The Highwire with Del Bigtree - HOW BAD IS THE FENTANYL CRISIS IN AMERICA?

Episode Date: September 8, 2024

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Well, there's a journalist that has really gotten deep into this the way nobody else has. It's traveled all over the world trying to understand where is it coming from. You know, how is it getting in? What are they trying to do to stop it? What's happened to the people involved in it? He's written an incredible book, Fentanyl Inc. And he is everywhere trying to bring attention to this incredible issue. Think you like this.

Ben Westhoff. Ben Westhoff. Ben is an award-winning investigative reporter. An award-winning investigative reporter whose books are taught around the country and have been translated around the world. In his new book, Fentanyl Inc. journalist Ben Westoff maps the terrifying trail of a drug that was developed in 1959 by a Belgian chemist as a legitimate alternative to morphine. I had a friend who died from fentanyl in 2010 before people were much talking about it, before I knew what it was. What I was interested in doing as a journal, was tracking how these drugs get into this country.

I decided to infiltrate a Chinese drug lab where they made fentanyl. I was the first journalist to do this, and it was a pretty dumb thing to do. It was a whole thing. I like wrote them on the internet. I made a fake email address, and I said, I'm a drug dealer.

I'd like to visit your lab. May I do that when I come to China? And they said, yeah. What? In 2021, I'm a drug dealer. 110,000 people died from drug overdose deaths, with 72% of them coming from synthetic opioids like fentanyl. Any pill or any powder that you get on the black market could have fentanyl from cocaine, heroin, meth, to even fake prescription pills that are pressed to look exactly

like a percocet or a Xanax. That's how Prince died. That's how Tom Petty and the rapper MacMiller all died is that they thought they were taking legitimate pain pills. It only takes two grains of rice worth of fentanyl to overdose. You can have a suitcase full that basically has millions of doses. We're in San Francisco in the tenderloin neighborhood, which has kind of become the public face of the fentanyl crisis in the entire country. There's guys who are just, you know, hitting up meth pipes, smoking fentanyl off of with pieces of aluminum foil.

A nice meeting, Ben. Have you had an opioid addiction, and how did it start? Unbarrassing to say, you know, but I'm 37. I met my wife when I was 30. At that time, I hadn't really done much, and she pushed me on to using opioids. Even if China reigns in its rogue industries,

if American demand for these drugs does not subside, production will simply shift to other countries. There are so many people affected, by this crisis, by this epidemic, that parents, family, friends, people are starting to make their voices heard. All right, well, the book is massive around the world. Everyone is reading Fentanyl Inc. If you haven't checked it out, you absolutely should.

I'm honored and pleased to be joined by Ben Westoff now. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining me. We just heard an incredible story. usually that story that I'm used to have done interviews like this for many years

it's you know we need to get into rehab there was something we could do this just this just felt so hopeless that beautiful kid beautiful family doesn't seem like there's any reason doesn't seem like some massive

human trauma it's just like accidentally went one step and tried this, you know, one step too far and tried this. Is that a common in all the interviews you've done? Is this, is that a fairly common story? Is that rare? Yeah, unfortunately it is really common. Almost any drug, as was mentioned, can and does have fentanyl in it now. Any drug that can be sold as a powder or a pill, fentanyl is just this super cheap, super potentant drug that if you're off on the dosing by the tiniest bit can kill you.

Why? I mean, you know, I get, you know, when I was a kid, you know, in high school, I remember there'd be like rumors that your marijuana could be laced with PCP. I guess that was the big scary thing then, right? It was PCP. I don't even, I don't remember what that, what that actually was, but, but, you know, the question is, why would anyone spend extra money to lace something? Well, the thing. Well, the thing is, I don't even remember what that, what that actually was. But, but, you know, the The thing is the drug dealers are actually saving money this way. And so if you've got pure heroin, that's expensive. But if you've got heroin that's mostly fentanyl, that's much, much cheaper.

And it goes with other drugs too that you wouldn't think have anything to do with opioids, like cocaine. You know, cocaine's an upper, fentanyl's a downer, but, you know, drug dealers just don't think, you know, anyone's in a position to complain, so they just combine it all. Where is it getting combined? It's coming out of China, right? Does it come out of China as the full form of fentanyl? Is it just shipping over in boxes or how does it work?

No, China makes what's called the precursor chemicals. So those are the most important chemical ingredients. I've heard it described in an article as like the brownie mix. And so that's actually sent to Mexico. And the Mexican cartels, you know, like bake the brownies, essentially. Okay. So they make the Finnish fentanyl, and then it's sent across the border into the U.S. Now, it's adulterated really every step of the way.

So in Mexico, the cartels might put fentanyl into other drugs, and then the regional drug dealers in the U.S., they adulterated some more. You know, every time they're increasing their profits. So they kind of like split it up, divide it out. out keep adding fentanyl to get more out of it? Yeah, exactly. And see, that's the problem, because, you know, fentanyl is an important hospital drug, too. Right.

You know, it's used in colonoscopies for men, epidurals during childbirth. But in hospitals, you have trained anesthesiologists who know exactly what they're doing. You know, I've talked to drug dealers on the street, on the other hand, who would mix up their drugs using a Mr. or coffee coffee bean grinder. And so you obviously have no sense of what you're doing with that. And as a result, there are hot spots in these drugs. So you could have one batch, and part of it might be fine, but other parts has a lethal dose.

So you go on this incredible journey. You decide you're going to go to China to the source of where this is happening. And we're about to wash or listen to an audience. a recording of you going in, but set this up for me. I mean, first of all, you just don't strike me as someone that just naturally charges into, like, did you say you were a drug dealer? Or did you, how did you set up communications with groups in China?

Yeah, the first thing I did was just Google bi-fentanyl in China. And all these websites were just right there on the clear web. I made a fake profile. I called myself Johnny Webster. I had like this avatar of a surfer bro, which I imagined was what a drug dealer might look like. And I just reached out to these people and I started going on long Skype conversations. You know, the time difference was like 14 hours. So I'd get up at 4 in the morning to talk to them before they were leaving work.

And we kind of formed a rapport and I'd ask them about the prices, the shipping. And finally I said, well, if I come up at the morning, to China, could you show me your lab? And some of them said yes. And so I went to China not long after that. All right. Well, this is a recording of just one of those conversations. I've fallen in a company for for 10 years. We do many chemicals, such as chemical standards, such as the API, and a few and a few of the chemicals, as CO asked. Right. It's 5-a-M-B, Fembe-D-E-N-B, M-A-F.

I know it's not legal in several countries, but they're legal, they're still legal to China. Right. I wondered in the few years later, this kind of chemicals were all banned in China, that at the other time, we will discontinued or to deal this kind of chemicals. Right. At this moment, this kind of chemicals, the chemicals is still living in China.

You have many, many recordings like that. When you talk to people like that, are they aware of the amount of people that are dying here from this? You know, some of these lab workers and salespeople, they said they had no idea what fentanyl was. And I actually believe them, you know, because there's government control over the media in China.

China doesn't have a fentanyl problem like we do in the U.S. So fentanyl would never even be in any of the newspapers. But this guy, he was the CEO of a lab, and I could tell that he felt guilty about it. You know, he referenced something called MAF in that recording, and that's a type of fentanyl. And he actually asked me a couple times. He said, I'm worried that you might be a journalist and you're coming here to get our company in trouble.

Is that true? Are you a journalist? Right. And I had to kind of just put on a poker face and say, no, that's crazy. What are you talking about? And, you know, the Chinese government clearly knows this is happening here. They know that these labs would be illegal. and almost, I mean, are there other countries besides China that allow this type of manufacturing

to go on and sell these chemicals? Is it? Well, in India you have some of it too, but China produces the vast majority. So when I was there, it was still legal to actually sell types of fentanyl. That was still legal. But China banned that in 2019. And so now it's almost shifted to these precursors. Okay.

And so, again, taking the precursors in themselves won't kill. you, but it's the most important thing to make fentanyl. And anyone can make precursors. Some people make it in the US, some people make it in Mexico. But it's the reason we buy, the same reason we buy everything from China. Because they do it the most cheaply, the most efficiently, and so that's why it's happening there. Is there a risk of these things, you know, vaping, for instance, is a really huge deal now.

I would think that most kids, people think, well, I bought it in a store. I mean, even like, you know, I grew up in Colorado. You can just walk in. Do you ever see this stuff getting into vape pens or things like that? Vave pens are really dangerous. They're not regulated by the FDA. So a lot of these same labs are making the vape juice, for example. And so you don't know what's in that stuff.

Now, theoretically, if we're regulated like cigarettes, you know, I would actually say vaping is healthier than smoking cigarettes. It's not going to cause lung cancer. That comes from the combustion of the cigarette. The problem is, you know, nicotine is addictive, but it's not necessarily going to give you cancer. The problem is we just don't know what's in that stuff, that vape juice, and often it does have really awful lethal chemicals. What is, you know, what is, what are we doing the United States of America? Do we still have like the war on drugs, you know, or say no to drugs? I mean, it'd feel like, you know, back in the Reagan area when I was in school, but are they just,

are they making attempt to stop this stuff? Do you feel like it's a legitimate attempt to stop fentanyl from coming across the border? Well, you know, as far as education, you know, we really need much better education. You know, the fact is that kids today, teenagers, 20, something college students, they think drugs are just the same as they were when I was in college. Right. You know, but the fact is the same dumb things I was doing in college now can kill you. So I think we do need broad-based education campaigns starting at, you know, pre-teen, really.

As far as trying to stop drugs from getting across the border, unfortunately, I think it's almost impossible. You know, heroin is only one-fiftieth as strong as fentanyl. And we couldn't stop 50 bricks of heroin from getting across the border, so we can't stop one brick of fentanyl. You know, in prisons, people die of drug overdoses all the time, and that's a maximum insecurity environment. So instead, I think we need to focus on education, and we also need to focus on getting what's called medication-assisted treatment

to addicted users. All right. When you, we talk to parents are watching right now, is that what you would say as a solution is maybe have this conversation earlier than you think you should? Yeah, absolutely. It can't hurt to have it too early

and you don't want to have it too late. The fact is that kids aren't wise to this stuff and fentanyl is so ever-present. People say, well, I trust my dealer, you know, but the dealer might not know himself what's in these pills. They also think that it looks like a Xanax. It looks like a Percocet. You know, it looks like the same thing that's in their parents' medicine cabinet. But you really can't even tell the difference between a fake pill and a real pill.

Did I hear, was it, 60, 70% of those pills that are out there or have fentanyl in them now? It's possible. I mean, I don't know the exact statistics. It's really hard to know. But, you know, it's Russian roulette, so why take a chance? Wow. And is this just sort of an American, you know, North America problem? Russia? Do we know of, like, is there a fentanyl issue or anywhere else in the world? You know, right now the only major countries are the U.S. and Canada because it sprung directly from the opioid crisis with Purdue Pharma, OxyContin. So that basically created millions of new addicted opioid users in this country.

And so when their prescriptions ran out, a lot of them turned to heroin, street heroin. But there literally wasn't enough heroin to fill the void. And so that's when fentanyl came in. So they built the market. Our own doctors, our own hospital system, built it through Oxycontinent, Codone, and all of these things. Then when the prescriptions up, it said, no more for you. hit the streets and then built and just created this vacuum. Yep. I mean, there was no reason that fentanyl had to come in here.

You know, people, you know, addicted users, they like heroin better. This wasn't something they wanted. This was a supply-driven epidemic with the fentanyl, and it was directly a result of these pills. Well, I want to thank you for doing the work. It's really great information. and really brave, too, to go in there and, you know, record people and get inside there. You're obviously got something deep inside of you. What would, you know, how do we help this?

You know, where do you have hope here? Well, I do have hope that the stigma is starting to drop a little bit, you know, like John and Charmaine. It was so, you know, it was hard for them to come here. But nowadays, there are so many people who've been affected by this crisis that that that that makes it easier for people to speak up. And even people in power, you know, politicians, judges, a lot of them know people who've been affected.

So that's the, you know, one of the only silver linings. But really, like I said, you gotta talk to your kids. And we have to start looking into treatment programs. I'm making a documentary about an underused treatment drug called Naltrexone. And basically it's like a four-term. a force field, it's like a vaccine. So if you take this shot for 30 days you're protected, you could take a whole syringe full of heroin or fentanyl and it bounces off you, you know,

but this this drug has been kind of stymied by big money interests and almost nobody uses it. So we actually have these tools at our disposal but we're just not implementing them. Very interesting stuff. Do you have a website or ways that we can track the work that you're doing? Yeah, it's just benwestoff.com. Okay. Well, thank you for your work. The book is fentanyl, Inc. You know, look, if you have young children or you know people that do, I think this is really an important topic. As I said before, we're trying out some new things here at the Highwire. So right after this show, I'm going to sit down and we're going to put Ben and John and

Charmaine in a seat altogether. I don't know that they've done that before and really get down to it. Is this an attack from China? Are they doing this on purpose? You know, what do they think when we all think tank together? Is there a solution? That's all going to be part of off the record.