Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PREVIEW: "Rogue Fentanyl Chemists" with Ben Westhoff

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PREVIEW: "Rogue Fentanyl Chemists" with Ben Westhoff · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans. Welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas. Here's Dangerous Idea
• 0:07
  for you. Why don't you go ahead and hop on the Dark Web and hit up a Chinese fentanyl
• 0:13
  drug manufacturer, one of the largest illicit drug labs in the world in China. Why don't
• 0:19
  you pose as a drug dealer, fly to China, and get a little tour. Got a little tour with
• 0:26
  the drug mafia of one of the biggest fentanyl labs in the world. That's what today's guest
• 0:31
  did. He was going undercover, reporting for his incredible book. It's called Fentanyl Inc.
• 0:39
  How Rogue Chemists created the deadliest wave of the opioid epidemic. He's written about
• 0:45
  the fentanyl crisis for the Los Angeles Times, for the Atlantic, for the New York Times.
• 0:50
  He's an expert in this and he has an amazing story about how he uncovered and understood
• 0:56
  exactly what is going on with the synthetic opioid crisis in the United States. Will Donald
• 1:01
  Trump's crackdowns on the Mexican border stanch the flow of fentanyl into the United States?
• 1:09
  Why are other rich countries less affected by the opioid crisis than the United States?
• 1:15
  And how did fentanyl cause the worst drug crisis in American history? You will understand
• 1:21
  all of that than so much more after hearing this fabulous chat with the one and only band
• 1:26
  up west off. These pills are all just pressed by drug traffickers to look like Procassettes.
• 1:37
  So if you get a pill from your actual doctor or pharmacy, it'll be fine, but that's the
• 1:44
  main way fentanyl is distributed now is through pills. You can buy a pill pressing machine
• 1:51
  from China that makes it look exactly like a Xanax or an oxycontin or anything you want.
• 1:58
  And you would do that if you were a drug dealer, why? Well, you sell these pills as the
• 2:06
  name brand. And so an actual prescription Xanax might cost wholesale like $5 or more,
• 2:13
  I don't know, but you can get one of these fake Xanaxes and it costs maybe 50 cents
• 2:18
  to make or something like that. And is there real Xanax in it and real
• 2:22
  percussate in it as well? No, it's just fentanyl in some sort of cutting
• 2:27
  agent usually. I see, I see. And the presumably the high school student or the college student
• 2:32
  who's taking it has maybe never had a percussate or the effect is close enough that it feels
• 2:37
  kind of like it, like how similar is the effect of fentanyl to the effect of oxycontin?
• 2:43
  I mean, it would probably feel differently. It would probably feel a lot more intense,
• 2:47
  but it might be too late by the time you even discovered it. I mean, it really slows
• 2:52
  your breathing down and kind of puts you out of commission. Right. How did this come about?
• 2:58
  Where did it, where and when did it stop? Well, fentanyl was invented as a medical drug
• 3:04
  back in 1959 by a Belgian chemist and was and continues to be a really important hospital
• 3:11
  drug, but only in the past 10 years or so has it jumped into the realm of abuse. And you know,
• 3:19
  at first it was pretty much completely stealth. It was only cut into heroin. And so that's how
• 3:27
  they kind of trojanced it into the drug supply. But now, you know, in addition to being cut into
• 3:33
  all these other drugs like heroin, meth, cocaine, pills, it's sold by itself. And there's a lot of
• 3:40
  people who try to buy it just as fentanyl as well. Okay. I'll get to that in a moment.
• 3:45
  The medical uses, I think I've had it actually. I think it's quite common right in the medical
• 3:51
  industry. So if you're just need to sedate you for a columnoscopy or if you're a woman who's
• 3:56
  going in for like a gynecological exam that's a bit intrusive, they'll stick a needle with
• 4:01
  fentanyl. And so it's obviously a safe and no side effect or low side effects and useful drug to
• 4:08
  keep people sedated. Yeah. I mean, you know, if I was having an epidural as a woman and about to
• 4:13
  have a baby, I don't know if I would want fentanyl all in, you know, my bloodstream, but
• 4:20
  but it's you know, maybe maybe you don't want to get the baby high, but maybe you want to get a
• 4:23
  little high if they're just snooping around in there. Yeah. I mean, as long as it's administered
• 4:29
  by a trained anesthesiologist, that's what they do. And so the amount is safe. You're not going
• 4:34
  to get hooked if you're just using it one time, but that's the problem. You know, all these drug dealers
• 4:39
  on the streets. They don't know how to make a safe dose. And that's why they put too much in there.
• 4:44
  And when you say get hooked, I'm always a bit torn when we talk about drugs
• 4:49
  about a missing piece of the jigsaw, which is the first thing that I asked you, which is how it would
• 4:54
  make me feel. Like anyone who has some experience in addiction with a loved one or with themselves,
• 5:02
  I think also understands that part of the appeal is not just this kind of brute force addiction
• 5:10
  where the drug is doing something nefarious to your nervous system and is making you a zombie to
• 5:14
  go back to it, but also the fact that it feels really fucking good. And you want to chase that feeling.
• 5:21
  And in some sense, there's this kind of fasty and tradeoff between you and your future self or
• 5:26
  you and your long-term self where you're willing to sacrifice a bit of long-term wellness for
• 5:32
  the feeling that you get in the short term. Like how do you think about addiction?
• 5:38
  Yeah. I think one guy who described it to me who took heroin as, you know, you never realized how
• 5:46
  much sort of pressure and stress you carry around with yourself all day long until he had heroin
• 5:54
  and it all went away. And I think, you know, it's very easy to justify it to yourself as,
• 6:02
  this is helping me. Not this is like I'm creating a fasty and bargain, but this is helping me
• 6:08
  become the person I really am free of stress. And everyone thinks that they're different, you know,
• 6:14
  you hear all the time about other people who get addicted, but you know yourself, you know,
• 6:20
  what you're capable of. That's what you tell yourself. And I think that's how I could start in.
• 6:25
  Interesting. But even if you know that there's a tradeoff, I mean, how much you've spoken to a
• 6:29
  lot of addicts, how much awareness do you think that they have about the tradeoff? I mean, I've
• 6:34
  felt I've been addicted to nicotine in the past and I've been addicted to alcohol in the past.
• 6:39
  And, you know, never to such an extent that I've hit rock bottom, but I've felt that I've been
• 6:43
  cocked, I've been smart enough to be conscious of the fact that there's a tradeoff. I've been smart
• 6:47
  enough to be conscious of the fact that probably if I was a non-drinker, I'd be leaving a,
• 6:52
  I'd be leading a life that is more stress-free and more fulfilled and has more time to smell the
• 6:59
  roses and less hassle and annoyance than being a heavy drinker. But it feels really good to get
• 7:06
  smashed today. Yeah. And like I was quite comfortable with that logic. And it would have to reach
• 7:12
  a point where I was like, you know what, it's just not worth it. The only reason why it feels good
• 7:15
  to get smashed is because I get smashed all the time. If I'd never got smashed, then I probably
• 7:19
  wouldn't want to. And I don't. But, you know, but I was aware of the bug.
• 7:23
  Yeah. Well, William S. Burrow said that it takes a long time to get addicted to opiates, you know.
• 7:31
  I don't know if it's if it's the same with alcohol exactly because like you really can use opiates
• 7:37
  like heroin and fentanyl regularly for a long time before you're going to go through withdrawal.
• 7:44
  And so, you know, and there are plenty of people who do it their whole life. I mean, for decades
• 7:50
  without really suffering negative consequences. You know what I mean? The definition of addiction
• 7:56
  is not just that it gets its chemical hooks into you, but that there are negative consequences.
• 8:02
  Right. So, you know, you're a coffee addiction. People don't call it a coffee addiction even though
• 8:06
  you go through, you know, same thing. If you don't have your caffeine, that'll be withdrawal. But
• 8:12
  it's not screwing up your life, you know. And that's the difference with opiates is that
• 8:19
  eventually you have to have it or you're going to physically be sick. Although the one thing
• 8:26
  that's better about opiates is you can't actually die from withdrawal. I'm like alcohol, you know,
• 8:31
  if you just suddenly cut it off, you can you can die from that. Yeah. I mean, you have to be a
• 8:36
  serious alcoholic for that to happen. But yes, it can happen. And so, is there a subset of the
• 8:42
  fentanyl using population who knows that they're using fentanyl? They're not the college kid
• 8:47
  who takes the perks set. They're aware that they're buying fentanyl. They're aware that they're
• 8:50
  using fentanyl and they've basically got it under control. Like they've basically at least for
• 8:56
  some prolonged period of time can run a life and operate in this world with jobs and families
• 9:04
  and be an occasional user in the same way that people do that on a widespread basis.
• 9:09
  You know, it's taboo to say it, but they do do it with drugs like MDMA and cocaine and they
• 9:13
  lead perfectly normal lives. But those are the ways that they let their head out on the weekend.
• 9:18
  Yeah, there's certainly I guarantee you there's lots and lots of people like that. The other thing
• 9:23
  to keep in mind is that it's not the fentanyl that kills you. It's not the heroin that kills you.
• 9:29
  If you were saying anesthesiologist and you had access to a never-ending supply of fentanyl,
• 9:35
  you knew just the right dose. You could take it every single day. You could have hold a job down.
• 9:41
  You could do anything. It's the withdrawal and usually it's the acquiring of the drug that gets
• 9:49
  into the really big trouble. You know, people spend all their money. They have to resort to stealing
• 9:55
  and prostitution or they get not unpure doses. You know, and they get something else mixed in there
• 10:03
  that kills them. I was under the impression that the main cause of death from fentanyl was overdosing
• 10:09
  on fentanyl because you don't know what dose you take. Yeah, absolutely. But wait, are you saying
• 10:14
  that that's not the case that it is usually because there's something else in the mix or...
• 10:19
  No, no, no, that's definitely the case. But I'm saying if you're the anesthesiologist,
• 10:23
  you would know the exact drug. Yeah, I mean, well, that's true of all drugs, isn't it? I mean,
• 10:27
  so many, if the war on drugs didn't exist and we could, you know, an addicts could go to a clinic
• 10:32
  and get a perfectly measured dose of perfectly pure heroin, then they'd be far fewer heroin.
• 10:38
  In parts of Europe, that's what they're doing. They have heroin companies like in Switzerland
• 10:43
  exactly at that purpose. And so just sticking on fentanyl, you mentioned that there was
• 10:48
  invented in the 1950s. It's now used. In fact, when you say that if you're an anesthesiologist,
• 10:54
  you'd be able to take it successfully. Did you see that horrifying story about the nurse
• 11:00
  in the Northeast of the United States who was stealing fentanyl from a woman's clinic at one
• 11:04
  of the big university hospitals? And so the women who were being treated to these very invasive
• 11:11
  procedures, I think it was egg harvesting for IVF that can be really painful were getting
• 11:17
  saline solution and kept explaining to the doctors and the nurses that I'm not, I'm not,
• 11:22
  I'm not an esotericist. Like, this is excruciatingly painful. Everyone was like,
• 11:26
  they're their pet. I'm sure that you're fine. And it turned out that they were just getting
• 11:29
  salt water because the nurse was stealing all the fentanyl and using it herself and selling it.
• 11:34
  Yeah, that's really too bad. In fact, that's how the whole epidemic started.
• 11:38
  Anesthesiologists were the first people to get hooked. And to this day, I know it's still a big
• 11:44
  problem. So then, why is it the case that in the past 10 or 15 years, we've seen this drug that is,
• 11:51
  you know, 75 years old, make its way into the mainstream. What was the, they were a killer app
• 11:57
  that enabled it to start flooding the market? No, it was the opioid crisis in the US,
• 12:04
  starting with the prescription pills like oxycontin. And so once, you know, they were mismarketed,
• 12:10
  yeah, people believed that they were non-addictive. And people got addicted in record numbers. And
• 12:16
  then when their prescriptions ran out, a lot of people turned to street heroin. You know,
• 12:21
  but there were so many new addicted users that there wasn't enough heroin to go around. And so
• 12:27
  fentanyl kind of not fell into the void there. And people started getting hooked on that. So it's
• 12:34
  not something anyone ever wanted. And the DNA even predicted. They said, don't worry about
• 12:40
  fentanyl. This was 10 years ago. The DA published that. They said, it's not going to be a problem.
• 12:45
  It's too potent. Nothing to see here. And it was only a year later that I was killing record
• 12:51
  numbers of people. And presumably, the users were somewhat right in the sense that they didn't
• 12:57
  need heroin. They didn't want heroin necessarily. What they wanted was a facsimile of the
• 13:02
  high that they were getting from the opioids, right, from oxycontin. They got addicted to this
• 13:07
  substance. And they wanted a substitute for that substance. And they probably didn't care what it was.
• 13:12
  Right. Exactly. And it was available to them. And it was cheap. And so that's why people turn
• 13:18
  to street drugs. And just remind us of the story of the opioid crisis. It's basically that this drug
• 13:23
  company that is not doing, that is a bit down on its luck, decides to use some shifty tactics to
• 13:29
  really pressure it to go hard on pressuring drug regulators in the United States to reclassify
• 13:34
  this opioid as safe and non-addictive, even though everyone who knew what they're talking about
• 13:41
  was like, this is basically just heroin. Yeah, I mean, I believe not in opioids and opioids.
• 13:48
  I used those terms synonymously, but have been addictive since like the dawn of time. And now
• 13:54
  all of a sudden there was one study that came out before all this started that. They gave people
• 13:59
  in hospitals, these opioids, and they were in a controlled environment. And this was inpatient
• 14:06
  only. And they found that people weren't getting addicted in this situation. So basically they said,
• 14:12
  you know, it's okay. It's not addictive if, you know, anymore. And so this company produced
• 14:19
  pharma and others ran with this idea that as long as you gave them the patients, these
• 14:27
  these like big doses, it would last 12 hours at a time. So OxyCon is short for Oxy Continuous.
• 14:35
  And so they said, you give them one pill and I one pill in the morning, you'll be covered,
• 14:40
  you won't become addicted, everything will be fine. And at the same time, doctors were
• 14:48
  were told to start considering pain to be the new vital sign. So you have your vital signs
• 14:55
  like your heart rate, your, you know, your breathing rate, stuff like that. And they, and they said,
• 15:01
  no, now you need to start asking your patients what their pain level is on a scale of one to 10.
• 15:07
  And so I remember being asked this, you know, when I went to see the doctor, he said, oh, you're,
• 15:12
  you know, you spain your ankle, what's your pain level? One to 10. I said, I don't know, seven.
• 15:19
  What's 10? I mean, is 10? Yeah. Like I've just been attacked by a shock and another
• 15:23
  of any arms or legs like what? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so, but then they were trained that if they
• 15:29
  said, I think it's eight or higher that you not only can give them opioids, but you should give
• 15:34
  them opioids because, you know, people shouldn't be in pain. It's a natural right not to be in pain.
• 15:41
  And so it was kind of these double influences that led to these opioid pills being prescribed
• 15:48
  in record numbers and that opened the floodgates. And of course, it's not just the drug companies
• 15:53
  that are training the doctors to dispense their medicines and not just training, but inducing the
• 15:59
  doctors to dispense their medicines like with by giving them free shit if they, you know,
• 16:04
  hit certain prescription targets and things, right? Really corrupt. I mean, this is to an outsider,
• 16:08
  no offense to America, but this is part of the insanity of a privatized, you know, healthcare
• 16:12
  system where profit is so prevalent. That's just inconceivable in a socialized system like
• 16:16
  Australia where we have Medicare for all and there will be no direct interaction between a pharmaceutical
• 16:21
  company. Well, yeah, any advertising on TV, just seeing all these pharmaceutical ads like,
• 16:27
  why are we being shown this? We can't, you know, this should be for drugs. Yeah, you need some kind
• 16:32
  of a gatekeeper as if like you're the best person to decide what drug you should have.
• 16:37
  But anyway, not only is it the drug company training and inducing the doctor, it's presumably the
• 16:41
  doctor then training the patient that if the patient gives the correct answer about their pain
• 16:45
  score, they get to feel really good, right? I know that if I just exaggerate how painful it is,
• 16:51
  I get to get high for the next 12 hours. Of course, I'm going to save my pains worse than it is.
• 16:56
  Yeah, there's no way they can measure that or judge if you're lying. It's just, it's a totally
• 17:01
  crazy system. Right. And so then, and so what's the mechanism by which it becomes a fully
• 17:07
  fledged addiction? I guess people are taking these drugs and then of course, someone misusing them,
• 17:12
  some might be crushing them up and snorting them and getting a high and whatever. And then the kids,
• 17:16
  you know, the teenage kids of the people who have the prescriptions start taking them and sharing
• 17:19
  with their friends and that's how it sort of gets its tendrils into the rest of the community.
• 17:23
  But then is there also a situation where the person can't necessarily get enough to
• 17:30
  get high? And like at what point, what link for me, I have neck pain and therefore I go to my
• 17:38
  doctor and they prescribe me Oxy, and I've been saying Oxy Compton, but we're talking about Oxy
• 17:44
  Codone as the drug, right? Yeah. Because Codone as the drug, Oxy Compton is the brand name.
• 17:49
  At what, what is the link between that prescription and me standing in a car park, offering someone
• 17:55
  a blowjob in order to for them to give me fentanyl? You know, like, what, how does that happen?
• 18:01
  Well, it's different for everybody, you know, I mean myself, I've taken these pills and they don't
• 18:05
  do anything for me. And for other people, you know, they take it for their pain. When the pain
• 18:11
  goes away, they stop and they're fine. They never want to do it again. But you know, some people have
• 18:17
  sort of addictive personalities and they start taking these pills. They like the way it makes them
• 18:22
  feel. It's not just about relieving the pain. You know, in fact, they say after like six weeks,
• 18:28
  you know, there's, it has nothing to do with the pain anymore. You know what I mean? Like,
• 18:34
  if your underlying condition is not fixed by then, you have other problems. Right. And so you
• 18:39
  one of the people who, I think there's a certain number of people like just genetically or something
• 18:44
  who don't, who don't have the psychoactive effect of opioids, doesn't, doesn't make you feel good.
• 18:50
  Yeah, I think I'm lucky enough to be one of those people. Wow. It makes me feel good. I had one
• 18:54
  just from a purely, we're around the time that I read your book. I was in Vietnam and went to a dodgy
• 19:00
  pharmacy and got what was claimed to be oxycontents just to try it out. Don't do that. Don't do that
• 19:06
  in Mexico. I wouldn't do it anywhere, but don't do it in Mexico. Those pills are all at those
• 19:10
  pharmacies in Mexico. They're all fentanyl. Right. I have some faith that in Asia, there's a, I mean,
• 19:17
  I don't know why I would have this faith, but I think there is a, I think I think there is a,
• 19:23
  an illicit Indian pharmacy network where they just overproduce drugs from a lot of pharmacies that
• 19:30
  supply Asia anyway, and they sell them on the black market. But I would not have as much
• 19:35
  pain as you, but you survived. I survived. And so, and okay, so the interesting question about
• 19:43
  the sort of context of addiction here comes up as well, where you were saying that they relied,
• 19:47
  the drug companies relied on these studies where they would give these pills to people in a hospital
• 19:51
  setting and they, and then they would release from hospital and they didn't have any addiction
• 19:55
  problems. This is true, of course, of many types of addiction. You know, there's, there are famous
• 20:01
  stories of, you know, American and Australian GI's who would be in Vietnam and they would take
• 20:07
  heroin and opium and they'd be totally addicted, then they'd come home and they wouldn't have
• 20:10
  withdrawal symptoms or they wouldn't be a problem for them to get offered because it was so
• 20:14
  tightly connected to that context that you remove the person from the context and the physiological
• 20:18
  withdrawals go away. And everyone who's had any kind of addiction, even if it's to caffeine or
• 20:24
  something, knows that there are these sort of nomonic triggers throughout your day where you're
• 20:27
  like, I get up in the morning, you know, I like putting the coffee on, if you do that all the time,
• 20:32
  then that, it forms a part of your addiction. If you move to a different city and you don't have
• 20:35
  a coffee machine, you weren't getting up in the same place, it wouldn't have the same, the same
• 20:40
  trigger. So it's crazy that they were ever able to use that as a rationale for claiming that it
• 20:44
  wasn't addictive. That's not how addiction works. Well, yeah, yeah, no, that, that study with the
• 20:50
  Vietnam Veterans is really interesting because there is this mentality that once, you know, heroin
• 20:56
  gets its chemical hooks into you, you're screwed, you can never go back. But this study showed
• 21:02
  that, obviously, that's not true. These people came home and they didn't have the same triggers,
• 21:06
  you know, and the set in setting aspect of what you're talking about is especially familiar to
• 21:12
  people who take psychedelics, you know, and they say like, you got to be in the right place,
• 21:16
  you got to be in the right mindset. It's totally, it's going to make all the difference in the world.
• 21:21
  And then they've even done studies on like mice with this and they give them a certain dose of opioids
• 21:29
  in one environment. They give them that same dose, you know, every day the mouse is fine. And then
• 21:35
  they move the mouse to a new mouse house or whatever, give them the same dose and they're dead suddenly.
• 21:41
  Oh, well. So there's actually a difference in the physiological toxicity of the thing
• 21:48
  depending on the context. Yeah, yeah, it's totally, it's something that's psychological but can
• 21:57
  totally have physiological effects. And so it's not just, when people say set in setting, it's not
• 22:04
  just for people tripping out on LSD. I mean, this applies to all drugs and where you are when
• 22:11
  you take it, how much you take, totally can affect these factors. I saw a documentary about it
• 22:20
  was interviewing a guy who was using fentanyl and the reporter, he was in a, it was cold, it looked
• 22:27
  like it was in a really cold part of the United States and the guy was in a car park and he was
• 22:31
  huddled in like a little nook where the wind was, was lower than there wasn't so blustery and
• 22:37
  he, he was an old guy with like a big winter jacket on and he had some tin foil and he was trying
• 22:43
  to light it and smell. Maybe it was a pipe or something, but he was trying to light it and smoke it
• 22:46
  and the reporter was like, do you mind if I ask you some questions? He was like, yeah, go on, he was like,
• 22:50
  why are you using fentanyl? And he said, well, it's cheap, it's, it's easy to get. And I was like,
• 22:59
  that is revealing about the mindset of the user. The question that doesn't mean was this cheap
• 23:07
  and easy to get. The questioner means, why the fuck are you old man huddled in a freezing
• 23:12
  corner of a dirty car park trying to light this thing and shove it in your face when you presumably
• 23:18
  could be doing a million other things with your life in this moment. But for him, it's so self-evident
• 23:26
  that you would want the hit, that his answer it relates to the cost effectiveness and the ease of
• 23:33
  procurement instead of the basic underlying question of like, what the fuck are you doing?
• 23:39
  And I was, you know, what is just, which is like nothing else. I mean, people compare it to a
• 23:46
  flu, but I don't think that's the best comparison because, you know, I've had flus where I didn't want to,
• 23:52
  I wouldn't have sold my soul to get out of it. But, you know, imagine like the worst flu you've
• 23:59
  ever had in your life where you're, you feel like you're about to die. And imagine now if you could
• 24:04
  just take a pill or smoke something awesome foil and all of a sudden everything would be better.
• 24:10
  I mean, that's basically what opioid addiction goes. Right. Okay. And that creeps up on you slowly,
• 24:16
  that feeling of, I mean, because presumably if you took something and then it gave you the worst
• 24:22
  flu that you've ever had or like, you know, if people have had been really sick with pneumonia or
• 24:27
  or mononucleosis or something like that where you feel really, really rotten, then you just
• 24:33
  wouldn't take that thing ever again. You'd note that the, you'd note the causal relationship
• 24:37
  between the ingestion of the substance and the terrible feeling. But that doesn't seem to,
• 24:42
  addiction doesn't seem to function that way. People don't make that link exactly.
• 24:47
  Well, no, it does creep up on you. And it first, it feels incredible. And then you do it again,
• 24:54
  and it still feels great. But eventually it flips and you need to take it just to feel normal.
• 25:01
  So it's kind of like maybe sliding down a slope very slowly. Yeah, right. One of the most
• 25:08
  fascinating sections of your book is where you go to China and you try to actually track down
• 25:14
  where this stuff is made and where it's coming from and what the delivery system is. This begins with
• 25:21
  the dark web and like crypto and how people are buying this stuff and and Mr. Pill. Can you take us
• 25:30
  into this dark journey? Yeah, well, the dark web, you can basically, it sounded too good to be
• 25:38
  true. I mean, just being able to buy any truck you wanted anonymously, have a chip right to your
• 25:44
  door. And there are all these new drugs is what kind of got me into this project. You know, for
• 25:52
  centuries, there were just like a handful of drugs. You ate them, you know, maybe you lick the back
• 25:58
  of a toad and got high. There were some some different ways. But in recent years, all the new
• 26:04
  drugs are made synthetically, so they're made in a lab. And there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
• 26:09
  of new drugs. And so I learned that almost all of them were being made in China. And so for every
• 26:16
  like natural drug, there was before, now there's a new synthetic version. So you had marijuana,
• 26:23
  now there's synthetic marijuana. And it's like K2 and spice. Have you heard of that stuff?
• 26:28
  Yeah. And so when you say synthetic marijuana, you basically mean that a chemist has looked at
• 26:33
  what the chemical profile of THC is and they've just replicated something akin to that in the lab.
• 26:40
  Not exactly. It's more there's the cannabinoid receptors in the central nervous system. And so
• 26:48
  THC latches onto those partially. It's called a partial agonist. And that's why it's so chill when
• 26:54
  you smoke marijuana. You know, it's not a crazy drug experience. It's very relaxed. But these
• 27:00
  cannabinoids, synthetic cannabinoids, they are full agonists, meaning that they completely grab
• 27:07
  onto the receptor. And it makes your brain like go crazy. And you can watch all these videos online
• 27:13
  of people losing their minds. But the chemical structure is not like THC at all. It just affects
• 27:20
  these same receptors. So how do we discover them? Dick chemists look at the cannabinoid receptors
• 27:25
  and then try to figure out what's going to go into them or is it trial and error?
• 27:29
  Oh, it's totally trial and error. Yeah. It's like, and I talk about a chemist in my book who would
• 27:34
  try stuff on himself. You know, usually these are animal studies, these type of things. But if
• 27:41
  you're giving these things to a mouse or even a cat or something, you can't really judge what
• 27:46
  they're feeling or reacting. So some of these chemists would test it on themselves. But you know,
• 27:53
  there's potential medical uses for this stuff. And there's a ton of potential. But what happened
• 27:59
  was that all these medical studies on these new drugs, these cannabinoids, these new opioids,
• 28:06
  you know, all these new drugs, they start in medical settings or in scientific settings.
• 28:12
  And the chemists publish their findings and they try to patent the drug. They try to, you know,
• 28:18
  make money off it. But most of these fail. And there's never a medical use that's determined.
• 28:25
  But these papers stick around, these studies. And so once the internet really came to fruition,
• 28:32
  all these drug chemists just started going on the internet and reading these old scientific
• 28:37
  studies and getting all these drug recipes. And they said, well, this didn't work as a medical
• 28:43
  product, but it gets you high. I'm sure. And I started making it as drugs.
• 28:49
  And then selling it on the dark web. But the risk of making this sound like it's a 101 for your
• 28:54
  grandmother. Where is the dark web? And how do I get on the dark web? And how do I pay on the dark
• 29:00
  web? And you know, when the thing from the dark web arrives, why isn't the FBI intercepting it when
• 29:07
  I enter the actual physical address? Like at some point, I'm still a bit confused about the
• 29:11
  interface between the dark web and real life. Like why isn't there an interception point between
• 29:16
  the activities on the dark web? And when they then come into reality? How do I get the drugs that
• 29:24
  are on the dark web? Well, the dark web just means that everything that can't be accessed by your
• 29:30
  normal browser, your normal Chrome or Firefox browser or whatever. So anyone can get on the dark
• 29:36
  web. You just need the special onion browser called Tor. You can put it on your smartphone. It's
• 29:43
  very easy. You can find these dark web sites on Reddit very easily. But then once you go on there,
• 29:51
  the way that you communicate with the dealers is through all these encrypted messages.
• 29:57
  And so, you know, why can't the FBI decrypt? Well, the FBI is not that smart. I mean, it's
• 30:03
  it's right. And when I say it's encrypted messages, are you then leaving the pardon
• 30:07
  migrants about the dark web? I haven't experimented with it. But you so you download a special
• 30:12
  browser that can access this portion of the internet that is not available to anybody else
• 30:16
  through a conventional browser. And then once you make contact with a drug dealer, are you then
• 30:20
  exiting that ecosystem and going to a conventional encrypted app like telegram or signal or something
• 30:25
  or are you staying inside that browser? Well, when I did it, we stayed inside, you know, the side.
• 30:31
  We used a special encrypted technology, but you can do it anyway. I'm sure. Basically, just
• 30:38
  the idea is that they can't, they don't know who you really are and you don't know who they
• 30:43
  really are. And the FBI is not the wiser. Right. But at some point, you have to procure the actual
• 30:49
  thing and that and then you become a human being in the real world when you pick up a package
• 30:53
  somewhere. Yeah. So they sent it, you know, you give them your address, they send it. So the two
• 31:00
  points that law enforcement could intercept it right is at the point where it's being sent and the
• 31:05
  point where it's being arrived. Well, the point that's being sent, you know, you can mislabel the
• 31:09
  package. Obviously, you can do some sort of anonymous drop that's not tied to you. And then on
• 31:15
  the receiving end, you know, that's that's where they would be most likely to catch you. But
• 31:22
  you know, how much mail is delivered from the US, from China to the US, there's like, I don't know
• 31:27
  hundreds of millions of packages per year. And the FBI or anyone can't possibly keep track of all that.
• 31:35
  So there's a small chance you'll get caught, but not a big one. Right. I mean, is it
• 31:41
  conceivable that in coming years, AI and like better technology finds a way around this by just
• 31:47
  bulk screening everything or finding, you know, some kind of signature that we haven't thought about
• 31:53
  yet that would raise the likelihood that something is one of these packages?
• 31:59
  Well, it's possible, but you know, the whole point of capitalism is to like do everything as
• 32:05
  like quickly and efficiently as possible. And so for something like this to work, you'd also have
• 32:11
  to slow down everyone's Christmas packages from from Amazon to China, you know. And so would people
• 32:19
  be willing to pay that? I mean, right now, Trump put all these tariffs on China. And so the US
• 32:25
  mail even shut down accepting packages from China for a couple of days. And obviously that's
• 32:31
  going to be a huge uproar if people can't get their fidget spinner, you know.
• 32:36
  I mean, I just don't think it's feasible.
• 32:42
  So the synthetic things that people are buying on the dark web, there are these big illegal drug
• 32:47
  vendors, right? And do they, when you encounter them on the dark web, do they look legit? They
• 32:52
  look not shady? Do they have like a, do they have, do they hire the correct people to put the
• 32:58
  proper kind of branding and logos on it that make it look amenable and kosher to a Western
• 33:04
  audience? Or do you feel like you're in a dark alley? I mean, you know, you can't trust anything,
• 33:10
  you can't trust the branding. There are actually our Amazon style reviews sometimes. So people
• 33:16
  will review their products and the shipping. And that is probably the best indicator. But
• 33:22
  you know, you heard of the Silk Road, which was the biggest of these early dark websites.
• 33:26
  Well, when that got shut down and the guy was sent to prison, Trump just partnered him actually.
• 33:32
  But after that was shut down, a new site popped up called like the Silk Road 2.
• 33:37
  And that everyone, you know, probably thought that had nothing to do with the other Silk Road.
• 33:42
  It's just someone decided to run with the branding. And then there was a third Silk Road later.
• 33:47
  And you know, you can't trust any of that stuff. What's the pattern all about?
• 33:52
  I think Trump said something like he thought it was judicial overreach. And I think he identified
• 33:59
  because he too felt he had been victimized by the American criminal justice system. And so he saw
• 34:06
  a kindred spirit. You know, this guy Ross Ulbrich was a champion by libertarian groups. And so
• 34:16
  that's a part of Trump space. Right. Okay. So there's a nexus here between the kind of crypto,
• 34:22
  bro libertarian, like we're ushering in a new future, which will be free from the art currencies
• 34:27
  and government overreach where anyone can do anything. And it will be a glorious new future.
• 34:33
  And the price that we have to pay for that is that there'll be a few nefarious things on the side,
• 34:37
  like people buying child pornography and drugs and, you know, sending funding for terrorism.
• 34:45
  But that's the that's a price worth paying in order to escape the yoke of some one-world
• 34:50
  government that is inevitably coming as an alternative. Is that the thinking? Yeah, I mean,
• 34:54
  I'm not a libertarian. I'm sure they would say there's some utopian version of what you just said.
• 35:01
  That's feasible. But yeah, I think generally that makes sense. Right. So these kinds of drugs.
• 35:06
  There are synthetic drugs. Chemists are trying and trying them out on themselves. There are
• 35:11
  bunches of new drugs. But fentanyl, as you said, is not a new drug. This is an old one. So at some
• 35:16
  point, the dark web and crypto start to facilitate the production of, well, I was going to say synthetic
• 35:25
  fentanyl, but it is synthetic, right? The production of fentanyl in Chinese labs in order to service
• 35:32
  this new demand. I mean, this also scrambles things for me because we always talk in the United
• 35:37
  States and the West about fentanyl as being a sort of a supply problem that like we have to crack
• 35:43
  down on it coming in from the border because they're not sending their best people, they're sending
• 35:47
  rapists and drug dealers and their China is flooding us with fentanyl. But China didn't wake up one
• 35:54
  day and decided to flood the United States with fentanyl. America woke up one day and was like,
• 35:58
  I really love opioids. I need more of this stuff. And China was like, okay, we can do that.
• 36:06
  So there's a demand, like everything is driven by demand fundamentally. Supplyra applies to demand.
• 36:13
  Well, what I found in my book was that the Chinese government was actually incentivizing
• 36:18
  these chemical companies to export fentanyl. They were giving financial incentives. They were
• 36:24
  giving grants to these companies. They were like, you know, giving them tax breaks and things like
• 36:30
  that. And this was not some side of nefarious plot to kill Americans, not a reverse opium war,
• 36:36
  like a lot of people have thought. But it was just purely like trying to
• 36:44
  increase the success of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. And so China actually has the
• 36:51
  biggest chemical and pharmaceutical industry in the world. But the US is, although it's smaller,
• 36:57
  makes more money because the US has all the name brands. And so China's government was trying
• 37:02
  to get these direct chemical industry up to sort of value, you know, value add ladder, if you will.
• 37:10
  Do you know what I mean? Instead of making all these cheap generics, they wanted them to start
• 37:14
  making chemicals that sold for more money that were more valuable. And so fentanyl was one of those,
• 37:20
  you know, because like we've said, fentanyl is an important hospital drug. It's like a blockbuster
• 37:25
  drug in itself. And so they said, if you export fentanyl, you get a 13% tax rebate.
• 37:34
  And so these companies, the problem was they didn't put any safeguards in there to say,
• 37:39
  only if you're doing it for legitimate purposes, you get the tax rate, tax break. It was everyone
• 37:46
  got it. And so that it was off to the races for these Chinese chemical companies.
• 37:51
  Okay, so that's somewhat contradicts what I just said in the sense that there was a demand push
• 37:55
  here. And was that that wasn't purely responsive to, sorry, there was a supply push here that wasn't
• 38:00
  purely responsive to the demand that was arising from the opioid crisis. Or was this just a happy
• 38:05
  accident that they that the two happened roughly the same time, the increase in Chinese production
• 38:09
  and the increase in demand from American opioid addicts?
• 38:13
  I think the demand side kind of drove it at first because these these chemical companies,
• 38:18
  they'll really do anything. You know what I mean? Like this company that where I went under cover
• 38:23
  in Wuhan, they said they could make 10,000 chemicals. They'll they'll make whatever you want,
• 38:28
  a custom order. And once the American demand side started wanting fentanyl, that's when these
• 38:36
  companies really ramped up production. Got it. And so okay, so fentanyl is in production in a
• 38:43
  major way in China. You contact someone on the web. How do you reach out and what what are your
• 38:49
  initial overtures to try to pull off this undercover Malaki? Well, I said, yeah, can I visit your
• 38:57
  your factor, your lab when I come to China and this and you're posing as what a drug dealer?
• 39:03
  Yeah, I said my name was Johnny Webster and I had I actually said I wasn't the drug dealer
• 39:09
  but my friend was in that I just was happy to be coming to China and that if the lab passed our
• 39:16
  quality requirements, then my friend would make this big order.
• 39:21
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