Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-29-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

State Senator Noah Robertson updates the latest from the Salem Session, he has filed a bill to repeal the fire map bill. Later a talk on homelessnes and the Fentanyl connection, Dr. Robert Marbut from the Discovery Institute does a deep dive.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. 11 minutes after 7, Noah Robinson will join me here in a couple of minutes after the Hannity update. Alright, what happened to Brammo? I was kind of wondering about that. I hadn't thought about it for years, nor have I seen the motorcycle, so I was wondering if it had gone away, right? And, let's see ed ended up uh bringing in polaris is who brought bramo and uh and then we had uh ryan mallory who uh messaged

me too saying bramo was sold to jackie jackie chan now manufactured in japan later cummings diesel made the talent walmart their battery development warehouse recently they moved in the walmart will be turned into a bowling alley. Oh, okay. Well, according to the sources I'm finding here, now this is Wikipedia, so consider the source. Bromo ended up, well, Polaris did buy it, yeah. And let's see, they ended up changing the name to Victory Motorcycle, and Victory Motorcycle ended up shutting down in 2017.

Polaris announcing that they were reluctantly closing down their Victory Motorcycle brand. Okay. And Polaris announced in 2015 that it had purchased the entire electric motorcycle business from Brammo, and they rebadged it the Victory M-Pulse. And so that's the story. So 2017, it's been a long time. Like I said, I hadn't been down to Talent there for a while actually looking at that old walmart factory so anyway appreciate the people weighing in we'll all all figure it out as time goes on

this is the bill meyer show noah robinson after the hand of the update next at pressure point roofing here's bill meyer Meyer. State Senator Noah Robinson rejoins the program. Senator, welcome back. And how are things going at the session so far? Well, no bills have been passed. So far we're safe. But we're very worried about what's coming down the pike. Okay.

What is coming down the pike that you think we need to be most paying attention to? Well, there's a whole raft of things. They want to ban more plastic. They want to regulate us in various ways. There's a concern about taxes. And really, we don't know at this point what they're going to push. There's placeholder bills and to do anything. Yeah, I'm going to be talking with Kevin Starrett about an hour from now because he wanted to go through a lot of these placeholder gun bills, which have been there that are just sort of primed for being gutted and stuffed, right? That's the kind of stuff that goes on here in the very end?

That's exactly right. They put something in, and last minute they change it, and then you get to fight it last minute because you don't know it's coming. Are you hearing any noise about the school budgeting? I'm reading some news stories that are rather interesting. They're talking about Governor Kotek trying to figure out, Governor Kotech trying to figure out how much more money to shove into education, even though there are fewer children enrolling in Oregon public education. And most of the money that is being given to the state schools right now, if they give any extra,

most of it's having to go into a backfill PERS, the retirement fund. And so, you know, that seems to be the swallowing the state education system, really. Exactly. But the other problem is they're not going to improve the education system with more money. In fact, I think if you cut the budget, you'd be better off. The problem is not money, it's how it's managed. And teaching children is simple. You just have to do it. The governor put out a 40-page report on how we're going to fix the system, which was just all sorts of bureaucracy and so forth, nothing in there about how to actually teach children.

Is there anything in the state legislature that's being talked about actually reducing? I know there's a big part about getting more housing built. The state economist says we need about 29 and a half thousand. Governor Kotick says we need 36,000. But one way or the other, I don't think anyone's going to the root of it, which is state control of the land and the whole process, the permitting process. Am I wrong about that, Senator? No, you're exactly right. That's the problem. They want to allocate money to build cheap housing, you know, which is going to cost affordable housing, usually costs more than normal housing. All they have to do is ease up on the regulations, and there are lots of people that would love to build the houses. You don't have to do anything else.

All right. I know I'm shifting gears and touching on a lot of things like bing, bing, bing before you end up going into your meeting. So I appreciate you being nimble. All right. No, that's great. I've got lots of time right now. Yeah. Let's focus on what you are working on right now.

And this having to do with Senate Bill 762. Yes. And that is the thing. We are just flooded with calls and emails from concerned property owners. They're rightfully concerned about what will happen to their property. They've been classified as high risk. That classification will not go away no matter what they do. And the government wants to come in and tell them how to manage their property.

The fire maps themselves are obviously severely flawed. But even if they were right, there's a takings problem with this. This should not be done. All right. And what are you hoping to do then with your bill? And what is it? To just simply repeal the whole thing and go back the way we were. Okay.

I like that idea. Don't get me wrong. But is this one of those things where no fellow can dream? Or is there? Probably somewhat. It's a little different this time, though, because there's a history of they don't like having this many upset voters. And two years ago, when they first came out with the fire maps, there was a huge outcry, and they had to pull back. And now they're back with them. And, again, we've got a huge outcry, and they had to pull back. And now they're back

with them. And again, we've got a huge outcry because of what they did. I think they're susceptible to the pressure because they've attacked so many property owners at once. And so we've been urging everyone to file appeal and push back on it, because if you make your voice heard, you can have an impact. And of course, total repeal is exactly what we need. I don't know. Like I said, the Republicans don't have enough votes. But I think we might be able to get somewhere. We'll see what happens.

Is there any possibility you could get a hearing? Have you heard? That I have not heard yet. I haven't heard back whether there's a hearing on that. I don't think it's scheduled. I'd have to check. But I have not heard that it's scheduled i'd have to have to check but i have not heard that it's been scheduled yet i know that i've talked to several uh to several

times with senator golden you know about this because uh the fire map deal was his baby and he naturally is not in favor of repealing it but i don't know if if there's any way to really fix this it appears that the the whole concept of the wildfire map risk plan has been flawed from the beginning. I don't know if they can fix that. I think that's correct. Some people say that it's a good idea to know what's highest risk in terms of placing fire assets and so forth. You didn't need a map for that. Anyone could have told you. You could have sat down on a map. Yeah, obviously, the Willamette Valley is going to burn as fast as, say, the Illinois Valley in the middle of the summer. So to have some idea of what's most flammable and what you need to have assets targeted at in the

middle of the fire season makes sense. And if someone wanted to do a quick map to have some idea, nobody would have objected to that. It's just deliberate targeting of property owners and classifying their property in ways that will reduce their value and make it hard for them to do things in the future. That's the concern. And, of course, the insurance companies, if they leave this up to the insurance companies, people are losing their insurance. The whole thing has put a whole uncertainty in what's going on. Of course, fire risk is there. So the insurance companies do have a problem trying to figure out their risk. But if you left them alone, they can decide, talking to the homeowners, what price they want to charge.

And if they want to recommend something that will lower the insurance, that's between the insurance company and the homeowner. We just need to keep the state completely out of it. Is there not an issue here, though, that if you end up getting to the point where the insurance industry decides that Oregon is at such a high risk that they can't cover it, that people will be forced off their land one way or the other? Because it's not exactly like the state of Oregon can just kind of pass an edict and force an insurance company to insure property here in southern Oregon. What do you think? That is correct. So the thing the state

can do most about that is have as efficient a process as possible for putting the fires out to manage the government forest as efficiently as possible so we don't have these high fire loads. I mean, we didn't used to have as bad a problem with this. And so, yes, we can improve the firefighting capabilities and possibly make things better, but the insurance companies do have to do their own calculations. The state cannot force them to do anything. If they do, it's just going to make the problem worse. So it's a problem, but when the state gets in and tries to do something this intrusive,

and with what's going on now i think it's very hard for the insurance companies to make any decisions they don't know what things are going to look like five years from now senator roa noah robinson is with me once again from josephine county senator i'm not one to like the state telling us what to do with our property but we do have building codes and construction codes and remodel codes and all those sort of things. We've kind of grown up with that form of tyranny for quite some time. Isn't there a case to be made that as much as I despise Senate Bill 762, and from the sounds of it, many other people do too,

that the requirements to when you end up rebuilding your property, replacing siding, let's say, with fire-resistant or fireproof siding and roofs, those kind of things. Isn't that kind of common sense or not? What do you think? Well, see, if I were updating a house, I would try to make it more fireproof myself. But I think that could be left up to the property owners as much as possible. And I don't like – I think there's too much in the building codes. The building codes aren't that high quality anyway.

I think in most cases you could leave it up to the homeowners and they'd be fine. But I think they're strong enough as it is that those homeowners that want to take the risk do it a little more cheaply. And those that want a stronger, more fire-retardant home can do more. It's a question of cost, and I really think that should be left up to the property owners. They can take their own risk. I would imagine that a property owner who would, let's say, put in the fire hardening on their property, the metal roof, let's say, and do they have fireproof? I don't know if it's fireproof is on their property, the roof, metal roof, let's say. And do they have fireproof? I don't know if it's fireproof is the proper term,

but much more fire-resistant siding and things like that. Yeah, the fiber cement is very good that way. Okay, yeah. You put that in and pretty much it's not going to burn, and that would be great. I imagine your insurance company would most likely look quite favorably upon that kind of a remodel, wouldn't it? Exactly. And that's why I think it should be left up to the property owners and insurance companies to figure it out. That's a system that works.

I wanted to ask you also, President Trump has been generating hissy fits. I'm sure you've read about this over the last day with his executive order to stop the grant stream funding and even the state of Oregon joining in on lawsuits, everything about fighting Trump, fighting Trump, fighting Trump. Are they scared about losing their money, Senator? Politicians are most scared about losing money above all things. I think they probably are. It's about the money. It's not about the principal involved. It's not that they don't care about the people. It's about the money. It's not about the principal involved. It's not that they don't care about the people. It's about the money, the money and the power. Well, of course, it varies.

You can't paint with a broad brush. But I think they worry about money more than anything else. There's always this concern. They love to spend the taxpayer money. They love to have all these grants. I think that that's something that they will be very concerned about. You're a state senator, so of course you represent your district in the state. Would you be okay with President Trump actually going to war against states like Oregon? I mean, going to war financially in which, all right, if you want this

grant stream funding, you better dance to this particular tune, even if it's a better tune than what was being danced to in the past. Like an example, when ODOT would put transportation grants into Medford and then they rebuild the streets, but then they have to put in bike lanes. Do you think it's wise for President Trump to do the same thing to Oregon in the opposite direction, to have a more common sense deal or not? Well, given the environment, of course, the conservatives would applaud it. I really think that this should be left up to the state. I'm for local control, actually, not just for— I think the state should stay out of the city's decisions as well. So I'm not generally in favor of the federal government coming in and giving edicts on this is how you must do it.

Of course, Trump's will be much better. Well, you know, Trump is already talking about this with government schools. If you're taking government funding, you're not going to be doing the multiple genders thing, the LGBTQIA agenda, the transgender kid agenda. And that would have to have some impact on the Oregon Department of Education, would it not? Because there's a lot of Fed money that goes to these local public schools. That's exactly right. And look, I'm happy if he does that, because in the current system, I think we need to eliminate both the Federal Department of Education and the State Department of Education and let the localities make decisions. We'd have better school. In the current environment, where, yes, a lot of money is coming down from the federal government, if he makes some obviously rational choices like that, I think that that's a good thing. All right.

Senator Robinson, Noah Robinson here. What has been your biggest surprise as we are getting into week two of the legislative session here? Anything that's jumping out at you? Well, things are jumping out at me. I'm not really surprised because I'm used to it having been up here with my dad, but I'm on the Education Committee and on the Energy Committee, and there's a lot of bills in there to ban plastics of various forms. They want to put filters in washing machines that require everyone that does a washing machine or every new washing machine have a filter to get out any little specks of plastic that might get out.

Well, you know, the thing is, though, Noah, I've talked about the stories about the microplastics in the environment. Is that not a problem or not? Well, it's there. I mean, there's microplastics there. Now, you realize they've just started measuring this stuff. I think it's been there a long time. I was asking questions about that because they had some people up there testifying about this. And it would be interesting to see how long they've been there and so forth. But it isn't something you'd expect to be terribly harmful. It's just little tiny

pieces of hydrocarbon. And these things are things worth studying. I don't think you're going to find that they're a real problem in any way. And on the other side is the tremendous value that plastic provides to people in terms of convenience, in terms of food being clean and sterile. Oh, yeah. Going back to having to have autoclaves and glass syringes everywhere, although that might make it a little bit tougher to be a fentanyl addict downtown. But, yeah, the stabbing wagon would have to have a lot more grants to put out glass syringes every day. But be that as it may, I think one of the – it would be interesting to hear you from your scientific perspective take a look at the endocrine-disrupting nature of microplastics. And I've read a lot about that, and I think if maybe you look into that, maybe you would feel a little bit differently about it,

you know, the man-boobing of America type of situation in which young men, especially the testosterone-disruptive natures of many plastics in the environment. Is that something worth looking at at the state level? It's always worth looking into. I think research on these things is always worthwhile. I don't really like government-funded research because it's really the poorest kind. But I think these sorts of things should be researched because you might find something that's worth following. Right now they're claiming they have weak correlations with various things.

There are correlations everywhere. I've seen so far no data that's concerning. I obviously will look at everything that comes up, and if something comes up that you look at and say, well, this looks like it's a problem, then you have to weigh the benefits versus the risks. That's the way it is a thing. But plastic is such a useful substance, and it's enhanced people's lives in so many ways that you have to, you can't just say it's there so we're afraid of it. You have to have an actual reason and have some idea of what harm it does if such harm exists. And also the cost-benefit of replacing that too, because I don't think people realize just how plasticized our entire world has become. For good, or some

people would say not so good, but it has been a miracle material, just is, and we can't get away from that. And then they do things like the ban in the grocery stores where you have to pay five cents, take everybody's time asking at every cashier counter. The food isn't as clean because it's not coming back in these little bags. And the amount of plastic they're attacking there is a little tiny bit of it. Plus, of course, we have in India and China, the amount of plastic they're putting out the trash situation there is very different. So when you say we're going to do something about it, it has to be first, there has to be a reason to actually even do anything. And then if you're going to do something about it, it has to be significant. If you put everyone to a lot of

trouble to reduce things by 1% know, 1% or less, that's just a total waste of everyone's time. When you look at the big plastic ball out in the middle of the Pacific, you know, there's that big island out there. It's miles and miles and miles. It's just huge, right? It's a huge bunch of floating plastic. But that's not from the United States. A lot of people don't realize that. It's all coming from Asia and mostly poorer countries in Asia that don't do a lot of landfills. They just throw everything in the ocean. That's a different problem, isn't it?

Yes. That's not something we're going to fix here, right? Yeah. Banning plastic in Oregon is not going to fix the ball of plastic coming from Asia. That's for sure. All right. All right. Well, Senator, keep looking at the science and keep us in the loop on that one. All right, Noah?

We appreciate that. I will do that. I'm very interested in it. We'll follow it. I'm not concerned now, but if we find something, I'll let you know. All right. State Senator Noah Robinson, and tell us if you're going to get a hearing on your repeal of Senate Bill 762.

And, you know, next time, I think we're going to have to look into Senator Jeff Golden. I'm going to talk with him next week, too. But I believe he's part of a Senate joint resolution that would have a constitutional amendment requiring a clean environment or promising every Oregon resident a clean, proper environment. Words to that effect. I'm kind of paraphrasing right now. There's no abuse that could come from such a law, is there?

Oh, never, right? Yes, exactly. Who defies a clean environment? Well, I don't have a lot of confidence in the people in charge right now. So I think that is just not really a good way to go right now. Yeah, it would be everything. Breathing too much carbon dioxide out, well, that's harming the environment. It could be like the single key to unlock everything.

And if you think DEQ is nuts on people now, wait until they get that kind of power behind them. It's amazing stuff. Carbon dioxide really bugs me. They're considering carbon dioxide a pollutant. It's essential for life. It's very important. We wouldn't have plants without it. As the concentration goes up, plants and food crops and everything grow faster.

I just did a remonstrance yesterday on that. I'm trying to explain to the senators the benefits of carbon dioxide and point out that there you really think that's carbon dioxide, tell them you'll believe that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, an actual pollutant, when the dope growers, the indoor dope growers, stop putting it in their greenhouses. Okay? Exactly, yes. Because they're all supportive of all the dope growers, right? Oh, the dope growers are doing this? Oh, okay. All right.

Senator, good talking with you. We'll catch you next time all right be well you too thank you very much state senator noah robinson it is uh 7 34 kmd it's the bill meyer show on kmed southern oregon's place to talk mr x is here mr x before news a hot take on the good side of President Trump trying to defund those NGOs that executive ordered, which is causing hissy fits in D.C. right now. What do you think? Well, I know it's causing hissy fits, and the shockwaves are going to be felt everywhere. And this is what you have to understand. This system is so embedded in what we face every day.

And point of fact, 762. Now, you have the Oregon Department of Forestry is leading this thing, right? But the whole thing relies upon the university creating the map. But the university isn't going to accomplish any of the work. The money would be distributed to the NGOs that are part of this, the stakeholder groups from the consensus. They're going to implement all of this stuff. Kind of like them being the equivalent of Stabenwagen with OHA. OHA doesn't distribute the needles. OHA writes million-dollar contracts to the Stabenwagen in Southern Oregon to actually

do the dirty work, right? That's exactly right and but the work that they're doing is based upon a false premise like no one was just saying it's all about climate change and it's about added control everything is about the injection of government control through your lives so how do you think that uh that trump defunding the ngos at a federal level or really putting them under strain would affect us here though with a state there's so much money there's so much money distributed to these people but via that federal conduit now you look at that aspect now they can't possibly fulfill the requirements within the law of 762 that they put together because who's going to pay for it?

Well, they're going to try to say you have to pay for it as a landowner, but this whole thing relies upon them burning and restoring the forest at a landscape level. Well, the first step in landscape restoration is to burn it. They want to be able to burn it through your property. And this is fundamentally the flaw. But they can't do that effectively because according to the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, they're supposed to go out and clear the land before they burn it. And this whole thing is such a nightmare, but it's all getting ready to come unglued. That's why they're pushing so hard on this.

That's why they're pushing right now. That's why they want it right now. Okay, get it in. All right. Ed, thank you for the hot take. All right. All right. Have a good one, Bill.

Thank you. Speaking of Senate Bill 762, Bob Hart wrote me, and he says, Bill, I've been asked by the Josephine County Commissioners to speak about the wildfire regulations Thursday. That's tomorrow. Josephine County Fairgrounds at 7 o'clock. He'll be taking questions after the presentation. The legislation allows local governments to appeal the map, and Joe County is considering an appeal.

I will meet with the county council later today. But remember, tonight is the Northwest Forest meeting at the blm office 3040 biddle road six o'clock we want to ask for more management of the forest to reduce fire danger they're going to be doing a presentation of three alternative plans uh to do that folks okay that's tonight six o'clock now uh you might want to get here early because at five o'clock you're going to have the gangrene hissy fitters out there that are all going to be bleeding about saving every old growth tree, you know, that kind of thing. So just understand that's what's going to be happening when you first show up.

All right, folks? It's 20 before 8. Stephen Westfall, Inc. is thrilled to announce the winner of their... Hi, I'm Amber Rose with Siskiyou Pump Service, and I'm on KMED. The homelessness issue, no matter what the NGOs may be telling us, no matter what our state government might be telling us, at the root of it, though, is more often than not drug addiction. And I know that the state of Oregon is taking baby steps into re-realizing that. You know, because in the past it used to be pretty much a common sense sort of situation.

All you have to do is just look and realize that a tweaker wandering around downtown Medford streets is probably not going to be employed and likely not real responsible when it comes to taking any housing that may or may not be offered, no to him or her, right? I wanted to talk about this with Dr. Robert Marbitt. He's an expert on homelessness, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute Center on Wealth and Poverty. Now, you have a PhD in political behavior. Now, that's an interesting degree, doctor. Welcome to the show. Good to have you on. Thank you for having me on again.

Really appreciate it. Okay. What would you say about the political behavior of Washington, D.C., as they see President Trump now doing his best to try to slice away funding from the NGOs here, all of that GrantStream funding? Did you kind of chuckle about that? Yeah. And I think you're really hitting it quickly you know you're set up there about losing a house it at a common sense level you don't give somebody a house if they can't hold on to a house in the first place right they a person lost the house when they were paying rent, whatever.

So why did they lose the house? They don't have a job. Why don't they have a job? It's because of substance abuse. And normally it's untreated mental illness. And you're sort of like self-medicating. Three-fourths of the people we know from the biggest study ever done in America, homeless, three-fourths of the people living on the street have untreated mental illness with a co-presenting substance abuse issue. And if you don't deal with the substance abuse issue, a person will never keep a job.

They won't show up on time. They'll leave early. They don't come. They don't perform. And if you don't do that, you don't make money. You don't make money. You can't pay your rent. This is not a housing issue. Yeah, it's a negative reinforcement doom loop, I think, is really what we're looking at. You don't help that individual. And what they've seen in California, who went way into a thing called housing first, they have found since really upping that in the last three years, their death rate has doubled. I mean, this is not kind. This is not humane. It's not good for society. And it wastes a lot of taxpayers' dollars. Dr. Robert Marbitt with me once again from the Discovery Institute. Doctor, I saw a young woman roaming the streets of Medford. I

was on my way to visit my mother over by Providence Hospital. And there was this young woman. She was walking down the street, had a sleeping bag wrapped half around her. And so you can already tag and say this is one of the concrete campers, one of Southern Oregon's homeless individuals. And she was a young woman. I'd like to say maybe mid to late 20s, that was it. And she was screaming and raving and arguing with the brick wall to her right, you know,

as she was walking down the street. And she kept doing that as she was going down the street and continuing to argue and rant and rave at these people. And there's nothing we can do, apparently. At least that's what I'm told. What do you think about that? Well, the good news is there is something we now can do. Thank you to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has said that local jurisdictions are better suited to understand how to help homelessness now than the Ninth Circuit down in San Francisco that came up with all these crazy rules. And so a few months ago, literally about three or four months ago, the Supreme Court ruled that a local jurisdiction could do it. And it's from an Oregon case, the city of Grants Pass. Yep, we're well familiar with it. Grants Pass is right up the road from us here.

We talk with them all the time about this. Exactly. And I had relatives over the years in your community have been there many times. And the police can do something. The city council can do something. Oregon State can do it. But problem is you come from a state, sadly, that had really gone off the left wing, lost their common sense and started saying, let's give alcohol to alcoholics. Let's give drugs to druggies and let's drug addicts and people with substance use disorders. Let's do that and see how that works. Well, that doesn't

work. What works is when you give real treatment to people who have substance use disorders. That really does work. And do you think most of these people, like the raving woman I saw, and like I said, it was very sad. I actually felt very badly, you know, for this woman, because I'm thinking, what a miserable life this is to be, you know, arguing with imaginary demons, you know, to you as you're walking up and down the street in your homeless life. And, you know, you think most of those people also are addicted to drugs or they have the mental illness, then they get addicted to the drugs and then it's even worse. Is that how you... And what we know from research, and again, the biggest study ever done is three-fourths start with the untreated mental illness and then they go

into the self-medicating. Now, about a small percent, very small, six, seven, eight percent start with the drug use and then go into mental illness. Normally, it's mental illness first, substance use second, normally. There's a small group that goes the other way. And I feel so sorry, and it just breaks my heart when you tell me the story for her and what she's going through and just can't imagine what she's suffering through. But that's one part. That's one third of the equation. The next is, what does that do for the community? Does that make a child walking to school more comfortable or less comfortable?

Is she potentially violent or nonviolent to another citizen on the street? And then we're wasting money. So it's bad for the person on the substance use disorder, the homelessness person. It's bad for the community, and it wastes the financial resources of the community in terms of the criminal justice system, the police, the emergency rooms, emergency departments, et cetera. Dr. Robert Marbid once again, and I wanted to talk with you a little bit before we continue this, because you've written or you've actually produced a documentary on a lot of this. In fact, it's called Fentanyl Death Incorporated. Could you tell us a little bit about that? It's streaming on Salem Now, by the way, SalemNow.com. It's on SalemNow.com, and we'll be going into some theaters in March and April, and then we'll have wider streaming in May, first week of May.

And it's the most comprehensive movie ever made documentary about fentanyl. So we go through the science of it. How did we get here? The medical aspects of it, the political aspects, policy, how China's involved, how Canada's involved, how Mexico's involved, how decriminalization has hurt us. And then we go into the solutions. And it's a really fast paced documentary. And if you want one hour to learn everything you need to know about fentanyl, in one hour you can get it. Get it great, and it's entertaining, it's interesting, and it's really getting really good reviews. Fentanyl Death Incorporated. We'll put that information up there, too, for people to find out more about this. But you're also writing recently that the president, our new president, who is, of course, our old president, has the attention of China, Mexico, and Canada

because these are where most of these countries are where most of the fentanyl is coming from. He did more in the first four weeks after being elected, not when he got into the Oval Office, after he got elected, he was a citizen, president-elect, and he got more done in four weeks than the prior administration did in four years. What did he do differently? He got the attention of the three leaders, so much so, and a lot of people forget more and more of the fentanyls coming through on the northern border of Canada. He got he talked to all three leaders. And I'm not sure Joe Biden had recently talked to any of these leaders of China, Mexico and Canada. And he even got the premier of Canada to come down to have dinner with them within, I think, five or six days after being elected.

And then he quit shortly after that. Yeah. Well, he's still in office for a little bit until they get the new government in. It's interesting, both Canada and Mexico, it looks like Canada is going to, you know, until you weigh it out, measure everything and test everything, but it looks like Canada has had the biggest drug bust ever in the history of Canada after President Trump was elected. It turns out two of the biggest drug busts in the history of Mexico occurred after President Trump was elected. So that tells me those two leaders and the government of those countries really get they got to start doing more. What about what about China, though?

Yeah, the problem with China is they're providing now what's called the precursor agents, you know, the technical ingredients. They're even producing what's now called precursor ingredients that go to Canada and Mexico, where they're really made in Canada and Mexico now. Okay. What could be done about that, you think, with President Trump? Because China's already on the radar for a lot of other issues involving trade. And the great news is the conversation has started. You're never going to get it fixed until you get the conversation started and you get their attention. And he did it with the threat of tariffs. I think everybody realizes you don't want to have a tariff war. But if that's what it takes to get their attention, get that and sit down on the table. So for China, we know they

know how to control drugs. There's almost no drug use in China. So we know they know how to do it. So if they want to do this, they can, and they can really help on what's flowing out of China in terms of the precursor agents. In terms of Mexico, they need to let us at some point really quickly start to do joint operations to take out the cartels. Because if you don't take out the cartels, you're going to have a supply coming in. And so we've got to do joint operations there. But isn't Mexico, in essence, a semi-failed Marco state right now? Some of the four northern states of Mexico absolutely are.

It is so unsafe there. You can barely move around with any inkling of safety. And it's all about the money. And it's all about the cartels controlling the financial stream. And before fentanyl, remember the cartels have been bringing in every illicit drug pretty much since the 1980s when it started with PCP and angel dust. And ever since then, coke, crack, meth, now fentanyl, the organic opioids, the synthetic opioids, all of them have been flowing through with the Mexican cartels. Let's go back to Canada here just a moment. Dr. Robert Marbut with me from the Discovery Institute, and his documentary, he's producer of Fentanyl Death Incorporated, and you can find that right now on SalemNow.com.

Doctor, something, now, do you live in Seattle? I know Discovery Institute's in Seattle. I don't know if you necessarily live there. I spend a lot of time up in Seattle because that's the headquarters for Discovery. Well, the reason I bring this up, though, is that it's one thing to have, you know, to have the prime minister of Canada, you know, talk with Trump and then say, hey, I'm going to quit, et cetera, et cetera. And then we're starting to see some drug busts. It's pretty well known, though, that the Chinese mob owns most of Vancouver at this point.

You know, a big part of it, north of Seattle. And Chinese interests control a lot of what's going on in Canada right now. What do you believe long term might be the way to deal with this? Because I think it's greater than just a little Fidel in the prime minister's office in Canada, if you know what I'm getting at. Yeah, absolutely. In the prime minister's office in Canada, if you know what I'm getting at. Absolutely. And we need much more cooperation with the criminal justice services, with the security services, the intelligence services. But the thing that scares me the most is roughly 60 percent of the inbound product of Canada comes in on the west side of Canada from Asia, China being obviously the biggest inbound. Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

It's kind of the look the other way aspect because of the communist Chinese control of so much of western Canada. Well, think about this. Less than 1% of the shipping cartons, containers, whatever that comes in, a big connex box, small connex box, whatever it is, only 1% are getting thoroughly checked now. And until that number dramatically changes, you're not going to get a dent in it. You got to get where you either with intelligence target certain containers

or you get such a high percentage of randomization. So if you hit a ship and you get two dirty containers, that means probably there are more containers on that ship. So you got to really go after every container of that ship. And you got to do that until they say you know what it's not worth it for us to bring this stuff in we're losing money we're losing people that's when they'll stop shipping it in yeah because losing a container every now and then that's just a cost of doing business really you know at that cartel level just the cost of doing business yeah they build that into their their their business plan all right let's take it then back to the homeless woman in downtown Medford that I was telling you about when we first started our conversation.

And obviously mentally ill, most likely drug addicted too. Like you say, that's where most of the homeless issue comes from. And we made a societal decision many years ago. And I know a lot of people like to blame Ronald Reagan. No, Ronald Reagan just had to be government, governor of California, when the laws came down from up above that we were going to deinstitutionalize the country. And we were not going to be putting people in mental institutions any longer, at least not to the extent that we were. And has that pendulum swung enough? Are we going to start swinging back? Is that what's necessary? Because I don't know if you're going to get a raving lunatic on

the streets of Medford or Grants Pass or Ashland to be necessarily taking their meds all the time without being under some form of supervision. Do you have any thoughts on that and i i do in in you you're in a state you know along with you know the west coast plus a little bit in hawaii who's sort of moved to it it's much easier to get high in your state in your community in bedford than it is to get treatment and we need to flip that on its head and make it easier to get treatment, the harder to get high. Now, that is expensive, though. That's not cheap treatment, though, is it? No, it's not. And to talk about what happened in the Ronald Reagan time, two things simultaneously happened. Ronald Reagan and Dick at OMB, they really wanted to get the federal government out of the mental

health business. And in 1950, there were about a half a million federally funded and government funded mental health beds in America, all across America. That number now is down to 30,000. And on the far... With a much larger population than 1950. Yeah, much larger. And so where they go, the streets, the jail, the prisons. And on the right, and I got to tell you, there's fault on both sides. On one side, on the right, it was, we don't want to spend government money doing it. And I think that was penny wise, pound foolish, because look how much it's costing us now. Then on the far left, they were watching when it flew over the cuckoo's nest, thought it was a documentary and moved into this deinstitutionalization when there was a hospital in New York that absolutely had to be either reformed thoroughly or closed down. But that doesn't mean you close down the entire system. And we got to make it, we got to figure out a way to make this system efficient and effective.

We got to make it efficient for the taxpayers and effective for the individual who needs the help. But we can't go from 500,000 beds to under 30,000 beds and expect things are going to be good for our country when our population is 60% bigger. You are then talking about some form of a re-institutionalizing program. And I know that we've had sheriffs talk about, well, it needs to be done through the criminal justice system. I don't know. Is that the best way to go about it? Or how would you do it? That's one approach. And to me, I don't care which way we go, but we got to do something. We can't keep talking about it. And the sheriffs are so smart on this. And the reason why they're smart, not only do they patrol very large surface areas,

they may not patrol metro areas, but they patrol rural areas. and it's just as bad there now as the metro areas. But the bigger reason why the sheriffs really understand this is they run the jail system in America. And right now, the American jails are providing more mental health help than any mental health system is. And we know jails don't provide good mental health services, but they're the only, they're the sort of last line of defense. And most of the people who are in jail are in severe need of mental illness help and substance abuse help, and they're not getting either. When you talk about 500,000 beds down to 30,000 beds, is that just 30,000 beds paid by the feds, or is that including all of the states, too? I just want to make sure my stats are right. That's all the

direct and indirect government system combined. And I'll tell you, those 30,000, almost all are forensic beds now. They're not proactive treatment beds. They're forensic. So when a person says, I plead, you know, innocent by reason of insanity, and they're not sentenced to life in prison for a murder, for example, but they're sentenced to a mental health facility until they're, quote, healthy. I think Hinckley, you know, who shot at President Reagan, you know, was put in a mental health institute, not a criminal justice system. So those are called forensic beds. That's about all the beds we have now. The 30,000 people sentenced for forensic, not crimes, because technically they weren't found guilty.

They were found innocent by reason of insanity, and they're put in a mental health forensic bed. So we basically have no proactive treatment mental health beds left in America. This also explains that when you have a family member that finds themselves in mental health crisis, the only treatment's available if you have $100,000 a year cash lying around. That's where we find ourselves right now, right? If you can't self-finance it, you don't get it. And all across the country, the court systems allow you what's called a 72-hour hold, and there are different names in different parts of the country. They call them different things. But you're allowed law enforcement or an emergency room charge nurse or an ER doc can do it and can assign you to a 72-hour hold. And the goal there is to have you de-escalate, to get the drugs out of your system,

all of that, so that you're not a harm to yourself or to society. Most of America doesn't even have enough treatment beds to make a 72-hour hold, a 72-hour hold. Most states, a 72-hour hold ends up being a 12-hour hold at most. And so we, you know, let's start at a simple building block. I mean, this is a very complex problem. Let's start with the simple thing. How do you make a 72 hour hold that's done by a judge or a, is 72 hour, that was a political decision made by courts. Most people clinically think you need a really a 10 day hold to get all the drugs out of your system so that you can make a coherent decision on your own recovery. And so I think we need to reinvigorate the 72-hour hold and make it where it really is, 72 hours. And I think it's time to go back to the courts and say, three days is not enough. Let's go for 10. There's a lot of clinical reasons why 10 is right. And then you move into

then what do we do with people at day 11? And so there's a lot of work to be done here. It's not easy, but if we don't do it, we're going to lose cities. I mean, places like San Francisco is a lost city. Portland is basically a lost city. Seattle, in many ways, is lost. Even though Seattle's doing more now than most any other city on the West Coast. If a city recovers, I think Seattle will be the first city to recover. And they've got a long way to go.

They've got a lot of problems. But they're starting to take on these hard issues. One of the biggest battles that we face here in Southern Oregon, especially with some of our smaller cities such as Grants Pass, Dr. Marbet, is we're told that, okay, to be able to take care of this homeless problem, there has to be low barrier shelters available. Now, we have high barrier shelters available to go begging because we have homeless that don't want to follow rules because you can't take the drugs, you can't do the drinking and various other things. What are your thoughts on that as part of it? Do you have an opinion? Oh, absolutely.

And I've set these up, and they've worked these facilities like Haven for Hope and San Antonio, and they work really well. And it's much more nuanced than that sort of far right or far left. And what it is is you want a low barrier to entry. I want to take you as is. If you're mobile, if you can roll in, if you can walk or crutch in, we want you in because it's better for you to be in treatment than being out on the street. But if you're actually going to be in treatment though. Yeah, but once you're inside, it is no drugs, no alcohol, and sometimes you need medical detox, sometimes you need social detox,

it depends on what it is. So inside the program is clean and sober, high standards, high expectations, but we'll take you as you are, and we call it come as you are. So we want to take you as you are, but we love you too much to let you stay that way, and we're going to have very high standards and rules inside the program. Does that require, though, a civil commitment of some sort? Sometimes it does, but sometimes it actually doesn't, and it depends on how you use the new City of Grants Pass rule. If you ignore—

This is the city, by the way, which is struggling with it because, you know, you have many people are saying we need a low barrier shelter, and then other taxpayers are saying, hey, I don't want to pay to enable. I don't want to pay to enable the problem. And let me give you a concept that I think is really important. If you have compassion without accountability, it's enablement. And so you need to have accountability with the compassion and you bring it under City of Grants Press rule. Now you can pick people off the street. You no longer have to do all this crazy stuff you used to do that did not work clinically. You can bring a person into a program, but the program has to be clean

and sober once you get into the building. And you absolutely have to have high standards. And if you continue to enforce it under the City of Grants Pass, at some point a person says, okay, I guess I got to get treatment. I can't just go out. Because if you have a city like San Francisco or Portland or Seattle or like Seattle used to do and say, don't worry, we'll keep giving you drugs. And we're much more worried about you having a clean needle than getting off of drugs. I'm befuddled of why we spend so much time worrying about a clean needle to get in your arm rather than saying, let's try to not have you ever put a needle in your arm. That's the way better approach than worry about when you do your drugs and want you to have a clean needle. We need to be moving toward treatment and recovery, not enablement of drug use. All right, Dr. Robert Marbut, producer of Fentanyl Death Incorporated, that's now streaming at Salem now. You can also find out more about the film at FentanylDeathIncorporated.com.

And as far as your other thoughts on this, is this over at the Discovery Institute website? I just want to make sure people can find out everything about you. Pretty thought-provoking. Well, thank you very much for caring about this issue and your thoughtful conversation about it. Because this is an existential threat to our country. And if we don't get serious about it, the fact that more people have died in the last five years of fentanyl in America than all Americans have died at war in 100 years should get people's attention. All right. Now, is there any other website I should mention?

That's what I was asking there earlier. No, no, no. Discovery Institute's a great one, Fentanyl Death Incorporated, and Salem Now. All right. Very good. Doctor, great getting a chance to talk with you about it again. Be well. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. Very welcome. My pleasure. This is KMED and KMED HD1 Eagle Point Medford KBXG Grants Pass.