The Chaser Report - Overdosing on Placebos | Aleksa Vulovic

Episode Date: September 22, 2022

Coming in with a cheery topic for your Friday is Aleksa Vulovic unpacking America's fentanyl epidemic. Plus, might he and Lachlan have finally figured out why Charles are trapped in an airport? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Friday, the 23rd of September. I'm Charles Firth, and with me today are Alex Ovalovich and Loughlin Hodson again. Howdy, howdy. And did everyone enjoy the Queen dying holiday yesterday? No, no, I hated it. It was just a very sad time.

I remember all the great things Queen Lizzie's done. Yeah, it was really hard to do anything that day. Yeah, well, you just languished in bed, did you? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I don't even have a joke here. I was just very sad about the death of the queen. No, I'm with Alexa. What about you, Lachlan?

Similarly, man, I was just, I thought, what would the queen want me to do to commemorate this day? So I invaded India. I thought you were going to say, and then did nothing else for the rest of my mother. Yeah, just sat on my ass and did nothing. Well, that's where I plan on going. You guys are a bit too mean to the queen. As a boy who is, you know, living with his parents very, very late in life,

I think hereditary fortunes are no laughing matter. I think it's normal to be a useless person living in the same house your parents and grandparents lived in. Who died and made him fun police? All right, the queen. The queen died. That's right. Coming up on the show, we're going to talk to Alex about a really chance. cheery topic. We thought we did in the week with something really funny and an upbeat.

Alex, you were given the task of, you know, brightening our Fridays with a really fun, you know, upbeat topic. What have you come up with? Well, to be fair, I actually did come up with a really fun one about this ferret that saved a couple of lives in Dubbo. But given that you're currently still detained for, I guess, the fifth day in a row in LAX. Yes. That's right. I thought I'd do something more related to your plight, right? I thought, why not make it relevant? Oh, okay.

So what are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about Hollywood or something, are we? No, we're going to talk about the fentanyl epidemic. There are dodgy people going all around America, you know, dealing drugs, smuggling drugs. There's a fentanyl epidemic. So, yeah, I don't know if, I don't know if, have you experienced it over there? Have you seen people struggling there on the street? of ads in the US at the moment

for watch out the next drug you take could be fentanyl I think the point is that it gets cut with other things I do not understand the fentanyl epidemic though because if it just kills off the users what is the reason

to sell it to people can we backtrack I actually don't know what fentanyl is could I could I be this is for the audience of course and I'm oh yeah

This is for whoever's listening and doesn't know. What's fentanyl, please, for a friend? From what I understand, I'm no drug policy expert, but I think it's a, it's an opioid, and I think it originated in the pharmaceutical industry, so it was like a very, very specialized pain killer. Right. No, it's the drug that they give you in a general anesthetic.

That's what it is. It's the general, so it knocks you out. The whole point is it's sort of completely, ideal world use is you have a doctor standing over you the whole time, making sure that you're breathing as it's administered to you. But it's the same drug. It's the drug that killed Michael Jackson. But again, maybe that's why it got all trendy,

because people were saying, well, if Michael Jackson died from this, maybe I should die from this too. That was actually great fentanyl PR. Michael Jackson has got billions now living on some island somewhere. or from the ventral industry. Yes, of course. Fake your death. So you're saying, but the current scourge is not from pharmaceutical companies, isn't it?

Isn't it all being important? I mean, I think it's a mix of everything. When you've got a drug that's that good, I feel like you get it from wherever you can. So, you know, you've got it taken from prescriptions. You've got it taken from overseas. You've got it, like, synthesized in different ways. But something really interesting started happening. I mean, the fentanyl epidemic is.

is an issue in itself, but you've got this other epidemic simultaneously, right? So check out what recently went up on the San Diego Police Department Instagram. I'm San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore. What you're about to see is traumatic body-worn camera footage involving one of our deputies who was exposed to fentanyl during his patrol shift. You're okay. Don't be sorry. There's nothing to be sorry about.

I got you, okay? I'm not going to let you die. I'm not going to let you die. Well, so the actual officer got exposed to it almost died, did he? Yeah, so this is, it's a bit of a, it's a really weird story, right? But there's a lot of clips like this. Because the cop's body cam was on. Yeah, exactly.

You're completely right. And on that track, I do think it's a bit of conspiracy. But yeah, the body cam was on. Very, very strange. But it's a bit of a rabbit hole, right? I watched this one video, and it was super intense. You've got this cop who's, um, Essentially, officer in San Diego, he's walking through a parking lot and starts searching through a car, which is normal in America.

You see a parked car and you can just, you just search through it. And he finds a bag with white powder and he touches it with his finger and then he collapses and he's like, you know, hyperventilating and he's having this horrible reaction. It's all, you know, quite terrifying to watch. But it's a bit of a rabbit hole online because there are so many videos like this. Like, I'm not joking, there's probably like 50 different police departments across America that. have released some form of this thing happening. Wow. So you're saying it's just completely fake, is it?

They're just pretending. It's a bit more complicated. I was researching it. So this has happened to lots of cops, right? They have touched fentanyl with their hands and overdose. Yeah, and because you can absorb it through your skin. Well, that's the thing. Like, apparently it's insanely potent, you know.

But look, I did a bit of research, and I think there's a bit of a, I don't know, The medical community doesn't quite agree with all these cop videos, right? So you've got the American College of Medical Toxicology. You're saying a cop has lied. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I know. It's a brand new kind of kind of take. But I think if you bear with me, it might make a bit of sense.

But you've got to suspend disbelief and imagine that, you know, cops might not be very trustworthy, just to make this story work. The Chaser Report, less news, more often. An authority comes out, right? The American College of Medical Toxicology and the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, big deal, I don't know, they've got very scientific names. They issued a statement. And the statement read, if bilateral palm-mas services were covered with fentanyl patches,

it would take approximately 14 minutes to receive 100 MCG of fentanyl. Now, I don't know what that means, but the vibe is that what happens in these videos is impossible. Like, you can't, right, you can't, you can't overdose from touching fentanyl. And it's, it's like, it's kind of... That's a pretty nuts way, if you could. It's seen, yeah, I see how it's plausible. And I also sort of feel like if, if anyone's got access to the really good shit that could do it, it would be the police. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

It's a really bizarre thing, right? So all these, like, opioid kind of safety groups, all these public health. institutions have come out and they've been like this doesn't make any sense like this this doesn't work but but the police see it quite differently there's there's there's there was this research done these researchers looked into the perceived occupational risk of fentanyl exposure among law enforcement so they they interviewed policemen and asked them how dangerous is fentanyl and the conclusion was that nearly all leaders and officers interviewed wrongly believe that dermal exposure to fentanyl was deadly.

Wow. So all across the police force, everyone's convinced that touching it will kill you. And it kind of goes against all medical knowledge of what fentanyl does and how it's administered. Anything. So it's super confusing. So the cops are being trained to believe that fentanyl is administered that way? Yeah.

So that's what's been happening. So the drug enforcement administration has been running these trainings and sending out these false communicates to police, pretty much saying that if you touch this, you're going to die. And what ends up happening is that you've got all these policemen having these like crazy psychosomatic reactions. And I mean, wow, wait, you can placebo yourself to death. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, to be fair, none of them died.

And did they, did they administer like a fake Narcan as well? Yeah, so they did. They did. They got real Narcan, which is, I mean, a bonus. Narcan's kind of cool as well. But like the weirdest part, I mean, what initially struck me with these videos before I went through the research is that the overdoses are really weird. Like, I don't know, I mean, it's a really dumb flex to say that I've seen an opioid overdose

in my life. And it's fucked up to see, but it looks nothing like what the police were going through, right? These people are like hyperventilating, having an anxiety attack. but overdosing and opioids, you just kind of, you just kind of go into sleep. Like your, your heart slows. You just, it's kind of like the most boring kind of life-threatening situation possible. So the idea is that these people are terrified, obviously. They've been taught that this stuff is going to kill them,

and they're going into this environment where they think they're going to die and they're having these anxiety attacks. So the weird part about it, what it turns out is going on is that there's some kind of of like war in the US between I guess medical experts and law enforcement so you'd assume you know these two institutions kind of function hand in hand but their motivations are a bit different at the moment right like law enforcement they want to make their jobs easier you know ideally they they have to deal with this problem of fentanyl overdoses and the easiest way to deal with that is to be given as much leeway as possible you need to be able to be as violent as you can arrest

people like do what you need to do to get the job done quickly right it's a lot easier to just tell everyone okay yeah yeah yeah yeah and so like i think a high up there it's kind of like a form of lobbying if they're like these videos and kind of pushing this idea that it kills you if you touch it um it it kind of creates this atmosphere of fear and hysteria and it makes it easier for like legislatures to make policies that allow police to deal with it in an easier way so you can have like higher sentences for fentanyl dealers you can there's There's more, it gives more operational space for the police. It gives more power, power to the police.

Yeah. Yeah. But what they should do is, but the clear thing is that the criminals should just, you know, invent a water pistol and tell the police that it kills them, you know. They've got to run away or something. I'm armed with fentanyl. I mean, this is genius. Wow. It's super clever

It's weird Because you kind of feel bad though Because like these individual police officers Are just kind of getting fucked Like you're being told this thing's gonna kill you And you have to just go in and touch it all day Yeah I don't know It's a it's a bizarre situation

Is fentany an Australian issue That we should be worried about here We just had our first We just had our first import the other day Oh is that why you're bringing over That's why you're being detained Yeah If I ever get out of LAX

Then yeah Charles is stuck in LAX for five days because the cops know that there's fentanyl in his bag but all of them are too scared to open his bag. That's exactly what's happened. That is exactly what's happened. Did you pack this yourself, sir? Yes.

Oh, he's immune. I shouldn't have labelled my toiletries bag fentanyl. Oh, no. For the first mistake. No, no, but in Australia the police seized the first big shipment of fentanyl um about two weeks ago um it was about three weeks ago she and and they said this is not the last time that we're going to have fentanyl but i think everyone in that raid actually has since died of psychosomatic symptoms so i totally understand it even just in just researching this i have to

like type the word fentanyl probably a thousand times and even that kind of got me a bit of like a i got a bit high doing that yes yeah it's not it's not a safe it's not a safe drive drug in any respect. Even just the spelling of it. Our gear is from road microphones and we're part of the ACASC Creator Network. Have a great weekend. Are you going to go out and party with some fentanyl? You guys?

You're young, you're hip. Yeah, I mean, it's great for the young generation because none of us have any money. So, like, it's great to have something that you just touch and it works. You know, there's just no waste. Nothing goes to waste. well have a good weekend overdosing to death on that cheery note see ya bye say hi to your mum for me say hi to the queen let me overdose for me