The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How European Cocaine Cartels Took Over The Global Drug Trade

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Jonathan Alpeyrie is a war photographer and journalist who has spent time documenting the darkest corners of the global drug trade — from cartel territory in Mexico and the favelas of Brazil to the streets of Kensington, Skid Row, Baltimore, and the mega-prisons of El Salvador. Jonathan breaks down what he’s seen firsthand while embedding with drug gangs, addicts, undercover police units, and special forces around the world. He explains how European drug gangs are becoming more powerful, why France, Belgium, and Holland are turning into major narco hubs, and how Mexican cartels are exporting their violence and tactics into Europe. Jonathan also discusses the rise of fentanyl in America, the origins of the synthetic opioid pipeline, the brutal reality of addiction on the streets, and what he witnessed inside El Salvador’s crackdown on MS-13. From undercover drug buys in Europe to firefights in Rio’s favelas, this is a raw look at the worldwide drug crisis from someone who has seen it up close. Go Support Jonathan! Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Drug-Wars/Jonathan-Alpeyrie/9780972115247 Website: https://jonathanalpeyrie.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/jonalpeyrie/ Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 European Drug Gangs & Cartel Tactics 02:00 War Reporter’s Background 03:55 Challenges of Access and Documentary Work 08:00 Undercover Ops with Cops & European Narcos 12:40 Weak Punishments & Overloaded European Prisons 15:50 Belgium, Holland & France: Europe's Crime Hotbeds 21:00 Ethnic Gangs and Emerging Alliances 27:00 Why Europe Is the “Crown Jewel” of the Drug Trade 35:00 Big Busts, Corruption & Mexican Cartel Influence 41:00 Fentanyl and Drug Crisis in the US 49:30 Drug Trends: Fentanyl, Meth, and Ketamine Scenes 54:00 MDMA, Ecstasy, and Party Drug Production 59:50 Inside Brazilian Favelas and Combat Zones 01:03:00 Violence, Danger & Drug Wars in Latin America 01:10:00 War Reporting: Syria, Iraq, and Hostage Experiences 01:20:00 Geopolitics, Proxy Wars & Global Destabilization 01:27:30 America’s Shifting Role & Future of Cartels 01:34:00 Personal Trauma, Resilience & Drug War Morality 01:41:00 Solutions, Nationalism, and The Limits of Idealism 01:45:00 Jonathan’s Mission & Final Thoughts 01:49:00 Book Plug & Closing Remarks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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which are the main three cancers. They are spreading in Europe. And they're expanding their power base and they're growing in strength from one country to the next. The Algerian criminal elements operating in Marseille are now creating alliances with Moroccan gangs in Holland and Belgium. I got kidnapped by the group that I was working with. I took a lot of beatings. They broke my ribs, mock institution. They showed me this.

It was like a pool. They would bring people and drown them there. And then next to it, there was a basketball court. They used to hang people there every day. And you know who gave them that expertise? Mexican cartels. Jonathan Alperi is a war journalist who travels the world documenting the war on drugs. From the cartels and the dealers to the users in the attics,

Jonathan has seen it all. He's embedded himself with Brazilian drug gangs in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, filmed live shootouts in the slums of Port-au-Prince Haiti, snapped photos of condemned MS-13 gang members at the notorious Seacot Supermax prison in El Salvador, and hung with fentanyl junkies, crackheads, and meth addicts from Mexico City to Selma, Alabama. Most recently, Jonathan has been documenting the dangerous rise of European drug supercartels and exposes why Western European nations, like France, Belgium, Germany, and Holland, are powerless to stop them. Nobody has a more unique, firsthand perspective on the worldwide

drug crisis than Jonathan. Check out his book, Drug Wars, Supply and Demand, available anywhere you get books, and we'll leave a link to that in the description of this episode. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is deep and there's no happy ending. It's Jonathan Alperi right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. How did you get interested in the subject of the underworld. I've always been fascinated and like I've done a lot of like stories on polyamory and like underground sex things or like drugs, anything that's very hard to get to. I love the challenge of setting things up and and diving into that world and becoming like

them. So it's embedding. It's embedding yourself with these subgroups, these subcultures that is challenging. but if you can get in there, that's where you get access that most people can't. Because taking the photos, that's easy. But the access and setting things up

and developing the right contacts, but also having them trust you. That's 90% of their work. Do you think that because you don't have a camera, we film stuff, which limits our access, because I'm going to film you in a mask with you're a Sina Loa cartel member and I want to literally get you talking about your crimes.

Do you think the fact that you don't do that, that you're just taking pictures, gets you more access than somebody with an actual film camera? I don't think so. And the reason is because when people in that world see with a camera taking pictures, they think you might be spying. Because you're being discreet about it. If you're filming with an actual camera, it's much more obvious.

I mean, it could be a problem, but it's not considered, at least in people's mind, that you might be spying on them. You're snapping some photos of their face and you might give these photos to law enforcement. When you're filming, it's much more obvious. So photographers, it's really tricky. And the key is to really make...

You need them to feel comfortable around you. And once you're successful with that, and that's really a skill, you are able to just do a... you want. That's why I never take pictures for a while. You just sort of hang around and you know, it's kind of like when you go surfing in an area where, you know, you go to Oxnard. If you surf, you don't know, you'll get your ass beat. But if you spend time and you go every day and you, you know, and the guys after a while, they might say, yeah, it's all right, you know, but you don't

just start surfing. Right. So there's a which is kind of eased into it. So you filmed, taking photos all over the world from gangs in Kenya? In Congo, in Kinshasa. In the Congo to, you went to Gaza after October

7th. You've of course been embedded with cartels in Mexico as far south as El Salvador, Ecuador. What I find out fascinating though is that you've filmed, excuse me, you've embedded with European

drug gangs. Now, to me, that's the, as somebody who's quasi-journalist myself, that's what I salivate at because those guys are the hardest people to get you to trust them because they're, they've really, you know, they've got the power of European law enforcement, you know, coming after them. So how, first of all, how did you manage that? The only way to be able to get close to these guys is through law enforcement units that you embed yourself in. To go completely the other way and to live with these criminal elements are active in Belgium and Holland, in France, which are the main three cancers, they are spreading in Europe as these three countries, is almost impossible. But the units I work with are all

undercover and they're all special units. I don't work with regular police. I only work with the top units, the most aggressive units, and the units who do the old a big bus. And the reason is because you do get close to these criminal elements like that, because I behave like a car, like I'm, I become one. So they, uh, and they do a lot of operations where they're buying drugs of these guys, where they are pretending to be criminals themselves. So I'm actually privy to that as well. And I'm doing that with the guys. So you pose as an undercover car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not pose as a number, you pose as a criminal. Yeah. with undercover cop units.

Yeah, like in Hacelt, which is in Flanders, that was in February. We did a big operation where they had been tracking this guy who had been selling kilos of marijuana in cocaine, and they've been tracking him down for a while. And we were coming in, and we worked out a deal when we were buying a few kilos of drugs from him, and he fell for it.

You try to make a run for it, and they took him down. So, yeah, that's the best way. Otherwise, if you want to go, like you were mentioning about Mexico, to really spend time with them, that's not possible in terms of just being with them all the time. Or in Brazil, you should spend time with criminal elements in the favelas in Rio. You can do that. But the problem is that the underground world, the drug world in northwestern Europe, is incredibly detached from the social structure. if you will, of Europe. Now that's changing because everybody is doing drugs

and they're expanding their power base and they're growing in strength from one country to the next. So that's the way I do it usually. That's fascinating. So you actually have purchased drugs with undercover cops from European drug dealers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's wild.

Yeah, that's the way they do it. The problem is they don't do any prison. they don't do any prison time. So you'll see as this conversation extends into Europe, the law enforcement units are good in these countries. The top guys are good. However, the law system in Belgium and Holland, for example, is quite different. So I'll give you an example.

Two years ago, they had arrested three guys at the port of Antwerp. I'm sorry, Rotterdam. And they were caught with three tons of cocaine that came in through Mexico, Caribbean, mostly, and then, you know, going to Europe. There was one Brazilian guy and two Moroccan with Dutch passports. And they got two years each. That's it. How is that possible?

Did they have to give up information on their suppliers? It's the way the punishment to the crime is that's just, they were just reading the law book. And they only got two years each. And I don't know if you've ever seen photos of jail cells from Holland. They're like little cozy apartments. They have nice wooden floors, nice little bed, a TV, which connects to a Nintendo 64, which is the first thing you can ask when you go to prison.

And you get it 100% of the time. It's human rights BS. So it's not really punishment. And for these hardcore guys, two years in jail, comfortable. And you can probably get a cell phone in there and just keep working your business. You can. Now, so are there no mandatory minimums for per quantity the way there are in the United States? Like over five kilos of cocaine is considered like a mandatory minimum amount of prison time in the U.S. under federal statutes.

Does these European countries not have anything like that? They do have that. But they don't upload the law for two main reasons. Number one is because there is no more space in jail. So they're not building new prison spaces like we would here. For example, France has had for decades about 50,000 spaces for prisoners. And they haven't built new jail. So now I think the total population that's incarcerated is about 76,000.

So they're overloading these prisons with a lot of prisoners. So what they do, the judges who are very leftist. in Europe. So for ideology, they just decided society is the reason why they're doing this. We should forgive them and they just release them also because they don't have space anymore. California is much the same way. It really incentivizes the system to keep, even if people have long sentences, life sentences, now you see a lot of guys starting to get out. Right. Because they need to free up space. So you think the main, you said France, Belgium and Holland, are the main narco states.

Yeah. Or the closest thing to narco states in Europe right now. So Belgium is the biggest problem for all kinds of reasons. Belgium is not really a state. It became a state in 1830, but it's very fractured now between the Dutch part and the Walloon part, the French-speaking part, and they hate each other. That's historical. That's been the case. the European Union Commission

and the Parliament are based in Brussels and they're the ones who are the main power base and they control everything and for example Belgium went through a period where they didn't have a government for about a year and a half didn't make a difference whatsoever now their immigration policy

is backfiring to tremendously where for example 30% of the population of Brussels is now Muslim And there's a lot of ethnic tensions going on because now they're bringing in Nigerians. They're bringing in Nigerians, also Albanians, who are doing a lot of the drug deals as well. Moroccans too? It's mostly Moroccans, yeah, like in Holland.

But now you have a lot of ethnic tensions that are going on, even in the drug trade. So the Albanians are real tough. They're small and number. They're incredibly cunning. We did operations to try to catch them. Very hard thing to do. They're very intelligent. and disappearing or not getting caught.

The Moroccans are big in numbers, so that's the issue. But they get caught easily. And now you have no borders, obviously, between these countries. So the Algerian mafia, not mafia, but criminal elements operating in Marseille in the south of France who's doing all the drugs, selling, dealing, whatever, and bringing them in, are now creating alliances with Moroccan gangs in Holland and Belgium. So it's really expanding in getting the, and they're getting a lot of their influences

from Mexican cartels. And that's the scary part, because Mexican cartels are incredibly violent, incredibly efficient, very tough. Now, obviously, these criminal elements in Europe are not nearly as tough or organized, but it is gradually going upward as the state. Eros.

Exactly. Yeah. Because, Nature hates void. So if it's replayed, it's going to be replaced by something else. When they say a neighborhood in North, like Saint-Denie in northern Paris, they'll say, oh, it's chaos. It's not chaos at all. It's just a new order replacing the old one.

And this is what's happening. And you're talking about the Paris suburbs, which have always been ghettos. Yes. Of immigrant ghettos. Yeah. But now they're immigrant ghettos filled with drugs and drug dealers and organized. crime. Who are they in the suburbs of Paris? Who's the main ethnic group? Algerians.

Algerians. Yeah, yeah. They're definitely the biggest problem. In Marseille now, for example, you see gangs coming from Italy, they are from Nigeria, who were brought in by the Sicilian and the southern Italian mafias to do the dirty work. And they were so poorly treated that they split up from the Italian mafia. And they're their own now. And they're the worst. They're the most violent. The Italian police has real problems with them. They control love small towns around Naples, around Anzio. They do everything. And now they're in the south of France expanding. It's really a disaster. And the European governments are completely disarmed for ideological reasons. They don't want to do it. But also, they don't have the political courage to do it. So it's getting worse and

worse. And it's very troublesome. So the Italian mafia clans, the, the, um, Andrungata in southern Italy and then the Neapolitan clan, which is the Camorra. Yeah. In the early 2000s, they had all the press as being the biggest cocaine importers in Europe, right? That's what the ports at the very boot of Italy. Can't remember what it's called. Bredisi maybe or Barry maybe? Yeah, some Italian name, you know.

So has that changed? Are they not the biggest importers anymore? Is it the Northern Europeans that are the biggest guys, like out of the port of Antwerp and Brussels or Rotterdam? So in terms of volume, it's always been Holland and Belgium. That's because they are the two biggest deep sea ports in Europe, which you just mentioned. Now that security is tidying up a little bit, it's getting more expensive to bring their products into these two countries. So what the criminal elements are doing, they're spreading out. And they're hitting the French port like Le Avre or Dancourt, who have no security whatsoever.

The French are completely disorganized. And what's happening is that they're spreading out, making it more difficult for local authorities to target loads there are coming in. So France is becoming more and more of a problem. Spain is a huge problem. Big party scene, Malaga and all these areas. There's a lot of people are doing cocaine, a lot of people are doing ecstasy, MDMA. Ketamine is the big new drug as well. That was a Brazilian specialty.

Now it's all over. And Italy, obviously, is the other big thing. It's actually increasing because what you have is, so the South American route goes two ways. It goes north through the Caribbean and to Europe. And then you have the southern route, which is more expensive. It goes through West Africa. And they do have strong alliances with local gangs there, like in Ivory Coast or Guinea and all these countries, Togo even. And then it goes up to Morocco, who's always been a drug hub through not marijuana, but the paste hash.

And goes up through Spain. But Italy now is another big route that's been increasing as well because a lot of people are doing cocaine in Italy, traditionally, actually. But that's also increasing. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming.

Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. I mean, it just, so basically the answer is everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. I mean, you saw the Kinnahans out of Ireland, you know, the big, they just arrested Daniel finally in Dubai because they had to because he was all over the news. But I mean, it seems like every country and region has big cartels. Do they do more Coke? I mean, why this insatiable demand for cocaine in Europe? Do you think there's a higher demand for Coke in Europe than in the United States? I know the price is higher. So there's more. incentive to get it over there. But why, yeah, why is Europe like the crown jewel of the drug trade? Partially because the criminal elements understand that the European Union is incapable of controlling anything on the security context. And European nations are withdrawing in terms of its regaliaan purpose, which is security, borders, currency, lawmaking, all these things that's disappeared.

So a lot of these high-ranking criminal elements, they understand this very well. For them, it's a business and nothing else and nothing more. And they do study geopolitics as well. They're far from being stupid people. And they see that, well, we can really punch through a lot of drugs and there's a huge demand for it. France is the number one consumer of cocaine in Europe, by far. By far, the French are doing cocaine like never before. Yeah.

Were you part of any busts at the big port? when you were embedded in Europe? So I did some, and not in Europe, but in Ecuador I have in Guayaki, and it's got tons of cocaine. In Europe, I've been trying to, and the authorities have been very standoffish with me when it came to being work in the harbors. And the reason is, one of the reasons is because Antwerp and Rotterdam are highly corrupted areas because if you're

let's say I'm waiting to get the drugs start coming through that specific container and I know which one you have connections with the dockers and whoever is checking the x-ray machines where the thing goes through. You go to him and you say

the number 24 here has stuff in it look away I'll give you the running number is between 5,000 euros to 25,000 euros per container. That's a lot of dough. Just for looking away. Just for looking away.

And it's tax-free, obviously. Yeah. And if you don't, I know where your family is. And is that kind of violence? Because that's like Mexico-level corruption and violence, right? Killing whole families. That's something that's done in a place where criminals are as strong as the state or almost. Are those threats real in a place like Belgium?

So they are real in Holland. They're not really killing that many people. They're starting to kill each other more because there are more weapons and they're becoming more aggressive. There's so much money. People are really fighting for it. However, you're not that level that you have in Mexico or in South America. We were not there yet. Far from it.

But it is gradually getting there. Did you see that video where I want to say it was in Germany? These cops, these SWAT and military units did a huge race. on these collection of like containers okay like big containers and this drug gang had hollowed it out and made it like a torture chamber and they just like managed to save whoever was like about to get some dental work done to his teeth in order for him to like you know give up information on somebody while I think that was in Holland maybe it was Holland because I saw the they showed me

the pictures so yeah it's a dental chair that was launched in the middle of that container. And you know who gave them that expertise? Mexican cartels. They had brought in. These guys were arrested too. Mexican Sikarios were brought in to teach them how to do these things. So you do have a strong alliance between some big Mexican cartel, especially the next generation and a Sinaloa cartel who are making strong ties with North African criminal elements in northern Western Europe. And they're bringing in their expertise, and that's one of them. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. What about the Serbians? Like, okay, so you think in these problem countries, Belgium, France, and Holland, you think it's the Moroccans, the Albanians, Algerians, and Nigerians more and more. And now you have criminal elements from Afghanistan in France. You have criminal elements from Chechnya. You have Romanians. You have a little bit of Serbians and Montenegro and stuff like that.

But they're very small in number. So the government should be able to deal with them very, very easily if they wanted to. So do you think these countries have a history of being war-torn? Obviously, France did horrible things to Algeria in the past. Do you think they take that culture of violence and outlaw behavior and just transfer it now into the host countries, if you will? That question is fundamental and truly fascinating. They are strong cultural differences between these different groups that we mentioned, especially when it comes to how you do business. You guys have something similar with Somalis.

There are, you know, all the money that's being stolen. I'm personally not surprised because that's how they do business in Somalia. You see how people bring their own goods and beds with them. The Spaniards did the same thing in South America in terms of great family landlords, created a lot of corruption so no small farmers could survive like it was the case here, which is the reason why North America was more successful to begin with. That was one of the big reasons. So they bring the good and the bad with them.

The Albanians are very tricky because traditionally they are smugglers. And whether they like it or not, throughout the medieval period, that's been true. And they've always been okay with Islam and then Christianity always very fluid and very adapting to situation. They're hard to trust when you want to have an alliance with them as a country. Very hard. So they're very fluid like that. And they also suffered under communism. the poverty of communism for decades.

That's right. So they went through, I mean, you know, first of all, the Ottoman period was very tough on them. And then later, all the Balkan wars and World War I. So everything in World War II was brutal. And then, you know, the end of the Tito period that you just mentioned. So they are very tricky. The Afghans are tough because they're just very tough people. And like if you go to actual physical confrontation against them on the street to a

arrest them, they will fight back. So sometimes the police, who in Germany, they're taking a bag because they're not used to that anymore. The toughest are the Chechens, real hardcore, you know, weapons smuggling and drugs and stuff, but mostly weapons, less drugs. Prostitution is a big thing with the Albanians. So different ethnic groups have a different relationship with money, how they use it, how they spend it, how they make it, and how they protect their territories. The Albanians in Holland are very tough, much tougher than the Moroccans. And actually, the Moroccans are afraid of them.

And we did operations to try to catch Albanians. All the ops have been on, they were not successful. Very sneaky, very smart, and they never create problems. The Moroccans, they're on the street and they'll mug people and stuff like that. So they're much more open about that. They get the numbers. They have the numbers too. Yeah. Although there's big drug traffickers, you know, with the hash route going into Spain and probably now cocaine, you would assume, right?

Yeah. Yeah. What about places like England, Paris, or excuse me, London, I can't believe France is the number one cocaine using country now. Right far. So let's talk about that. Like, what is it, do you find a link between the, we'll just call it the disintegration of the, you. once great European countries over decades from all of these different political and economic reasons, right? The European Union, the mass migration, the everybody kind of just getting poor, kind of like it is in the United States, but on Europe, it's a much, it's a much worse level. Do you think that's the reason that everybody is, like, why are they doing all these drugs? That's the main thing. It's like, why? Why? Why more now? as opposed to the 1980s when Coke, people first discovered what it was. Like, why, is everybody just giving up? The European Union is two main structures in terms of who decides. You have the European Commission and they have the European Court of Justice. These two structures, they control everything.

The Parliament doesn't control anything. They vote on the margin of the laws that are being written by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. The ideal, which is become an ideology is the trifectis, freedom of capital, of goods, and therefore, people. So are you saying that a lot of these countries in Europe don't have sovereignty to create their own drug laws that would fix their drug problem? You're saying it's made by the European Union? So in terms of the national drug laws, they're different for each country. What's the problem is not the fact that they have these laws is the fact that they don't apply them on the punishment level against criminal elements.

But the other big problem is that normally in a normal country, you would get kicked out of the country for that. Like usually they're dual citizens. Actually, they all are. Because if you're Moroccan, Tunisian, and Algerian and your grandparents, one of your grandparents has a passport from back home, you have that by by, by, birth and you could never get rid of it by law. So they're both, they always have two passports. You can remove the French passport and send them home because they did criminal offenses. The European communal law forbids you from doing that. You have to go to court. It's one case-by-case basis. But there are so many criminal elements now. It would take a million years. So that's why they're not being kicked out. So yeah, criminals don't get a lot of prison time and they're not

deported. No, they're not being deported at all. Right. So but the drug trade, like the thing that's, you know, ripping cities apart and the Kensington and Skin Row and the Paris, Parisian suburbs, right? Like, what is the solution to it? You know, you went down to El Salvador. You went into the mega prison. Sure. Tell us about that. Tell us about what you saw, what you heard. And then, Do you think that El Salvador is a workable solution for the whole world, for Europe, for the United States? The El Salvador example resembles tremendously the Filipino with Duarte also, you know, went after criminal elements, 200,000 dead. I mean, he went all out. Now he's in jail.

He's being judged by the International Court of Justice for crime against humanity, for getting rid of criminal. elements. El Salvador is an interesting example, but they were successful because it's a small country. Tiny, they knew where everybody was, which areas were controlled, used the army, surrounded them. And actually, interestingly enough, most of the criminal elements didn't fight back. There were a couple of clashes here and there, but the army, and they surrendered. They were not as tough as they thought they were. Right. Because going after people is one thing, going into a hand-to-hand street,

fighting with the military that's a I mean I've experienced street fighting many occasions it's a very very hard experience and very dangerous and when you start to do go hand to hand and start spraying fire around then you'll see who is a man and who is not took them out he built that prison I was privy to see that very high tech a lot of Chinese technology and all these guys who were taken I I think it was 70,000 and about 45, 50,000. I'm not clear with the exact numbers or in that prison. Unless Bukle was a president now gets arrested,

which is possible after his tenure, these people will never go out. They don't just die in place. And a lot of NGOs and more progressive liberal entities went after him heavily in the media. well turned it was inhumane I always say go talk to the local El Salvador and he's very happy you can walk around a night without getting shot or his kid get kidnapped or whatever it might so he was quite efficient at it the timing was

ripe people really had it went too far and again it's a small country you could do that Honduras is trying to do that right now not as successful it's a bigger country it's more complex so but is that in El Salvador is that white out the drug trade, because there never was a big drug trade in El Salvador. Like these MS-13 guys, like, you know, I don't disagree necessarily with what Buckele did, but these guys were like extorting bus drivers for quarters. These were not high-level cocaine exporters. So again, that's also a big difference, right?

So you're correct. Their strategic imprint was very small. You're right. El Salvador was a good hub, right, to stop on the way. What they do is just go from one port to the next, working there went to Mexico and then land route to the great North American market. So you are correct, they were into all kinds of things. I remember they showed me this, it was like a pool, a swimming pool, very small, but it was all grass around because it was the vegetation had grown. They would bring people and drown them there.

Terrible location. And all the time. And then next to it, there was a basketball court that the government had built. You know, sometimes they built sports so kids don't do drugs or they do sports instead. They used to hang people there every day from the net. They show, and the net was like from the pressure on the body. That's what they were doing to people. So you're right.

They were doing all kinds of extract, you know, of different ways to get money. And they were fighting each other. What do you think? Okay, so you've been to, I mean, if you look in your book, Drug Wars, Supply and Demand, you've been to the tenderloin in San Francisco. You've been to Skid Row in L.A., I'm assuming. Kensington in Philadelphia, the whole city of Baltimore. Baltimore covered heavily.

Dangerous city. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think is like the worst in terms of just lawlessness, drug addiction, and we'll call it violence, throw that in there out of all those places. Yeah, they all have their particularities. Baltimore was tough because lots of gangs. So I was operating in gang area, so I had to be, you know, careful.

They didn't know where it was the obvious reason. In Philadelphia, it's just a drug usage of crazy people, just completely off their rockers doing fentanyl and just really heavy drug users. But to me, the more grim was New Mexico. and I spent a lot of time in northern New Mexico and Maine these are kind of abandoned area who were

once prosperous and now just these abandoned small towns in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, I've heard that. So New Mexico's like, why were these towns abandoned? Northern New Mexico? Yeah, like Spaniola, these places.

So basically New Mexico has been a drug route for heroin through Mexico since the late 19th century. So there's a tradition of drug smuggling in the area and then it just spreads out across the land. You still have that, not nearly as much as California

or Florida or Texas, those areas. It just feels like time has stopped there and you have beautiful landscape, so it's a weird combination of beautiful nature in these small human towns where everybody's doing drugs,

they're doing dirty drugs, there's no money, so they're looking, resources to help them and just really lost souls and this wilderness. And it's visually and intellectually, it's fascinating to dive into that, to that world. Arizona was interesting to Maine was cool. Not cool. I'm sorry.

It was interesting because it's, yeah, very affluent coastal towns like Kennebankport and a lot of money. And then you go more inland in the wooded areas. Then it's all prescription drugs. all poor white drug addicts. And it's grim, and that's because the industries are gone, and it was never anything to replace it. But in 1970s, we decided that it would be better to produce in China.

And obviously, we wiped out a lot of jobs and industries in America. Same in Europe. So drugs were when people had nothing else to do. Okay, so then, like New Mexico, is it also poor whites, or is it like Native Americans? You got a bit of everything. Yeah. So do you embed with drug addicts?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I could spend weeks. Seriously? Yeah. Do you do any drugs? No. I used to be an addict? No, but I mean, no, I've never been addicted to them.

And that's how my brain's wired. I remember in high school and I was an athlete for 20 years. And I used to smoke during lunch break at school in New York City back in the 90s. Because I went to a French high school. So all the kids smoked. Yeah, yeah. Because you're French. That's what the French people do.

But I was, you know, I tried and never, I really tried to be an addict. And never. Same with hard drugs. But I grew out of them because there was a time to me, it was just, it was, but it was never going to be a problem. I knew that. But you take a chance. You don't know about your own addiction unless you try. But I've tried all kinds.

But I was never addicted to them and I grew out of them. So. But yet you, and that makes you a perfect person to hang out and observe drug addicts because you're not going to do them. Yeah, no, I would never. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so you're watching people smoke fentanyl? Yeah, like shoot it. Yeah, like a lot of like needles.

Let me ask you this. Do you find that less people are ODing on fentanyl now? Because I've heard, because we study cartels on the show pretty heavily, and we've heard that the regulations are, getting the chemicals out of China to Mexico to produce the fentanyl have worked to an extent so that the fentanyl batches are less strong. It could also be that they're getting tolerant to them here. But do you find like when did people stop? What do people go straight to the fentanyl to get high and not just have it be like heroin

with fentanyl in it? Like when do people, what year do people start like saying, no, I want to, I want to, I I am a fentanyl addict. So the genesis of the fentanyl historical arc is the 1990s. There was multiple deals that were struck between Chinese businessman and Sinaloa cartel, like the traditional real powerful base cartels, maybe Tamaulipas to golf and these lesser but still powerful. Deals were struck and it was basically, we'll bring you the model. cool and you will produce and you will sell to the US market. That's how it happened. The DEA did a big

raid in Mexico City, mid-90s, maybe it was 98, I forget. And there was a Chinese businessman and he had $300 million in cash in his apartment. There's so much of a, he didn't know what. There's a scene like this on the movie Blow, remember? Right. He opened a door like that. And I knew pesos or dollars? No, no, dollars. And I knew some of the guys who were in the operation. They told me about this. But it was on the news. I came, but, you know, I knew the guys. Anyway. And what the way it worked is

the following. It's easy to cook. All right. It's big toxic, but it's not the hard to make. You make it. They, what they would do, and they did that with other drugs, and they're doing that with xylazine, which is the trank, is the big thing now. Which is even more devastating. It's scary. they would have some of these cartels would have already connections with local gangs Philadelphia

namely they will bring a certain amount of fentanyl to them for free and they'll say mix it up but you know as late because you die right just just very little and because these guys are not chemists that's why many people die there's too much fentanyl in a product itself give that product mix it don't give it just purely the mix it and give it to a bunch of addicts, some of your clients, because they are clients. That's how they see it. And it was bingo because the guys got so addicted,

they saw the result. So they applied on the ground how it worked, and the guys would keep coming back. They went completely crazy. I need more. And they were like, okay, we got something great. That's how it happened. And Philadelphia was a perfect place to do it.

And then boom, spread out to wildfire. If it was a 19-19. If it was a 1990s kind of agreement between the Chinese and the Mexicans, why did it take 15 years? You know, we didn't, fentanyl didn't really come onto the scene until Chapo, 14, 15. Why did it take a generation? It took less time. It just wasn't advertised as much. It was still on their ass.

If the media doesn't really cover it or there's organizations don't really cover it, they don't really know what it is, it takes a few years before it really becomes a very visible national issue. But it takes time to set up the lines, to produce and stuff like that, and then to see if it works and then spreading out takes another few years. So it takes a bit of time. But it became huge in the media, yeah, like over about 10, yeah, 10, 15 years ago. So do you see less people, ODs are down? Fatal overdoses, fatal overdoses are down when it comes to fentanyl specifically, opioids in general. why do you think that is? You're from what you've seen on the street with all the EMTs, the cuffs, they don't have that spray.

What is it called? I actually have some of the Narcan. And I would always have a couple with me in case, you know, someone, but, you know, it's very simple. You put it in someone's nose, you press it down, like a red button. And that works. So it works less and less because like every drug, the body gets used to it. But that's why people don't die. And it actually backfired because if you're a hardcore drug addict

and you know you're not going to die because someone is going to, then you keep doing your heart drugs. You see the, it's a double-h sword. On one end, you save lives. You keep them going. But they will do more and they will continue because they know they're going to get, they'll be awakened by the thing.

Oh, my God. Did you ever have to do that? No, I had it with me. I mean, I have seen a bunch of guys who did it and died. front of me. But there are other buddies who also drug addicts. Also, I had the

Narcan. The Narcan. So they're like, hey, hold on, buddy. Put in their nose and they're like, sometimes they would put like three or four because they were so drugged up that they needed a few. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive.

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Yeah. So you just witnessed people fall out. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've seen that many times. Just taking pictures of it. Have you seen anybody not wake up?

Yeah, I've seen plenty of dead, either murdered or, you know, OD. Yeah, plenty. Yeah, because we'll talk about that, the violence that goes on. You know, you go to assume desperate drug addicts are going to, it's going to spin out of control, people are going to get killed. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the violence in any poor environment, that's always been the case. Drugs adds another element because when people are really addicted, they need their fix, obviously. But the amount of money that's being exchanged is just no one knows how much money.

money is being made across the North American, the South American, North American trade route and into Europe. The DEA goes up to $400 billion a year, but they don't actually know. No one knows. Well, how much, okay, talk about like Kensington, how much money is moving. I mean, obviously, it's 24 hours, but there's such small amounts. Like a guy from Baltimore was on the show the other day, he said they're selling $3 fentanyl hits. Okay.

So obviously there's thousands, tens of thousands of transactions every day, but how much money are those strips really bringing in versus like it just being a place where people come to get high and the junkies are also the dealers? Like, is it that kind of thing? Or is a place like that actually, even though it looks chaotic, it's actually being run by organized crime? Yeah, yeah. It's totally run by organized crime. and they're making a lot of money. Who's running Kensington in Philadelphia right now? So you have different local, mostly black gangs.

They do have connections of some of them, like the higher ranking guys. They do have strong links with some Mexican cartels. And that's been around for years. So you do have traditionally, like in Baltimore, these kinds of gangs. They are making a lot of money as well. And the proof is that in order to protect their business,

they're heavily weaponed. They have a lot of guns. Mostly 8mm glocks, some assault rifles, but mostly handguns. You can't just walk around with the, you know, not like here, you walk around the machine gun. But it's very prevalent. The money, no one knows how much money is being made. There are some numbers, but I wouldn't trust them. No one knows.

I think the fentanyl is a really high margin because you can buy, you can buy a key of fentanyl really low. and make, you know, like if you buy it for a thousand, this is coming from somebody that emailed me. Do I trust all emails? No, but I've heard it. I've verified it. Like, I think it's a thousand, 1,000, 1,200 for a key. Like, if you got like a Mexican connect,

like if you're part of the cartel. And just chopping it into $3 hits, you can make like $25,000 off of a $1,000 investment. Yes, that's good. Yeah. So, you know. And actually $3 a hit is very, expensive because the fentanyl result on your body is very brief.

So you want another one quickly. You'll be spending multiple times these $3 on a daily basis. Okay. That's wild. So it's like a hit a crack. It doesn't last very long. It doesn't last very long. How would the junkies, the fentanyl addicts, how many times a day are they using, like

on average? So some of the very dependent ones that have sponsored. spent time with, and there's some in cartel territory, northern Mexico. I remember these guys were shooting up straight fentanyl in their necks. And one of these pictures is in the book actually. Now his body could take it, that's how crazy addicted he was. He was out of his mind for, we hang out with him the entire day. maybe an hour and a half, he was just completely off his rockers.

Then he started trying. Now, he's a very resistant guy. But it's just a few hours. It's brief. So 10 times a day? I wouldn't say 10 times a day, but I've seen guys do, yeah, three, six times a day. Just like completely hooked on it. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, man. No, so three, you add up. It's not cheap. That's how I see it. Nine bucks? No, I know, but this will have no money. But over time,

Every day, for more. I mean, it's like. Well, yeah, it's tens of thousands. Do you think, like in Kensington or the tenderloin? Like, I know it's impossible to know the number for sure, but did it look like thousands of people? Yeah, so if you don't see them all, right? You got people on the street and then people inside, you know, doing their drugs. Either it's abandoned buildings or just where they live there.

Yeah, it's like thousands and thousands. The authorities don't know either. Did you go to like any shooting galleries or? or any places like indoors where, you know, people come to get high? I have, but not in the United States. You mean like the legal ones? No, I meant like safe houses. Yeah, just drug houses.

Yeah, I did a couple in Dominican Republic. Like crack and heroin safe houses, very dangerous places to go into. But I had a good contact. And after a while, it was like, you need to go now. Because, you know, you never know. And some guys were becoming edgy. And so I would, of course, listen and leave. But yeah, yeah, I did a couple of those over the years.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's grim. It's just dark and all these little rooms. Yeah. Sometimes, I know it's sound weird to say, but that's the photographer in me. Beautiful lighting sometimes. Right.

Just like a string of light, just lighting one guy. Right. And dark around. Or, you know, I would use other people's flashlights at, night so they're you know for whatever reason they're using to light something up and I would use only that light to take the picture and because I'm using a prime lens I'm only shooting a 51.2 which is a very wide lens and it captures a lot of light that works very well to shoot at night just grab whatever lights around I don't use flash ever ever ever they're beautiful pictures in the

book um okay do you has fentanyl or meth How much were you around meth, methamphetamine? So meth, you don't see it. Like, I remember doing some stuff in Panzocola, and the Panhandles. And you do see, more like the white port and trailers. You do see that there are more. It's interesting how, to some extent, drugs differ on the ethnic group. So crack is more, like in New York and the Bronx, for example, of crack usage, mostly Dominican, Puerto Ricans.

and blacks. But you don't see Mexicans do that at all. Yeah. And that's a cultural thing. Mexicans are not, they drink heavily, but they're not known for doing heavy drugs. It's been changing.

You should go down, you should see the places we've been. The Mexicans do drugs. No, they do, but I mean, like as a nation, it's not like a culturally, like you would in the U.S.

where drugs is much more widespread in terms of consumption. My experience with Mexico is that they are still a very family-oriented nation. There are certain limitation and restrictions when you're raising kids. But yeah, yeah, there are areas. Everybody is in Mexico City.

They're bad areas for drugs. Well, even amongst the elite in Mexico now, it's like being in Spain. Cocaine is like we party with coke. You're talking about cocaine. Okay. Yeah, yeah, sure. But also, like, meth is, if you go to places,

we've been to Nogales, we've been to Montef. Monterey, Saltio, all these places in northern Mexico. It's a working class drug. So there's big time, yeah, they sell a lot of meth in Mexican cities. But I was asking that because I want to know about Europe. Well, just let's focus on the fentanyl. Will fentanyl make it to Europe? Do European cities have the problems that we have with Fent?

No right now. And the reason is because people have to remember that Fennel overwhelmingly is a legal production. China makes four drugs. That's what they give you when you're in a hospital bed and you have an op. That's how they shoot you up for pain at a very, very tiny dose, obviously. So India is a big producer of the molecule as well. We are too in Canada.

And I think these are the top producers. And I rarely say this because I don't like the European Union, but they do have a good side in terms of restriction for prescription drug, production and consumption. So the fentanyl is highly, highly, highly controlled in terms of being given out. So you don't really have any legal fentanyl usage in Europe. It's very tiny, though it is increasing. Okay.

So a lot of people, unlike in the U.S., in Europe, they're not so addicted to legal opioids. You're correct. And so therefore you have less demand for illegal opioids like fentanyl. You're correct. So the prescription drug issue from the 1990s with a cycle of family, this has never happened in Europe. Okay. However, France does have a huge problem with, I forget the word in English, drugs that you take like because you're depressed. These kinds of drugs. Antidepressants. A lot of people are on it in France. It's like the number one user by far, given by a psychiatrist or, yeah, legally. But huge problem.

Right. A lot of people are taking because they're depressed. In France is number one. Right, right. And do you think that maybe, well, certainly it probably leads to, you know, stimulant use, ketamine, right? Catamine is on the rise. I did a ketamine piece in Brazil and the gay community because I used,

I did this crazy story on the underground gay sex world in San Paolo. You had to embedding that. Oh, my God. I hope you didn't have to get high on your own survive, you know what I mean? Yeah, I had to be, I'm straight, so I had to, you know, I'd be extra careful. For sure. But the parties, the drugs, it's insane.

Brazil is not a production hub. It's a consumer hub. They do a lot of kinds of drugs. And everybody in Brazil is gay. You have a lot of gay. It was crazy when I went to Rio. It's like jacked fucking gay black dudes. So you have a lot of, it's very fluid sexuality.

It's a weird. Brazil, I've worked a lot in Brazil. It's a weird between a very Christian state. Abortion is illegal. So they have these deep Christian foundations. And on the other hand, the sexuality is very, it's true, it's very fluid. And ketamine was a drug being used. I used to, during that week, I photographed that for a French client.

But it was also part of some of these photos are in it. In the book is the use of ketamine in a gay community for party drugs. So they do ketamine, they snorted usually. and they go all out. And these parties, on the ground parties, is basically, one was an abandoned factory, and that was grim. It was basically a huge concrete floor,

and they had a stage in the middle and a bar on its flank. And there were balconies, multiple floors. And I started shooting, and I bought my girlfriend at the time was Brazilian for, safety and couple of buddies of mine. And it was 2,000 people in an orgy, ultimately doing drugs.

It was like the end of the world. And I remember the further go up you would go, the darker it would get. And then I got to the top floor and there was some sort of an entrance. And I opened and someone grabbed my arm and pulled me in. And it was basically an orgy in the dark where like dozens of people. I thought I was going to die. So I extracted myself. They thought I was in to join.

And I was able to pull myself out because, you know, I was holding my camera. But all drugs, everybody is just doing something cocaine, obviously. Right. But what does ketamine do? Like, you know how gay guys used to do and probably still do poppers in the U.S.? Is ketamine a similar feeling to poppers? Why do gays, you know, go to this drug? I mean, it keeps you going, right?

You could just go all night and just keep arteming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could really, I mean, then you could do too much of it and then something, it's called going through a K-hole. Like you lose, like you feel like your body is detaching from itself. It's a very weird, very unique feeling that you get if you take too much ketamine. But it's really a party drug. It's just, it's linked to them. Now, does organized crime, like at what scale is ketamine moved?

Because we're, ketamine's big in the U.S. now, too. Yeah. at what, is it controlled by organized crime or is it kind of just more like localized people, again, who do it that also know how to make it? Or is there a hierarchy to ketamine trafficking? There is trafficking of ketamine, but it is also a trend where people who feel depressed go to their doctor and they get ketamine. You do have that now. There are doctors who think that it's okay to give ketamine if you have. anxiety. So you have this legal side of it where people are getting it legally. The illegal side

is mostly for the party scene. It's not something that you have a junkie on the street, just shooting up or snoring in ketamine. You might have some, but it's marginal. It's really, the criminal elements are targeting the big party scenes, like in Proto Vallarta in Mexico, huge gay scene, a lot of ketamine there. Okay, so who's making it? Who's, who's, I mean, I obviously part of IARTA, people controlled by the cartel elements, right? But like in a place like Rio or Europe, like do you make it at scale? Like are there kilo dealers of ketamine or is it just something that like small time people get involved with? No, I think it's all, it's, you know, it's like for the, on a large scale, these international criminal elements, it's like a menu.

you go to a restaurant and they sell you different products and ketamine is one of them. It's probably on the lower scale. I don't think it's not their big moneymaker. It's just an extra way to earn cash because it targets a specific kind of people the way they used to target advertising people in France and the 80s with cocaine

or heroin with a jazz man. Like, Rachel's used to talk about this in the 50s and 60. They all, you know, love them or junkies. using heroin. So it was targeted for specific bubbles, you know, groups of social people. Ketamine is like that.

So would you liken the market, like the market capitalization? In other words, how much, how big the market is for a drug like ketamine? Would you say it's on par with like Mali or MDMA? It's a good question. No, I think Mali MDMA is much higher. It's much more popular and it's been extensive.

It's made less ecstasy now, more MDMA, because it's actually a little bit better for you. Right. I don't mean it's good for you, but at least it's a pure form, right? Ecstasy, you didn't know. You got speed. You could have cracking and, you know, whatever it could be. And now was an organized crime. They made that in, like, Holland.

They had a big production, and they still do. And I've been on ops that were farmers. These guys were Dutch, though. And they were producing. MDMA because they already have the chemicals and they have the facilities to do it. So they would set up cameras. It was like an investigation, right, for months. And they would set up cameras like in the movies, you know, and like the light on the street,

wherever on the tree, whatever they could find. And they would film it 24-7 and you would see some, they were pig farmers in that case. And they were bringing huge barrels, plastic barrels. and there were so many of them that are like, hmm, that's weird. And they were bringing in chemicals to make MDMA. Wow. Because Belgium and Holland have these huge festivals, music festivals. And, you know, you pop MDMA to, you know, you party, you know, so.

Oh, interesting. So it started with music festivals in those countries, and then they started exporting it. Because I know they, you know, we've talked to big ecstasy dealers that would get their shit from. Yeah. Tell us about the. favelas in Brazil. This is a, that's one of the most fascinating, frightening, you know, drug, to organize crime areas in the whole world. Yeah. So in Rio, so you have two different kinds of favelas. You have the favelas are nicer, more accessible where you even have tourist tours. Like Vigal, Santa Marta, they do have tours and they take you around. And these tours have a deal with the gangs who control the area. And it's okay.

I worked in a real like Jacques Alazzino, Akari, which is in a north and northwest part of Rio where no one goes. These are the real hardcore. Some of them controlled by Red Command, who's one of the big criminal elements for Brazil. Very violent guys, very dangerous guys. Not the same voice as Mexican cartels. There's very interesting differences. And I worked with these guys because I had a good contact. and I spent time with them.

Very hard to take pictures. It was very restrictive. Was not very happy with the photos. And you were working embedded with the Red Command? Yeah, because I had a contact. He was a priest. And he would bless them. So I had this contact.

He said, come with me. They know about you. Photos. We'll see. So I took some. But it was never, I didn't spend enough time. I think I should spend more time. I just couldn't.

And you would go to their homes and bless them and stuff like that. You're a soldier, you need to survive today. Maybe try to find another way. But a lot of these criminal guys were religious. Yeah. Heavy armed flag jackets. I mean, it's like, it was falling.

And I did really, I did half a dozen combat operations in these areas. And this was with Corre, which is commandos. Like I had access to it. I was the only one with that kind of access. And different military police units. And we did a proper firefights on the streets, like gun battles, people getting killed, spraying fire all over. Yeah, yeah, like no joke. Like these units were when they go after it's to kill.

It's not to negotiate. Yeah, they just take up. So do you, so you were wearing a press suit? No, no, no. I mean, I was flag jacket, but I don't wear press ever. Okay. But they gave you a flag jacket and a helmet. No helmet.

I don't wear a helmet. Yeah, I hate you in the head, man. That's part of the gig. That's a good shot. So, yeah, I know. But a flag jacket was for security, but I'm also very experienced. I've done a lot of urban combat, like Mosul and in Syria and stuff like that, so I know what to do. And it's intense, but it's not intense like it was in Iraq, right?

But it's for a city that's not a war, it's pretty serious. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's at war. Yeah. Every now and that, it flares up, right? Yeah. When do they decide to do raids, like those lethal raids where they're just there to kill? What?

Did you get a sense of when the police decide? Okay, let's go in and do it. That's like a cleansing. Yeah, yeah, right. So sometimes it's because a lot of police officers in Rio are getting killed. And they're getting killed when they're getting home. I think it's a, I forget the number. They told me it was like 80 or 100.

It was like dozens every year. It was not a small number. And because some of these police officers work in the areas where they live, so the dealers know who they are. And they would ambush them going home when they were out of their service without their weapons and just kill them. And what that happens, out of revenge, they'll go in and they'll kill a bunch of them in return. So you have that.

Or the new governor who's hardcore and he said, I need to make an imprint on my tenure. We'll do major operation. We're going to kill a bunch of these guys. and calm things down for a while. But it doesn't solve the problem long term, but it goes down and then it goes back up. Right.

It's a never-ending pendulum. Yeah, yeah. It's like constant. You saw that. Did you hang out any like drug sales spots in the favelas? Yeah, yeah. This I was never really allowed to take pictures because for them,

their tactical areas, their points of cells. But yeah, you know, anywhere. some corner they sell everything, you know, bad cocaine, like bad drugs because people do drugs in these areas are poor so they get cocaine. I saw it looks almost brown. Dude, I had one of the worst cocaine, the worst cocaine I've ever bought was from a guy in the favelas.

Yeah, I'm sure. I didn't go up into the favelas, but like I sent him up there. I sent him up to get weed. Right. But I don't speak Portuguese. So he came back with a bunch of blow. That's not so cheap it was. It was like money for weed and it came back with Coke.

It looked like pancake mix. It was fucking awful. It was like I didn't even do drugs. It's terrible. One of the trips I did in Rio, I lived with transgender for a couple of weeks. And they are all prostitutes and drug users. That's the, unfortunately, that's the ammo. And they would do cocaine and they would get that kind of cocaine because it was cheap.

And I have pictures of these. These people who I became very friendly with actually were, but, you know, prostitute at night doing drugs or just living together in abandoned buildings. Right. So doing that too. So do they have tourists, cocaine, which obviously I didn't get, but they must have better product for the tourists. And then the locals get the shit that's just cut. Yeah. And they sell it for it's cheap.

It's very cheap. It's the same for coffee production in Colombia. They do very good coffee production, but none of it stays in Colombia. It's for export. And the bad coffee is for domestic consumption. Right. Same thing. Same business calculation.

What do you think the worst area was? And all of these fucked up, drug-addled, crime-ridden cities that weren't technically at war, because I know you've been real war zones too, which we should talk about at the end. what do you think was like the worst? In terms of the addiction side of it, overall. Both. For addiction, the U.S. is grim. And the reason, because I would go shoot in the winter sometimes,

it's the whole ambiance. You know, Baltimore used to be a very, you know, I had a lot of business not anymore. New Mexico was grim. I spent a lot of time in Oakland, in California. obviously grim in a different way. Just to see that you're in the United States and you have that. And that's what's so surprising.

In terms of violence, the deport of Guayaquil in Ecuador was dangerous because I took part in operations in areas completely controlled and they clash. And the people, their arrests were really bad guys. and there's a lot of retaliation from the criminal element against the police element my friend there was the head of all this almost got assassinated

a bunch of times last year they tried to kill him in his car and they missed he's a high-end commander he's a clean guy so you have a lot of not so clean guys so they don't get killed right

so there was threats on me too after a month I went back to Quito and in Quito I was going to do the same thing and I was introduced to the main commander and I could tell

as soon as I walked in, the guy was deeply corrupted and I told my fixer and like, I don't know about this guy and he was not happy that I was around. And he was like, yeah, maybe two months later he was arrested, got 25 years in jail for drug dealing.

Yeah. So, you know, you have a lot of that too. Do you think Ecuador was the most violent? It was really getting to that curve. Mexico is the most dangerous to work in. Mexico is a whole different ball game. Where were you?

You were in Tijuana? Yeah, they're a lot of the north. And like part of the southern Pacific coast, a little bit Mexico City and around. A little bit in Cancun as well. But yeah, Mexico is different because their understanding of death. Their relationship with death and violence is very unique to them. This mix of culture of Aztecic. culture and Spanish colonial violent era combined into a very peculiar population group who really

doesn't care about death. A lot of people do not. It's like, eh. Yeah. It doesn't matter. I know the, for sure. I think that same thing, especially amongst the indigenous and who usually become cicadios. Yeah.

It's the white guys that look like me and you from. Elisco or Sinaloa that make the deals, that make the drug deals, but it's the brown soldiers. They're the ones who fight and get killed all the time. And yeah, it's extremely normalized, but it's deeper than normalized. Like it's, yeah, there's a cult-like fascination with death. I mean, Dio de los Moritos, right? Yeah, the whole society. That's not necessarily bad on the surface level, but, yeah, it's permeated the criminal.

element. I mean, one of the most violent cartels at the time was they had one group called Los Aztecas, and they were vicious. Los Zetas as well, who were wiped out. Yeah, it's just a combination of culture is very peculiar because you go to Central America

there's violence, but it's not they're not as creative with it. And same in Brazil, it's very violent, but they will never be, they'll never pull off you. I mean, put you in acid, they don't do these things, really. They'll just kill you, but in Mexico, there's some sort of creativity around it. There's even evidence that ISIS, when they were expanding in Iraq 10 years ago, less,

eight years ago, there was some social media stuff that came out when they were saying they were a bit shocked, by the way, Mexican cartisal dealing with violence. ISIS was. were you ever personally in danger? I mean, covering drugs? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, there are times I had to leave, you know, and it's, I worked in Nogales and I was

being checked out by cartel after a while. ICE helped me out with that. So, yeah, like it's, you know, they don't touch international reporters because it's too much light on them and they don't want that. But if things go bad, you never know. Right. I mean, people start fighting each other and they get desperate. So, yeah, what about, I felt the most in danger personally when I was filming in America.

Like in the tenderloin is when me and my camera guy were like, oh, we definitely cannot walk down this street. Yeah. Whereas in Mexico, yeah, you feel uncomfortable, but it's just much more controlled. Nobody gets out of line. Yeah, yeah, you're correct. There's a, there's a logic and a law with criminal elements who impose their own. So you were embedded in Iraq as well. Yeah, with the Iraqi army when they retook Mosul and when they're twice.

And are you there on assignment for a big network or why, how are you funding a lot of this? All right. So the war stuff, they have big clients. Like I shot for Vanity Fair for years. I shot for Bloomberg for years. CNN, different French magazine like Paris Max. So I had my clients over the years. I worked for Getty

earlier in my career. But now I don't do news so much anymore because the monies are not really there which is, you know, going to Beirut and just photographing, bombed out building is not so interesting to me. But the

drug stuff is something I've been embedding myself more and more and that's self-funded. I do go fund me. I just, I raise capital. for that. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Yeah, I mean, and do you, you must go in there. Do you ever, has there ever been an experience where you're like, oh, I actually may get killed? Yeah, yeah, many times. And in Syria, it was hardcore and I was kidnapped in Syria and held hostage for many months, you know, the whole torture and the whole, the whole experience.

Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, we can. I covered that war three times, so early on, so early 2012, I went twice, and the third time I went towards Damascus through Lebanon, because we'd go through Turkey before. And after 10 days operating in the area, I got kidnapped by the group that was working with. They decided to, they was financially a good business deal. See, it's all about money. Of course. It's a business, except that now you're dealing with humans. Who's the group you're with? They were like a local Katiba, which is a fighting brigade. Okay. So it's a loose term. These are the rebels trying to overthrow the Assad government. And they decided to.

Yeah. And the experience was very unique, obviously. I mean, they tortured me quite a bit for a couple of weeks to break your will. It's not personal. It's just to make you not a problem to them because they need resources to watch you. Well, these guys are watching. They're not out fighting. I was released because there was money involved.

Someone paid my ransom. Someone that was close to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. very political situation, very unique, the way I was released. And I escaped in Beirut. They smuggled me back to Beirut in truck of their car. After paying off all the guards to cross the border, this whole story. And then I escaped.

I ended up at the French embassy where they hid me for a while because the Lebanese government was pissed off. The guys like us were going back and forth crossing illegally all these borders without their permission. And they flew me back to... How much was the ransom? Half a million dollars.

Dude, you're a handsome guy, man. That's, yeah, you fetch a higher price. I know, it wasn't that high. Some guys were like two, three million. That's like the joke now to you. I wasn't worth that much. What are you actually worth? You're kidnapped by Syrian rebels.

Just half a male. That's a disappointing. So it was a political deal that got them the cash? So the guy who paid my ransom was also a businessman. He still is. And I can't say who, obviously, for his own protection. I actually reached out to me very recently, oddly enough, to how I'm doing. He had businesses in Canada, and his assets were all frozen because he was part of the regime.

That's how we do it, right? We freeze everybody's assets who's an adversary. And you wanted to be out of that list. And by paying my ransom, he thought. that would happen, but it didn't. The French and the U.S. governments were like, we're not being blackmailed by you. Yeah, you really saw our guy. We're happy for our citizen, but.

Okay. Now, so Bashar al-Assad has fallen. His regime fell six months ago. Just like in an instant with the health of Turkey, Israel, and of course, the good old United States. So finally, after all these years, you know, he was. went into exile and now some ISIS like guys are running the country. And it's completely balkanized. It's been cut up. It's a failed state. First of all, what they were saying about him in the news when he was in power, you were there. The propaganda in America was he was dropping

white phosphorus on all his cities, on, you know, killing his own civilians, you know, kidnapping people, disappearing them. Is any of that true? Is there any of that true? Is there truth to that? It's tradition for the regime and before him as father, Hafez, Hassad, to torture and do a lot of killings. But that's how they do with each other. The Middle East, when they go at it, they just do a lot of that stuff. That's cultural, in my opinion. Anyway, again, particularities of violence also changes culturally. And in the Middle East, they have their ways as well. They love to torture and kidnap. Because also kidnapping is business, especially in Lebanon, smuggling, you know, smuggle antiquities like you smuggle people. What's the difference? Just different amounts.

Anyway, so was it a good regime? No. However, when it comes to geopolitics, people have to understand that the morality side of it is not relevant. People, countries talk to each other, even if the guy in front is not a good guy. We dealt with Gaddafi for decades. Ficked up individual. But we did a deal with him. We said to him, no nuclear weapons, no nuclear anything, but you control southern border for migration.

That was the deal that the Italian struck. We get rid of him. I really came up. Yeah, now you can buy human slaves in Libya, literally. So at the end of the day, I said to people, he was a bad guy. Yeah, but look what you have now. look what you have now in Syria.

Do I trust this new guy? No, I do not. They are nice in the beginning because they want to be legitimate. Yeah, he was invited into the Oval Office. The guy was a ISIS, like he wasn't just a soldier. He was like an ISIS like commander.

He had responsibility. Yeah, he probably has a lot of blood on his hands. For sure. But that's what I mean is like you you negotiated, you deal with everybody because that's how people think that nation states are friendly with each other that that's a nonsensical comments nation states have common interest or they don't if they have common interest they make an alliance

and they work things out until it doesn't work and they move on that's how the world works is it nice is it friend no but that's that's how it operates but there is you know there is a morality or at least value sharing that makes some nations close even when there is no economic reason to be close. You know, this is why we share a sentimental connection with Europe because that's our ancestors. And Christianity is where we come from. But in a place like Syria, was this guy, Bashar al-Assad,

was he committing, like, ethnic cleansing? Was he doing what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians? Like, on that level? Or why was he killing? Nobody asked why he was white phosphorus bombing his own civilians. Yeah, so in terms of... I'm trying to imply that the CIA was behind all of this. Is that true?

Because they've done a lot of shit like this. Yeah. So the war in Syria was not a civil war. In the beginning, it was a little bit. But it was truly a proxy war. And the proof is, and there are many, to make it simple, the Islamic opposition, were a rack tag and then efficient,

foreign mercenary force in terms of proportional to its population the largest number of non-Syrians coming to fight against the regime were from Tunisia

and I mean proportional to their population and everything is like a couple of thousands but you had Chechens you had Saudis you had a lot of Muslims from Europe from France from Belgium from Holland from England

thousands and thousands went to fight and die there. So it was truly an international war, very contained. It did not go over, really. Thank God. So it was very contained, very violent within that containment,

but truly international war. The U.S. was arming and training the southern groups that did a pocket and on the Jordanian border. It's still there. Then you had the Kurds. The Turks were involved. I mean, yeah, everybody was like ripping apart that kick.

And why were they trying to overthrow? Why? Why Syria? There's a lot of oppressive, repressive regimes. Why this government? It dates back from, on one end, it dates back from what the media like to call the Arab Spring, which is non-Arab Spring. It's not, in a sense that it's not a genuine popular movement to be a democratized Egypt. I mean, a general dictator and probably for the better is actually quite smart. and managing his country in the region. LCC is not a dumb and far from it.

But it's no democratic rule. And when they tried to have elections, they elected, forget his name, the guy was a Muslim Brotherhood. He would now went to jail and died. I forget his name. People remember. So people voted for hardcore Islamists.

So why do they do that? It could be one thing, that goes back to your Secret Service argument is you use other people's troops to create issues problems. The Byzantine Empire intellectualized that very well. You take one barbarian tribe against the next,

a lot cheaper than saying your own troops to fight them, you have them fight against each other. Sometimes it backfires. Hamas is Israeli creation. Ariya Charon, I mean, everybody knows this. created a little bit of a monster to compete against the fatta in West Bank. Right, who were non-violent. Less violent.

Yeah. Because they also had hardcore troops in Ramallah and everyone. They did clash a lot with Israeli troops. Right. What I've heard, and I like this kind of argument or this way of framing it, is that Israel, however you look at it, either they're leading us, wagging the dog or we're we're wagging them, but they're trying to destabilize all of these other countries so they're not threats to to Israel. So that's why you destabilize Libya by by creating a failed state there,

get rid of Gaddafi. That's why Syria is now a failed state. They're trying to do that in Lebanon as we speak, right? So I've heard that and I'm like, okay, I can I can accept that. And I'm sure there's, there's an economic, there might be an economic reason behind that. You know, I don't know why the U.S. feels like this one tiny little country, Israel, which is an ethno state. It's a religious ethno state, just like, you know, Syria was, or excuse me, like Turkey is a Muslim state. I don't know why they feel like those guys are the ones that we need to be using to destabilize the rest of the region, but they have. So I don't know. I like that worldview. For people who don't know him and they should check him out, he went to University of Chicago, which is where I went, and he's a professor there.

His name is John Mearsheimer. Yeah. You know who he has. Others might not. Now, when you listen to him, he, and he's not the only one who says this, says the war in Iran is not a good deal for us because the interest that we have is different than the interest that Israel has. and that therefore it's possible that Benjamin Metaigneur tricked the United States.

I find that hard to believe to some extent because if that's the case, how dumb is the Defense Department in the United States and there are a lot of very smart people in the Pentagon. Probably the smartest people

go to the Pentagon in the US. Work for government. They don't work for Congress or Senate. I can tell you that. Anyway, I'm not going to name names, but I would like to. And And what is the interest for Israel considering that the Abraham Accords, which were negotiated

and imposed by Trump, by Trump won, 2016, were, and the Chinese were instrumental, or basically saying, okay, Iran, Saudi Arabia, you guys stop all this BS with the Utees and you guys are going to work things out and we're all going to make money. We're just going to commerce, which is what the Chinese want. That's the only thing they want. Commerce, fine. And Israel struck a deal with Saudi Arabia. Things are moving forward.

Why are they doing this now? No one really knows. Someone's right. But it's strange that right before the midterm elections, Trump would take that gamble. I don't understand. I know. The MAGA movement is fracturing. What they call the donor class, which is high-valued American Jews who are Zionists

and not so nationalist for the United States. States, we have those in France. And that's, you know, it's a big problem. It's a big problem. And they're, you know, they're donating for that too. The problem on a strategic level for Israel is that it has no strategic depth. It's too small. It could be pushed out to sea eventually. That's why they're trying to expand and they're just, you know, West Bank is now completely taken over. Gaza, all this bombing for what? And now they're pushing north timidly, very hard. on northern southern Lebanon, from what I know, they might have conquered six to ten miles.

I think they're trying to reach that river. Yeah. And their clash was apparently are fucking serious. Yeah, well, they've moved, you know, they've already moved a million and a half people have had to flee. Yeah. Right.

But they're pussies. So when they go in and try to fight men like Hezbollah, they get fucked up. So a lot of, they're taking big casualties. So they're taking losses. They're very losses averse. That's true. They don't like taking casualties. Yeah, they're faggots.

So they, I used to have an IDF friend. He's not a friend anymore. Right, you try to be friends with a Nazi in 1939. It's difficult. But they have a saying like better, yeah, it's basically like better anybody else than Jews. So they're very ethno-s supremacist-minded. You know, it's interesting because when I was in the kibbutz right after the attacks, you know, there's, obviously they were showing us,

a lot of the Palestinian troops were taken out. I mean, they were just bombed out, basically. Helicopters, artillery, some infantry clashes, but a bit more of a distance. But there's an argument, and that was by Haritz, the big newspaper says it, that's a fair amount of civilians that were killed, and the Kibbutz were killed by clashes

because they were bombing heavily. Palestinian infantry positions. So they kill a bunch of their own citizens. And there's also another argument that better off to kill them than to have them being kidnapped and held in Gaza. And that's something that's being said in Israel,

quite a bit. The Hannibal directive or whatever? Just sort of like better because we're not going to get them back. And in some ways, I understand why they're doing that. It's, you know, for us, it's hard to understand. but they're constantly at war. So this is what I think, and I don't know anything, but this is just my observation about why America,

because we're talking about why now. So if I put my tinfoil hat on, like, why are we doing, like, why is this the moment that we have to start a war with Iran? There's maybe like three possibilities. One is the Epstein files. That's what you hear a lot about. Trump has compromised. There's a lot of his friends.

friends are compromise. They're in those files. And Israel's got them. Hence, the connection to Jeffrey Epstein and Assad and all this stuff. And they know this is their best chance because they've lost all their goodwill that they used to have with the American public. So this administration, it's like now or never. So, hey, we're going to release these unless you do what we say. That's one of them. Another thing that might be possible, kind of like COVID, our national debt is so unpayable, right? And in order to save the U.S. dollar, or excuse me, rather, they're going to sacrifice the U.S. dollar by printing so much of it, but they need an excuse. So in order to refinance the debt, in other words, in order to have the central bank, the Fed, buy up all of our treasuries, they need an emergency. So COVID was a great emergency, right? Like 25% of all the money that's the U.S. money that's in existence, one quarter, it's wild, was created in 2020, right? So it's a buying opportunity. So with now that we're creating this emergency, this energy emergency, you cut off all the oil, we're going to go into, you know, the economy's going to come to a screeching halt and the Fed will step in and say, okay, well, nobody will buy our debt. We'll have to do it, but it's because of the war.

Right. So that's like my, if you want to look at it, a tinfoil hat, I don't know, could be elements of all of it. You know, what they say, don't ever let a crisis go to waste. So that creates opportunities in that context. You are correct. In terms of the details, the Epstein files, it seems like an awful lot of risk to start a war for that. But who knows? It's good to keep everything open and have that discussion because you're right.

Anything's possible. The other possibility, and that might be more of a direct consequence, is that the U.S. wants out of NATO. And you could tell already the U.S. just pulled 5,000 troops out of a... Germany. But it's been going on for years. European Europe has to relearn how to rejoin history in a grand sense of the term by defending itself, which is incapable of doing England, send one frigate to the threat of Almuz. This is the Royal Navy, you know? A bunch of bunch of frigates. Yeah, and it broke down there to send it back. We're talking about England. This is how bad

Europe has become. Yeah. France has a better Navy. And so it could be a way to force that because what Trump has always been elected on is we're retracting within ourselves traditionally, which is what we started. And because the U.S. is no longer able to be the number one cop on the planet because we lost a lot of resources wasting some of it. Then we understand China is on a rise. Russia to some capacity, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, a little bit, Turkey. So everybody is making moves right now. So the U.S. is no longer able to be the number one guy and be like, this is how it's going to be, that is partially over. I think it's kind of, it is a good thing, though, because if you go back to being like, the war, and maybe that's the reason to go to war is to figure out how do we save face but not be the unipolar power anymore.

Yeah. Do you think that now that the world is being divided up again into fiefdoms rather than a one-world police order, like how the U.S. was, do you think that will have an effect on cartels and criminality? I feel like it will. I feel like because, say, for instance, the U.S. can't police the Middle East and the rest of the world anymore. and they'll just eventually be forced to come back to this hemisphere. Like, it'll be, it'll turn its power, its power of the military onto, you know, Mexico and Colombia and Ecuador and all of these, like, all of these places with, you know, massive instability because of organized crime. Yeah, I mean, I was just in Cuba actually covering the embargo recently. And so Cuba is the next target.

We'll see how it transpires and how it's being done. But clearly Cuba is next on the menu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And from an American perspective, it makes sense to no longer have this rock in your shoe right next 90 miles south of Florida. So what you're saying is accurate. The U.S. is regrouping its resources towards the Monroe Doctrine, which is... Yeah. But we were originally.

Well, not originally, but pretty quickly after the U.S. is creation, 100 years. Anyway. So that's happening and hoping that some local players in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, will take the helm and through an alliance with us, which is what's happening, the Salman, to be able to, well, now you're going to be dealing with your zone. That's what we call a Westphalian. Westphalia ideas, which is the big treaty of 1648, which ended the 30-year war in Europe, which was one of the most devastating war in European history, which killed one third of the German population, millions that grew some. It's called a 30-year war for people who don't know. I didn't know that.

And the Treaty of Westphalia, the town of Westphalia, as well, the powerful European state joined and say, okay, no more. And then nation states took their modern form at that time. That's how it happened. Fascinating. Fascinating. So how'd you get tortured in Syria? I took a lot of beatings. They broke my ribs.

Mock execution and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, they fuck you up a bit. Yeah. The mock executions would just kill me. Yeah, with knives too. Yeah. They were like going like this and they, yeah. Yeah, they're real fuckers.

And did you look at them like, dude, we were friends. Why you're shaking? Like you're like, it breaks you down because you don't know. They're not going to do it. Well, you know this in hindsight. But yeah, you're like,

and I was shaking for like two days. Trying to control, but not a lot, but just, because you know it's going to happen again, right? It's during that peaceful time that you're thinking about the next time they're going to drag you out.

Eh, most of them are dead now. I doubt anybody's going to miss them. Oh my God. Yeah. And did you, and you had no idea if these were going to be real executions the next time? You don't know. You don't know anything.

It's a dark hole. You don't know what's happening outside your bedroom. Were they feeding you? Yeah, yeah, they feed you because they want you to be in healthy. You're worth no money if you're dead or sick. So they do. But then it got a lot better for me because I started learning Arabic. I started integrating with them.

And then it becomes personal. So they started liking me more. And then the military situation, Hezbollah was pushing through our area and it was bombings constantly. It was intense. I was chained up for a while blindfolded while bombs are dropping around the house, stuff like that. Yeah, it was hard.

Your brain forgets a lot of it for survival reasons. Right. So have you, you seem like a perfect person for ketamine therapy. Right. Yeah. So have you, yeah, how do you deal with that? I mean, how do you? I don't take prescription drugs, nothing.

I don't do any of that stuff. I'm very resilient, so I'm just trained through it. Do you have nightmares or anything still? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, less right now because I'm not covering wars that often and more, but I used to have a lot of nightmares screaming. And nice for the girls sleeping next to me. For sure.

Just like, good to hell. You're about to get to know him. Yeah, like, I'll call you and disappear. Never hurt from me again. It's a good way to get rid of them. You're like, I'm having night tears. Yeah, I can't have you sleep over. Yeah, I'm screaming in my sleep.

Yeah, you might wake up with a pillow over your face. Yeah. I might mistake you for a Syrian rebel. Yeah, for a Syrian rebel. That's amazing, man, because, you know, it's like trauma. You know, it's a reason a lot of people probably get on fentanyl, you know? I mean, look, the opioid, your body physically gets. addicted. So you can blame that on the Sackler and the opioid crisis and the pharmaceutical

companies. Because you still made a choice to take these pills. But you did make it like... You do make a choice. You do make a choice. You know that you can, if you go through pain, you can get off of them. That's why legally it's so hard. How they got them is the way they distributed the drugs and to what aim. But you're correct. You cannot sue McDonald's because you're fat and you have diabetes because McDonald's not coming to your house with a gun and your head telling you're going to eat McDonald's three times a day for 10 years. That's the thing. You do have some choice.

And this is the problem that I have with the war on drugs. This is the problem I have with blowing up drug boats. It's like you, they are, it is the free market and they are responding to an insatiable demand from people that are making choices. That's why I tell people, like, don't, you know, if you think you're a humanist, which, by the way, is that your philosophy, right? You called yourself a humanist. What do you want to understand? No, no, I wasn't talking about me. I'm saying about that. I consider myself, I'm definitely a nationalist. That's a political, but I mean in a traditional way, a conservative. I don't mean. I mean in a far right nationalists. Yeah, I don't mean that. Far right nationalists are much more globalist than people understand. Yeah, they've somehow, they've somehow, they've, they've somehow. They've somehow. They've, they've somehow. somehow co-opted, the globalist of co-opted nationalism.

I'm a Charles de Gaulle nationalist. Right. Because you have a different form of nationalism. You have the national socialism, which I'm not. But I'm a Charles de Gaul, which is everybody has its own right in its own country, and you do what you want. I'm not going to invade you, but if you invade me, I'm going to fuck you up. But it's about nation states. Everybody is respected within their own borders.

You commerce, you have deals, no problem. I mean, I'm a liberal either. You want to make money. That's no problem. However, that's the true notion of being a conservative nationalist, the way Charles de Gaulle understood it. And that's why I hate the European Union. And they're destroying Europe for multitudes of reasons. But now the word nationalist is a bad connotation because what happened in the 20s, 30s and 40s.

But there are different types of nationalism. Like there are different types of migration. People, you know, it's in a deep. That's in a detail that you find the devil, you know? So you have to look into that into detail. Well, I asked you that because, like, if people consider themselves, like, if you care about, you know, other people, if you care about people getting blown up on a maybe a drug boat in Venezuela, you shouldn't do. There's real consequences to, like, buying and using drugs. And I think there's a selfishness involved, you know.

It's, you know, I used to go in Rio, go to this high-end party. everybody's doing drugs. And some people I've met there. I was like, do you want some? Like, no. Why? Because I've seen too much on how it gets to your nose or your veins. And you've seen this.

It's like once you've seen the gritty, the darkness in it, it makes it hard to want to do it. Or you know, you're young, you make mistakes. You do it. You know, you fuck around. That's fine. Everybody, it's a long life. You make mistakes.

You deserve a second chance. I don't have a problem with that. But to be very nonchalant about it, I think, is morally problematic. And I think to some extent, we should bring some people in these areas. This is what's going on, man. Right. Okay. Last question.

Because this is a solutions-based podcast. People aren't even know who Charles de Gaul is. He was the great president of France. I just rewatched Dan the Jackal, one of my favorite movies. What do you think, you know, Tucker Carlson floated this, and I just as an American solution, right? Potentially, it's like arrest the drug addicts. Okay? Like we've been going after the kingpins for years.

It doesn't work. It doesn't. They just regroup. It's, you know, one guy just takes the next guy's place. if you went if you actually arrested the drug addicts you know nodding off in the middle of the street in philadelphia or san francisco or baltimore and put them in put them in a place where they can actually get help but make them get the help right like i'm not saying put them in a put them in a prison with you know uh murders or rapist but put them and keep them with the force of the state and now you've just gotten rid of a whole if you force people you're

to clean up, you've gotten rid of this whole demand base. And therefore, a lot of the drug dealers, not all of them, but a lot of them just get put out of business. Yeah. So if you're going to do that, you need to also at the same time go after the criminal elements hard. Like you really need to clamp down on them. Like the way they did, you know, I suspect because we're different country, but I was

talking about earlier on about the Philippines. Right. When it was, I mean, we're talking about all the criminal elements was 250,000 people sold with weapons in a drug business. That's like an army. Right. He went after them. And now he's at the Hague. He's being judged for crime against, not humanity, but like the one right on, I forget the name.

Which is a very bad sign because if you're, which means if you go hard against criminal elements, you're going to go to court. But why do you need to go after the criminal elements, though, if you've arrested the people that are funding? Because many people were killed. Like, they made mistakes. I mean, you know, I always have... No, no, I understand the Philippines example, but, you know, we're out of the Philippines. Like, you know... Right, for the U.S.

Yeah, I don't want us becoming... Right. I'd rather have there be drug addicts than us have no rights, like the fucking Philippines. Right. You know? So in the U.S., it's illegal to do drugs in public, and they just don't arrest anybody. Like, you know? You could, yeah.

So, and then it would depend on the kind of drug. If you're smoking weed, it's... different than if you're like a complete junkie, but you do need to take care of these people and you need to make a break. And that's what Bukkele and El Salvador did. He did in a very violent, terminal way to make that break. So the young youth generation hopefully will not be intertwined from an early age within that gang culture, which we have here extensively. Totally. And that's a mistake. It's going to take somebody to, yeah, do. take something from, you know, a leader to take some ideas from Buckele, but do it in an American way.

Sure. Try to, like, it's going to be something that's not ideological necessarily, necessarily. It's like practical and hopefully as close to fair as it can be. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, for example, I remember when, on the Reagan, Nancy Reagan, were like, just say no. The message was proper. Right. But the way it was advertised was people were. laughing. They're like, this old little lady, what the fuck does she know about drugs? It's not legitimate. I'm 35 and I'm on Wall Street, dude. I'm trying to close. I need a little shot. That's right. So it didn't transpire into the social public arena by saying, well, yeah, okay, you shouldn't do drugs. Everybody, most people agree with that. Parents all agree with that.

Yeah. So it didn't, it was poorly advertised. It looked, it looked silly. care about solutions? I've talked to another reporter and she exclusively focuses on like drugs and crime and she she's just in it for the adrenaline. She's like oh yeah, it'll never end. So it's, you know, always

be drug users, drug dealers, blah blah, blah. She's just in it for the juice. But what are you in it for? You're in it for the challenge of it. Are you in it to make the world a better place? Obviously you'd like to see the world be a better place, but are you just chasing

chasing the thrill of it. Yeah, the thrill is always, it's less and less as I'm getting older. You know, you wise up. When I was 20, I was, when I was going on, infantry assaults in Georgia, drunk on vodka.

I would not do that today. But that's stupid, right? Yeah. Youth. The adrenaline is, it's personal decision. It's marginal for me at this point. The covering the drugs is,

I want to open a window to as many people as possible. on one of the reasons and there are others why we are declining morally in the Western world. And to me, it has a real philosophical and therefore historical perspective to why I'm doing something.

The photography is a sideshow. What's important is my historical understanding of everything is so fundamental and so lacking in a lot of young people, unfortunately. For lack of interest or the system, the educational system is subpar. to say the least, especially in public schools.

Not everywhere, but New York is disaster, so, you know, it put a lot of money for nothing. So it's really about that for me. It has a real, if I'm going to leave something behind, it's the history of that, what I like to call the great human experience, for better or worse, the judgment that could be posed at a dinner show.

I do have solutions. And we hinted at them. I don't know how much more time we have, but it's where people need to understand that, do I want to make a world a better place? I'm not naive, okay? I'm just one man. And some people who say that publicly,

I always kind of laugh. I find it a bit nonsense. Yeah. How much you could try, sure, it's commendable in some way. But often people who believe that are not very realistic about how things work between nations, geopolitics, for example. Yeah, yeah, I guess I'm just idealistic, you know.

Yeah, I get that. But it's to always step back and have this, on a personal level, it kept me sane all these years to just put a distance between kids getting shot by snipers in Iraq and seeing that. And not losing my mind because they're still just kids. Kids are just kids anywhere, right? So to be able to be cold about it is an asset. but it transpires into a bit of my life. It goes over.

And that's why I have, I usually don't respond emotionally to things when it comes to war, stuff like that. Because being as logical as possible, in my opinion, is the best way not to make mistakes and predicting how things will be in the future. Right. Okay. Well, let's plug your book. I wish you had your book about the European drug war ready, but that's still

In process. Yeah, still in process. Let's talk about this bad boy right here and where everybody can find you just in general because I want to plug this, yeah. Yeah, so this is my third book and this is G editions in New York City. They do high-end coffee table art books and is distributed by Salmon and Schuster.

And it took me seven years to do it. It's about almost 300 pages and it's a lot of photos, but a lot of text on my personal experiences of how I got to these places and how I worked out or didn't work out. So there are a lot of chapters, and the book is split in two, South America, Mexico,

and then the addiction side of the story, which is the United States. So people, I'm sure you'll have links in the description. Yeah, yeah. So that took seven years. Yeah, it was a long time in the making. Incredible, incredible. Yeah, it's,

I'm very excited to dig into it. I'm probably going to read it tonight. So go get a drug wars supply and demand. It's a photo. So if anybody out there, we have a good section of our viewers don't know how to read. So there's plenty of pictures in there for you. I'm just kidding, guys.

Yeah, go check it out. How do you say your last name? Alperi. Jonathan Alperi. And the link to that will be in the description. Well, thank you so much, man. That was Chaston. A real pleasure.

Thanks for coming all the way down here. All right, you guys, go get it. Drug wars, supply and demand with Jonathan Alpery. We will see you next week. Take care. He's out.