever it was,
• 21:22
  are you allowed to talk about? It was marijuana, cocaine and
• 21:26
  methamphetamine. Those were the big three.
• 21:29
  And then ultimately I would start seeing heroin.
• 21:32
  We all started seeing heroin probably in the 2000 tens.
• 21:36
  Then that would turn into fentanyl.
• 21:38
  So at the end of my career, it was pretty much all fentanyl
• 21:42
  with a few cocaine, methamphetamine, you know,
• 21:45
  heroin cases sprinkled in. But yeah, that that those are
• 21:49
  the cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin are the are the
• 21:54
  BIG4. Yeah, and they're, and they're
• 21:56
  so it's so dangerous. I mean, you know, I mean, like I
• 22:00
  kind of hear, I know people talk about coke and coke has kind of
• 22:04
  become like culturally, almost like it's, it's been culturally
• 22:07
  acceptable since comedians in the 60s and 70s and everyone,
• 22:11
  all these actors and, and Wall Street and bankers and it's kind
• 22:15
  of glorified and like everywhere, you know, and it's,
• 22:19
  it's terrible. You know, it scares, it scares
• 22:21
  the crap out of me. Well, it, yeah, it it me as
• 22:25
  well, all the drugs scared. And I'll even tell you why I
• 22:27
  don't like marijuana if you want to know.
• 22:28
  But yeah, absolutely. And fentanyl has been the game
• 22:31
  changer. You know, I, I spent 28 years
• 22:35
  active in law enforcement, you know, badge and gun.
• 22:37
  I'm still working with law enforcement almost, well,
• 22:40
  actually every day, not almost every day in a training
• 22:43
  capacity. So, you know, 30 plus years
• 22:45
  working with law enforcement and I've never seen a drug more
• 22:48
  impactful. I've never seen a drug change
• 22:50
  the drug landscape like fentanyl has.
• 22:52
  I mean, recreational drug use, casual drug use, drug
• 22:55
  experimentation. I mean, we now have a drug in
• 22:57
  our drug supply that can kill you the first time you use it.
• 22:59
  We've never had that. You know when you and I were
• 23:02
  younger, if someone died of a first time drug use from meth or
• 23:05
  coke, pretty rare. I'm not saying it doesn't
• 23:08
  happen, but pretty rare. I mean they pretty much had to
• 23:10
  been, you know, trying to consume an entire pound or
• 23:13
  something. But you know, fentanyl, it only
• 23:16
  takes only 2 milligrams to kill you.
• 23:18
  You know, only 2 milligrams is a couple granules of salt or sand.
• 23:22
  So you're talking literally just a speck once it gets into what
• 23:26
  you think you're taking, like let's say even pills, right?
• 23:28
  You think you're taking an Adderall or a perc or an oxy,
• 23:33
  you know a couple granules of of fentanyl and you're dead.
• 23:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right away. And it's it's been such, it's
• 23:43
  been such an issue. You know, I mean, I think that.
• 23:46
  So I just read a book called American Cartel about the date
• 23:48
  about I'm sure you're familiar with it, right?
• 23:51
  Basically. I smiled.
• 23:51
  I haven't. Read it yet?
• 23:52
  But I am I I actually have a copy of it at home, yeah.
• 23:55
  Oh, great. Yeah, so I have a copy of it
• 23:57
  here. Actually, the book was published
• 23:59
  before the case was actually finished.
• 24:02
  I had to Google what happened at the end, you know, but but
• 24:07
  what's what's your take on understanding on, on this, on
• 24:11
  this opioid crisis that's been, you know, happening to like
• 24:14
  sweeping, absolutely sweeping the country for the last 20
• 24:17
  years? Yeah, and that's, that's one of
• 24:19
  the reasons why, you know, I have a nonprofit organization
• 24:23
  that I run called only 2MG and that's the biggest reason why I
• 24:27
  started this nonprofit was to address the opioid crisis,
• 24:30
  address the crisis. And like I said, we now have a
• 24:33
  drug in our drug supply that's changed everything.
• 24:35
  I mean, game changer is exactly how I would describe it.
• 24:39
  That's why I'll say it again. That's why after 30 years in law
• 24:42
  enforcement, never seen a drug more impactful.
• 24:43
  I mean, it's just had a profound impact.
• 24:45
  It's in everything to give you some perspective in 2000.
• 24:49
  So, so the DEA runs a program called the National Forensic
• 24:53
  Laboratory Information System, NFLIS, dash drug, and we work
• 24:59
  with about 9899% of all the labs out there.
• 25:03
  So I don't care if you're a state police, I don't care if
• 25:06
  you're a county, I don't care if you're a Police Department.
• 25:08
  Wherever you are in the United States, if you send your drugs
• 25:10
  into a crime lab, there's a good chance that's going to go into
• 25:13
  this NFLIS drug. And that's how DEA looks for
• 25:16
  drug trends and things like that.
• 25:18
  So let me give you some perspective of what fentanyl is
• 25:20
  done. In 2014, there were about 5500
• 25:24
  instances of fentanyl being seized by all of law enforcement
• 25:28
  in the United States. Again, federal, state and local
• 25:31
  5500, by 2019 there are over 100,000, by 2020 there are over
• 25:37
  200,000. These are just seized by law
• 25:41
  enforcement. So from again 2014, 5500 to 2020
• 25:45
  / 200,000, that's a more than 3500% increase in just six or
• 25:49
  four years. Just fentanyl, Yeah.
• 25:54
  And if you look at the, So the number one drug seized in the
• 25:57
  United States is methamphetamine.
• 25:59
  And that's historically been been number one for, for a long
• 26:02
  time now #2 has been historically cocaine.
• 26:06
  Well, now in a very short amount of time, fentanyl is now the
• 26:10
  second, second most seized drug in the United States.
• 26:12
  And then if you if you break the states up separately, I think
• 26:15
  it's 1616 or I think it's 1616 states now the number one drug
• 26:22
  seized is now fentanyl, no longer methamphetamine.
• 26:26
  And again go back to 2014 when there were only fit 5000
• 26:31
  exhibits and all of law enforcement.
• 26:33
  That's how quick it took over. So I mean, it came in our drug
• 26:36
  supply through because of the legal opioids.
• 26:39
  And, you know, especially in the mid 1990s, you know, with an
• 26:43
  increase in heroin use and then it, you know, got into our
• 26:46
  heroin and then from there got into our pills and then from
• 26:48
  there got into our cocaine and there got into our
• 26:50
  methamphetamine and it's, it's saturated our drug supply.
• 26:54
  So, yeah, so the opioid crisis is it's it's devastating, it's
• 26:58
  impactful when you look at the number of people dying, you
• 27:00
  know, when I was in school, when I was a police officer in early,
• 27:03
  you know, in the in the 90s, we lost two 3000 people a year.
• 27:07
  And I'm not minimizing folks, but that's a pretty low number
• 27:10
  when you in comparison to today's numbers.
• 27:13
  You know, 2024 data is not complete yet, but 2023 data is
• 27:17
  like 107,000 people lost their lives.
• 27:20
  Yeah, I think that when I started my law enforcement
• 27:21
  career, 34000 people, 2 or 3000 people lost their lives to
• 27:25
  drugs. Now we're at 100,000 plus.
• 27:28
  And then when you dive deeper into those numbers, 2 thirds,
• 27:31
  75% lost their lives from one drug.
• 27:35
  No way. And then and those people
• 27:38
  weren't even, I guarantee a 99.9% of those people weren't
• 27:41
  even looking for fentanyl. They were for sure right they.
• 27:44
  Were looking for pills, right? They were looking for coke they
• 27:46
  were looking for and it found its way into the into our drug
• 27:49
  supply and it just saturated everything.
• 27:52
  And now you have people that, who think they're taking a Xanax
• 27:56
  bar, you know, they think they take, they're taking, you know,
• 27:59
  an Adderall or an oxy or they think they're just snorting a
• 28:02
  line of coke, you know, on a, on a Friday night, you know, and,
• 28:05
  and boom, they're hit with fentanyl.
• 28:08
  And that is driving the numbers significant increase.
• 28:13
  It's heartbreaking. I had AI have AI have a guy.
• 28:16
  I have a friend of mine who I did an episode with a little
• 28:18
  while back and he never, and you know, he, he, he drank every now
• 28:23
  and then smoke cigarettes, you know, and he's from Savannah,
• 28:27
  GA. So he used to play a lot of golf
• 28:28
  and he tore his meniscus and, and he went to the doctor.
• 28:33
  The doctor said, hey, man, you know, I can't, I can't do
• 28:36
  surgery for a month. Here's a couple, you know, take,
• 28:38
  here's a prescription for some painkillers.
• 28:41
  And he said, come back to me in a month and we'll, we'll do
• 28:44
  surgery. Came back in a month.
• 28:46
  He took it every six, you know, one pill every six hours,
• 28:48
  whatever the doctor said, came back after a month, did the
• 28:52
  surgery. The guy had another two weeks of
• 28:54
  pills and you know, for, for the recovery and he started getting
• 28:59
  withdrawal symptoms. He goes back to the doctor so
• 29:01
  actually says, oh, you got to go to rehab, You're a drug addict.
• 29:03
  And he's like, I'm a what, I'm an Orthodox Jew.
• 29:07
  I got wife and kids. I got, you know, I have, I have
• 29:09
  a, I have, I have a business. I have, I have a life.
• 29:11
  I have to maintain. I, I can't just go to rehab.
• 29:15
  What are you talking about? Like I, I have a whole life.
• 29:17
  And it took him years to kick it.
• 29:20
  It took him years to kick it. And actually he said the only
• 29:22
  thing that worked, therapy and and rehab and whatever he said
• 29:25
  the only thing that worked was he went down to Mexico and did
• 29:28
  ibogaine one time. He said since then he's not
• 29:31
  taking a Motrin. He hasn't taken an aspirin, he
• 29:33
  does not, he has not touched an opioid.
• 29:35
  He says since the it's been like I think sick, I think maybe 5 or
• 29:39
  6 years and just completely cleaned, you know?
• 29:42
  I'm happy to hear that. Well, I'm happy to hear the back
• 29:45
  end of that story. Obviously you know that that's,
• 29:48
  I've, I've heard these similar stories all the time and
• 29:50
  unfortunately a lot of them turn for the worse where, you know,
• 29:53
  they, they went to the doctor, we got this prescription and
• 29:56
  then and then because of the substance use disorder, because
• 30:00
  of the addiction, they started using more and more and more, or
• 30:03
  they turn to heroin. Yeah, and as I want to say, so
• 30:05
  he saw at a certain point he said he was like, at one point
• 30:08
  he goes, I'm ashamed of it. He goes and everyone, he goes.
• 30:10
  Every addict does this. He goes.
• 30:11
  I was hiding it for my wife and my family.
• 30:13
  And he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes.
• 30:15
  Thank God I didn't get to the point where I was looking for
• 30:18
  street drugs. So I wasn't looking for any kind
• 30:21
  of, you know, pill off the cat, you know, about, you know,
• 30:23
  whatever it is off the street, you know.
• 30:24
  But I mean, who knows what happened?
• 30:27
  Absolutely, it happens a lot. And now let me let me give you
• 30:31
  another story. Now let's just say that it was
• 30:33
  it wasn't because of an injury and because of a prescription.
• 30:36
  Let's just say it was because of some type of abuse in life, you
• 30:39
  know, or sexual or emotional. Abuse.
• 30:43
  And you turn to drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism.
• 30:46
  You know. That happens a lot as well.
• 30:48
  We know that happens a lot of people.
• 30:49
  You know, there's a tons of reasons why people use drugs.
• 30:52
  But so now you're struggling with not only the drug use, but
• 30:58
  you're struggling with something that you're trying to escape.
• 31:01
  So it's a, it's a double whammy, right?
• 31:04
  I mean, real for a lot of people.
• 31:06
  And this is, you know. You're treating.
• 31:08
  You're treating one devil for another, unfortunately.
• 31:11
  Absolutely. And and until you fix both,
• 31:14
  it's, it's a, it's a yeah. It's a yeah.
• 31:16
  And it takes a lot of work. It takes an enormous amount of
• 31:18
  work. It takes a lot of work.
• 31:19
  Even if you're healthy, it takes a lot of, it takes a lot of work
• 31:21
  to just be a regular person, you know?
• 31:23
  I mean, life isn't easy, you know, I wanted to ask.
• 31:28
  I was actually, so I was, so I saw on your on your site that
• 31:31
  you were between Little Rock, Springfield and Corpus Christi,
• 31:36
  TX. And I want to ask about those
• 31:40
  places. But one of the things I wanted
• 31:42
  to ask about geographically, actually what I was curious
• 31:46
  about Corpus Christi, I kind of see being a big just based on
• 31:49
  the map it's on. You know, it's by the wall, it's
• 31:51
  by the ocean, it's by the border of Mexico.
• 31:54
  It's probably DEA heaven over there.
• 31:58
  I I imagine. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:02
  Most of our, so most of our work in Corpus, we had a pretty large
• 32:06
  what we call area of responsibility.
• 32:08
  Aori think we had 17 counties. So we went, we went, I don't
• 32:14
  know how well you know Texas, but we went W almost to San
• 32:17
  Antonio, not San Antonio, but just to the east side of San
• 32:19
  Antonio. And then we went N just South of
• 32:22
  Houston in Vic and then we went S very close to like Brownsville
• 32:28
  and McAllen. So we had a pretty darn.
• 32:30
  It's huge. Yeah, it is.
• 32:32
  And there's two highways that go through South Texas right in
• 32:35
  just literally from Mexico right up it's 77 and 281 and you come
• 32:40
  into the country through a legal port of entries PO ES and then
• 32:43
  you have to go through checkpoints.
• 32:44
  And those checkpoints were are very, very, very busy.
• 32:48
  And anytime the Border Patrol seizes drugs from the
• 32:50
  checkpoints, the DEA responds and we're the investigative body
• 32:54
  of those drugs. So even though.
• 32:57
  You're not. You're not actually confiscating
• 32:58
  yourself. There's Border Patrol and the
• 33:00
  Border Patrol calls you once they found something.
• 33:03
  Yeah, so, so, so they stop a vehicle, let's say it has, I
• 33:06
  don't know, 1000 lbs of cocaine in it.
• 33:09
  So they'll, they'll apprehend the, the, the suspect or
• 33:12
  suspects and then the vehicle and the drugs themselves.
• 33:16
  And then we'll respond. We'll actually take custody of,
• 33:19
  of everything the, the suspect, you know, the, the drugs and
• 33:24
  we'll process that and then we'll work the investigation.
• 33:27
  So even though our office was geographically in Corpus
• 33:30
  Christi, most of our time was spent down it further in South
• 33:34
  Texas along the border. So right in the McAllen area,
• 33:37
  most of our investigations led to the McAllen area or Mexico.
• 33:41
  Yeah, yeah, I do a lot of business actually in McAllen.
• 33:43
  A lot of Mexican customers come to the states to buy ultrasound
• 33:46
  equipment. Yeah, it's very funny.
• 33:49
  What do you think? The first time I ever went down
• 33:51
  there, I, I had this, you know, there's going to be cactuses and
• 33:55
  it was going to be some Wild West town, right?
• 33:57
  And I go down there and McAllen is a large area like.
• 34:01
  Like, I actually haven't. I haven't been there myself.
• 34:03
  It's funny, I I haven't been to McAllen.
• 34:05
  I've been to, I've been to San Antonio, Austin, Houston,
• 34:11
  Beaumont, I've been to, I've been to one or two other places,
• 34:17
  but I haven't been to McAllen yet.
• 34:22
  I want to go. Or not.
• 34:23
  It's actually, I mean, I prefer all the other places you told me
• 34:27
  that you've been to before. I go to McAllen.
• 34:29
  But McAllen is not some little tiny, you know, hillbilly town.
• 34:33
  I mean, it's pretty built up, pretty good.
• 34:35
  I mean, there's, you're not going to go without food
• 34:37
  shopping, you know, there, there's everything down there.
• 34:40
  It's, it's a nice little area. And the people are wonderful,
• 34:42
  too, you know, and. And on both sides of the border,
• 34:44
  for that matter. Yeah.
• 34:45
  But definitely, definitely, I found that for sure.
• 34:47
  But so I understand how Corpus Christi and the host like South
• 34:52
  Texas area is big for DEA geographically especially,
• 34:56
  right. Like if you're planning to bring
• 34:58
  to smuggle drugs or to sell or to distribute, I'm sure that's
• 35:01
  one of the main places to go. Little Rock and Springfield are
• 35:04
  far more inland and have a lot less, which seem to be a lot
• 35:08
  less geographical test. I feel like no.
• 35:11
  No, the highway systems. My first assignment was Little
• 35:14
  Rock, so I spent about 10 years in Little Rock.
• 35:16
  And how'd you like it there? I actually loved it.
• 35:18
  You know The funny thing about that?
• 35:20
  I was in Missouri, in Joplin, MO, if you look at the maps, not
• 35:23
  too far away from Arkansas. And I'm telling you, I avoided
• 35:26
  Arkansas. Like it's the play.
• 35:27
  I just thought, oh, no, they're a bunch of, you know, rednecks
• 35:30
  down there and no way, right. And when I had an option to go
• 35:33
  to Little Rock, I'm like, it's only four hours away from Joplin
• 35:37
  and I had a lot of friends there.
• 35:39
  You know, I'd started building a pretty big footprint there and,
• 35:42
  and I looked into it. I thought, this looks like A and
• 35:44
  no one in my Academy class had any interest at all going to
• 35:47
  Arkansas because it was the same thing.
• 35:49
  It was the stereotypes, you know.
• 35:50
  And let me tell you first of all, that what a amazing place
• 35:54
  that was. The whole entire state.
• 35:56
  I mean, Arkansas is really a little gem that people, you
• 35:58
  know, people laugh at, but but the quality of life is pretty
• 36:01
  darn good. Little Rock's got some issues
• 36:04
  with crime and things like that. But, you know, I could make that
• 36:06
  argument in in a lot of, in a lot of cities.
• 36:10
  But as far as the drug work, as far as being a DEA special agent
• 36:14
  there, our highway system was very unique.
• 36:16
  We had a highway that cut in through Texarkana, which is on
• 36:19
  the bottom left of the state from Texas.
• 36:22
  And, and then we also had, you know, Hwy. 30 and Hwy. 40.
• 36:27
  Yeah. And, and so we had one that just
• 36:28
  kind of cut right across the state.
• 36:30
  And I mean, you can, we could have cases that tied back to
• 36:34
  Arizona or California. We have cases that tied into
• 36:38
  into Texas and the cartels operate in certain areas of
• 36:42
  Mexico. So so it was pretty cool in a
• 36:44
  sense that we were working a lot of different type of
• 36:46
  investigations weren't just, you know, it wasn't just like when
• 36:49
  in South Texas where I was in Corpus and along the border, it
• 36:52
  was primarily the Gulf Cartel in the Los CentOS.
• 36:55
  And I'm not complaining. It was huge eye opening learning
• 36:58
  experience for me. But in Arkansas, because of the,
• 37:01
  the, the highway system, the traffickers that were coming
• 37:04
  through, I mean, we were working investigations that were
• 37:06
  completely different from each other, which.
• 37:08
  Was right. So, so where?
• 37:09
  Where are people coming from? Again, Arizona, New Mexico, you
• 37:15
  know, California, Texas. And these were, they're on their
• 37:19
  way to distribute to other places and you've patched them
• 37:22
  in the middle. Yeah, they're on the way to wow,
• 37:26
  you know, Chicago, Detroit, all these major cities.
• 37:29
  So, you know, if sometimes we do control deliveries on these
• 37:32
  seizures, sometimes we would just have investigations that we
• 37:35
  would link, you know, from the source to the destination.
• 37:38
  And that would mean we would travel to, you know, Miami, we
• 37:41
  would travel to to New York. We travel to, you know, Chicago,
• 37:44
  these big cities where the drugs were were going.
• 37:46
  So. And then just locally, I mean,
• 37:48
  we had a lot of what we call local or regional impact
• 37:51
  investigations. So this is when we're just, you
• 37:53
  know, buying dope and, you know, maybe working undercover and,
• 37:57
  and quite, I mean, it was it was great.
• 37:58
  It was a great experience. It was a lot more than I thought
• 38:00
  it was going to be. Would you?
• 38:03
  Spend a decade there. I did.
• 38:05
  I spent 10 years there. I was in, I was not in
• 38:07
  management. So at this point now, I had
• 38:09
  about 15 years in law enforcement total and I decided
• 38:13
  to to go into management and that's when I went to Texas.
• 38:16
  I see. OK, So what?
• 38:17
  So you were. So what was your what's being a
• 38:20
  special agent like on the ground while you were there as opposed
• 38:25
  to management? Well, you have a lot of freedom.
• 38:29
  You know, first of all, there's no uniform and you wear jeans to
• 38:32
  work. And, you know, you have a lot of
• 38:33
  freedom to, you're working in teams and you have bosses, but
• 38:37
  you really do have a lot of freedom to to really push your
• 38:39
  investigations in the ways that you want to push them, you know?
• 38:43
  Do they do they present the case to you or do they say, hey, go
• 38:46
  find your go get out there and find what you can find?
• 38:50
  Go out there and find them. And early on I didn't, you know,
• 38:53
  I was like, how, how the heck am I going to do that?
• 38:54
  Because I didn't have any relationships.
• 38:55
  I wasn't from the state, wasn't anybody there.
• 38:58
  So I got in my car and I drove to sheriff's offices and I drove
• 39:01
  the police departments and I'd introduce myself to whoever I
• 39:04
  could. It was whether it was the
• 39:05
  sheriff, whether it's the chief, whether it was just the Sergeant
• 39:07
  on duty. I mean, and I shook hands and
• 39:09
  gave my business card and, and, and just tried to build
• 39:13
  relationships. And sometimes people were
• 39:14
  skeptical, you know, like who's this fed coming in our building,
• 39:17
  right? And then sometimes people said,
• 39:20
  yeah, that's awesome. We do have a problem here.
• 39:21
  And I'm, you know, it's nice that you're here.
• 39:23
  And, and I end up building some amazing relationships that way
• 39:25
  and, and, and working some incredible investigations
• 39:29
  because of these relationships. So, and then, but every so often
• 39:33
  you might have a supervisor or, or something happens and, and
• 39:36
  that comes, you know, there's a, there's a file and then someone
• 39:40
  supervisor puts it on your desk and says, Hey, look into this.
• 39:42
  You know, that happens as well. But for the most part, you
• 39:45
  really do have a lot of freedom and.
• 39:48
  Do you prefer the direction or do you prefer the freedom?
• 39:51
  I prefer the freedom personally. I love that.
• 39:54
  I I love, I love building those relationships.
• 39:58
  I think that's one of the most important thing that we can do.
• 40:00
  And I love collaborating and working with those agencies and
• 40:06
  using all of our resources to, to, to better the investigation.
• 40:11
  So yeah, absolutely prefer that. Yeah, it's cool.
• 40:14
  It's funny because I've found actually through teaching, it's
• 40:17
  really interesting that certain students of mine, I used to
• 40:20
  think that certain students are better or worse writers.
• 40:23
  And some of them are, of course, but some of them it turns out
• 40:26
  function better with like, you know, I'd be like, here's a
• 40:30
  creative prompt. It's it's raining on a
• 40:32
  Wednesday. Go, you know, and write, write,
• 40:34
  write for 10 minutes. Go do it.
• 40:36
  And some students needed the directions.
• 40:38
  No, I just need some more structure and some more
• 40:40
  directions of format. And some people, students are
• 40:43
  like, I can write anything I want.
• 40:44
  I'm like anything you want. And they just take off with it.
• 40:46
  You know, they just and, and the places they go are incredible
• 40:48
  and creative and fun. And I'm sure that applies to
• 40:51
  everything. You know, there's certain people
• 40:52
  that are more like, hey, let me just go see what I can do.
• 40:55
  And, you know, give me, give me a job and I'll figure out my
• 40:58
  way, my own way of doing it. And then there are people that
• 41:01
  like, you know, being told, OK, here's exactly what you're
• 41:03
  supposed to do over here and then follow the step over there.
• 41:06
  So do you do like, did you do what people do?
• 41:08
  Like the shows you go to, bars you see you, or wherever you
• 41:12
  examine. Like what's happening?
• 41:13
  Like what do you do? Well, your life changes when you
• 41:17
  do go. You're in public, you know,
• 41:18
  your, your back's always to the wall.
• 41:20
  You're always looking at, you know, potential threats, you
• 41:22
  know, things like that. But as far as working or trying
• 41:25
  to initiate investigations, I mean, sometimes really it's just
• 41:29
  the relationships, you know, you know, so and so we'll call from
• 41:32
  a Police Department, say, hey, we just, we just popped a guy
• 41:34
  with, you know, a pound of meth and, you know, we think he might
• 41:37
  cooperate. Would you be interested in this?
• 41:39
  And, you know, absolutely. You know, even if he doesn't
• 41:41
  cooperate, let me come in and take a look.
• 41:43
  Let me see if I can, you know, exploit the telephones and or
• 41:47
  communication devices and you know, and help you out and
• 41:49
  figure out, you know, where the dope's coming from, where it's
• 41:51
  going and and if there's any Co conspirators involved and how we
• 41:55
  can put them all in jail. Awesome, That's so cool.
• 41:57
  So it's almost like leads, almost like sales, you know,
• 41:59
  like you got to get leads and you got to get, you know, you
• 42:01
  got to get customers that are going to call you and say, hey,
• 42:03
  I'm interested in this and and then you got to step up and
• 42:06
  close the deal. All right.
• 42:08
  Yeah, right. I mean, that's, that's, it's
• 42:09
  important. I and I know I'm talking about
• 42:11
  relationship a lot, but I think that's critical for sure.
• 42:14
  It's critical in any profession for that matter.
• 42:16
  Definitely, you know, and for me that was really what helped me
• 42:18
  was, you know, even though I like the freedom, it was the
• 42:22
  freedom would start because of because of, you know, that phone
• 42:25
  call quite often, not all the time, but quite often.
• 42:28
  Definitely. So then they then you get called
• 42:32
  after 10 years. Hey, we want you to move to
• 42:34
  management. Or how'd that go?
• 42:37
  So in within DEA you have a yeah, that's your option.
• 42:40
  I made a decision to go into management.
• 42:43
  I liked working cases, but I just, you know, I just made that
• 42:46
  decision and, and there's a process.
• 42:49
  You have to take a test, you have to have some support from
• 42:52
  your, you know, your current management.
• 42:53
  And I did that and had the support and I got selected.
• 42:57
  And then you apply for positions and I applied for a couple
• 42:59
  positions and, and I got selected to, to go to Corpus
• 43:03
  Christi. And, and that was my first
• 43:06
  formal. I mean, I had been in an acting
• 43:08
  capacity, you know, like when your, when your boss is out,
• 43:11
  you're the boss, you know? Yeah.
• 43:13
  But now I'm now I'm a supervisor and now I'm in South Texas.
• 43:16
  I'm there for almost 7 years and I have a very high performing,
• 43:20
  high function team, great men and women and was very fortunate
• 43:26
  to to. I thought that none of your
• 43:29
  people got hurt in the line of duty, that no one under your
• 43:32
  management got hurt in the line of duty.
• 43:34
  That is incredible. That's how do you do that.
• 43:38
  Yeah, I'm just something I'm proud of.
• 43:40
  I, I, you know I'm in. It's got to be rare, no?
• 43:45
  No, it's not as rare as, as probably it sounds.
• 43:51
  I mean, it happens, you know, we, we, we have a dangerous job
• 43:54
  and people do get hurt. But you know, I, I think
• 43:58
  something that we did really well was, was risk management,
• 44:02
  you know, operational planning. That's something that DEA does
• 44:05
  very, very well. And it's interesting, maybe I'm
• 44:10
  going off in a tangent here, but, but I've had folks that
• 44:15
  say, I don't know if what I did at the DEA is, is marketable in
• 44:20
  the civilian world. I'm like, right, first of all,
• 44:23
  think about what you did when it comes to crisis management, you
• 44:26
  know, operational planning. You know, that was a Tuesday
• 44:30
  afternoon for us, you know, Fortune 500 company, if
• 44:33
  something happens, that's a big deal, right?
• 44:35
  When something bad happens and now all all hands on deck are
• 44:39
  all reacting to it. And DEA literally that was oh,
• 44:42
  that's Wednesday. I wonder what tomorrow's is
• 44:43
  going to be. So you just got used to it,
• 44:45
  right And not. And I know it sounds arrogant.
• 44:48
  I'm not trying to to to be cocky about it.
• 44:50
  I'm just, that's just something we were doing a lot, right.
• 44:53
  We had to think about, you know, not only our, our own safety,
• 44:55
  but the public safety, you know, if we're working with informants
• 44:58
  or we're even the bad guys, you know, we, we can't just, you
• 45:01
  know, it's not the Wild West. We can't just go and shoot them,
• 45:03
  right? I mean, we, we, we want people
• 45:05
  to go home and save all of us, you know, and, and bad guys
• 45:07
  included. And we want them to go to jail,
• 45:10
  but we don't want them to. We don't want them to to get
• 45:13
  hurt. Yeah, and it's better if they
• 45:16
  don't start to begin with, you know?
• 45:17
  You know. So, so yeah, absolutely.
• 45:21
  I think that was something that we did very, very, very well and
• 45:24
  I'm proud of that. And, and, and I think that's
• 45:26
  something that that is marketable and that is
• 45:29
  transferable in the civilian or afterlife, you know, after the
• 45:33
  EPA career. Definitely.
• 45:35
  And when it comes to like institutional drug abuse, right,
• 45:40
  Like this book that we were reading about in terms of sorry,
• 45:43
  like American cartel and the opioid crisis and doctors
• 45:46
  prescribing medications to people, what can be like, is it
• 45:51
  what can be done from the DEA? Does DEA say like, listen, this
• 45:56
  is just within the like the, the within the law, like they're
• 45:58
  allowed to do it and that's what I can do.
• 46:00
  Or are you trying to come up with plans to kind of prevent
• 46:02
  that? Or were you, you know, is that,
• 46:04
  is that a, is that a conversation even?
• 46:06
  It is a conversation and it's very delicate and political. 1
• 46:11
  So here's I'm retired, so I can pretty much answer.
• 46:14
  And yeah, if you look at the current opioid crisis, it really
• 46:19
  started because of the Pharmaceutical industry period.
• 46:22
  Literally, if you go back and I when I train, I talk about this,
• 46:25
  I spend the first part of my presentation talking about the
• 46:28
  historical context of what happened.
• 46:30
  You look at the 1990s with Purdue primarily and Oxycontin,
• 46:35
  what it did, you know, we changed to pain management in
• 46:38
  this country. So back to your original
• 46:40
  question, we, we DEA and the federal government is involved
• 46:43
  in, you know, regulations, prescription, we, we have what
• 46:48
  we call quotas. So pharmaceutical manufacturers,
• 46:52
  you know, they can't just say I have a pill here and I'm going
• 46:54
  to make a trillion of them tomorrow.
• 46:56
  I mean, you know, there's so many they can do and release
• 46:59
  things like that. The problem is, is they
• 47:01
  constantly put pressure on, you know, their, their congressmen
• 47:05
  and their senators because they, they can financially do that,
• 47:08
  right? I was going to ask about their
• 47:09
  revolving door. Yeah.
• 47:10
  Oh, my goodness. And then So what do they do when
• 47:12
  they come to, even though we're part of the executive branch,
• 47:14
  they come to us and say, hey, you need to raise your quotas.
• 47:17
  And unfortunately, I've seen DEA just do it.
• 47:22
  And it's, it's disheartening, you know, and and you know, and
• 47:25
  then, then at the end of the day, who gets blamed?
• 47:27
  All DEA just let it happen, Right.
• 47:29
  Yeah. Yeah, well, when the when the
• 47:31
  senator who controls your purse strings, controls your budget,
• 47:34
  is telling you to increase the the and soften the regulations
• 47:41
  and allow the these companies to do more, which they shouldn't.
• 47:45
  And if you do, because you pretty much have to, I mean, I'm
• 47:47
  just, that's just the reality of it.
• 47:49
  And no one at DEA Active will tell you that.
• 47:51
  But I'm telling you I'm now I'm. Retired.
• 47:53
  It's funny that's. That's the reality of it.
• 47:57
  Well, first of all, I don't, I mean I don't, I don't not only
• 48:00
  do I not make the association when I think of the opioid
• 48:03
  abuse, you know, and I think of the opioid crisis, I don't blame
• 48:07
  DEA and I don't know many people, you know, I haven't seen
• 48:10
  that really that sentiment manifest in my world.
• 48:14
  Yeah, you know, there are people that I didn't mean to cut you
• 48:18
  off. Good.
• 48:18
  Please, please, by all means, yeah, the people that.
• 48:21
  No, I, I, I, there are people that do so, so let me back you
• 48:24
  up. But I kind of hinted at it a
• 48:26
  little bit. So in the, in the mid 1990s, we
• 48:29
  added a fifth vital sign in the medical community pain, right?
• 48:35
  And that had a profound impact, you know, because we were
• 48:39
  convinced, convinced that opioids were not non addictive.
• 48:45
  And they would say things like less than 1% of people become.
• 48:48
  Addicted. I remember that.
• 48:48
  Yeah, sure, that was all. Completely garbage it was based
• 48:51
  on. Like cigarettes aren't
• 48:52
  addicting, right? Or they have, or they haven't
• 48:54
  found that cigarettes 'cause that that cause lung damage or
• 48:57
  whatever it was. Yeah, exactly.
• 48:59
  So so so they they were led to believe that this stuff was non
• 49:03
  addictive. So what do we do?
• 49:04
  We literally went from prior to 1996.
• 49:06
  Let me put this in perspective. If you went to, if I'm a doctor
• 49:09
  and you came to me and you said, Hey, I'm in pain, I need some
• 49:11
  opioids, I'm going to look at you and I'm going to say, OK,
• 49:14
  where's the bone sticking out? Like, prove to me you're in
• 49:17
  pain. Like, and I'm not saying that
• 49:18
  you couldn't game the system or trick me because obviously that
• 49:21
  happens as well. But for the most part,
• 49:23
  statistically speaking, at least, I'm going to, I'm going
• 49:26
  to look for some objective way to, to, to measure it, agree and
• 49:30
  measure that you're actually actually in pain.
• 49:32
  You need an opioid. After 1996 that went out the
• 49:37
  door. It went out the window.
• 49:39
  I mean, it literally just was thrown out the window and it was
• 49:42
  like, oh, you're in pain. Oh, here's 30 pills, here's 60
• 49:44
  pills. So, you know, you had your
• 49:45
  wisdom teeth taken out. You probably went home with 60
• 49:47
  hydrocodone pills, no questions asked.
• 49:50
  You know, your, your son or daughter had a Little League
• 49:53
  baseball injury. You know, maybe they hurt their
• 49:55
  elbow pitching or something like that.
• 49:57
  One home with 306090 pills, no questions asked.
• 50:01
  So the pendulum shifted from from very objective ways to
• 50:05
  measure pain to just give it to everyone.
• 50:08
  So what happened? We saw this widespread abuse and
• 50:10
  people started dying from legal opioids dying and, and, and then
• 50:15
  the number of opioids just rose, rose, rose, rose.
• 50:18
  And the height was in 2012. And I think I'm right on the
• 50:22
  statistic. It was 81.3 prescriptions per
• 50:25
  100 people in the United States, not 100,000, not 100 million,
• 50:28
  but 100 people. So there were 81 opioid
• 50:31
  prescriptions per 100 people in the United States by two. 1000
• 50:34
  It's one of the scariest sets I've heard in a long time.
• 50:37
  Yeah, and it's insanity. It's insanity.
• 50:40
  It really is. And and, and and drugs like
• 50:43
  Oxycontin. By 2004, it was the most abused
• 50:45
  farm school on the street, You know, in a law enforcement
• 50:47
  community. We used to call it heroin in a
• 50:49
  pill. But it is, though, chemically
• 50:51
  right. Yeah.
• 50:52
  And then the pro bills, all the the pain management clinics that
• 50:55
  are still that are still popped up everywhere.
• 50:57
  All over Florida, actually. Started.
• 50:59
  We have a program now it's prescription drug monitoring
• 51:01
  program. If you, you and I go to the
• 51:03
  doctor right now and say we're in pain, they're going to run
• 51:05
  our names in the system, make sure we're not doctor shopping.
• 51:07
  That exists because of what was happening.
• 51:09
  To correct. Yes, I read that that that was
• 51:11
  the book too. Yeah, absolutely.
• 51:13
  Yeah, the book, yeah, I can't wait to read it.
• 51:15
  But that's it's, I'm familiar with a lot of it.
• 51:17
  But so now, like I said, 2012 was the height.
• 51:21
  So now people are like, look, we and then people started turning
• 51:24
  to heroin because heroin is also an opioid.
• 51:27
  And if they couldn't get enough from their doctor, if they
• 51:29
  didn't feel like they're getting enough from their doctor, they
• 51:31
  want to hear it heroin. And we now know through a lot of
• 51:34
  research that about 80% of all heroin users started with legal
• 51:39
  opioid prescriptions. Let me repeat that again.
• 51:41
  Make sure that's clear. Anyone who to anyone who thinks
• 51:45
  I'm might may have said that incorrectly.
• 51:48
  Up to 80% of heroin users started with legal opioid
• 51:54
  prescriptions. That's an incredible thought or
• 51:59
  statistic. Well, I mean, I don't know what
• 52:02
  else would get people to take care of it.
• 52:04
  Like, I don't know, I don't know what like to welcome to somebody
• 52:07
  like, hey man, you want to do some heroin?
• 52:08
  You're like, no, I don't think so.
• 52:09
  You know, like it's not the same thing as taking a puff from AJ
• 52:12
  or having a shot, you know, but like.
• 52:14
  Good point. And that really started a lot of
• 52:17
  them. And so then a lot of folks were
• 52:18
  looking at law enforcement, specifically the DEA saying,
• 52:20
  hey, we got to do something. So that's when we finally
• 52:23
  started to regulate the the pharmaceuticals.
• 52:25
  True, because because even by 2013 our federal government
• 52:28
  says, Hey, we have a problem with with prescription opioid,
• 52:32
  like it's, it's crazy. And we actually declared it an
• 52:35
  emergency within the federal government.
• 52:36
  A lot of people don't know that since 2013.
• 52:39
  So we started to regulate it. So back to your original
• 52:41
  question, some people are like, shame on DEA, shame on the
• 52:44
  federal government for regulating it because then it
• 52:46
  they a lot of people believe that that forced people into
• 52:50
  heroin. What?
• 52:52
  And I would push back on that and say, actually they were
• 52:54
  already at heroin. We saw heroin spike.
• 52:57
  We hadn't seen that type of spike since the Vietnam War.
• 53:00
  So I'm sure there were some people out there that the
• 53:02
  regulations made, you know, getting legal opioids more
• 53:05
  difficult. And they probably did turn the
• 53:07
  heroin, but that process already started.
• 53:11
  So I'm not trying to protect the.
• 53:12
  Yeah. For sure, for sure, for sure,
• 53:13
  for sure, totally. Especially when you, especially
• 53:16
  with that stat back-to-back you up with that fact that 80% of
• 53:19
  people weren't interested in heroin before they started
• 53:23
  opioids. That means that something
• 53:24
  started somewhere, you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 53:28
  And that's, you know, when you asked me earlier, what kind of
• 53:30
  drugs did I work? You know, early on, like I said,
• 53:32
  it was marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine.
• 53:34
  And then we started working heroin cases, you know, and we
• 53:37
  were all kind of literally scratching our heads at the time
• 53:39
  going, you know, and I loved it because I hadn't worked any
• 53:41
  heroin cases up to then. And I was like, what the Hell's,
• 53:43
  what the heck's going on, right? And, and now we know, you know,
• 53:46
  now we know what was going on. So I'm actually excited to talk
• 53:50
  to a former agent about this because I, I found out, I found
• 53:56
  out about a month or two ago from a good buddy of mine that
• 54:02
  apparently just because something like cannabis is state
• 54:08
  legal does not mean that it's federally legal.
• 54:11
  And that if there was, if I was sitting on the street in
• 54:14
  California or Oregon or New York or Illinois and I was smoking AJ
• 54:19
  and a fed could hypothetically, and I heard they're not going to
• 54:23
  bother because it's such a pain in the pain in the butt to deal
• 54:27
  with, but could hypothetically come over and arrest me for
• 54:30
  that. Is that the case?
• 54:32
  Yeah, so, so marijuana, a Schedule 1 drug under the
• 54:39
  federal government's statutes. And yes, so it, yeah, it's, it's
• 54:44
  illegal. So how can the states make it
• 54:46
  legal? Well, that's a whole state
• 54:49
  versus federal, state rights versus federal rights.
• 54:53
  I can tell you why I don't like marijuana though.
• 54:56
  Sure, let's hear it. I'd love to hear.
• 54:58
  It THC levels, so a lot of folks marijuana the THC and marijuana
• 55:03
  THC is the psychoactive substance.
• 55:05
  That's what's like that what makes you high, That is what
• 55:07
  makes you high. And the THC levels, I went to
• 55:11
  high school in the 1980's, the THC level in the 1980s was about
• 55:16
  2% on the high end, you know, in the 1990, yeah, 1990s, two to
• 55:22
  4%. You know, by the early 2000s,
• 55:25
  four, five, 6%. And then you see this increase
• 55:28
  to where they are now. The average THC levels in
• 55:31
  marijuana now about 2530%. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:36
  So, so when I hear people, especially parents who will tell
• 55:38
  me all the time it's just weed, I hear that a lot.
• 55:41
  Just weed, quote UN quote. You know, I smoked it when I was
• 55:44
  in high school. What's wrong with my son or
• 55:46
  daughter smoking it and I have to correct?
• 55:48
  It wasn't getting short term memory loss, that's why.
• 55:52
  There's a lot of problems associated with it, but the end
• 55:56
  of the day it's not the same weed.
• 55:58
  If you could go into a time machine and grab the marijuana
• 56:01
  from the 70s and 80s and maybe even the 90s, okay, then it is
• 56:04
  just weed, you know? But but the, the marijuana that
• 56:08
  especially young people are smoking now is not even in the
• 56:11
  same ballpark. I mean, literally, it's not.
• 56:14
  They ought to call it something else because it's not even, it's
• 56:16
  not the same thing it was 1015 years ago.
• 56:19
  I mean, it's if you smoke one marijuana cigarette right now,
• 56:23
  that's like smoking 1213 marijuana joints 15 years ago.
• 56:28
  It's literally that ratio. So, So what are we seeing now?
• 56:32
  All the things that was supposed to, you know, the, the stress
• 56:34
  and anxiety, all, you know, the sleeping, all that stuff.
• 56:37
  We're actually seeing those things increase, especially in
• 56:39
  young people, you know, the trigger for psychosis.
• 56:42
  We know that. And then I talked to, you know,
• 56:46
  because of my work with only two MGI, talked to a lot of folks in
• 56:49
  the treatment and recovery community.
• 56:51
  And, you know, the biggest client that they work with,
• 56:56
  young people in marijuana, they call it cannabis, same thing.
• 56:59
  Marijuana. Yeah.
• 57:00
  Cannabis disorder, which is marijuana addiction.
• 57:03
  Yeah. You know, do they work with meth
• 57:05
  and coke and other stuff? Yeah, absolutely.
• 57:07
  But marijuana, young people, number one client, I believe it.
• 57:12
  And that's across the United States.
• 57:14
  I believe that. I believe that I the reason why
• 57:17
  I believe that it it could potentially be so dangerous is
• 57:22
  because it's because of the no big deal attitude about it.
• 57:26
  You know, there are things that have big deal attitudes about it
• 57:30
  that kind of a ready like, you know, again, you tell me I'm
• 57:33
  not. I was never in my life
• 57:35
  interested in like an upper like opioids or coke or anything like
• 57:37
  that. Like if you, like you told me
• 57:39
  like I like no man, like I want to, I want to leave that stuff
• 57:43
  alone, you know, And like, it's scary.
• 57:45
  It scares the heck out of me, you know, And even when I was
• 57:47
  younger, when I was in high school, I remember how it used
• 57:48
  to be deathly, deathly terrified of, of cannabis because I had
• 57:53
  friends that were in high school that were cool.
• 57:55
  And they'd, you know, they'd all all these girls would love them
• 57:58
  and they were good at sports and then they'd start smoking and
• 58:00
  all, the next thing, you know, like all they're interested in
• 58:02
  doing, you know, is smoking. And I was like, no, I can't do
• 58:04
  this. That scares the heck out of me.
• 58:07
  And then it became a lot more just like it only became like
• 58:10
  drinking, like casual, like as casual as drinking.
• 58:12
  And you know, probably even, I'm sure we're, and we're seeing
• 58:15
  with downswing in alcohol consumption.
• 58:18
  I'm sure that's going to. I'm sure there's a direct
• 58:20
  correlation between how many more people are smoking, are
• 58:23
  smoking weed now as opposed to people that are not drinking.
• 58:27
  Yeah, we're actually seeing a down a downturn in both young
• 58:32
  people really, which is 1. I don't know if you ever look at
• 58:35
  Yeah, monitoring the future study is a is a long term
• 58:39
  research that's been going on at University of Michigan.
• 58:41
  I mean, they probably doing it for 2530 years.
• 58:43
  And every year they, they really dive into drugs and alcohol by
• 58:48
  young people and they, and their highlight is 8th grade, 10th
• 58:50
  grade and, and high school seniors.
• 58:53
  And we actually are at historic lows right now.
• 58:55
  Even even when you throw in, even when you throw in
• 58:57
  marijuana. So which is good.
• 59:00
  So we actually see, you know, are seeing a decrease in both
• 59:03
  even smoking, which is wonderful as well.
• 59:06
  Yeah, we're seeing an increase in things like vaping and and.
• 59:11
  That stresses me out too, but I can't can't do much about that,
• 59:15
  unfortunately. I think.
• 59:16
  I think a lot of this stuff comes down to education and
• 59:19
  these kind of conversations. I agree 100%.
• 59:22
  That's one of the reasons why I do what I do is education.
• 59:24
  And I know it's maybe cliche to say, but you know, information
• 59:27
  is power and I really believe that.
• 59:30
  And, and there's also you have to take that information and
• 59:34
  apply it and apply it in your life to, to make.
• 59:36
  It that's the hard part. That's the hard part.
• 59:39
  Exactly. So those are the tools and the
• 59:41
  things that we need to be encouraging in young people.
• 59:44
  So they now they have the information, now how are we
• 59:46
  going to make it applicable in your life?
• 59:47
  How are we going to, how are we going to execute these?
• 59:50
  Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 59:51
  So, so let's oh, sorry, the last thing before we get to the last
• 59:56
  thing before we get to Springfield teaching and all
• 1:00:00
  that fun stuff, because I'm excited to talk to you about
• 1:00:02
  that too. I mean, China's clearly behind
• 1:00:07
  defence in all crisis as far as, as far as we know, right?
• 1:00:11
  Is this this is, does the government consider, does DA
• 1:00:14
  look at this like an act of war? Is this like, is this soft war?
• 1:00:18
  Is it because? Again, like I forgot this.
• 1:00:20
  I thought the stat was that more people had died from fentanyl
• 1:00:24
  overdose than like all 25 years of the Middle East war.
• 1:00:27
  You know, like more the more troops have died in the Middle
• 1:00:30
  East, you know, for the last 25 years, maybe even since Vietnam.
• 1:00:34
  I don't remember what the exact stat was.
• 1:00:36
  Is that what it was? Yeah, I know Vietnam is one of
• 1:00:40
  the ones I've seen for sure. And that's true.
• 1:00:41
  I mean, like I said, if you look at the 2023, a hundred and 7543
• 1:00:46
  people died and 75,000 because of 1 drug fentanyl.
• 1:00:50
  And then like I said, 2024 data is not complete yet, but we
• 1:00:53
  think it's going to be about 8082 thousand.
• 1:00:55
  And again, if you dive deeper into those numbers, I guarantee
• 1:00:57
  it's going to be about 75% because of fentanyl.
• 1:01:01
  So fentanyl, the, the chemicals to make fentanyl come from China
• 1:01:04
  right now there, India, there's some European countries as well.
• 1:01:09
  But China by far, number one, absolutely controls the the
• 1:01:12
  chemical trade. Yeah.
• 1:01:14
  And they sell the majority of that to the cartels, right?
• 1:01:19
  I mean, they'll sell it to anyone.
• 1:01:20
  You and I can go online right now and buy that stuff, but
• 1:01:24
  their number one customer is the cartels.
• 1:01:27
  Within the cartels, it's usually the Sinaloa Cartel or the CJNG
• 1:01:32
  cartel, Jalisco New Generation, and they'll take the chemicals
• 1:01:37
  to put them on the cargo ships. They get transported to to
• 1:01:42
  Mexico, right into the ports, which unfortunately the cartels
• 1:01:46
  control a lot of corruption. Sure, you know, just a lot of
• 1:01:49
  control. And then from there they'll get
• 1:01:51
  trucked or, or transported to various locations throughout
• 1:01:54
  Mexico. And this is, by the way, not
• 1:01:57
  only for fentanyl but for methamphetamine as well.
• 1:02:00
  The drugs are mass produced and then they're smuggled into the
• 1:02:02
  United States. So yeah, do I consider this war?
• 1:02:06
  Absolutely. It Is it.
• 1:02:08
  Feels like it, right? It has to.
• 1:02:09
  Be it really does. And it's interesting if you look
• 1:02:11
  at Chinese history, China's history and China's cultural
• 1:02:15
  drugs. I actually talked about this
• 1:02:17
  when I talk about the opioid crisis and I kind of get people
• 1:02:20
  the historical context. You know, back in the 1700s,
• 1:02:24
  England was the first country that was really selling like raw
• 1:02:28
  opium to China and traded for porcelain, silk and tea.
• 1:02:34
  And it had a profound impact on China overnight.
• 1:02:37
  In fact, it's estimated that over the course of the next 100
• 1:02:41
  years, one in four males, that's 25% of the male population had
• 1:02:45
  developed an addiction to opium. And then what was happening with
• 1:02:49
  with China as they were growing because they weren't a
• 1:02:51
  superpower back then, right? They were they were they were
• 1:02:54
  immigrating places like the United States, you know,
• 1:02:56
  especially on the on the, you know, California and the West
• 1:03:00
  Coast. And what were they bringing with
• 1:03:02
  them? They were bringing with their
• 1:03:03
  opium, you know, so wow to. Start in the 1700s.
• 1:03:08
  Yeah. And then, you know, I don't know
• 1:03:09
  if you knew this, but I actually went to war twice over opium.
• 1:03:12
  1839, Yeah, 1839 was it was called the First Opium War, and
• 1:03:17
  I'm sure there's another official name for it as well.
• 1:03:20
  Sure, it's called the First Opium War.
• 1:03:21
  And they, they literally went to war with England over opium and
• 1:03:25
  they went again. They weren't.
• 1:03:26
  Powering and they said you just can't sell us this anymore.
• 1:03:29
  That's what they were saying. Well, they internally within
• 1:03:32
  those, I think it was Ji the Jing dynasty said, hey, this is
• 1:03:35
  bad. This is this is hurting our
• 1:03:37
  people. Stop.
• 1:03:39
  And of course England's like no, no, no, no, no, no, this is this
• 1:03:42
  is a big, you know, like in today's economy, there's
• 1:03:44
  probably like a billion dollar business, right?
• 1:03:46
  Just be like telling Amazon you can't you can't ship anymore,
• 1:03:49
  right? This is this is a huge deal.
• 1:03:51
  So two nations went to war with this and England, I'm sorry,
• 1:03:55
  China lost because they weren't a superpower.
• 1:03:57
  So they had to sign these very unfavorable treaties.
• 1:03:59
  And you know, and then Fast forward to 18551856 time period,
• 1:04:06
  they went to war a second time and this time it was against
• 1:04:09
  France and England. They teamed up against China and
• 1:04:12
  still China wasn't a superpower. And again, they lost and they
• 1:04:16
  had signed these unfavorable treaties.
• 1:04:17
  So to me, it's interesting that you have, I mean, you literally
• 1:04:20
  have, and this didn't stop until about 1910.
• 1:04:24
  So you have a couple 100 years of history within China of drugs
• 1:04:28
  just devastating this country. And then if you read about
• 1:04:31
  Chinese culture and and talk to people, it's fascinating
• 1:04:35
  because, I mean, now it's it's send as much as this poison to
• 1:04:39
  the West as you can to destroy it.
• 1:04:42
  Yeah, and I, I absolutely think it is.
• 1:04:44
  It's a, it's a form of a warfare.
• 1:04:46
  And and I don't, you know, I don't think the DEA looks at it
• 1:04:48
  like that. I think that's pretty hard to do
• 1:04:50
  not right. I don't think so.
• 1:04:52
  I I. Mean how can you not those
• 1:04:54
  numbers? I mean it if, if, if, if.
• 1:04:57
  I mean you know if. I mean, I mean, officially you
• 1:05:02
  and me absolutely, like you said, the numbers make sense,
• 1:05:05
  right? But officially that's, that
• 1:05:07
  can't be a stance that you know, that, that our government's
• 1:05:10
  going to put out there, but they are working behind the scenes.
• 1:05:13
  I can, I can assure you that to to to further regulate this and
• 1:05:16
  and to stop the flow of these chemicals.
• 1:05:19
  I hope I, I, I certainly hope so.
• 1:05:21
  I certainly hope so crazy. And it's, you know, and it's so
• 1:05:23
  interesting because I, I, I, you always hear about how big
• 1:05:25
  picture China is. You always hear about how
• 1:05:27
  they're always willing to play the long game.
• 1:05:29
  And that's really what enormous amount of their advantages, you
• 1:05:32
  know, like, you know, there's one president in that they feel
• 1:05:34
  like they can't work with. They'll just wait four years or
• 1:05:37
  eight years at most, you know. But, you know, GG Ping is not
• 1:05:40
  going anywhere for, you know, for a while and, you know, so,
• 1:05:44
  you know, so he could afford to wait it out.
• 1:05:46
  So I feel like it's so fascinating to see like this
• 1:05:48
  country got devastated, kept that long picture in mind, said,
• 1:05:52
  hey, we just, you know, this just happened to us.
• 1:05:54
  Let's do it. You know, this, this could be a
• 1:05:56
  great form of warfare. Yeah.
• 1:05:58
  This is that that's, that's crazy.
• 1:05:59
  It's really, really interesting. Great.
• 1:06:02
  So. Springfield, MO.
• 1:06:05
  Springfield, MO where you are now, right?
• 1:06:09
  Yeah. So, well, after I left, so Texas
• 1:06:13
  was my first supervisor job and then I went to Quantico,
• 1:06:17
  Virginia next. OK, so Quantico, Virginia is
• 1:06:21
  we're actually housed on the Marine Corps base and you have
• 1:06:24
  the FBI Academy at the DEA Academy.
• 1:06:26
  So I was there for about four years and I was in charge of
• 1:06:29
  motions. What's that?
• 1:06:31
  Teaching. Yeah, teaching.
• 1:06:34
  I was, I was, I was, I was in management.
• 1:06:37
  So I ran AI, ran a couple training units, but I did teach
• 1:06:41
  as often as I could. I had the opportunity definitely
• 1:06:44
  to, to teach more and I took advantage of it and I loved it,
• 1:06:47
  absolutely loved it. I was in charge of most in
• 1:06:49
  service training. So once you graduated from our
• 1:06:52
  Academy and you got assigned to, let's say, South Florida and you
• 1:06:56
  needed additional training and whatever, you know, you would
• 1:06:59
  come back to Quantico for, you know, whether it was conspiracy
• 1:07:01
  training, whether it was leadership training, whether it
• 1:07:03
  was, you know, whatever it is. And my unit handled 95% of that
• 1:07:07
  at the Academy. And then I actually got to start
• 1:07:10
  the leadership and training development unit for DEA at our
• 1:07:14
  Academy. And.
• 1:07:15
  Cool. Yeah, we were developing.
• 1:07:16
  Yeah, which was awesome. How'd that happen?
• 1:07:20
  Well, you know, it's funny, I I get there right?
• 1:07:22
  And I didn't, I was, I was replacing someone, I was
• 1:07:25
  replacing someone that actually promoted.
• 1:07:27
  So there was a vacancy. So I get in the spot.
• 1:07:29
  I'm like, all right, what's my job?
• 1:07:31
  And I look at this list of classes that we put on and it's
• 1:07:34
  pretty large list. And like I said, it's, it's most
• 1:07:36
  in service training with the exception of like firearms or,
• 1:07:39
  you know, medical or tactical. But if it's, if it has anything
• 1:07:42
  academic, it's probably going to be my unit.
• 1:07:45
  Well, on this list there's a bunch of leadership stuff.
• 1:07:47
  So I'm like, Oh my goodness, this is exactly what I want to
• 1:07:50
  do. And I'm like, I'm sure glad they
• 1:07:51
  didn't know that because they never put the right people in
• 1:07:53
  right job. They.
• 1:07:57
  Serendipity. Accident, right?
• 1:07:59
  It was the position it was open. So I go Oh my goodness.
• 1:08:02
  And then I realized that why are, I mean, we have a, if you,
• 1:08:05
  if you all the, you know, if you look at the chemists and the
• 1:08:07
  analysts and the, you know, the support staff and you look at
• 1:08:11
  DEA as a whole, probably, you know, 8-9 thousand people.
• 1:08:15
  And our leadership program is supposed to support all of them.
• 1:08:17
  And I thought, why are we doing this in conjunction with all
• 1:08:19
  these other classes, very important other classes.
• 1:08:22
  So I made the argument that we need to remove those and have
• 1:08:25
  our own leadership and development training unit.
• 1:08:28
  And thankfully I had the ear of, of my management and they were
• 1:08:32
  all wonderful people. And they made a decision to,
• 1:08:35
  yes, we could do that. And then this is the kicker
• 1:08:39
  though. I had to run my own old team and
• 1:08:41
  I had to run the new team. And then there was another team
• 1:08:45
  in the building that I end up getting.
• 1:08:46
  So I had three teams that I was running and they didn't change
• 1:08:50
  that until I left. When I left, they finally put
• 1:08:52
  supervisors over each team. So they gave you an enormous
• 1:08:56
  amount of work. What's that?
• 1:08:58
  So it's an enormous amount of work, you're saying?
• 1:09:01
  Yeah, but I loved every bit of it.
• 1:09:02
  I had amazing, amazing, amazing people who worked with me, who I
• 1:09:08
  got to work for, who I got to serve as their boss.
• 1:09:11
  And I loved it. I got to teach and train and
• 1:09:14
  that really, I've always had that interest.
• 1:09:17
  But that really just kind of ignited.
• 1:09:20
  How much more bureaucrat? Oh, sorry, please go ahead.
• 1:09:22
  No, no, please no, no. How much more bureaucratic is
• 1:09:25
  the management side than the agent side?
• 1:09:27
  Like do things move a lot more slowly when you're in management
• 1:09:31
  because you got to get approvals and you got to go through all
• 1:09:34
  these channels or? Yeah, it, it certainly can
• 1:09:38
  depending on what we're doing. But you can get things to flow
• 1:09:41
  pretty good. So I mean, obviously you're,
• 1:09:43
  you're handling some of the scheduling, some of the, you
• 1:09:46
  know, I mean, even some things like supplies, right?
• 1:09:48
  You know, let's say your computer bus, you know, breaks
• 1:09:51
  down. I need to get you a new
• 1:09:52
  computer, right? I mean, so you're handling all
• 1:09:54
  the administrative tasks, but more importantly, you're, you're
• 1:09:57
  helping, hopefully you're mentoring and developing people.
• 1:10:00
  You know, let's say you're brand new and you don't, you don't
• 1:10:03
  have that experience and vision yet, right?
• 1:10:06
  And maybe you can utilize some of mine and I can help you get
• 1:10:10
  on that path, give you that directive, you know, to to that
• 1:10:14
  push. You know, this is what you're
• 1:10:15
  going to write about. Like you were saying earlier,
• 1:10:16
  right? I love that.
• 1:10:20
  Sometimes depending on the, the, the direction of the
• 1:10:23
  investigation, things sometimes would slow down depending on
• 1:10:26
  how, you know, depending on what the what the investigator wanted
• 1:10:30
  to do. But for the most part, it wasn't
• 1:10:34
  AI mean the red tapes there, you know, the bureaucracies there.
• 1:10:37
  But it if, if you let that bother you, then you're never
• 1:10:41
  going to be effective. You just have to work with learn
• 1:10:43
  how to to manage it and deal with it and and you know, make
• 1:10:47
  it part of your workflow. Yeah, yeah, when I started, you
• 1:10:51
  know, when I was doing sales, my, both myself and my dad are
• 1:10:54
  terrible at the red tape stuff and bureaucratic stuff.
• 1:10:58
  Terrible, terrible, terrible at it, which is why we have a small
• 1:11:01
  business instead of working for a corporation or something like
• 1:11:03
  that, right. But you know, and, and, and my
• 1:11:06
  dad and I got an e-mail from, I forgot where it was either
• 1:11:10
  Columbia or Harvard or one of these universities looking for
• 1:11:13
  some medical equipment for the research.
• 1:11:15
  And, and they said, OK, but we need you to onboard.
• 1:11:18
  And they sent me a pack of like documents to fill out.
• 1:11:22
  And my dad and I look at each other and we're like, we, my dad
• 1:11:25
  is like, I can't tell you. I can't tell you how many deals
• 1:11:28
  I've lost because because of how many times that I've needed to
• 1:11:32
  do this and I just can't get myself to do the paperwork.
• 1:11:35
  Can you try to deal with it? And oh wow.
• 1:11:37
  And I looked at it and I'm like, I don't know.
• 1:11:40
  And then I'm like, wait a minute, all this is asking for
• 1:11:44
  is my e-mail address, my phone number and my W9.
• 1:11:46
  You know my W9 like 5 different times.
• 1:11:48
  I was like, this is easy, I could do this.
• 1:11:50
  And then next thing I know I'm doing all these forms for all
• 1:11:52
  these different universities. I know exactly how to onboard no
• 1:11:54
  problem. So I guess like you know what
• 1:11:56
  you're saying, if you let that bog you down, it stops you.
• 1:11:58
  But if you can figure out the way to navigate it, like like
• 1:12:01
  that famous incredible scene with the, with the insurance
• 1:12:04
  company where the guy goes, he's there.
• 1:12:06
  You're teaching them how to penetrate the bureaucracy.
• 1:12:08
  You're teaching the people how to, how to move their way
• 1:12:11
  through it. So yes, so the teaching the
• 1:12:15
  curriculum, what's so what's it? So is it a classroom setting?
• 1:12:18
  Is it, is it field work? Is it, is it, is it embodied?
• 1:12:23
  What's it like? It's, it's great.
• 1:12:26
  It's, it's, we have several classrooms at Quantico.
• 1:12:29
  We have a, you know, we have an Academy.
• 1:12:31
  We have a. Kind of test class, homework,
• 1:12:33
  slides, stuff like that. Well, for the in service
• 1:12:36
  training, not so much the test. A lot of, you know, PowerPoints
• 1:12:41
  handouts, you know, a lot of facilitated, especially for the
• 1:12:44
  leadership, a lot of facilitated discussion, which is what I
• 1:12:46
  prefer. I like, I love to talk.
• 1:12:48
  I don't want to just, you know, like when I'm talking about
• 1:12:50
  fentanyl, I have to go up in front of the class and show a
• 1:12:52
  lot of slides and kind of just kind of lead the, you know,
• 1:12:55
  leave the class, right? But leadership is to me, if
• 1:12:57
  we're learning from each other, the different perspectives in
• 1:12:59
  the room. So it's a little of everything.
• 1:13:03
  If if you're training the new, new, new cadets, you know, new
• 1:13:06
  agents, you know, then obviously you have to test them on that
• 1:13:09
  knowledge and make sure that they that they're, you know,
• 1:13:11
  they're comprehending it and it can pass and go on to the next
• 1:13:15
  stage. But for for my units, you know,
• 1:13:18
  when we look at in service, you know, it's more just enhancing
• 1:13:23
  their learning or to be introducing new principals, you
• 1:13:26
  know. Yeah, but it was a lot of fun.
• 1:13:28
  I can tell you. I I loved every second laws at
• 1:13:31
  Quantico. I really, really did.
• 1:13:33
  It was, it was first of all, I had some really good bosses.
• 1:13:38
  I was very thankful. All my all my bosses were
• 1:13:41
  really, really good guys. What was it like being back in
• 1:13:45
  Virginia for the first time in 20 years?
• 1:13:49
  That was actually fun too. I this traffic sucks, but
• 1:13:53
  thankfully I lived very close to Quantico, so my commute was 15
• 1:13:57
  minutes today. Every so often I have to go to
• 1:13:59
  Washington, DC for a meeting at our headquarters there.
• 1:14:02
  And in, in DC, we're actually on the Virginia side, right across
• 1:14:05
  the street from the Pentagon. There's, if you look at the
• 1:14:07
  Pentagon City Mall where the Macy's is, right across the
• 1:14:11
  Macy's, you'll see two large black buildings that are really,
• 1:14:13
  really tall. And that's DEA headquarters.
• 1:14:15
  And I enjoy going there because because sometimes I would see
• 1:14:19
  friends that, you know, that had worked with over the years and
• 1:14:21
  they would be stationed there, but I didn't enjoy driving
• 1:14:25
  there. Yes, I believe that.
• 1:14:28
  I believe that the. Traffic in Northern Virginia is
• 1:14:31
  horrific. And, and so I was so excited
• 1:14:34
  originally when I went back and I was like, I'm going to do this
• 1:14:36
  and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this.
• 1:14:37
  And then before long I'm like, it's going to take me an hour to
• 1:14:40
  go 1010 miles. I have no interest leaving my
• 1:14:43
  house right now, right? Definitely.
• 1:14:46
  Gotcha. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
• 1:14:49
  found that too, by the way, I even where I, where I grew up,
• 1:14:52
  you know, I mean, these places get so jam packed and you know,
• 1:14:55
  I went back and I'm like, you used to take me 10 minutes to go
• 1:14:57
  to the supermarket. Now it takes me half an hour.
• 1:14:59
  It's crazy. But you know, we, I used to do a
• 1:15:03
  lot of deliveries, especially when I was single and I, I
• 1:15:06
  wanted to travel and get to see more towns and cities.
• 1:15:08
  So, you know, let's say I'd have 5 customers that bought
• 1:15:11
  ultrasound machines for me along the East Coast, right, in the
• 1:15:14
  Carolinas, in Virginia and Florida, right?
• 1:15:17
  Or, you know, whatever it was. And I would, so I'd load up a
• 1:15:21
  company van with a bunch of machines and, you know, drive
• 1:15:24
  down and stop in each place, maybe spend a day in each city.
• 1:15:26
  And we charge each customer whatever meant for a freight
• 1:15:29
  cost. But we like, you know, but if we
• 1:15:31
  get enough people, if you get enough customers, we'll load up
• 1:15:34
  our own van. I'll deliver it myself.
• 1:15:35
  Door to door service for you. And, and we always knew you got
• 1:15:40
  to get to DC, you got to, you got to be, you got to be at DC
• 1:15:45
  at 4:00 in the morning because otherwise you could spend, you
• 1:15:48
  could spend 5 hours in traffic sitting, you know, just just
• 1:15:51
  getting past that stretch, you know, it was horrendous.
• 1:15:56
  You know, even when I go, I'll be there next week, you know,
• 1:15:59
  you have the HOV or the express lanes, what they call them now,
• 1:16:01
  the road, you know the ones in the middle and they do it based
• 1:16:04
  on. How many people you have in the
• 1:16:06
  car, right. Oh, that was.
• 1:16:09
  Busy the road is so you're the price fluctuates.
• 1:16:11
  So they, they try to guarantee you the speed limit.
• 1:16:15
  So in order to guarantee the speed limit, they have to raise
• 1:16:17
  the price to get more cars off the road.
• 1:16:19
  So there have been times when I've been on that stretch and
• 1:16:22
  it's, it's cost me $6070 to go. Yeah, just, but, but, but again,
• 1:16:29
  I'm driving the speed limit, you know, so I'm not sitting in and
• 1:16:32
  you look and I've taken pictures.
• 1:16:33
  I'm looking at the traffic and I'm thinking, Oh my goodness,
• 1:16:35
  these folks are sitting in traffic for two, 2 1/2, three
• 1:16:38
  hours to go 20 miles. It's ridiculous.
• 1:16:41
  Yeah, you know, it's and people just won't pay the money.
• 1:16:44
  And I'm like, I'm going to find a way to pay the money.
• 1:16:46
  I was, I was almost certain after COVID that this would not
• 1:16:51
  be a during COVID, this would not be a thing anymore.
• 1:16:53
  Because I was like, people, once people realize that they don't
• 1:16:55
  have to put up with this, they're not going to anymore,
• 1:16:58
  you know? But I'm surprised.
• 1:16:59
  You're right. No, you're right.
• 1:17:01
  And and I think I think, well, COVID for sure slowed it down.
• 1:17:05
  That was really weird. If you ever gotten, you know, if
• 1:17:07
  you live in the DC area or I'm sure New York or any big area at
• 1:17:10
  the time, you know, and you're like, we're all the people.
• 1:17:13
  Like it was just an eerie feeling, right?
• 1:17:15
  And then a lot of people realize that, hey, they could remote
• 1:17:18
  work. They could, you know, work from
• 1:17:20
  home. And then and they could live
• 1:17:22
  anywhere and they could live anywhere, meaning you could, you
• 1:17:25
  could keep your job with Bank of America and not be in, not be in
• 1:17:28
  Manhattan every day. You could be, you could work for
• 1:17:30
  Bank of America and live in, you know, and live in Monticello, NY
• 1:17:35
  an hour and a half north and be like, as have you, you know, and
• 1:17:37
  live in a farm. And you could have the best life
• 1:17:39
  that you know in the in the world if you wanted.
• 1:17:42
  Well, within the federal government, they made a decision
• 1:17:44
  over the last couple years that. Remote go back to yeah, what do
• 1:17:47
  you think about that? I have mixed feelings for the
• 1:17:52
  most part. I think it's silly, but I think
• 1:17:54
  there are people that do need to be in work.
• 1:17:55
  But ultimately I think for away from the policy, I actually like
• 1:18:00
  being in the office because I like having face to face
• 1:18:03
  contact. I like, you know, the
• 1:18:05
  relationship building and things like that.
• 1:18:07
  I think you lose some context when you're over the, the
• 1:18:11
  computers, but again, I think it's convenient.
• 1:18:15
  I think it's nice to be able to, to live wherever you want to
• 1:18:17
  live. And you know, and we have
• 1:18:19
  airports, right? We can, we can fly if we need to
• 1:18:21
  be in the same room. Sure.
• 1:18:23
  I have some mixed feelings. I, I, if your motivation is what
• 1:18:28
  we have a late lot of lazy employees.
• 1:18:30
  If we let them, we let them stay at home, they're not going to do
• 1:18:32
  anything. Well, then to me that's a,
• 1:18:34
  that's a problem with management.
• 1:18:36
  You know, are you not tasking these people?
• 1:18:37
  Are you not? Interested.
• 1:18:41
  Are you not trusting your people to get the work done?
• 1:18:43
  And if they are getting the work done and they are good
• 1:18:45
  employees, then what's the harm of them sitting in front of
• 1:18:48
  their computer wearing pajamas? Right.
• 1:18:50
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:18:52
  So I think there's a lack of, and I've seen this not just in
• 1:18:55
  the federal government, but in a lot of industries where I work,
• 1:18:57
  I do a lot of leadership training.
• 1:18:59
  There's just a lack of There is no leadership, it's just
• 1:19:01
  management. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:03
  I've noticed that too. Actually.
• 1:19:04
  It's funny that you say that. You put it like that and it's
• 1:19:06
  true because I feel like there's a lot of jobs that, you know, I
• 1:19:10
  lived in Manhattan for a little while and everyone there works
• 1:19:13
  for these companies and like these jobs are like, so what's
• 1:19:17
  your job? And they tried to explain it to
• 1:19:19
  me. I'm like, it doesn't sound like
• 1:19:21
  that needs to be like a full time position, position that you
• 1:19:23
  need to be, that you need to be doing all the time.
• 1:19:24
  You know, I'm like, like, well, I'll be honest, I don't like, I,
• 1:19:28
  I work, you know, for I, I, I actually only have like 4 hours
• 1:19:32
  of work a day. I have to be logged onto my
• 1:19:34
  computer and be available, but like, I only have a couple hours
• 1:19:37
  of work a day, you know, And so I, I, I, I, I hear, I don't, I
• 1:19:42
  don't know if that's management. That's the direction of the
• 1:19:44
  world. Again, with AI and stuff like
• 1:19:46
  that, that's the direction of the world is heading that a lot
• 1:19:48
  more we, we, you just kind of need people more for oversight
• 1:19:52
  than actual tasks and actual, you know, kind of work like
• 1:19:55
  that. But umm, I think that the, that,
• 1:19:58
  and, and this also will certainly have a direct
• 1:20:01
  correlation to, to drug abuse in the future.
• 1:20:05
  People when people don't know what they're going to do with
• 1:20:07
  themselves. And, and you know, and you and
• 1:20:09
  let's say you are an adult and you're, or even a young adult if
• 1:20:12
  you're 24 years old and you're out of college and you're
• 1:20:14
  getting paid $150,000 a year and your job requires you to be
• 1:20:17
  working 3 hours a day. I mean, who's not going to drink
• 1:20:20
  a beer in the afternoon and who's not going to sit and smoke
• 1:20:23
  a jet in the afternoon unless you're extremely motivated to
• 1:20:27
  build something yourself and do your own thing, you know?
• 1:20:29
  I mean, the question of what humans are going to do with
• 1:20:32
  themselves is a legitimate question.
• 1:20:35
  Well, and then into further than that now when we don't have the
• 1:20:39
  human interaction, I mean, we, we know historically what, what
• 1:20:43
  that's, I mean, there was a, gosh, I'm going to talk about a
• 1:20:46
  study. I don't know all the names, but
• 1:20:47
  back in the early 70s there was a study, there was a
• 1:20:50
  psychologist and oh gosh, I forget his name now, but you can
• 1:20:53
  look this up. And you ever heard of the Rat
• 1:20:56
  Rat Park study? No.
• 1:20:59
  OK, so he puts a bunch of rats together in this, You know, I
• 1:21:04
  don't know, thing that he makes right.
• 1:21:06
  And it's got the little wheels the rats can run on and, you
• 1:21:09
  know, and they can have sex. They can do whatever they want
• 1:21:12
  to do. I mean, it's called Rat Park.
• 1:21:14
  It's just in this rat Park, they have two bottles.
• 1:21:18
  One has I think it was cocaine and the other one has water.
• 1:21:21
  I think I heard of this OK. Cocaine, you heard of this one?
• 1:21:24
  It's it's interesting. They would do the cocaine and
• 1:21:26
  they would drink from it, but then it was just a little bit
• 1:21:29
  and but the water, they would drink all the time, right?
• 1:21:31
  But but they'd have all this fun interactivity and then they
• 1:21:36
  isolated now that now they had just one rat, same 2 bottles,
• 1:21:40
  but no other, no other rats around, none.
• 1:21:45
  Literally the opposite. They would look at the water and
• 1:21:47
  they might drink it and then they'd immediately go to the
• 1:21:49
  cocaine and they just every single time.
• 1:21:53
  And he was talking about the social isolation.
• 1:21:56
  And to me, I I agree. You know, what are you gonna do
• 1:21:57
  with your time? But then to me, the social
• 1:21:59
  isolation of not being around people.
• 1:22:01
  Yeah. And I know we can get it online.
• 1:22:03
  I get it. But I.
• 1:22:03
  It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing.
• 1:22:06
  I think study after study emphasizes that, you know?
• 1:22:09
  Absolutely. And we've already seen that with
• 1:22:11
  social media, right? And look, look how the people
• 1:22:13
  treat people on social media now.
• 1:22:14
  I mean, it's, it's so easy to say, oh, I don't like your
• 1:22:16
  politics or I don't like your, your stance on this.
• 1:22:18
  Well, in Europe, you know, you're an A hole or you're blah,
• 1:22:21
  blah, blah, blah, you know, and we just weren't so nasty to each
• 1:22:24
  other. And that's because you would
• 1:22:25
  never say these things face to face, never but online.
• 1:22:29
  And then the more that we encourage that, the more that we
• 1:22:32
  encourage a lack of face to face, a lack of social and
• 1:22:37
  relationship skills and and, and communication, the more I think
• 1:22:42
  we're going to see people turn to drugs and alcohol.
• 1:22:45
  Definitely. Behavior and that scares the,
• 1:22:48
  you know, way out of me, especially with young people.
• 1:22:51
  Yeah, it's so the school I teach at is an Orthodox Jewish school
• 1:22:55
  in in North and Beach and these kids.
• 1:22:58
  And one of the things that one of the aspects of the school is
• 1:23:01
  that the school very, very, very is very strict about no phones
• 1:23:05
  in school, no smartphones and no social media at home, even at
• 1:23:09
  home. And, and I remember I didn't
• 1:23:12
  want to teach high school because I thought they were too
• 1:23:14
  immature. I thought they were.
• 1:23:15
  I wasn't able to, you know, I wasn't, I wouldn't be able to,
• 1:23:18
  to explain and have, you know, creative or deep or
• 1:23:22
  philosophical conversations. And these kids just don't get
• 1:23:25
  it. And these kids in particular,
• 1:23:27
  you know, there's so much face to face interaction.
• 1:23:31
  There's so much confidence from, you know, like when you're with
• 1:23:34
  your friends, you don't sit on your phone and go on Instagram
• 1:23:37
  or go on Twitter. You got to play basketball.
• 1:23:39
  You got, you got, you got to find something to do with your
• 1:23:41
  parent. You got to you got to drive your
• 1:23:42
  parents crazy. You got to make something in the
• 1:23:43
  kitchen. You know, you got, you got to do
• 1:23:45
  something. Yeah, it's crazy.
• 1:23:48
  And, and, and, and, and, and, and I walked away after a week
• 1:23:52
  of teaching, you know, of trying out.
• 1:23:55
  And I'm like, I love this. I, I, I, you know, I absolutely
• 1:23:58
  love it. And they all have flip phones
• 1:24:00
  and they, you know, they'll, and sometimes they'll get, you know,
• 1:24:02
  these, you know, smartphones, but with all these blocks on it.
• 1:24:06
  And, you know, and it's just absolutely incredible how
• 1:24:09
  sophisticated and creative and confident, you know, relative
• 1:24:13
  to, you know, my own siblings, even that, you know, that I have
• 1:24:16
  a 14 year old brother, you know, that is, I mean, you know, and
• 1:24:19
  he and he got, he has a phone and my mom only gives him a
• 1:24:21
  thing two or three hours of screen time a day.
• 1:24:24
  But, you know, that's still a lot.
• 1:24:26
  You know, it's still, it's still makes a difference.
• 1:24:29
  Yeah, it's, it's, it's really fascinating.
• 1:24:33
  I hope that this becomes a trend.
• 1:24:34
  I, I really think, I hope and I think that we're going to look
• 1:24:37
  at this like this 2020 years or 15 year gap of social media and
• 1:24:42
  as like the Guinea pigs of society and be like, I can't
• 1:24:46
  believe we let our families do that.
• 1:24:47
  I can't believe we let our kids do that.
• 1:24:49
  I. Hope you're right but and I'll
• 1:24:52
  throw on the AI that we were talking about earlier yeah, you
• 1:24:55
  know what what is that doing? It's it's people aren't
• 1:24:57
  thinking, they're not, they're not writing, they're not, you
• 1:25:00
  know, there's the decision making.
• 1:25:02
  I mean, they're letting, they're letting the computer do it for
• 1:25:04
  you. So no, I agree.
• 1:25:06
  I hope that we do look at this and say this is silly and, and
• 1:25:08
  you are seeing like you said, I mean, here's a great example of,
• 1:25:11
  you know, a school that's saying, hey, we got to restrict
• 1:25:13
  this, you know, yeah. For the mental health of our and
• 1:25:16
  for the development of our students.
• 1:25:20
  And I'd love to see more and more school districts and
• 1:25:23
  parents in general take. Yeah, it's becoming a little bit
• 1:25:26
  more of a conversation. Jonathan Haidt, I don't know if
• 1:25:29
  you heard heard about him. He made that those rounds.
• 1:25:32
  Incredible, incredible. And in his book, The 8th
• 1:25:35
  Generation. Did you read the book?
• 1:25:39
  No, it's on my, it's on my queue.
• 1:25:41
  I have a million books queue, but I actually follow him on
• 1:25:44
  LinkedIn. I watch some of his videos all
• 1:25:46
  the time and brilliant. And what he's saying is makes
• 1:25:49
  sense and I wish I just wish we would catch on.
• 1:25:51
  You know, I, I've, I've heard parents really push back, you
• 1:25:54
  know, not to him, well, to what he's basically saying.
• 1:25:56
  But like when I have these conversations in my training,
• 1:25:59
  like our kids need phones and what, you know, what if I need
• 1:26:03
  to get a hold of them, You know, what did we do when we were
• 1:26:05
  young, right? We didn't have the phones.
• 1:26:06
  I mean, it's like they just, they lose sight of, of, of of
• 1:26:10
  reality and. That book, that book might be
• 1:26:15
  the most important book I think I've ever read him, one of the
• 1:26:17
  most important books I've ever read in my life.
• 1:26:19
  Just because. Yeah, it's so because it's
• 1:26:22
  because the implications and just the way that he lays it out
• 1:26:26
  is so profound and so clear. And so it's so devastating,
• 1:26:30
  quite frankly. You know, and like, you're like,
• 1:26:32
  how can you even like you, you know, the like the stories of
• 1:26:34
  these 1112 year old girls with these, you know, with these food
• 1:26:38
  disorders and, you know, and, and, and, and, and depression
• 1:26:41
  and, and, you know, and anorexia, God forbid.
• 1:26:43
  And you're like, what is what is happening?
• 1:26:46
  You know, and, and unfortunately and, you know, fortunately,
• 1:26:49
  rather you have voices like him that make the rounds.
• 1:26:52
  And fortunately, it's what's so cool, I think is like, you know
• 1:26:55
  how the podcast, you know, he goes on Les Friedman, Joe Rogan
• 1:26:59
  and and diary of the CEO and he reaches 100 million people like
• 1:27:03
  that. And you're like, that's
• 1:27:05
  incredible. Like that's incredible.
• 1:27:07
  You know, you can't do that on Fox News anymore.
• 1:27:09
  You can't do that at MSNBC or CNN anymore.
• 1:27:12
  You know, So, you know, I kind of hope that the conversation
• 1:27:15
  out there is going to be is really is, is, is turning, you
• 1:27:19
  know, I really hope so. What what?
• 1:27:21
  What is some passions of yours outside of Drug Enforcement of
• 1:27:26
  Drug Enforcement? I think my biggest one right now
• 1:27:30
  is travelling. I love love love love to travel.
• 1:27:34
  6 states here in July coming up. Where you going?
• 1:27:37
  I just, I just, I don't know everything about it.
• 1:27:39
  I love where am I going? Well, kind of cheating here
• 1:27:42
  because when I go to DC, that's really three states, right?
• 1:27:45
  You get, well, 2 1/2 states or DC on the state, right, you get
• 1:27:48
  Virginia and Maryland. So that's kind of a but this
• 1:27:53
  month I have Nebraska, Maine, you know, Virginia, Maryland.
• 1:27:58
  Beautiful. Yeah.
• 1:28:01
  I've not here. I've done, I've, I moved from
• 1:28:05
  New York to Seattle and I did that right.
• 1:28:07
  And I drove it. I drove there and back.
• 1:28:10
  I, well, you know what, the first half and the last half
• 1:28:15
  were both miserable, depending what you know where you're
• 1:28:17
  coming from. So New York to Washington once I
• 1:28:20
  Pat, once I got to Denver. So the first four, you know, the
• 1:28:24
  first day from New York to Chicago was beautiful because
• 1:28:27
  you got, you know, Pennsylvania, you got the hills, you got, you
• 1:28:30
  know, you got all the nature. Then you got the plain lands,
• 1:28:33
  you got like the flat, you got the just the flat, Illinois,
• 1:28:36
  Iowa, whatever. And even the first part of
• 1:28:39
  Colorado people don't associate is all like, you know, the
• 1:28:42
  eastern part of Colorado is all fields.
• 1:28:44
  Yeah. And then you get, and then you
• 1:28:46
  get to the mountains and you get to like Denver area.
• 1:28:48
  And then West of there is just, it made me fall in love with the
• 1:28:53
  country in a way that I've really never that I've never
• 1:28:55
  experienced before, you know? And it was, it was incredible.
• 1:28:59
  I think the Pacific Northwest is some of the most beautiful
• 1:29:04
  natural scenery, I think, on the planet.
• 1:29:08
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:29:08
  Have you been there? I agree.
• 1:29:09
  It's yeah, absolutely. I have.
• 1:29:12
  And and it's a beautiful country, isn't it?
• 1:29:14
  It's it's it's. America is such an amazing, such
• 1:29:17
  an incredible place. It's I, I, I, I, I took it for
• 1:29:19
  granted for so many years until I had a family.
• 1:29:22
  And then once I, once I had, once I had kids, you know, I
• 1:29:27
  started getting emotional at the national anthem at like sports
• 1:29:30
  games, you know, like what's going on over here?
• 1:29:32
  I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm tearing up and I'm crying.
• 1:29:34
  I'm like thinking about the hope for like, you know, and
• 1:29:36
  everything that this place represents and, and, and
• 1:29:38
  everything in it. And I'm like, I, I, I just, I, I
• 1:29:41
  love this place, you know, it's, it's, it's really amazing.
• 1:29:46
  I absolutely agree. I to this day, I get goosebumps
• 1:29:49
  hearing it. I mean, it means it's special,
• 1:29:51
  you know, and as much as I love traveling around the world, I,
• 1:29:54
  you know, always come back here and it just, it just feels good.
• 1:29:57
  What's your favorite country outside of the States?
• 1:30:00
  What was your favorite country visit?
• 1:30:03
  I'm. Well, I'm partial to Germany
• 1:30:06
  because my mother's German and I was actually born in Germany
• 1:30:10
  military base, but I was born in Germany and I speak a little bit
• 1:30:13
  of German. So I'm partial to to Germany.
• 1:30:15
  But everywhere I go, I, I love Europe.
• 1:30:18
  I, I love the history in Europe. I love, I love when you look at
• 1:30:21
  a church and you're looking at it going, Oh my goodness, that's
• 1:30:23
  been there since 1400. Like, like if you were just
• 1:30:27
  walking around, like I'm like, like, it's just mind blowing,
• 1:30:30
  right? You know, And, but ultimately, I
• 1:30:33
  mean, I, you know, it, there's beautiful places in the United
• 1:30:38
  States from the, from the mountains to just the, the small
• 1:30:41
  towns. And it's just, it's just a
• 1:30:43
  gorgeous place to travel and very fortunate that I can.
• 1:30:47
  Yeah, you're, I, I, I was just in Barcelona and, and that
• 1:30:52
  enormous church there. I've never been.
• 1:30:59
  I've never been speechless as a result of, you know, a building,
• 1:31:04
  but the church blew me away. I forgot what it's called.
• 1:31:08
  Do you know what I'm talking about?
• 1:31:09
  That giant that that, that enormous point of Barcelona.
• 1:31:11
  Doesn't surprise me. Barcelona's, you know, it
• 1:31:13
  doesn't surprise you. I'm Yeah.
• 1:31:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I feel like Europe has that
• 1:31:17
  history. America has like that life and
• 1:31:20
  that spirit that like, you know, there's just like it's the,
• 1:31:24
  it's, it's the younger brother of the entire world.
• 1:31:26
  I feel like that that cool, enthusiastic younger brother
• 1:31:28
  that's just like figuring itself out, you know, in a beautiful
• 1:31:32
  way. I go hike.
• 1:31:34
  With some guys and we were in Arizona and we were at his.
• 1:31:40
  We went to both Bryce and Zion and both beautiful and Norman.
• 1:31:44
  We first grow in it was four of us in the car, all adult males,
• 1:31:47
  right. And we're all I mean it was it
• 1:31:50
  was literally probably the same if it were 1520 years ago and we
• 1:31:54
  were all 13 year old females meeting Justin Bieber for the
• 1:31:57
  first time. Like we were all like, like,
• 1:31:59
  like it was. So it was just breathtaking.
• 1:32:03
  It you had no words. It just, it was absolutely
• 1:32:06
  incredible. And I love that.
• 1:32:08
  But but yeah. And then and then of course,
• 1:32:10
  then when you put it in perspective and you're like, you
• 1:32:12
  know, and you're in Barcelona or you're, you're somewhere else
• 1:32:14
  and you're like, gosh, this thing has been here for 500
• 1:32:17
  years. You know, think, think of the
• 1:32:18
  things, the conversations, the people that have walked through
• 1:32:20
  here. I just, I don't know, I love, I
• 1:32:22
  love that deep thinking and you know, the impact these
• 1:32:25
  businesses have had. I mean, that is just incredible.
• 1:32:29
  Yeah, I was just in Israel right before this, right before the
• 1:32:32
  whole thing with Iran popped off.
• 1:32:33
  I had a very close friend of mine that got married there and
• 1:32:37
  I went to, I went to that Western Wall and I was and I was
• 1:32:40
  there and I was like, this is a spot.
• 1:32:43
  And I was just thinking, I'm just sitting there and I'm like,
• 1:32:46
  this is a spot that people that, that millions and millions of
• 1:32:50
  people, you know, from every religion in the world, from
• 1:32:53
  everywhere, all over the world, just come and pray.
• 1:32:56
  And I'm like, there's so much significant like, like it's just
• 1:33:00
  a spot of prayer and love and hope.
• 1:33:03
  And I'm like, and you just soaking in you're like, this is
• 1:33:05
  just this is, it's so beautiful and it's, it's so profound.
• 1:33:10
  And I think I, I, I think, I hope America will get something
• 1:33:14
  like that. I really do.
• 1:33:15
  I hope that we get some like, because I think that what we
• 1:33:18
  need to be grounded a little bit more is like something spiritual
• 1:33:21
  and something, you know, we have amazing national spirit.
• 1:33:26
  We have a beautiful sense of patriotism.
• 1:33:28
  America, Americans, you know, and like, it's always been the
• 1:33:31
  case. And but I do we have a location
• 1:33:34
  that like, is like the manifestation of all those hopes
• 1:33:38
  and dreams, you know, I mean, and I think that it would be a
• 1:33:41
  beautiful, beautiful, magnificent thing to like, that
• 1:33:44
  would be like a huge cultural thing for the country to have a
• 1:33:49
  physical manifestation of a place that people can like
• 1:33:52
  connect to. No, I agree, but I tell you I've
• 1:33:56
  been the first time I ever saw the Statue of Liberty.
• 1:33:58
  Yes, maybe that's it. I didn't.
• 1:34:00
  I didn't cry, but it was pretty amazing.
• 1:34:02
  I mean, it felt, I felt that warm, you know, those goosebumps
• 1:34:05
  and thought. And this is think of all these
• 1:34:06
  folks who've come to this country following this amazing
• 1:34:09
  dream, right? Yeah.
• 1:34:11
  And what other country in the world has has just opened their
• 1:34:14
  arms to, you know, it's just I don't know.
• 1:34:16
  I thought that was but but you're right.
• 1:34:18
  I don't know that we ever will have that that place like you
• 1:34:21
  describe. You gotta build it.
• 1:34:23
  You gotta build it. Build it and they will come.
• 1:34:27
  That's why we have a small right here.
• 1:34:31
  That's right, Right, Right. Definitely, definitely,
• 1:34:35
  definitely. Brian, I really appreciate the
• 1:34:37
  time. Thank you so much for, for
• 1:34:39
  getting back to me so quickly, working with me so quickly,
• 1:34:42
  taking the time to record this. This is, this is so much fun.
• 1:34:45
  And I, I, you're, you're a service and all that you've done
• 1:34:47
  and your teaching and your work on the ground really, really
• 1:34:51
  means the world to me and means the world, I'm sure to everyone
• 1:34:53
  that's going to listen to this. And, and I didn't get to talk to
• 1:34:57
  you about Eagle sticks, but maybe that'll be for another
• 1:35:01
  time. Thank you.
• 1:35:03
  This was. This is really, really
• 1:35:05
  delightful, Ryan. Thank you so much.
• 1:35:07
  Thanks for the time. I hope to be in touch.
• 1:35:09
  OK. Thank you so much.
• 1:35:09
  Have a great day, man. Happy 4th of July.
• 1:35:11
  You as well. All right, take care.
• 1:35:13
  Happy bye. Bye.
• 1:35:14
  Bye. Bye.