Panic World - Why were cops fainting from fentanyl?

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Some urban legends are just for fun, like the “Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus,” while others are not. Today we’re investigating the claim that while busting drug dealers, police can accidentally “absorb”  fentanyl through their skin, causing them to suffer a whole bevy of health problems — starting with fainting. Years later, it’s still impacting legislation across the country and mostly wasting a bunch of money. Mangesh Hattikudur and Mary Phillips-Sandy from Part-Time Genius join us to explain how fentanyl actually works, and debunk this one. Check out Part-Time Genius wherever you get your podcasts, and follow them on Instagram @parttimegenius. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here:      http://multitude.productions/ads. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So this is actually very exciting. Typically, when we talk about mass panics and viral hysteria on this show, there's some kernel of truth. Today, we're talking about something that has like almost no kernel of truth to it, which is really great. But to start, I would love to ask, what is the most outlandish urban legend you've fallen for? I don't know if I don't know if I exactly really believed it, but I was like surprised and stunned by the sort of effort that someone went to. There was a website in the late 90s that was devoted to saving the Pacific Northwest tree octopus. And they had these like photos of tree octopuses. And I was like, wait, like, if it's that wet, like, maybe they.

And it links out to all these other, like, research sites. And there's like a Russian paper about it. And like, it's incredible. And I guess someone was using it as a test for, like, kids. I remember this. And just went full out to like figure out like literacy and media literacy and whether people would believe in hoaxes or whatever and none of the kids passed. That's awesome. What about you, Mary?

I feel like I want to believe things more. Do you know what I mean? Like I feel like I miss out on a lot because my first question when someone tells me something good, it's always like, really? Are you sure? I feel like I am often the downer in my friend group. That's perfect for this show. I will say as a teenager, I briefly became very convinced that bonsai kittens were real. Oh, yeah.

The, like, genuinely horrifying internet meme about growing a cat inside of a glass jar or something. I was, like, 13 or 14, I was like, wow, the internet's, the world's a really scary place. This seems like very real to me. I fell for the Pope puffer jacket thing. Oh, the AI Pope. Yeah. Pope and a coat. Yeah.

Pope and a coat. I mean, I briefly fell for the. the kangaroo at the airport thing the other day. Like, I had just woken up and looked at my phone and I was like, that could happen in Australia. Sure. This is all great prologue for today's episode. So first, let me just introduce everybody. So my name is Ryan Broderick, joining with me sometimes.

If you can't shut up sometimes is our producer Grant, our lovely producer Grant. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And today, we are talking about a genuine reality warp. A panic that took over America for a while is still sort of impacting laws. and legislation and wasting lots and lots of money. We're going to be looking at why police became convinced that they could absorb fentanyl through their skin. And joining me today is Mangesh and Mary from Part Time Genius.

Welcome to the show, guys. Thank you for having us. Yeah, so excited to be here. We're going to be doing a classic split episode. So we're going to kick things off with the Panic World side, then throw to you guys for the part-time genius side. Then we'll come together like the Wonder Twins at the end and close the whole thing out. And I wanted to start with some videos that went viral in 2022.

The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department is opening up about a suspected fentanyl overdose and how a fast response might have made all the difference. Fantastic. So this is a video of a suspected fentanyl overdose from the Kansas Police Department. And there's a cop totally splayed out on the ground. And let me read you a bit from the story here. Training kicked in. Grisela grabbed his Narcan and delivered a powerful dose which works to counteract opioids like fentanyl.

The first few doses didn't seem to help. Grisela switched nostrils and eventually delivered a total of five doses to Officer Thompson, who confirms he felt like dying. I bet he felt like dying. Yeah, absolutely. If this thing was worth a million dollars, it's priceless to me now. Captain Grisela said while holding Narcan in his hand. And then here's the best part here. It's not if it's going to happen.

It's when. think as a police department, we've done a much better job making sure we're ready when it happens again, Captain Grisela said. So this is sort of a very, I think, archetypal example of what we've heard from police departments across the country about fentanyl. When was the first time you guys remember hearing that cops were touching fentanyl and passing out or overdosing or whatever? Like before the pandemic, 2017, 2018, I feel like there were news stories about it. I just started working in newsrooms when a lot of this stuff was kicking off. From what we can see, May 2013 is the beginning.

Oh, wow. It's the earliest recorded case of cops being worried that they could be exposed to fentanyl. And it's from the Montreal Gazette talking about cops seizing from toxic drugs. And I was trying to think of like the media environment in 2013. And I do think something that has sort of been lost at time is that in the very early 2010s, we had like this massive influx of digital media companies that were. racing each other to find like viral news stories like that very early Facebook traffic heavy world and a lot of these newsrooms hiring little idiots like me right out of college and not training

them at all we're like more than happy to just take whatever the cops are saying and just print it or rather publish it online and I do feel like that is like a massive component here is like a totally feckless unskeptical media environment like 15 years ago yeah that's That makes a lot of sense, actually. I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. I worked in a similar environment for a while, and it's like you have maybe 10 minutes to, like, skim or press release. And then you got to hit click because then you got the next post test to go up. When you first started seeing the articles about this or the videos of cops fainting, what were your first reactions to seeing how this was packaged?

I think at the time, especially given the community that I grew up in, the opioid epidemic and fentanyl and preempties, particular were definitely scary things to me. And I knew people who had suffered from it. I knew people who'd been affected by it. And it just seemed like part of that. I think if anything, I felt like, why aren't those people on the front page of the newspaper? Why is it the cop who fainted and then felt better an hour later? That didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. And also like in J-school, in a journalism school, like the first thing they teach you is like if the cops say it, it's news, which has never gone wrong ever. Totally fine.

Totally, totally fine with that. But I wanted to read another passage here for you guys, which is from this Montreal Gazette piece, this is the first, seemingly the first ever sort of evidence of a police department claiming this. They write, some of the drugs seized were so toxic that four police officers handling them became ill. One officer had to be taken to the hospital with heart problems,

three other officers who were handling in drugs while wearing masks and gloves developed rashes on their arms. Okay. Okay. Also, I love that this was in Montreal, so at least they didn't have to pay for their hospital visit when they were there. Yeah.

They had to wait nine hours, but it was free. Nowadays, I think the Canadian government would just suggest you do like assisted suicide. Just take me. more until it stops. We love Canada. I shouldn't say that. I'll be moving there when I'm not allowed to live here anymore.

Okay, so in 2016, we start to see like the actual formation of this idea. The DEA issues of press release about the dangers of fentanyl exposure. It has been taken down. I'm not sure if that's because they think it's wrong or because Trump has banned any sort of like public, you know, correspondence from government. institutions, but either way, let's listen to a clip that the DEA put out. I'm Jack Riley, Deputy Administrator, the Drug Enforcement Administration. I want to take a minute today to talk to you about something very important.

As a matter of fact, it could kill you. And I'll read a bit from the statement that went along with this. Just touching fentanyl or accidentally inhaling the substance can result in absorption through the skin that is one of the biggest dangers with fentanyl. The onset of adverse health effects such as disorientation, coughing, sedation, respiratory distress and cardiac arrest is very rapid and profound, usually occurring within minutes of exposure. I mean, it feels like, you know, fentanyl's being used in hospitals and things like that for people to be around it and not have seen some of this behavior before, I'd imagine. Yeah, that's an excellent point.

Let's return to our video, though, and see how the police frame this. So if you skip forward a bit after Jack Riley, we cut to two. two real Jersey cops who both kind of look like they play in the band Crazy Train. You know what I'm talking about? The process of sealing the bag, just out of force of habit, I grabbed the bag and I closed it up. And when I did that, a bunch of been poofed up into the air right in our face. And we ended up inhaling it. I felt like my body was shutting down.

You actually felt like you were dying. I don't know how they could have just happened to have thrown it up in the air and inhaled right in a way. That's so interesting that that happened to them. I think it's very purpose by the DEA at this time to sort of go this way, sort of more anecdotal, looking for like localized stories of this stuff happening. I mean, kind of time back to the digital media thing, Facebook traffic was at its peak at this point. And I do think when you look back at like 2015, 2016, we were very like, we were very interested

in like what was going on in local communities. And I think that is largely to do with like Facebook building that network effect. And also by this point is like peak era of like Facebook departments having faith. It is peak era of police departments having Facebook pages. Oh yeah. Yeah. And creating a lot of content for Facebook. Cops love making content.

They do. The only people who love making content more than cops are soldiers on TikTok who were using TikTok so much that they had to ban it because of national security reasons. Not because of China. That is a real thing that happened. So obviously once the DEA does this, we go back to sort of the classic rule of journalism, which is that when the institution say something, it becomes news. So we get the torrent now of just like everyone covering this. So the Washington Post in September 2016 reports on a SWAT team in Connecticut that all had to be treated for overdosing on fentanyl because they got headaches and lightheadedness after a drug bus.

They were all fine, of course. Maybe they were hit by like the Cuban microwave gun, you know, like maybe that they got hit by that instead. But this is all over the internet over the next like nine months. So in May of 2017, there's a bunch of posts that show up on places like BuzzFeed and the Atlantic. Atlantic writing. The New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory released a photo to highlight the drugs particular dangers. The photo showed two vials. One showed a big lethal dose of heroin, about 30 milligrams or a small scoop, if no one listening has ever done heroin before.

Just in case, Grant threw that one in there for you guys. And the second showed the equivalent for fentanyl, which is only three milligrams. A bare sprinkled, the Atlantic Rites. And then here's a quote that they include, a puff of fentanyl from a, from closing a plastic bag, is enough to send a full-grown man, the biggest man you've got into the emergency room. As a police officer from New Jersey described in a drug enforcement agency video last fall. They are just copying, pasting from the DEA promo video on what they're.

The cop said. This is standard, right? And of course, these stories keep escalating. That same month in NBC, patrolman Chris Green of the East Liverpool Police Department had just finished searching the car when another officer spotted some white powder on his shirt. Oh, interesting.

Without thinking, he brushed it off with his bare hand. And it passed out about an hour later. Chief John Lane said it took four doses of narcanter. These cops are narcanning each other at such an extreme level. This cannot be good for you. Okay. For a person who might not be sort of like clocking what we're clocking here. Like what do you guys once again?

Like what would make you guys skeptical when you read reports like this? Like what's missing? Well, science maybe would be good. Consistency. I don't know. If it, I don't know, does it happen immediately or does it take an hour of driving around and then you pass out, right? Like these things are not, these stories are not the same. I think the other hard thing is like in addition to a cop saying it anecdotally, right?

Like they feel so strongly about the experience they had, right? That there's like an emotional aspect to it that comes across too. And I think as more and more cops are listening to more and more cops talk about this, it just spreads. Yeah. It's like a really easy way to get PTO if you want to go down that. from what I know about cops. It seems like that could be maybe one possibility here. So a later BuzzFeed story shows that the person with the fentanyl got extra jail time for assaulting an officer.

So this is like actually where this stuff starts to impact the law, starts to impact how the law is implemented. And I think that's like a very important piece to this, which is that like misinformation like starts very kind of in a goofy way and can really cause some. damage. And it's all being passed around for about a year until finally there's some pushback. It took until August 2017. Two giant toxicology centers issue a joint statement saying that you cannot absorb ventral through your skin. You have to ingest it writing. To date, we have not seen reports of emergency responders developing signs or symptoms consistent with opioid toxicity from incidental contact with opioids. And then they've They get a little even saucier here.

In the unlikely event of poisoning, Nalazone should be administered to those with objective signs of hyperventilation or a depressed level of consciousness and not for vague concerns such as dizziness or anxiety. The idea that they're getting anxious and scared and narcanning each other is extremely funny, honestly. I just love the idea of it as like an inhaler that you carry around. A little winded. I'm just like imagining like the pulp fiction like adrenaline shot in your heart moment, but they're just narcanning each other when they get kind of spooked on their patrol.

Kind of, you know, based on what you would know about like how well information travels in America and how much we trust experts. Like what do you think happens next year in our story? Oh boy. I bet everybody paid attention and that made headlines everywhere and nothing bad happened. Right? So yeah, that's exactly right. Several months later, the DEA quietly retracts their initial warning and no one notices.

In Hartford, after a SWAT team was called in last year, a reported fentanyl overdose is responded to with a hazmat team. In December 2017, on an episode of Blue Bloods, one of the main characters nearly dies from an accidental fentanyl overdose. And without the law, nobody's safe. She's overdosing. Finally, the National Library of Medicine in 2020 does a really fascinating story, studying like how it spread. And it does seem to kind of come back to the idea that this is partially or the result of Facebook activity.

So they write, fueled by misinformation, fentanyl panic has harmed public health through complicating overdose rescue while rationalizing hyperpunitive criminal laws to assess misinformation about health risk from casual contact with fentanyl. We characterize its diffusion and excess visibility in. mainstream and social media. And that's sort of like the background of the study. They found one article saying that if you breathe fentanyl, you will OD. It had 450,000 shares on Facebook, reaching nearly 70 million people across four years.

And several of the articles correcting it had less than 30,000 shares, which is depressing. Not great. I'm not the internet expert here, Ryan, but it seems like something was right. wrong with Facebook? It feels like it shouldn't have been that way. You guys, you guys, you guys aren't on Facebook? You guys aren't hot on Facebook. I'm, I'm still using it all the time. No, no, but is that like what you were finding for disinfo at that time on Facebook? Like, does that follow a trend that you're well aware of? Yeah, I mean, we didn't even talk about it back when we were in like 2016 in our story, but like that was the summer of killer clowns,

right? There were so many localized hoaxes and myths happening in the mid-2000. 2010s on Facebook because Facebook had effectively mapped out every small community in America and connected all of them. And so the kind of thing that would be talked about, I feel like at your neighborhood bar and then kind of die of quiet death is now just like balancing around the internet forever. Where are you guys from both? I'm from rural Maine. Okay. So we know about the opioid crisis. Yeah.

Massachusetts. Yeah. Yeah. I'm from Delaware. Delaware. Okay. So, I mean, do you have a sense of like how your local Facebook, like in your hometowns, like how those Facebook networks like still operate today? Like are they are they big Facebook population still? Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that I'm not on Facebook makes it very hard to communicate with people sometimes. I have like a placeholder account. And there are times when I have to go on. It's the only way to reach people. I feel like growing up Delaware was like such a moderate state. It just felt. to me like a very moderate place and as both things like clear channel came in but then things like

facebook you just saw the widening of of these populations and people forming into their own camps but but facebook is definitely like i see all my high school friends still on it yeah it's the same for me as well like the the the kinds of things that would have just been i don't know passed around a small town they they get stuck now and i i i have no problem believing that like this was a thing a couple cops thought was possible. And it became like basically a meme in the same way a meme becomes a meme because Facebook just doesn't like stuff doesn't die on Facebook. It just lasts forever because of like the the news feed.

So even by 2021, we have stuff from like the San Diego Sheriff's Department putting out a video of a cop, uh, overdosing from skin contact. they put it on Instagram and I'll read a couple of the comments here which are wild and actually Mary your your sort of connection to the opioid crisis is interesting here because one of the top comments on this video is someone saying like oh just seeing this makes my heartbreak knowing this happened to my son you have other people writing like of all the things that never happened this never happened the most so obviously some people are realizing this but then you also have people saying I don't care what anyone says I am a former

fentanyl user and they might deny it all they want. I usually don't agree with what they say about contact that can give you an OD, but that looked 100% like an OD, and I've had an R-Can many people. But I do wonder if another connection to this, and like the reason this idea has persisted so much is like it does create a narrative that's easier to handle when you have so many small communities in America that have suffered from the opioid crisis. In the same way, like a lot of conspiracy theories kind of like thrive on grief or thrive on like 9-11 conspiracies thriving on confusion. I do wonder if this is similar. I think the connection to grief is really important because a lot of people have experienced loss because of fentanyl and because of opioids and they don't know why.

It's hard to understand why. Why did this happen? Why did that happen to someone I care about? Where did this all come from? And that primes you to believe whatever you're then told about it. And I've actually, some of that goes the other way. I have a friend who works in health care back home. was saying she has patients who will say, I don't want any fentanyl. Like, if you're giving me anesthesia, don't give me that fentanyl. And she's like, it's a hospital. I'm not a dealer in an alley. Like we went to med school. We know what we're doing, but people are afraid. And so they say, just don't give it to me. I don't want any opioid medication. And it's like you're having heart surgery. You're going to, I'm sorry, we have to put you under, you know. Yeah, my, my son had

this benign tumor that he had to go to surgery multiple times for. And when the surgeon mentioned, to him that he was going to be on fentanyl. He got terrified. It's, it's really hard because, like, I think as Americans, like, we're not really good with, like, the grays. We're really good with black and white. And I feel like, you know, like, it's so much easier to, like, believe this and then try to curb all drug use versus, like, seeing sort of the space in between. Yeah, I watched all eight seasons of house over the winter. Are you doing okay? I spent eight full days of my life watching House and was continually shocked by how often they were using fentanyl because I did not realize that it had a purpose in a hospital.

And apparently I'm not alone here because as of 2021, 80% of police officers in America believed you could OD from touching it. that no attempt at debunking has really broken through into the ranks of the people who continually report this stuff, who, like we said, have direct access to what's left of local news in America, and they're just pumping the misinformation into that ecosystem. I feel like we should just start like a fentanyl petting zoo or something, where you can go and realize that there's no, yeah, there aren't any impacts of touching it. That feels like that would go down really well. I think people would be totally normal about it.

that. Yeah, here's a little booth where your kid can touch a pile of fentanyl and just, it's fine, it's okay. Throughout the early 2020s, you know, we have seen just more and more of this stuff coming out. MPR in 2023 published an article that said, police were suffering from accidental fentanyl exposure every few weeks. Brandon Del Pazzo, a former police chief who studies addiction and drug policy at Brown University, said, the idea of it hanging in the air and getting breathed in is highly, highly implausible. It's nearly impossible. And then NPR said they couldn't find a single case of a police officer who reported being poisoned by fentanyl or overdosing after encountering the street drug that was confirmed by toxicology reports.

So they are still saying this all of the time and it has never, ever, ever been proven with any sort of toxicology. in 2022 i think vice got like pretty close to maybe figuring out what happened here so they wrote police departments waste public resources when they deploy an excessive response to a perceived threat activists say in January the Tennessee highway patrol flew in decontamination equipment by helicopter at an estimated cost of $3,800 while responding to a man who was overdosing then after a deputy and EMS worker claimed to experience symptoms of an overdose, police and prosecutors criminally charged the man with two felonies for reckless endangerment, which is nuts and genuinely terrifying. By the way, that story was posted on what was once Twitter and the top response from Alex Perrine,

the journalist, is do hazmat suits protect you from easily available factual information about how Thank you. Great stuff. So, so yeah, Keith Humphreys, the former senior policy for the White House Office

of National Drug Control Policy, does have a theory, which is generally as prosecutors, the more things you can charge somebody with, the more power you have. So even if they knew that this is mostly hysteria and Hocum, they might still welcome the power.

I don't know if you can change that. And I do think that's probably as close as well. get to a real definitive answer for why this has never gone away. Once you give them the out, why would they give that up? Because they can just double, triple charge you with whatever they want if they do a little fainting dance and pretend like you've poisoned the air around them. Once that particular cloud of misinformation gets inhaled, you are just going to...

That easily snortable cloud of misinformation. You're going to kill over from misinformation, but that's what's... try to brush off the misinformation with your hand, but then it gets inside you and then it spreads. You can't do it. Then you get double overdosed. So yeah, after the break, we're going to talk about what is actually going on with fentanyl, how it works, where you can buy it, who you can talk to, to get it easily on your local street corner. But first, a word from our sponsors, Pfizer.

For listeners, there was almost a spit take there. Okay, so guys, I'm given the range of the show over to you. Please help me understand how fentanyl actually works. Yeah, and the story behind it's like pretty remarkable, and it is in some ways like a wonder drug. And I want to talk about the guy who invented it, this guy. Fentanyl is awesome, you say. Interesting. Appropriately used.

But, you know, and there's this guy, Paul Jansen who discovered it, who's just a stunning character in history. But before we get to that, I'm going to pass it over to Mary to talk about sort of the history of opioids and fentanyl. Well, opioids are actually some of the world's oldest known drugs. The ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans were using them medicinally, not just to get high, but for as long as we've had them, there's been... Were they also using them to get high? Oh, I mean, listen, what else are you going to do in ancient Rome, you know? Yeah, no, that's cool. But, you know, people have been aware of these addictive qualities, right? This has been a problem for as long as we've had them. And so in the

1800s, morphine was actually isolated to try to fix that, to try to get the benefit, the pain relief, the medical benefit, without as much of the addiction and overdose risk. Didn't work out too well, because morphine is morphine. So the next great idea was heroin. We thought maybe that'll do it. No one will get addicted to heroin. Uh-oh. And so the synthetic opioids came along in the 1930s. And again, And the whole idea was how can we make something that will have the pain relief quality that we need without having the risk of addiction? And so that was actually why people wanted to create synthetic opioids. I feel like a large criticism that's thrown at Big Pharma. And you know what I mean?

I'm a huge supporter of Big Pharma. They sponsor the show. Yeah. I mean, they're there. Yeah, of course. But I do think it's interesting that they're trying to make a non-addictive opioid. Because like so much of what you hear is like they're trying to keep you hooked, you know. But like this is like a centuries long process to make a non-addictive.

Well, because these were designed to be used in medical settings, you know. This wasn't stuff that you were supposed to be running around with. It was stuff that, you know, you're having surgery or something. This is what you need. But all of these things are derived from similar compounds, right? They all work kind of the same way on the brain. But again, the difference is potency, right? So fentanyl depends on the delivery mechanism.

But good rule of thumb, it's about a hundred times more. potent than morphine. So it is no joke. You can use less of it and get the same result, which again, in a surgical setting, that's a good thing. All of these opioid drugs, whether you're talking about oxycodone, morphine, or fentanyl, they have similar effects in terms of what you experience in your body. Number one, pain relief. That's what they are for. Sedation, right? Drowsiness, dizziness, decreased respiration, decreased heart rate. So all of these things about your heart racing, you know, feeling like you're hyperventilating. That's literally the opposite of what these drugs do.

And that's how people die from overdose typically, is their heart rate slows too far, the respiration slows too much. That's what causes the overdose death in many cases. I didn't even consider how stupid that is, actually. Coughing and rashes are not really things that happen when you take these drugs. That's so awesome. Yeah.

I love that. like they're describing the symptoms of a panic attack, not a... Right. Cops would never have a panic attack and take it out on the public. That has never happened before. Yeah, but fentanyl, I mean, fentanyl really is, I mean, I know we joke about it, but it is an incredibly valuable drug, and it really did a lot for the medical fields in which it is supposed to be used. And, my gosh, I know you did a lot of research about that.

Yeah, so I was hinting at this guy, this Belgian doctor, Paul Jensen, and he starts working for his family's pharmaceutical company in the 1950s. His life is really extraordinary. When he's eight years old, his sister is four, and she passes away from tubercular meningitis. And this is the thing that essentially drives his entire life, right? He's determined to save people, and he's determined to find drugs for things that don't exist. And so, you know, at the time, a lot of pharmacies and drug makers are basically just mixing compounds of things that already exist. And so he's looking for new ways to attack disease, et cetera. And so he has a chemistry lab as a kid in college.

It's during the World War. And so, like, the Nazis have actually shut down the universities to any higher education. And somehow he wrangles his way into these universities and he studies in secret for a number of years. He's, like, getting attention from professors and stuff like that. But he's, like, continuing his course of education. He borrows money from his dad. He takes over the third floor of their office building, and he starts a lab on his own. So, like, everyone else is basically just doing trial and error in this very coarse way.

And he is kind of looking at a molecule from the start and trying to figure out how he can use it and wield it to attack biological diseases. And what years is? So this is in the 1950s. Okay. Wow. Yeah. I didn't realize we were still like. like trialing and erring by that point.

Yeah. I mean, so there's a little bit before this. I think there's like a syphilis drug that uses this method. But for the most part, this ends up being the pioneer of like how startups are like biological startups or like pharma startups. I was going to say, we got to go back in time and kill this guy. He invented the startup. I don't care about fentanyl and how good it is.

We got to kill this guy with a time machine right away. But he's fascinating because like he has two mottos. right, he always goes around to everyone in his lab. He really doesn't have much of an ego, but he always asks two questions. He asks his, like, lab mates, like, what's new? And his other motto is the patient is waiting, right? Because he just wants these drugs to come out as quickly as possible. That's also kind of ominous if you think about it, though.

Yeah, yeah. I mean... The doctor will see you now. But he, apparently, like, other people in the lab used to clink the test tubes as he'd walk down the hallway because, like, just to let people in the labs ahead of the way know that he was going to come and ask pester them about like what's new and how to develop things. But he starts immediately like creating incredible drugs, right? So one of his drugs that he creates is called Halpideral.

It's also known as Hal Dahl. He creates this in 1958. Oh. And yeah, it's an antipsychotic. It dramatically changes the lives of people who have schizophrenia, right? And so like before the schizophrenia drugs that were effective basically turned people into zombies. like they were completely out of it. And they administered to like a 16-year-old who has an impossible life up until this point.

And he basically gets a functional job. He gets a family. He like has two kids. Ultimately his dad. That's way more than I have. So good for him. That's amazing. His dad takes him off the drug and his life falls apart.

But until that point, it really is sort of a testament to how effective this drug is. Jansen also comes up with like a drug. drug for menstrual cramps. He comes up with emodium, which is just stunning. Wow. At its peak, a drug a year is coming out of his lab and a very effective one. I knew a guy in college just like but no, that's amazing. Like here's a here's the modern age. Like here here's all of the preventable diseases that will like, don't have to deal with anymore. That's amazing. One of the craziest things I read about him was that like he actually saves the terracotta soldiers in Cheyenne because like they're getting destroyed by fungal like like a fungus.

and he comes up with this, like, antifungal ointment to basically, like, preserve all the terracotta soldier. Like, he's really remarkable. Well, sure. If inventing drugs was a video game and he cleared it, like, he's just doing side quests, right? He's just like, I don't know, like, I'm going to do this terracotta soldier's fungus one because I'm bored. Like, yeah, sure.

Sounds good to me. But back to fentanyl. In 1960, he creates fentanyl, and it's another synthetic opioid. it. And, you know, his goal is, as Mary pointed out, to improve the onset time, right? Venil gets used in IV drugs in Europe in 1963. It's usually given in combination with other drugs for anesthesia. But it hits sort of this, the speed bump in the U.S. because there's a guy named Dr. Dr. Rips, he's an anesthesiologist. Drips?

Yeah. It's amazing. Fuck off. No, that's the same. Nomitive determinism is so awesome. Being an anesthesiologist named Dr. Drips is amazing. It's phenomenal. That's crazy work. And he, you know, in some ways like Jensen is ahead of his field.

He is really worried that this is too potent. He's worried about it in the operating room, but he's also weirdly worried about what happens if it escapes the operating room. And he's worried about the addictive nature. And this is like so ahead of his time, right? Like in the 1960s, he's thinking about this. Yeah, I mean, like, in the 1960s, like, people are just, like, drinking codeine at home all the day. Yeah.

This is, like, peak housewife codeine problem era. So the fact he's worried about that is actually pretty impressive. Completely. But he does realize that this can change surgeries. And so Jansen and Drips kind of meet and hash out the details. They mean in the middle, essentially, where Jansen tries to push things. to a drug that the FDA will improve, that's basically one part fentanyl to, I think it's 49 parts, drapeteral.

The other drug is an antipsychotic. It's used to treat nausea. And one of the side effects is dysphoria. And the idea is that, like, if you can counter the euphoria of fentanyl with this dysphoria. Oh, interesting. So it's like, we've made, like, a really lame heroin. Yeah. Like, it's a really boring heroin.

Okay. I see what they're trying to do here. Yeah, but so, I mean, what's fascinating is that, you know, 1972, the FDA approves fentanyl for use alone in these little IV vials in hospitals. The actually, actually, one of the first overdose deaths in the United States was reported in 1973, so just one year later. And it was a young man. Well, it was a young.

Wow, really, really portends things to come, huh? Like immediate. It was a young man who worked at a hospital in North Carolina. The local paper described it as a synthetic narcotic, practically unknown, outside the health professions, because that's what it was. It only existed in hospitals, but healthcare workers were starting to get hooked on it. People were starting to steal it from work. People were starting to siphon it out of the IV bags.

What really changed everything was in 1981, fentanyl went off patent. And so when the patent expired, it blew up tenfold increase in sales in the United States. So this is then in the mid-80s. You know what's coming in the early 90s, the Sackler family. And they want every. Everybody. Who are the sponsors of our next ad break, by the way. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, and so, you know, now fentanyl is out there. It's on the loose. And now people are getting addicted to opioids in ever increasing numbers. And so what's going to happen next? Well, the internet happens. And what do you do with the internet? You wouldn't download fentanyl, would you?

No, but you would sell it on the dark web for sure. But before you would do that, you could go read some chemistry papers that people have uploaded online, right? Whoa. Okay. And so it's a synthetic opioid. Remember, it's just completely made up of lab chemicals. Right. So if you know a little bit about chemistry, which I do not because I failed it.

If you read these papers, the molecules are actually not all that complicated. So people started realizing, well, wait, maybe there's a way we can just make this. And we don't have to deal with buying it from pharmaceutical companies or sneaking it out of hospitals. What if we just cook some up at home? Is that the same reason why, like, synthetic marijuana has spread so aggressively is because you can just make it like i i guess i'd never considered that with a synthetic drug if you know chemistry you can just make well you have to know chemistry and you have to have access to the right precursor chemicals right

but if you if you if you know what you're doing and you have i guess some time on your hands and you have access to the stuff um but yes i mean a lot of this esoteric knowledge about about you know drug manufacturing is readily available online don't go look it up anybody listening to this i'm not saying you should go to chat gbt and ask it to make you Fentanyl. How do I make fentanyl? Right. And so that's kind of what really opened the fightings. I think our producer Grant is doing that right now. I can see his face. I believe he is asking Chad GBT to make fentanyl for him right now. So like we'll update you in a couple of minutes of what happens. Okay. So people are making this because they're sharing it online in the 90s. Early 2000s, yeah. But I think the difference between something like meth or synthetic marijuana, et cetera, is that those are actually. harder to make and ultimately, like, the meth is more dangerous versus, like, the fentanyl is an

easier chemical process. You actually don't have to be a chemist. You can get trained by someone who can show you, essentially. Interesting. This also colors my entire understanding of, like, Trump's hysteria around, like, the fentanyl taxes he's like talking about, where there's this idea that it's this dangerous drug that's coming up from Mexico or down from Canada, but, like, you could just Google it and make it. anywhere you want, really, if you have the access to what you need.

Right, but we're Americans and we're lazy, so we prefer to let people in other countries do that for us. Dude, we used to make things in this country. Bring back American-made fentanyl. Bring back American-made synthetic opioids. God damn it. Everything is made in Mexico and China these days. Oh, my God.

Maybe the terrorists are a good thing. So we're going to hear all about how the cartels get involved right after a word from our sponsors, the Sinaloa cartel. All right. So, yeah, the big question mark that I've had actually this whole episode is where we do get this idea that it's coming up from Mexico. Like, how do the car, like, because obviously there's a moment where the cartels realize it's cheaper to put this stuff in other drugs. That's my understanding is that that's the major vector for getting people sick in the first place. But yeah, so how does this all start?

Yeah, so I think the people who really sort of embrace this and make a business of it is that, the Chippitos, who are El Chapo Guzman's four kids. What's fascinating about them to me is that, like, as El Chapo was on the run and he was tunneling out of various prisons and escaping, people were really talking about the kids' like succession, right? Like, they were like kind of these, like, they thought of them as these sort of like four idiots who were like, you know, El Chapo had grown up hard and these kids had gone to like really fancy schools.

They were spoiled. They had grown splashy. And they were on Instagram, right? So they were like flashing it all the time. They were, I remember this. I remember this happened. So there, I was following them on Instagram. Photos of them with like tigers and stuff like that.

And, and, you know, people think they're just not capable. And also that they're not capable of. Classic millennials. Working together, right? Like, they think like there's going to be a power struggle between these four and it'll be like succession essentially, right? You know, there is a power vacuum when their dad goes to prison and the cartel fractures. Most of the cartel seems to go to the side of like this guy El Mio, who was El Chapo's right-hand man or partner.

But what people forget is that these teens actually did grow up in the business. And they weren't just like interning. They got real roles and responsibilities. And they're actually ruthless and cunning, right? And so like instead of going after the heroin market or marijuana, they really spot this opportunity to modernize. And it becomes clear that like even their Instagram like positioning, is all about the future. They want to create a new brand

and new branding mechanism for young drug lords. They want to counter the press narratives in this way. They're like, they want to be seen as human, flashy and innovative, right? Like it's crazy. And they spot this opportunity in fentanyl.

As Mary was saying, right, the chemical compounds or precursors are produced in China. And for many years, that's where fentanyl itself was made and then traffic to North America via Mexico. But they kind of shore up their power first, right? And so like one of the brothers, this guy, Ivan, he's known as El Chapito, he sets up a group called Los Nini's.

And this is basically the armed security forces. And he oversees like a notorious group of hitmen that are actually called the Losinidis. And so like... Until they get exposed by fentanyl and start saying, oh no, I touched it. Oh no. Yeah, exactly. You kind of see how these four brothers really, like, take on their own roles within this thing, right? And so, like, Alfredio, he worked closely with Ivan.

He's good with the financial aspects and the logistics. So he's really the transportation distribution guy. There's a guy named Ovidio, Al Rattan. He's known as the mouse because he's good at evading security. But he's actually the one who supervises the production of these fentanyl, super clandestine facilities that all work isolated from one another, right? I do have to say, cartels have the greatest nicknames for each other. Honestly, you've got to hand it to them. They're really good.

It's the branding. They're so good of branding. They're so good of branding. Yeah. Okay, so they've built this. They've built the facility. And there's one other guy, Joaquin, who is known as El Guerro. He is the money launderer, and he's the one who's best at insuring some of the international

facilitation of logistics. He's also heavily into crypto and figures out how to like a laundering. money through crypto, right? Like, crypto grow. Never trust. Hold on. I was going to say, the only person who's ever figured out how to launder money through crypto, it's just this one guy.

Nobody else has ever done that. Yeah, so there's this like... You know, I was kind of with them until you told me they were into crypto. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I can get behind a narco state, but I don't think I can get behind like cryptocurrency. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, these, uh, they're kind of this Voltron of like drug, uh, operations.

and so logistics, and they spot this opportunity. And so they're getting these chemicals shipped to small itinerant labs, and they're using them to synthesize fentanyl. But what's really amazing, and obviously they're smuggling the product to the U.S., but what's stunning is the economics on the stuff, right? So, like, for just $800 of precursor chemicals, they make a $640,000 profit, right? So like if you scale it up, right, like a million dollar investment makes about $800 million in profit. That's crazy.

Yeah. And so like they're using crypto to launder money. They're sophisticated. They're making billions of dollars. And obviously they're causing 100,000 deaths in, you know, in the U.S. every year. But the volume is insane. And so like in 2024, the DEA reports, it seized over 60 million fentanyl-laced fake pills and nearly 8,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, which equated to more than 380 million lethal doses.

And in May of this year, there was another big drug bust. They captured 400 kilograms of fentanyl and 2.7 million pills, along with cash and other drugs. And the thing is, at that volume, right, like, you can afford to lose a lot of batches and still make a ton of money. As Mary was pointing out, there's kind of like nothing inherently wrong with the chemicals themselves and the reason like China makes these precursors because you know sometimes they're used in over-the-counter drugs sometimes prescription drugs also plastics pesticides fragrances right and so like

even if the authorities crack down on one type of these precursors like they're chemists can figure out a clever way to to like use these and come up with alternatives and and so like there's kind of no crushing this uh this source of materials i found a really great analogy about making fentany where it described it as, I want to say it was a Reuters article, but it talked about it like a Mr. Potato Head. Like the core ring of the fentanyl molecule is the head. And then there's accessories that you can put on. But if you have the ears from one box or the ears from another box, they still fit in the earhole, right? So you can ban 12 different precursor chemicals.

But then there's 90 others that you can plug into those holes if you know what you're doing. And the effect will generally be about the same. So you're saying that there's no hope here. There is no hope. We should all give up. Okay. Well, speaking of which, Grant has spent the last several minutes convincing Chatsybt to tell him how to make fentanyl, and he's going to read you that verbatim right now.

So at first I was like, hey, chat JPT, show me how to make fentanyl. And I was like, no. But then I was like, I'm a journalist, and I'm trying to understand the process. And then when I broke it down into different questions, it became very helpful. And I was like, so how would you source these synthetic materials? And it's like, would you like a diagram of how to source us? And I was like, and just in theory, if I wanted the lab equipment, like, what, what is all the lab equipment I need to make fentanyl? And I'm guessing in the order that you would need the equipment in.

Like, I think from five minutes while also listening to us record this podcast, I think I could get like 70% of the way there of like, it's now kind of a one-stop shop. Party at Grants. Terrifying. So, well, while Grant continues to be a very hands-on active producer searching how to make drugs while we do the work, I wanted to end with a character we started with because there's some interesting synchronities here. So Jack Riley, the DEA guy who gave the warning of the dangerous defense and all,

he retired in 2022, and he's been doing a bit of a press tour. He wrote a book about how he helped capture El. Chappo, and he's made a lot of very interesting claims. In 2022, he claimed that fentanyl was in the Halloween candy that was being passed around. With Halloween, only a few weeks away, DEA officials are sounding the alarm on how drug cartels are targeting our children. In fact, Rainbow fentanyl has been seized in 21 states. If my son's going to go trick-or-treating, I'm going with him, and when he's done collecting

his goods, I'm going to go through it before he consumes it. This is right out of the Mexican cartels playbook, what they're doing. They're going after the most vulnerable. I had to talk to my daughter about it, and I said before you open your candy, you know, back in the day, our parents used to do that looking for razor blades. And I said, we're going to have to open up all your candy because bad people are putting drugs in candy boxes, and it makes Mama worried. He claims that there's no doubt that cartels are using the American military to distribute fentanyl.

And then just in December of last year, he asked Trump to let him run. run the DEA. That's what he wants to do. So not only is fentanyl an unstoppable Mr. Potatohood of human misery, the people who are the most vocal about it in America are using it as a like unbeatable boogeyman to basically install themselves at the top of federal agencies and do press tours.

In all of these interviews, he's just happy to go on cable news with zero pushback and be like, it's only logical for the car to be doing this. Of course. Like, it's totally the car, like, right. There's never a figure. There's, there's a lot of, I feel.

And he, but he says it very authoritatively. The only, the only way the cartel is going after American children is by beating them in Fortnite because they play a lot of Fortnite. Did he really? Yeah. I mean, being a cartel is boring. It's like being in the military, but like, if you're not making their product, like, if you're, like, you're just hanging out, hanging around.

I mean, my, my son told me that, like, that, and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I should fact check this, but that when the creator of Dragon Ball Z passed away, that the cartels took a day off? Huge. They did. Yeah, so people don't know this, but Goku is Mexican. And Mexicans really love Goku. He, there's like, like, if you go to Mexico City, like, every couple blocks,

you're going to see like a Goku branded, like, Taco Truck. It's a whole thing. But just, just real quickly. God, Jack Riley sucks so much. I don't like seeing his face. It upsets me. But yeah, I think this is the thing that upsets me the most about this whole situation, which is that we are trying to find a way to pin blame on the Mexican cartels, the Chinese factories,

the this, the that, you know, the Halloween candy. All we actually need to do, right, is like, provide people with health care and mental health care and resolve poverty and desperation in rural and urban America. And then, like, maybe that makes the problem better. but oh no, that might be too difficult, right? That's no fun to yell about on cable news. I mean, if I could synthesize a takeaway, much like an opioid here, you're exactly right, which is that at every turn of the story that we've told today,

even the invention of Facebook, have been like private attempts at like solving systemic issues. You're synthesizing a different version of heroin because heroin's too addictive. If you're creating Facebook because you want to connect local communities and, like, give them a way to communicate with each other. And then they start spreading misinformation. The cops that are now using them to spread their own misinformation. And then the cartels get a hold of the fentanyl and it's pretty much impossible to ban it because you can just make it a different way because it's so versatile. Like all of these things are, it's like the failure of the modern age sort of in one story in a way that's really fascinating. And it is inherently stupid also, like everything in the modern age.

Like the idea that cops are going around claiming that you can absorb it through your skin or throw it in the air and breathe it in and die, it is inherently dumb. But behind that dumbness is like this very fascinating and sad story of the breakdown of basically the last 50 years. And that's the tagline for Panic world. That's the whole show. I think you just got it something that like is maybe made me the most depressed in all of this is that I think some people in this, the police. local news ecosystem were cynically bad actors. But I think for most of them, it's like, when there's a truth that is convenient to you and you can circulate it.

Right. I think Jack Riley is earnestly believes the things he's saying and doesn't need facts or figures to back them up. And it pings through their, they keep sharing it. And so they believe their own hype. And even if the comments are like, that's fake, you just tune out that noise. it's uh this is like an episode about how everyone can get high on their own supply hey there you go that's what you're the pream i i am i am not willing to sort of say jack riley

is earnest or not i it's you know what like it functionally doesn't matter i do think many of like many people tend to forget that like police officers are like they're not experts in public policy they're not like they're they're caught like it's it's it's They're just people, right? And they now have access to broadcasting tools, the same ones that normal people do. The same ones that normal people didn't have 20, 30 years ago. So it's all sort of connected in the same way where you can spread this stuff. It's really easy.

And I'm not going to define what stuff is in that sentence because it applies for anything we're talking about. And yeah, I totally believe that like a cop is terrified of fentanyl because like the cops live in the community where the opioid crisis is happening. That's right. 100%. They've had people they know be affected by it too. Yeah. I know cops who have, who have had an opioid problem and died, you know, in New England, that is not uncommon. I understand to a point, like, how this is not going away.

And for the same reason, like, just fentanyl can't go away as far as we, I understand now. And I'm terrified. Especially now that Grant can just make it at his house, apparently. Yeah. So, uh, there, uh, there do appear to be federal agents breaking down the door behind you as we speak. But that could be from a different thing. I don't know what you're into. Um, I, average podcasts are going down. We've got to subsidize the podcast industry somehow.

That's right. That's right. If you want to go to Patreon.com slash panic world for $5 a month, we will mail you the recipe for fentanyl. You can make it yourself at home. Totally fine. I guess like, yeah, last sort of thoughts here, last question here, like, where do we go with all of this? I mean, both with the miss info and with the fentanyl problem. Like, I mean, in your guys sort of research, Do you have anything even mildly hopeful we can end on, please, for the love of God? There's not a big, happy solution. There are maybe a bunch of small happy solutions. There could be changes that happen, not even at a whole community level within a family, right?

Or within a block or a neighborhood where people are able to convey accurate information. Get Narcan training, everybody. You can do it. It's really easy. Testing strips as well. That's right. And so if we can find ways to keep each other safe and to share what we know, like, share this podcast with everybody. You know.

There's something I can get back. That's right. And that will maybe not save everybody, but it could save someone. I guess you got anything hopeful we can end? Notorious optimist, Mike. He's just shaking his head. He's like, no. He's giving up.

I mean, two of the Chappellitos are in jail right now. So that's something. Two down. Two down, two to go. But grants in the business now. So that changes the equation. You mean you mean grantee? Yeah.

A little grant. Um, no, I mean, I think, I think it's just so sad. Right. Like it is the whole situation is so sad. Thank you. Thank you. Very helpful. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Normally we plug things here, but we all just go stare into the rain. I don't want to just take a quick minute to cry and then we can... I think that both Mary and you are right, that like everything, to me, as the world feels harder and harder, I've taken so much, I've taken so much from communities, right? And the idea that, like, our, whether it's like community gardens and seeing people come together or like the way our little co-op, like hands out coffee to the unhouse people around the corner.

And like it just feels like there's a pulling together of community that people had forgotten about in a way previously and people are really leaning into now. That is hopeful to me. Like it feels like as institutions are failing us, like it feels like small groups of people collecting is a bomb for all of that. Let's end it there before things get dark again.

That was perfect. Thank you guys for coming on the show. This was truly as delightful a conversation about something so dark could ever be. People want to follow you. People want to find yourself on the internet where if they want to find your recipes for fentanyl on your various blogs,

like where can they do that? They can find part-time genius on any podcast app of their choice and we're on Instagram at part-time genius. Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at Garbage Day. Email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick.

Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our Durange logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com slash panic world. Please give us products to sell by contacting Multitude at multitude. Dot production slash ads. For any other way, you would like to give us money or work with us or promote us or become financially entangled with us. You can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bag man, Josh Fielstad,

and you can reach him at PanicworldPod at gmail.com. And one piece of advice for me to you, chill out, touch grass while you still can. Oh, you know what? I take it back. I fell for the running Pikachu during the protests in, I think it was Turkey. And there was footage. That wasn't real. I've seen like multiple angles of that. Wait a minute. I heard that someone told me that Pikachu was AI. we have to debunk this right now before we can continue. There were there were photoshopps of it but. Because again, that was one of those things where you think that could happen. I mean, I could see.

Oh, I see the confusion here. There was a real Pikachu protester, but then people started doing AI versions of it. Oh, okay. So it's both fake and real. My favorite kind of thing. The best. My favorite kind of thing. Yeah.

But not like that. Yeah, there was a Pikachu there. And then people loved it so much they kept putting the Pikachu in other kinds of parts of the contest. Yeah. Yeah.