We're Out of Time - Turning Heartbreak Into Purpose! Gregory Swan and Dr. Gary Latson

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

In this powerful episode of We’re Out Of Time, host Richard Taite sits down with two fathers who turned unimaginable tragedy into purpose. Gregory Swan, founder of Fentanyl Fathers, and Dr. Gary Latson, founder of Candles In The Wind, share their deeply personal journeys of losing their sons to fentanyl. Together, they discuss how grief became the catalyst for advocacy—educating the public about the dangers of fentanyl, building awareness, and creating real connections with today’s youth. Their stories shine a light on the urgent need for prevention, community support, and open conversations about this devastating crisis. 👉 Please FOLLOW We're Out Of Time for more raw, honest, and inspiring conversations every week.For more information on Fentanyl Fathers: https://fentanylfathers.org/For more information on Candles In The Wind: https://candlesinthewind.org/ 🔗 All things Richard Taite, We're Out of Time, and Carrara Treatment Wellness & Spa: ⁠https://linktr.ee/richardtaite⁠

Gregory Swan and Dr. Gary Latson joined the We're Out of Time podcast to share how the loss of their sons inspired their journey into advocacy. It really gives us purpose in our son's passing to be here and to advocate. I was a mess for a long time. The work that we're doing is the pathway out of the grief. I lost Drew on April 3rd, 2013. This is my son, Trevor. After my son passed, I had a really hard time of grief. As a Mr. President, the grieve parent is the Lynch parent.

pin to kids paying attention. The We're Out of Time podcast team extends heartfelt thanks for helping the show reach number two in Apple podcast's mental health category and number 68 overall among top shows. Your support means more than words can express. Thank you for listening to the We're Out of Time podcast with Richard Tate. If you haven't already, please follow the podcast, rate and review. And if you're getting value out of We're Out of Time, share it with someone else you know. If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 888-8-3-3-3-3-2. 131-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can.

Please, we're out of time. Today we're on We're Out of Time for National Fentanol Prevention and Awareness Day. I'm joined by two fathers who turn their greatest loss into a mission to save lives. Better men than me, for sure. Greg Swan is the co-founder of Fentanyl Fathers, a national nonprofit bringing powerful personal stories into schools to warn students about the evils of fentanyl. He's also been on the front lines in Washington and state capitals pushing for stronger laws and awareness campaigns.

Thank you. Dr. Gary Latson is a physician with over 40, years in medicine, including anesthesiology, pain management, and military service, and now leads the Candles in the Wind Foundation and works with fentanyl fathers dedicated to ending drug deaths through education prevention and family support. Both lost their sons. God, man. Both lost their sons tragically to fentanyl. Okay. Greg, let's start. start with your son, Drew. Tell us about him and what happened, please. Thank you so much for caring as much as you do. We are, I'll tell you about Drew's story to answer your question. It's just

so comforting to know that there's somebody who has the empathy, the ability to care about this subject. And I met your beautiful son, Dominic, who didn't lose, you know, a son. How did that feel for you guys when you met my kid i remember meeting true right at the same age or having him right at the same age i have dreams about him at that age and i just instantly loved him did you feel a sense of loss because i felt the second my son was talking to you guys i was like oh my god it sometimes there's a twinge of like almost jealousy that other people had still have their children and we've missing one of ours. But I don't want to take that away from anybody.

Everybody's children are beautiful, and I celebrate that you do still have yours. And it's like, you know, give them a hug. Spend the time you have with them because it's so precious. When Drew was that age and a little even younger, I would teach him, just like Dominic, was a little young man, shake my hand. said, nice to meet you. I was kind of impressed with them. And I would tell, I would give Drew a dollar if you would shake a person's hand and say, how do you know my dad to start a conversation? And these people were always astounded when that happened. So I pass out dollars. One day, I gave Drew a dollar just for nothing. And he said, what's this for? I said, just for love. He goes, love. Love costs five dollars. That's so good. That's so good. But no, it was great to meet him.

And we're thrilled to be here. And it is, you know, I can go there just like anybody else and be, you know, cry my eyes out about Drew. The work that we're doing is the pathway out to keep my head above water of the grief. The grief is bad. But I lost Drew on April 3, 2013. he was 24 years old. I got a call. It was 12.30 at night from my son, Jack, Drew's brother.

And the phone rang twice and my wife said, you better pick that up. That's bad news. 12.30 at night. I woke up. I was in a stupor and he kind of blurts out. Daddy, he's sitting down. He's sitting down. And I was in a wandering state of consciousness waking up.

I said, no, I'm sleeping. What's going? And he goes, I need you be sitting down right now. So I sat up and bed. I'm like, and I started to realize something bad was coming. And I said, say it, Jack. And he said, Drew's dead. And when he said that, that just that, that those words marked a before and after period in my life.

For sure. I was, I was happy and fairly maybe naive how much I took life for granted, even though I've had some challenges. I was doing good. I was a real happy person. And when I lost him, I mean, my reaction was very similar, like DEA agents and other people will say when they show up at the house and tell a parent they lost their kid. They let out not a scream, but a sound. They call it a sound. And they say the sound never changes.

It's the same sound. What is it? It's like a guttural reaction from ages past, animalistic of loss. It's like you're from the woe. and I got up out of bed and I was screaming, no, no. And I told, you know, I thought at that point I had a relationship with God. I told him where he could go. And it wasn't to heaven.

And I flipped him off. And I said, you and I are breaking up because you just took what I really cared about. So we're done. And then I went and I went and sought out Jack. A lot of I talked to schools and I might share that occasionally. And people come up to me, did you make up with God? Oh, definitely. Yeah, we made up. I mean, the only way back out of the grief, I had to go to, you know, someone who could help me out of that. I was a mess for a long, long time. I read, I read all sorts of books about the afterlife. But I really had, I really, you know, parents are paid to love their kids, but I really liked Drew. I really did. He was so, like I just gave you an example, he was so funny. And he, you know, he always called me as hero. I poured my mother. whether she meant it or not poured a lot into me in terms of how great life was and how

there's always a positive angle to everything. God is working on me and all this. And I poured that into Drew. I gave him what she gave me. And as a result, you know, nobody wants to get it wrong on their first kid. He kept telling me his whole life till the day he died. Dad, you're my hero. And is that the part that you remember most?

Like what's the part? I remember that's still so vivid for you about your son. I believe maybe it's denial, but I believe he cared so much about me. He wouldn't do this to me. I believe his soul is moved on and he's waiting for me on the other side. That's the most powerful thing. I don't think of them in the past tense at all. And I just as something as simple as taking the garbage out where I live,

I take the garbage down to the basement and there's a collage of them there. And I always look forward to taking the garbage out because I talk to them there in this little collage and just get repumped up and to go back. But I was a mess for a long time. And it was through advocating that I finally found a pathway back. There's a story behind that. But I don't want to take up more of your time. But let's turn it over to you. Let's get to the doctor.

on me. This is my son Trevor. He was a wonderful kid, bright, intelligent, funny, also mischievous, you know, always doing practical jokes, sneaking around, doing crazy things. And then around age 11 or 12, he changed. somebody had introduced into cannabis and he liked it pretty soon he liked cannabis more than he liked anything else and I you know say anything he wanted to do if it didn't involve cannabis he didn't want to do it so he didn't know why time with me do you know why that is because the cannabis is gives them something that they seem to can't get any other way was he

depressed at that time? No. He was quite happy and, you know, it was, it was for kicks and because it was the cool thing to do and all that. Now, he became depressed and had problems later. But when he started, he was, I think it was just a mischievous, funny, thrill-seeking kind of thing. He was an adrenaline junkie. He did. He was a thrill-seeker. Right. And then that progressed to other things very quickly. By the time he was 14, he was into ecstasy and LSD and psilocybin and other stuff, and the experiential things, the thrills and all that. But he would go on and off. He was brilliant. He, even after being in a therapeutic boarding school for a year, he put him in a charter school where he was able to complete his entire senior year of college in three months and took the SAT

and blew the top off of it, got an old university of Texas. He was 37 when he passed. And how did he pass? He had been on probation for cannabis and psilocybin for four years, and so it had been more or less abstinent from hard drugs. His probation was coming to an end. He took what he thought was his last drug test. So he decided to go, he was living in Puerto Rico at the time, decided to go to the casinos and party, got some cocaine. And was cocaine, yeah, cocaine was stimulants were probably the most recurrent problem for him. Now let me ask you a question real quick. Your son was dabbling in drugs. Yeah, poly substance.

Right. Was yours? Yeah. Yeah, he was clean, though. He was clean for like a year and a half, did a lot of good things during that year and a half. How did he pass away? He took an unprescribed pill from a roommate, which we originally thought was methadone. And it was lace with fentanyl.

Well, in 2013, I'm actually having a meeting with the medical examiner tomorrow on his, because the only 3% of cases were fentanyl induced back in 2013. And he had what is called a therapeutic lower amount. What was it called? Within the range. Within the therapeutic range. Within their therapeutic range. So methadone didn't kill him.

So they suspect it was fentanyl because. Let me tell you how it's happening. Okay. The kids today are the ones that are using fentanyl really aren't dying as much. Right. Okay. Because they've got the tolerance. Yeah.

And they know how to use it. Right. People think fentanyl is a bad thing. But as you know, as an anesthesiologist, it's a fantastic drug if you use the right way because of the short life, right? That's why I brought this packet. I know you know about the packet, but 2 milligrams can be, 2.2 can be fatal. Right. If you're unexposed to it, and this is 2,000 milligrams.

Right. Well, the kids that are dying today are the straight A students. Oh, yeah. That go to the rave on the weekend. That's what happened to Drew. That's right. He relapsed at a rave in Miami. That's right.

He was given him Molly. And he called me, his brother, and his mother and said, I need to get back on track. I slipped up. And we're like, wow, you relapsed because we were real serious about his recovery. Sure. And I remember the day he died, my wife came in and said something in my office, like something really bad is going on right now. And she had this premonition about Drew. And I got home and as I'm driving home, my son Jack called me, he goes, I got some bad news for you, Drew's relapsed. I'm like, and as I got out of the car and closed the door, I looked at the handle and thought to myself, at least he's still alive. He wasn't. We found out later that day, but that it got him. But he relapsed at a rave in Miami on a Molly. And we think he was seeking methadone to detox. To detox. Yeah. Right. So the kids that are dying today,

are the straight A students. Yeah. Because they don't have the fentanyl, they don't have the tolerance. Right. And they don't know how to use it. Yeah. My son was a professional. I mean, he'd used cocaine intermittently throughout his life, but he never used opioids.

His sister had been involved with a heroin at it at one time. Yeah. And he gave him a really bad type for opiates. So he studiously avoided opiates. Yeah. He was, that's but he's got cocaine with fentanyl. He was a specialist. Yeah.

Right? He liked cocaine. Yeah. Okay. Just like me, by the way. I didn't like opioids at all. I like to be awake for my high. Right.

Okay. But the reason you do it is to keep your heart in your chest to calm you down so that you can enjoy your cocaine run. Okay. What happened to him is he wasn't used to that. And essentially what he did was a. speed ball. Yeah. He didn't, I don't think he knew that there was fentanyl in that cocaine. That's right. And he died alone in his bathroom. That's exactly. The middle of the night. So it's just, it, it, it was an accident, but it was tragic. Yeah. Yeah. After my son passed, I had a really hard time of grief,

but I was still working, so I had to go back to work. And I didn't, for months, I didn't even tell my coworkers that my son had died of a drug overdose because of the stigma. Did you feel it? So you felt shame over it? Yeah. Why did you feel the shame? I shouldn't have. No, but don't judge it.

Yeah. Why did you feel the shame? The stigma, people feel that people that die of drug, drug problems are sort of self-induced and that maybe their parents didn't do a good job. Okay, well, then you can tell those people whenever you speak to them, that Richard Tate says, go for yourself. Thank you. Richard Tate.

Thank you for that. No problem. But eventually, you know, in my grief and struggling with it, I started doing research and I started realizing, oh, my God, this was 2022. And really, people weren't talking about fentanyl. But I started finding people like Song for Charlie and fentanyl fathers and follow them on LinkedIn. And I'm going, I can't sit back and do nothing. I've got to do something.

And so I decided. I'm going to live my grief out loud. I, you know, said, I'm going to tell everybody what happened. I'm going to start a nonprofit. I'm going to publicize this. I'm going to start educating doctors, which you know is sorely needed. And so I made that my mission. Well, that's a great thing that you just pointed out because doctors don't know anything about addiction.

I give CME continuing medical education lectures on addiction. and it's outrageous it's amazing how flu-less people are it's amazing it's and the public doesn't know this right they think oh the doctor knows but the doctor what do you get a week at most in in medical school on addiction medicine and and we're so busy working that we're not we're not circulating among the teenagers and stuff like that we don't know what's going on in the drug scene and all that. I grew up in the drug scene, so I sort of understood it, and I struggled with my son's recovery for 25 years, so I was aware of the drug scene. I kind of kept my fingers on it, but other doctors, particularly in 2022, didn't even realize that people were dying of fentanyl.

It hadn't really been put out there. Even when I left Cliffside at, I sold my last treatment center in 2000. 18. Yeah. And it was not even a thing then. Well, it wasn't. No. It wasn't, it wasn't bigger than anything else. Yeah. And yeah, it was right at the bubble. That's right then started going. Right when I left. And then the second I left, the world went insane. Yeah. You're right. One, 20, 22. And, and then, you know, so now, you know, doctors are more aware because of the news and everything else, but they don't really understand that this is the most, this is the thing that young people were most likely to die of. Well, no, no.

The thing most likely to die from are the doctors. And let me tell you why. Yeah. Okay. Because if you put a patient on opioids for longer than five to seven days, you don't have it. It's got you. Right. Okay.

And then the kids are looking. Yeah. All right. And you can't do the doctor shopping anymore. Right. Because all these systems talk to each other. I could have gotten away. I got away with it for three years.

Yeah. So to Rush Limbaugh? Rush Limbaugh. Oh, yeah, he's doctor shopped. Is he passed? Yes. But he was, he was, he was, he doctor shop. He was addicted to doxycontin.

Right. Fairly addicted. Me too. That was Drew's, that was a little cat, Drew. And was the doctor? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I can tell you to illustrate and validate your point about doctors not knowing much, I have a, I think a very relevant. A quick story about that. I was in a head on car accident. It broke my pelvis in 2017.

So I'd be put on pain meds. It really hurts to break your inner dudeness. It's ridiculous. And so I was on a lot of porcocet a day. Fortunately, even though I'm in recovery, that was not my drug of choice. I like to be stimulants. So you like cocaine? Well, I like adderol, anything that would keep me stinger.

Did you ever use with your son? No. Okay. No way. So anyway, what it happened is I was on a ton of these. pain meds. It was like seven percissette a day. And so I went to my doctor. I said, I can walk now, my pelvis is healing. Can we get off these things? And he's like, oh, yeah, just go cold turkey. I won't say his name because I like the guy, but he said, I went cold turkey. And by three o'clock in

the morning, I felt like I was being electrocuted. And I literally understood as an hour would go by, and just one second went by on the clock. And I had to wait till eight in the morning to see this guy again, grab him and say, that was the most irresponsible thing you ever did. Give me the drugs and we're going to and I'm pulling your medical card. We're going to do it my way. And I'm going to taper off. And I, when I walked away from Percocet, I was down to just a dot on my tongue, like from 116th to 120, 132 to nothing. And I never noticed it. I said it's called tapering. It was all legit, you know. And he goes, fine. We'll do it that way. I'm fine with that. I'm like, who told you how ridiculous he works? How ridiculous is that and dangerous.

There's a great TED talk of a guy that similar story had been on, had car accident had gotten, you know, hooked on, Dilaudid and Percocet. And his doctor tried to taper him in two weeks. And it's like he was describing how the agony that he went through withdrawal. He went through it because he didn't know any better. But he said it was the most miserable experience of his life. Do you know it's funny? Do you know what's funny? We do that all the time.

But it depends on the amount that they've been using and the duration that they've been using for. Right. So I just had probably my favorite client of all time. Okay, here. And he was on opioids for 20 years, my age. Yeah. Okay. 20 years.

And he went ahead. and we had the conversation that we always have. Okay, do you want this really comfortable, or do you want to do this a little quicker? What do you want? Right? And this guy, you know, was very well off. And so he said, no, I don't mind how long I have to be here. I just want to not suffer.

And it took us. 90 days to detox this guy for 20 years 90 days and then he sits down with me because I go to say goodbye and he looks at me and he says hey man

can we talk maybe I don't I don't know if I should leave and I said babe if you don't know if you should leave then you shouldn't leave that's the red flag I said you do what you want but why not you just detoxed why not go through an entire month and you'll get three years because that's what it's like at my at my place right okay at Carrera you do uh 30 days that's like getting

three years of therapy well the kid goes ahead and does it and i check in on him every month he's almost got a year so that's awesome but i check in on him every month because i just love this guy And he's doing great. That's great. Great relationship with his wife, mending his relationship with his kids, great relationship with his old man. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's it.

I mean, doing really, really well. So it, you got to, it's different for everybody. Most of these places will put you in, right? And the same detox protocol for everybody. And that's wrong. Well, some try to, you know, particularly if you get the. put in jail or prison. They want to detox you in 72 hours. You know, they basically withdraw you. They give you some medicines to try to make the detox a little bit easier, like Dexmeditominy or

something like Clonidine, something like that, to take away some of the misery. But they expect, they basically just let withdrawal happen at its, you know, fastest pace. It's worse than that. It's worse than even that. Yeah. One of my best friends from childhood, was on like four or five hundred milligrams a day of Oxycontin. So you know how bad that is. Wow. Right? I mean, I was the same way.

And so these guys were on it. Michael and his other friend. Yeah. Michael survived the detox in jail and his friend didn't. Didn't survive the detox. Didn't survive the detox in jail. When I was going through withdrawal, I understood right away why people rob drug stores.

For sure. Why they would order and try to believe. the lie that it's really the real drug when you're ordering it online, whether it's X, Oxycodone, percocet, etterol. None of that is true. It's laced with fentanyl. But to believe it, because you're so desperate. And I remember when Drew graduated from college, I was with him, and he pointed out the apartment he was living at. You go, you see that apartment up there, dad? I go, yeah, he's that bedroom. I've suffered more hell than you ever want to know that I've gone through. That's right. That's where I would detox. That's right. It's the worst detox you can have.

Benzos. Absolutely. Greg, I want you to tell me about fentanyl fathers, okay? Your mission, how many students you've reached so far, and the work you're doing. Thanks for asking about it. I'm from Detroit. And so what we do when we launch a car is... Is it in Detroit?

Yes. Okay, go on. And what we do is, you know, you don't launch a car to the Southeast Michigan Ford dealers. You launch it for the country. And so that means everybody. You have to, you have a target audience to get a brand out. to me it was very obvious the most sweet spot to aggregate toward kids who were dropping of this

was the high school age to get them to herd these cats all in the same room was the high school age. That was it. Yes, middle school is definitely a place that's not too early to start with kids. Some would argue in grade school. College is where they started dropping. But the quick genesis of Fennell fathers was the very, The very first month, Drew died. I was on a radio show with a friend who was in the business talking about it.

Didn't even know what he died. I hadn't even gotten the toxicology back yet. And just reminiscing about Drew's two hours of that. And I got a little relief from that. I remember getting ready going to that thing thinking, this is the most important day in my life. I'm talking about it. Five years later, you know, my wife would hear me in the bathtub just crying in the morning, playing Michael Jackson's gone too soon.

I was a mess. I really, it was, I was so debilitated. I had a good business at the time, and a lot of people around me kept me going, but I could barely keep going. You lose, it's despair and hopelessness combined, and it's that bullet that takes out the kid takes out both parents right at the same time. And I tell you, not to interrupt, but can I tell you what my feelings are on this? High school is too late.

Yeah. Okay. Way too late. Okay. Elementary school. Even better than that. Even better than that. This is what's needed.

Every grade, starting with kindergarten, right? At the beginning of each semester, so it's kindergarten 1 through 12, that's 13 years. Right. At the beginning of every semester, so that's 26 times, these kids have to see a video and then have a conversation about it. So think of it this way. Each grade is a different, is a different kind of cartoon. Right. So that it's age appropriate.

So I'm not saying that this is going to happen, but something like this. Sure. So in kindergarten, my kids liked Cayu. Now, do you know what Cayu is? Okay. Popular with kindergartners, but I know what. So it's this little cartoon with this little boy. and he's Canadian and he's super sweet, just like Canadians are.

And it's just this sweet little cartoon for young kids. And then you get older and then you have the next kind of thing that they're in. And then finally you get to high school and you have the South Park version of it. Right. Yeah. So if you do something like that, okay, it becomes conditioning. Yeah. I can prove it to you. When I was a kid, every morning in school, we stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance.

Do you know what my age group doesn't do? They don't say, I hate America. Oh, yeah. They don't death to America. Oh, yeah. We don't do that. Yeah. Okay.

We were conditioned when we were younger. I can prove it again. We can go the opposite. way. Islamic terrorists teach their children before they can speak. Okay. To kill Westerners, Jews, everybody. Okay. And then they do. I can prove it again. For the last 20 years, okay, or more, Qatar has been sending a ton of money to our elite universities to establish groups, hate groups. Now, every kid, under third, 30, okay, is got this, I hate our country thing going on.

Now, if we can do this from a young age, then this is what needs to happen so that they're conditioned, right, from a very early age. And you have to have the conversation early and often with your children, early and often. I have it all the time. What I was going to say was that the description that you have of a, you know, a yearly semester, you know, informational thing. Yeah. That's great for giving them the information and the knowledge. But what really is necessary for prevention is for them to hit it emotionally. That's correct.

And that's where parents that have lost a kid can break the ice. Yes. We talked to a high school assembly, and we follow the movie dead on arrival, which you've probably seen. And when that movie goes off, we put up a picture of our kid and we say, you know, this is my kid. And he was just as smart as any of y'all. You know, he was just as cool as any of y'all. He navigated the drug scene for 20 years. He thought he was too smart that would never get him, but it got him.

So there's none of you in this audience that's so smart that this can't kill you. And you're a thousand percent correct. And that emotional connection. For sure. And that's what we say is the secret sauce. But that's why. We parents have the impact. But it's got to be all of it, guys.

Yeah. I'm not talking about instead of. Right. I'm talking about in addition to it. I think you proved it. You said I'll prove it and you did prove it. Of course. Because I'm of the same generation where.

What is up with these people who don't love America? What the heck? It's so anti-my, every thinking. And this anti-Semitism, I mean, I come from a place where they have this Holocaust Museum in Farmington Hills. And they're like, so we never forget. I'm like, man, I got to give it to my Jewish neighbors. They're going to make sure we never forget.

I'm thinking that'll never return. I am stunned at anti-Semitism. I'm stunned. Out loud. And so, yeah. And so I'm like, WTF. So, but in terms of this conditioning, you're right. But here's the difference.

Like I actually, it was very, very privileged to be able to have this eye to eye conversation with the president when he was there. When we were there July 16th. And I said, the brief parents are the secret sauce. But here's the thing. And he goes, no, you're absolutely right. He goes, we love our law enforcement. But if kids are getting lecture to by law enforcement, it's a cliche they often can't afford to pay attention to. So, is they going to pay any more attention in school?

And there's these anti-drug talks in school. And there's discussion whether or not the jury's out, whether Dare ever worked. But the advantage of fentanyl, the upside of fentanyl, is that it's deadly. So we're not selling Boy Scouts and Church as an option to drugs to kids, which they might roll your eyes at. And by the way, nobody rolls their eyes at us in our high school assembly. No, no, no, I'm telling you. They won't.

It's amazing. It's amazing. not amazing because people are, they're not evil. I mean, these are kids that are looking at fathers that lost their sons. They really are amazing kids. And, and, but the thing is, when you're talking about life and death, you realize, they realize, you're not here to lecture me on a healthier lifestyle. That's right. It's not Ward Cleaver. It's like, they're doing me a favor. It's a head's up. And when you talk about life and death, that gives you the license to really get their attention. You know what else I love. Guys, you know what else?

is a great idea. When a therapist finishes their education, they have three years where they have to obtain their hours. It's about three years. And then they can go on and do this. Here's the thing, though. I've spoken at a number of psychological colleges. Okay. I did one last week. There it is. And I can tell you therapists, kids who are going to therapy, school, correct me if I'm wrong, because you were just there. Yeah. Very altruistic. Yes.

The salt of the earth. You don't get into that profession unless your soul was good. Yeah. You know. My daughter's one. That's right. So you know. Okay.

Salt of the earth. Now, right now you have what's called preceptors or whatever the hell they're called. And they get paid these supervisors. It's called supervision. and they sign off on your hours and you pay them. Okay, well, aside from the fact that that's predatory and horrible. Yeah. Okay.

Right? That's horrible because these people have nothing. Yeah. Okay. This was my idea. Wouldn't it be great if the president signed an executive. Oh, yeah. I'm all about that.

That says, okay, if you're going into counseling for, drugs or the homeless issue, it's signed off automatically. Okay? There's no nonsense. Let me tell you something. If I went to Pacifica, let's say, okay, Pacific, whatever it's called, where I spoke the last time, if I went there, I can tell you, I could walk right into the administrator's office and say, hey, give me everybody.

that wants to go do this thing with us. Okay? We're going to sign off on all their, it gets signed off automatically. Okay? Listen to what we could do. We could kill two birds with one stone. I'm very much.

My dream is to help the military and the veterans. Beautiful. That's my dream. Served in the military right here? There it is. And I've been treating the military and veterans for 17 years for free. I've always had three guys in my place at all times,

as I do now. We just got our contract to treat veterans in military. It took us two years. Don't worry. We don't know how to bill for it yet, but it doesn't matter. They've been here for free all the time, so we'll figure it out because, you know, it's the government.

It's different. But think about that for a second. You go, you walk in these encampments and you find all these homeless people and a lot of them are veterans because of the trauma. And you find these people and you literally like golden retrievers. You take them and you and you put them in a place. Now, then you can think about, oh, well, there's all this government property. Well, why can't we do something? Think kibbutz mixed with habitat from humanity.

Right? And then you teach them how to fish. Yeah. Right. And if they can't, guess what we do? When they come to the grounds, these are the people that give them the orientation and show them around. Right? Maybe they can't do that. Maybe they just get in the car and they go back to their old encampment. Right? And with the therapist and I say, hey, this is better. I've been here and I've been here and I've, have been there. Come with me. Yeah. Right. I mean, these are simple things that can get done in every little city, in every little town, right? Yeah. That you can do that make a difference today. Where are you going to have do them, though? Ah, that's great. So the president just went ahead and allocated $400 million to go to West to the VA campus right here on Wilshire and San Vicente, which is the biggest campus in the country. Fantastic. Okay.

So he did that for homeless vets and for substance use disorder treatment. and he's so, he's so aligned. Like, I'm so aligned with him. Yeah. Because I was there before he did this. Yeah. Six months earlier. And I was walking with my buddy who heads the veterans here for the county of Los Angeles.

And I'm like, how many people are in that building? Oh, that's a vacant building. How many got in that building? Oh, that's a vacant building. You could have put a thousand veterans in. all the vacant buildings they had there. And I just started crying. Yeah.

I said, what is this? Yeah. And the president is like, yeah, I'm done with this. I'm done with it. Yeah. Like that. Yeah, he moves fast. He makes decisions.

He did something. You said you, right before fentanyl became, it blew up as an issue in 2018. You exited your last place. I had an event like that involving $6 billion, which came from the president, directly. I kind of wandered through the desert of grief for a while, and then I talked my wife into running for Congress to bring a spotlight to the... Really? Yes, to bring spotlight to the... Is she a congressman? No. She was disqualified at the last minute from dirty pool, but we got something very significant done. Her dad was very famous in Detroit. His name was Bill

Bond, the movie Anchorman was based on his life. Oh, no, a ridiculous guy. Anyway, Christine ran for Congress, and we got a lot of free media because she had a famous dad. So we got called into D.C. and we met with Paul Ryan's team at the end of this day of vetting. And I told my wife, I'm like, this is the one that counts. It's Paul Ryan. So we walked in there and we had all the speaker of the house age, 2018. They had the whole thing line up. And we walked in and we were very candid and we're like, look, you got a problem. They're like, what's our problem? We said, well, John McCain did this to the American Health Care Act six months ago. You have 35,000 dead Americans on your hands. We think that's your fault. They're like,

Like, who do you think you are? What do you mean our fault? Like, well, whose fault is it? The Democrats, they don't have the House. They don't have the Congress. They don't have the Senate. They don't have the White House. Whose fault is it?

It's yours because the American health care opened down. You hung a donut on doing anything for the opioid epidemic. You think that's cool with us? We're bereaved parents. They agreed with us almost violently. I got a call from the guy who held the spot before. His name's Carrie Benavoli. He goes, Swan, what did you do over there in DC?

I'm like, I thought we were going to be removed under security. But we pushed the. envelope. He goes, every congressman has to know about the opioid epidemic because in the state of the union addressed this week, he's going to pitch it. And he was only going to talk about military, but they talked him into pitching it for two minutes, the opioid epidemic. I go, that's great. I guess we did our job. He goes, no, you don't understand. It's going to get budget because you did that. So it got $6 billion. If you go to the White House archive, Melania Trump's pictures there, it says ending the opioid epidemic, 2018. Well, it didn't work out. Definitely.

went down, by the way, a little bit. Ads were out there ubiquitous least. The angle was the sibling and the parent lecturing the using a kid in the family to get off the opioids. I don't know who was put in charge of that. It wasn't someone like, and with experience. So it was a optimally executed, but that money was spent and also put a lot of heat on the opioid epidemic. So 2019, fentanyl explodes. And it was exploding. And it was exploding. And it was exploding. It was approaching 100,000 deaths. And I thought, I'm not doing anything, you know, to help solve this. And when Kerry Lake lost her election, I thought she was going to seal the border down in Arizona,

she lost the governor's race. I thought, I got to get in the game and do something. And I talked to other like-minded parents on a Zoom call. I was like, can we do anything? Are we just victims? And that's how fentanyl fathers started. We're like, we're going to go get into schools. And the difference, what separates the men from the boys in the same.

business is those who can get into schools and those who can't. And we were failed for a long time getting into schools until we crack the code. Now we're in. And we've done 200,000 students. And we've, we've, we've had data from every single one. We take a survey. We know there before and after lift, their awareness. And there's 26,727 schools in the country. That's the job. We've got to get into those. But we got to do both. We have to do. We have to. I agree with you on the grace and goals.

It's always all of the. It's, it's, we got big lives. There's social media. These kids have the attention span of a nat. No kidding. Yep. Okay. No kidding.

That's why, I'm going to take this from Anthony Robbins. Repetition is the mother of skill. Okay. Okay. Here. Coach Nick Sabin. You guys know who he is. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Right? The last guy. He went down to Michigan in his last game. Yeah. Okay. Not happy about that, by the way. Okay.

We're all tied. Now listen, here's the thing. Okay. This guy said the greatest thing ever. We don't do things over and over again until we get them right. We do them over and over and over again until we can't get them wrong. This is the same thing. Wow.

This is, this is, I like that. reps. We do it over and over and over again until we can't get it wrong. This is simple. Listen, can we just get back to common sense here? Yeah. That's all this is. Right. Okay. Yeah. It's like in teaching, they say, you know, first you tell them what you're going to tell them, and then you tell them what you told them, and then you tell them what you told them again. Right. Right. So I finally get it. That's right. And it's got to be all the time. early and often. And it's not the facts of figures.

I mean, kids can learn that it's the number one killer of people. And it's the, you know, they can learn all the facts and figures. But it's the emotion. If they don't take it in and realize that, you know, their buddy is going to die of this. You know, I look at it when I say, there's 100 kids in this room. The chances are at least one or two of you is going to die of fentanyl in the next 10 years if y'all don't do something. Yeah. It's up to you. You have got to reach out to your peers and make them stop. It's up to you.

It has to be visceral. You're correct. And if you don't, you guys were a thousand percent right, it's got to be emotional. But look, man, everybody learns differently. Yeah. Okay. So think of it like this. Here's the person. This person learns it here. This person learns it here. Some people need it at everywhere. Yes. Okay. I'm slow. I need it everywhere. Yeah. Okay. But when I get it, it's clear. And then I'm like, okay, this is simple. All right, let's get on with this. Dr. Latson, through Fetanil Fathers and your own foundation, Candles in the Wind Foundation,

what does your advocacy and your education look like day to day? It's been quite a few, quite a bit of time, researching and learning and following other nonprofits to get a pulse of what's going on. on. Greg gave me an amazing opportunity. I had been trying for two years to get permission to go to high schools and talk to kids. And I came across Greg and reached out to him. And he had an opening and he sent me down to Miami. And lo and behold, he gave me some training and established a format. I got to speak to over a thousand kids in one week. It was the most incredible experience.

I can imagine. Had you guys had L.A. Unified School District yet? No. No, I've heard mixed reviews on getting in there, but we'll get in there. We have some really good advocates here in L.A. that are going to get in there. When I knew you guys were coming and she was telling me about this, I called a girlfriend of mine who either works now there or used to be one of the head people there. And we're speaking at 4 o'clock.

Trust me, I'm going to tackle you on that. Oh, don't worry about it. I'm like being anybody. Oh, that's beautiful. Anybody who's got a connection like that? Yeah. I mean, that's how it's done. No, no.

It's how it's done. The problem is so few people want to take time out of their day to do anything for anybody, which is crazy to me. Well, I do two or three things. I do speaking with the kids when Greg can line me up for that. I give continuing medical education to doctors and in the other group that will listen to me. And I also, through my nonprofit, support getting people into treatment. I have a friend that's a peer support specialist with recovering on his own.

He circulates among the homeless community. And when he finds somebody that's ready to consider treatment, I live in rural New Mexico, the nearest treatment center, the nearest detox center is two and a half hours away. So I reimburse him for the capability of taking people to treatment. Oh, so you pay for the transportation. The transportation. That's great. It's a very, very difficult set of people to work with sometimes.

You know, we have a nonprofit. And we've got this other thing that when people call and we can't place them either at the high-end center or the index. network affordable center that we have like it's like a $250,500 for 30 days of treatment with HMOs all that so it's great right but we can't treat everybody we don't do like government stuff we don't do the state um you know like the Obamacare stuff right we don't do that but we have a whole department where we find stuff for them because I didn't want anybody to ever feel like Oh, because they can't come to my place. I don't care. That's like insanity. One of the things that I emphasize is that it needs to be shared decision making. Some people benefit from residential

treatment. Some people are not willing. Maybe they're not quite as, you know, at the end stage, maybe they're still, still have a job, still have a family. They don't want to be away from their family, give up their job. And so they need to be offered other things like Medicaid. assisted treatment or intensive outpatient. There needs to be a menu and we need to discuss with people all the different options so that we're not forcing them into one mold or another. It shouldn't be residential treatment or nothing. Well, I don't mind forcing anybody into anything. Coerced care is definitely a strong thing. I mean, my son probation probably extended my son's life many years. Listen, there's only two types of people that come to treatment only two.

Okay? People that want to get well and people that want to get the heat off. Yeah. Okay. So coercion, think about it. Coercion is the second one to get the heat off. Well, why is it coercion? Because your wife is going to leave you, right?

Or your boss is going to fire you. Or you're going to end up in jail, right? Or whatever it is. That's coercion. Now, most people say, well, he's got to do it. for himself. Okay. Nothing is killed more people than that.

Okay. And the reason is, is because, and I can prove it. Except maybe ignorance. Well, that is ignorance. Right. And so let's, do you know how, how I can prove it to you? Okay. That it's, that that's killed more people than anything.

Because if those are the only two people that come into treatment, then why do 50% of the people coming in to get the heat off? stay sober. Right on. Well, there you go. You just do it again. Hey, guys, I'm here all night. Listen, Dr. Gary came up with something I think that's interesting to you.

He talked about the stats because he served 90% of anesthesiology is fentanyl. Well, don't do it because it's a good, it's an effective drug. Now, just real quick, do you have in top of your mind, I want to put you on the spot, what percentage of people do you think are born like addicts or predisposed to addiction? Would you say 10%? 5 to 10? Yeah. That transfer.

Here, this is how I look at it. Okay. 10% have a problem. Their problem drinkers are users. Okay. Yeah. But only half those about 5% rise to the level of where it's got them. They don't have it.

It's interesting. Okay. An illustration from. Yeah, this is fascinating. To tens of thousands of patients over my career. Do you take 10 people and you're talking to them before their surgery or maybe they're of pain? You give them a bit of fentanyl. I'm talking 50 micrograms, tiny amounts.

Six or eight of them, seven out of those 10, we'll go, yeah, that feels good. You know, it helps my pain and everything. Two or three of them will get violently nauseated and never want to feel it again. And one or two of them will go, wow, what was that? Can I have some more? Right. You know. And if you talk to them while you're doing it,

They get violently angry because you just ruin their high. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. So it's about the same as the general population. Definitely, there's some people are wired to have a euphoric response to opiates that's different than the general, most of the general population. You know, most people that get prescribed Vicodin or Norco or Percocet. Can I tell you why that is?

But a few do. And it's because of it's a predisposition. They respond so pleasurably. It's not just a predisposition. Let me tell you what it really is. Opioids are called pain killers for a reason. But they work better on emotional pain than physical pain. Interesting.

Okay? Wow. As you know, four Advil and two extra strength Tylenol are prescription strength medication. Okay. That's right? Yeah. Okay. All right.

So why do you need the other stuff? Yeah. Okay. but it works better on emotional pain. Yeah, yeah. Much better. Right. And I can prove it.

When a guy's going through a depression, right, whereas heads just chewing on them. Yeah. I'm a piece of garbage, I'm like all that, right? And then you give them that pill and they go, ah, and the noise, quiets, and you're not. chewing on yourself anymore. Hey, man, okay, you're doing that until the wheels fall off. Right. Because you are suffering and now you're not. Yeah. Okay. Relief. That's, yeah. You're in the addict's

head, man. That's for sure. That's because I'm unaddock. That's good. All right. Greg. Yes, sir. Why do you think hearing from bereaved parents has such a stronger impact on students than hearing from law enforcement or teachers. We've touched on this a little, just give it to me. That is teeing me up because that's the linchpin of what we're doing. And this is where I said after we were at the White House and the Halt Fentanylack was signed and we got the privilege of meeting the president. I said, what am I going to say to this guy?

I'm going to have one second in front of them. And I said, Mr. President, the brief parent is the linchpin to kids paying attention. I'll give you an example. I was sitting before a school. It was a thousand kids in the audience. And as they typically do, the principal wants to put on a good impression for us. We're in Miami-Dade.

And a quick stand on Miami-Dade. Deaths went down by 350 year-over-year because we'd seen every high school and every middle school in Miami-Dade. It went down what? 350, according to the medical examiner, the coroner. 350 deaths.

350 less deaths. Adolescent deaths. In Florida? In Miami-Dade. Really? Yeah. went down because we were comprehensive saw every single high school and middle school there that's fantastic it was great and and when we started this campaign guys do it every year at the same high schools

okay thank you because they you have the juniors and seniors it's not just that it's not just that it's they forget and it's like out of sight out of mind no you're you're right so one of these we had a thousand kids in this audience and the the principal gets up and there's an old cheech and chong tape i don't if you remember it where the lady saying, class, class, please shut up. And it's this parent voice where they're used to hearing that like Charlie Brown's teacher. I told, I told the principal, I go, hey, you don't have to yell these guys or beg them to pay attention to me. I have a little technique that makes them just go dead silence. She goes, I need that technique. I go, you can't have that technique because you'd have to lose your kid to get that technique. But just give me the mic and just introduce this.

And I got it. All I say is the same. simplest thing. Hey guys, like I'm Ward Cleaver, like I'm so clueless. I don't even know they have social media. And they're like, who is Yahoo from wherever? Hey, guys, I'm here on a sad mission. And I point to the screen where we're about to start. I lost my kid to this. Dead silence. Put their cell phones down. They lock in. And there's one thing that kids are really, really good at and it's recognizing authenticity because they're so played all the time. Like, go ahead, freak show. Let's hear what you got. And then we have a riveting 45-minute, very disciplined communication set for them with movies and PSAs and stats and all that and a commitment not to do it at the end and we measure

it. But we're there to prevent them from ever starting. Don't try, don't die. It's our message. And they're very, very moved by it. And they're crystal clear. They're more likely to go near and drink gasoline than they would go near an unprescribed pill afterward. They're good. They're like, I'm going to go out of this world some way. I ain't going out that way. And one thing we'll tell them is take your precious little body, you little Einstein's, and toss it off the side of a mountain. You know what that's called? Base jumping. You'll die one in five thousand times if you have wings on.

You do this eight and ten times you're gone and you're taking out your parents too. And these kids don't even have enough grip of their own mortality. The number one reason for not doing it or not trying it and getting the memo is they don't want to do this to a mother. They don't want their parents come in and find their feet cold in the morning and collapse and then they're ruined. If they're young enough, the second. They're at 13, okay? Sixth graders. They don't care.

Sixth and six graders. Well, sure, because now you get to the point where it's about socialization and fitting in. And, you know, when you're in elementary school, you don't have that when you're in elementary school, okay? Yeah, parents are still good. Parents are still your friends. Once you hit adolescence, parents are the enemy almost. That's right. You know, I notice you kissed Dominic.

which was beautiful. And I kissed my son, Drew, until he just figured it out that I couldn't kiss him anymore. My son hasn't figured that out. Don't let them. I wasn't. You know, I just wanted to kiss him and right up until he was, you know, a grown up. But Drew helped me start writing a book called 1001 Great Comebacks to Peer Pressure. And we wrote that book. We finished it with some kids from safe students advocating fentanyl education. and it's available for free at the bottom of our website. I'm not pushing our particular website, but Svenalfathers.org at the bottom is a free book. Now, you had said you were given this free book by Jackie Siegel, which is how her daughter was thinking.

I was given it by David Siegel. The man. Your brother. Your brother. So David, David is one of my heroes, and Jackie's really picked up the mantle, but I, she spoke also in front of, of the president. She said, unless she got it wrong, her sister died on the same day.

Yes. David died. I think it's the same day. And her sister had overdosed on a line of cocaine. And it was laced with fentanyl. So now she's out of the box fentanyl champion. So we combine forces and create something called angel army.com. And we are, she's going, we're going. That was my, that was, that's what I wanted to, that's when I wanted to bring up. That's how to scale the, to scale it. Because remember, these therapists, these brand new therapists. And you can say, oh, well, they're not seasoned. Yeah, you know what? They're not seasoned.

But you want to know what else they're not? That's what gives them. Jaded. They're not desensitized the process of helping another human beings. Yeah. Yes. But I interrupted you. Tell me what angel are me.

No, so it was great. So it's been great to get to know the Seagles. They wanted to do the same thing. their daughter, Victoria, didn't necessarily die of fentanyl. She had an overdose. I think the final cause was methadone, but I don't even know if they were testing in 2015. They're, they're opioids. It didn't matter. And you know what else? Well, you hear her daughter, her sister died at fentanyl. So just this year, 2025. And then she lost David and she had and she had a lost another family member too. And I remember we did the White House that night. That night we had dinner with,

believe it or not, Cash Patel, the next day we were doing Fox and Friends, 30 million viewers. I was Cash, but he's phenomenal. He's phenomenal. He's a great guy, very normal. I told him about this, there's something called, there's something out of St. Louis called Contaminated, a movie. And it talked about in China, they're selling fentanyl precursors to Western customers. And he hadn't seen the movie. I'm like, Ron, don't walk to see it, because you need to see that this is.

celebrated and supported and underwritten by the Chinese government. And sent to Mexico where you have a guy in a hazmat suit, no kidding, with an oar and a big vat. And that is the level of sign. Oh, yes, that's it. Yeah. Right? And then they take it and they put it in the pill molds.

Yeah. Right? And they're like a chocolate chip cookie, right? Exactly. Right? Some of the, it's like sometimes you get a pill with too many, too much fentanyl and many chocolate chips and sometimes you get it with none. Guess what you do when you get it with none? You die. You want more. You take another one. Right. And then you die. Right. Right. Right. And National Geographic had

something on that called a story about that. The precursors coming in. But anyway, Jackie and the Victoria Voice Foundation, we've been working with them. They wanted to use this as their speaker organization to get out. And we said, look, let's get every single, brief parent that we can. There's a million of them just since 2019 on the fentanyl issue. There's a million. Wait a minute. Do you know what I do you know there's something called Alexandra's law? Do you? Yeah. You know, and you know Matthew, right? Matt. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm having dinner with him tonight. Okay. So you tell him you came. And he says hi to you. Oh. Says tell him. I said, tell Rich. I said, hello. I got a text from him. You tell him. I said hello. Yeah. So one of the reasons I did this was because of Matt's daughter. Alex, yeah.

And it just destroyed me. Yeah. So I started this thing because that hit me. And my buddy Nathan, Hawkman, introduced me to Matt. Wow. That's great. You know, there's another law called Melanie's Law. And she died.

She was 15 years old. She died in a Hollywood high school on property. San Diego got together and they mandated, Fentile Awareness. The first one in the country mandated Fentenal Awareness education in the schools. You've got to warn these kids. That's been my heart forever. And I followed them doing that. And then Melanie's law ended up on Gavin News and Stessie signed it. And so it mandates Fenton Awareness Education, but they're not compliant. The California schools are not compliant. So we have some parent couples that are going into schools and reminding them that you are

obligated by law to train on this. We have a DEA approved program, the Fentile Fathers Program. Anybody getting federal funds for anything, okay, for anything. I don't care if it's to the schools or whatever. If there's federal funds being sent to California and California doesn't go ahead and do what they're supposed to be doing in this realm, okay? Just don't give me any goddamn money. Yeah. No money. You get none.

Okay. That's what I love about this guy. Yeah. That's what I love about him. Yeah, for sure. He's not listening to the noise. he's not being told. He's not being told, I can't do this.

He's like, yeah, okay, cool, I'm the president. You're not. Go do it. Yeah. I love that. Yep. Love it. Oh, yeah.

And so we're just basically bent, resolved to scale. And the way to scale is give these brief parents who definitely want to tell their story. Not all of them are public speakers, but they have their five-minute story down. It may suck the life out of them that day, but it gives them purpose. in their pain and it gets them out of bed. And at the end of the day, as a brief parent, the ultimate thing I think we could give them is to say, had your kid not died,

100 kids would have died because you weren't there telling them about your kid. Do you know what bothers me more than anything in the world? You guys took your pain, okay, and made certain that other parents didn't feel the way you feel. I never wanted another parent to feel. Never.

Ever. It's the worst. Listen. Absolutely. For me? It's something I could never get over. It is the, it is. You're a lover.

Your daughter, the way you talked and I met Dominic? No, you couldn't. No. It's the worst thing that can ever happen to a parent. It's the most unnatural thing in the world to bury your child. I just can't even discuss it. And I've got a podcast on this where I'm continually re-injuring myself all the time. Yeah.

And it's torture. Thank God for guys like you because we're not going to get it done just scaling with brief parents. We need people champions like you. So I was so excited to meet you. And I knew you were friends with David Siegel. And so was the president, was friends with him and talked about that. David was a hero.

He marched up the steps to Congress and said, this is what you're doing. Yeah. Okay. And he's responsible for having the Narcan. Yes, he is. Naloxone Awareness Day is June 6th. And that's a tough day to get a lot of attention because it was formally known as D-Day, which is it's still celebrated.

But yeah, it was a 10-year anniversary of Jackie. We were in town not long ago celebrating that with them. And they've got juice. They had both Florida senators there, three congresspeople there. Of course they've got juice. They're serious people. Yes, they are. All right.

I called Donald Trump the fentanyl president. Okay. He's done way more than any other president. around drugs ever. He's mentioned fentanyl more times in his first 100 days than the last three presidents combined. Yep. Okay.

It's refreshing. Yeah. And even though fentanyl wasn't an issue, you know, down the line, still opioids, fentanyl opioids, interchangeable. Okay. Greg, you were at the Halt Act signing recently and met with the president. Let's tell everyone what this act is about. The Holt Fentanyl Act made all fentanyl-related substances permanently illegal by putting them in Schedule 1, the strictest drug category.

What does that mean? Well, fentanyl was raised and the precursors were raised to a level where marijuana is going the opposite direction, going down to Schedule 3 maybe, and this is a big issue now with the DEA and all that. President said, this doesn't seem like much at the service it goes, but this is one of the most important pieces of legislation I'm ever going to sign. It allows you to put guys who are in this game away for 10 years minimum where justice is served to the parents where you're more likely to get into a new business. If they die. No. No, no, no. If you have 100 grams on you, I believe.

I think of it. Milligrams. Any dealing, it doesn't have to result in death. Now there's a mandatory minimum. He's a mandatory minimum 10 years. And he does have a lot of empathy. He's talked to parents. He's like anybody, he hasn't lost a kid.

And he really hammers his kids, you know, no drinking drugs or smoking every time they leave the house. And his kids are good kids, you know, President Trump. Yeah. Well, kids are older now. Yeah. He doesn't have to tell him not to do drugs anymore. But he was very, very on top of that. Absolutely.

He really, I've always, I personally have always liked him. But he said he talked to a parent where he really won me over as a champion was he said, I talked to a brief mom. And she said, it gets worse, not better. It does. It does. I'm like, thanks for saying that. He's right.

She's right, right. Right? It does get worse. It is. It is. It's bad. Well, as you grow through your grief and talk to other parents, you realize the magnitude of the problem. How many families are affected by this. You know, it doesn't, it's not just the loss of one life. It's the destruction of many more.

I mean, how many marriages break up because of the grief that the parents are you kidding? How many, how many, how many, how many siblings end up, you know, with depression and PTSD and everything? The ripple effect of this problem is just, it's incalculable. It's destroying us from the inside. The other thing that President Trump did is yesterday he just announced that he's really going after the cartels in their terrorist status. And you remember ISIS? Does that ring a bell? Yeah.

Where are they? They're gone. Why are they gone? Because he made him go away. And I was on a podcast. This is like, I think, the third one I've ever done. This is a real privilege to be here. Thank you.

It was Martha McCollum. She goes, what do you think the cartels are going to go away quietly? a $14 billion industry. I said, I hate it when anybody dies, but I can tell you this, there will be blood, and there is going to be blood because it's going to be,

it's now a war between us and the cartels. And guess who's going to win that one? You just look at the, if I were in the cartel business, I'd be looking for another job. Yeah. I tell my peer support guys that, certainly community,

I say, you better be telling your, your buddies that are addicts now, you better say, are you going to do when there's no fentanyl anymore? Because it's going to dry up. It will never be completely open. Well, then they're going to find something else like pink protein 2C. Right. Well, we kind of said, you know, if you could pass out buprenorphine, you know, if buprenorphine was as easy to get suboxone, and if suboxone was as easy to get as fentanyl, right? We'd save 100,000, we'd save 20,000 lives a year at least because Suboxone doesn't

kill people. Can I tell you what I like? Can I tell you what I like about salt? The most. Sure. The way we've been getting jerked around is through the ingredients. Yeah. In these drugs. So you get, you change one little thing and then it's no longer against the way. Oh yeah.

No, yeah. Right? Yeah. That's over now. That's it. If you switch the precursors, even a little bit chemically, it won't help you. No. That's the whole phyttonal act.

That is. And, and I swear, I was thinking about that. that last year and I'm like, this doesn't sound right. This is horrible. A lot of these problems, people say, well, they're complicated. Okay. They're not. You make them complicated. I'm not saying this in a way that's full of ego, okay? I know for certain, okay, that if I had a blank check, okay, for less than a billion dollars, I could clean up the entire city of Los Angeles. for certain. And I could do it in less than two years. Now, that would be my full-time job, but I'm not a CEO anymore. I'm the chairman. So I got all the time in the world.

Just this morning, I was walking along the Santa Monica strip over to the beach, and there were at least 10 people slumped over, obviously, you know, with a result of addiction. And then were they slumped over like this? Some of them were of the Moutanian slump or the Zyazine slump. And then there were others just, you know, sacked out. Some girl. Instead of somebody's daughter. Some girl was unconscious on the beach.

And, you know, I could tell she was breathing and she twitched her foot once in a while. So I knew I didn't need to run over and give her an arcand. But, you know, it's just tragic. It's everywhere, you know, around here. And wouldn't that girl's mom love a phone call? knowing that her daughter's still alive, but she doesn't know where she is. I'm sure. I'm not like you got to go look.

A lot of a man. Yeah. A lot of them. I've had calls with parents. They don't care. They're done. Well, they. And then when this happens, okay, then they're on it.

There's a million bereaved parents in the country. We want to aggregate at least 100,000 Angel Army. We want to, like FedEx or UPS, have a logistical. non-sexy approach to this army going out and taking responsibility for a state and for a county and for districts to make sure every school sees a bereaved parent presenter. There's 26,727 schools in the country. How many? 26,727 high schools. Is that public or private or both?

That's both. We want to hit them. Yes, we want to hit the others, but this is our starting point. and we want to go in there with a parents and talk to them. We know that it's doable. We know that we have the resources to do it. It's got to be implemented and executed at the state and then the county and the district and the high school level. And it's completely doable. Can I make a suggestion? Yeah.

Please. Okay. Because you guys are right there on the J curve. Yeah. About to blow up, right? Yeah. So it can still be modified. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Modify it to start in the elementary schools. Okay, you got it. We're going to go in and do the elementary schools in Miami now this year. You have to. We're doing it. And I applaud them for saying that I would argue, like one thing you've mentioned is that it's, if it's a personal story, it's a tragedy, but if it's 100,000, it's just a statistic. But this is killing more people than Vietnam 9-11, childhood cancer, global plane crashes, drunk driving, all combined.

But I just want to say this in terms of the reach. Go ahead. You were going to say, well, I was going to say the best part about you guys. And I was saying it earlier. And naturally, I forgot what I was going to say. But the best thing about you guys is that you guys turn this pain into making certain that the parents, that other parents don't go through this measurable pain. But the thing that disappoints me the most is when parents don't. I've got one of the reasons I came back.

So there was a bunch of reasons. But one of the reasons I started this was because one of the clients, one client I had passed away from fentanyl and he had seven years sober. But he got into a car accident and the doctor put him on these medications. Oh, yeah. And now he's looking and he took one pill and he was slumped over in the car unless than a minute. Wow. So, and the parents blame me. They blame me.

And the reason I know that is because I wasn't invited to the funeral and I told them I wanted to go. Now, these people called me for everything. Whenever they had an issue with the kids and I'd get on the phone and say, you want me to come get you or you want to do it this way? And they said, no, no, Rich, we're fine. We'll do it that way. This is the one time they didn't call me. And they told everybody it was a heart attack.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's class. Because they're, because they felt shame. Yeah. They were embarrassed. Yeah. And that made me insane. Yeah.

Well, we don't play nice in the sandbox. We, we would leverage our way into schools, but if someone wants to be complicit in the ignorance of kids, they're our enemy. And we don't, we don't let them stand in our way. Now, I would argue that everyone is responsible for this. And I'll give you my take on that. It comes from the book of Proverbs. Solomon wrote this. Proverbs chapter 24, verse 11 and 12, he said, hold back those staggering toward the slaughter. Stop those going towards certain death. If you claim it's not your

responsibility, God who knows all hearts knows yours, and he knows you knew. It's a real scripture. It's a real good luck explaining that on Judgment Day. If you say, it's not my job. This is our number one responsibility. You know what's killing people. You have us on your podcast. We know it's killing people. We're trying to scale this. The president knows he's signing laws and he's behind us on this. We got to get the army, the angel army parents together and go in and because the brief parent is the linchpin to this. Tell these kids and these kids lock in. They lock in. But start earlier. Yep. I agree with you. I agree. And I like your idea of the cartoon or social media for the young year.

That's right. And then at some point, we get a bereaved parent in front of it. It may not be appropriate to tell a story of the death to a fifth grade. Why not? Well, no, no, no, no. This is not? Listen, not instead of.

In addition to it. Okay. Okay. So this is a great point. And there's a lot of curriculum out there. I will definitely take your advice and go younger. But in terms of executing, if you're going to prioritize, if you're going to prioritize, we want to hit these high schools first. And then we want to hit the middle schools and the grade schools because the high schools is right before they really start dropping.

Once they get into college, they don't have mom and dad there to lie to them to say door dash is at the door. And their drugs arrive. I know. I did a thousand middle stool students the week that I went down to Miami. Better. And it was amazing to see sixth and seventh graders listen up. And you'd tell, you'd ask, you know, how many of you have a family member or someone you love that's been affected by this? Oh, it's like 40 in every audience.

Yeah, the little hand. It's amazing. You know, sometimes it's their parents. Yeah. That have died. They lost their parents. They lost their siblings. They lost a cousin.

Yeah. It's crushing this country. This is our number one problem for sure. It's not unusual for one or two to be brought to tears. And while that's, um, We don't want to make people, we don't, we don't set out to make people sad. But if it elicits that emotion, it tells us we're getting through that we're, we're making an impact.

All right. You guys are magnificent. All right. We're going to go to one quick, a couple questions from the audience. Okay. Okay. Tyler from Phoenix is asking, my son has mental health struggles. and I'm worried he might self-medicate.

I know he's on Snapchat. How can I stop this before it's too late? Very dangerous on Snapchat because he can order up drugs and they can be delivered right to the house and for a price. That's a real problem. I'd love to send him the free book, a Victoria's Voice. We give it to every student in every assembly who wants this book and we give that out. That's a real benefit from Jackie Siegel and explains the mental health that they go through. 50% of kids are struggling for mental health, as you know,

but we know that they spend three hours a day scrolling through their phones. Three hours. Who told you three hours? CNN. Yeah, they're wrong. 10 hours. They're wrong. So three hours.

If they were three hours, we wouldn't have a problem. One thing I learned in recovery is the serenity prayer, grant me serenity over things I cannot change. Well, you're scrolling through three hours a day of three things you can't change. That's going to cause stress. and anxiety. You know, we talk about the greatest generation. These guys came from poverty, went into World War II. How'd they turn out so good? And these kids have a problem scrolling. But that's, they have these, you know what I'm talking about. They have these mental.

The best was, the best was COVID. The best was COVID, where everybody just lost their minds. Okay. And it's like, dude, you're not asked to fight a war. You're asked to sit on the couch. Just shut up. You have the authority to say that. But it doesn't matter. They do have this stress and anxiety. What do they do? Well, that is your lane doctor.

That is your lane rich. Our lane is one way that doesn't work. And that is anything that's unprescribed, it's going to kill you. You need to have a chance to get into therapy. You need to have a chance to have, whether it's a pastor or a therapist or alternate all the good things with sports. and all the other things you can do. One thing that will not work is Adderall Xanax, Percocet, OxyContin, ordered up. And by the way, it's in the marijuana supply.

The best thing, it is. The best thing, well, not when you get it from a dispensary. That's right. It's the only safe way. But also, keep in mind, in California, 80% of the dispensaries are getting it from cartels. I don't know if you knew that. But the DEA confirmed that for me last week. I didn't know that.

Well, if that's true, then that's a bad deal. One point I always make tomorrow. audiences, I say the most dangerous thing on the planet is white powder. For sure. Anytime you get a white powder, you have no idea what's in it and how potent it is. You might snort one line and get high. The next line you die. Sure.

Look, what Donna went down in our town and she's in denial that she took any drugs, but she was revived by Narcan. I mean, she had opioids. And my theory is that she probably took a line of cocaine that was late. Yeah. Yeah. And the problem with that is they have these test strips and these kids think if they do the test strips, they're safe and they're not because one part of the pill is this way and the other part is different and same with the powder. So it's- And the harm reduction is, it doesn't tell you how much fentanyl is in it. It just says it's fentanyl or it's not. Right. And they go, oh, it's okay, it's got fentanyl in it. Well, that's why I paid for. But they don't know how much is in each pill. It's ridiculous. All right, let's move to the next one.

Sarah from Los Angeles is asking, if I find a pill in my child's room, is there any way to tell if it has fentanyl without sending it to the lab? Yes, you can use a test strip, but it's not that reliable. Well, the other thing is... Help. If it's positive, you can confront your kid and say, this could have killed you.

If it's negative, it's not certain, because you can have negative results. results from that test strip, and it still may have food pills. Well, the other thing is the DEA this year is saying it's just five and ten pills are laced with fentanyl, deadly fentanyl. That's not true. It was seven in ten. It was last year was seven and ten and went up to eight and ten.

And you can assume at that point that if your child has an unprescribed pill, if you didn't get it, mom, it's got fentanyl in it. You can absolutely assume that. Yes. It's like playing Russian roulette with four of the five chambers loaded. It's not if it's when. Well, one of the things I explained to them is that, you know, pills that are sold on the street, you know, to each other, think about how difficult it is to get a prescription, a truly pharmaceutically manufactured pill. On the street.

Right. On the street. It's not bad. It costs the cartel pennies to produce the fentanyl pills. Do you how much of costs for a pressed perk on the street I just found out? $20. bucks two bucks oh yeah it's it's it's it's less than that it's it's uh a hundred dollars for for 50 100 bucks for 50 yeah two bucks that's crazy in Phoenix you can you if you get it's cheaper if you if you

buy it in bulk so you're not a mathematician you're a doctor right got that I saw the reals turn like that yeah and I'm like oh he'll figure it out yeah yeah I mean I think it's probably as little as 50 cents in some places that's I'm sure we have a video on the on the front of of our phenylophiles.org site, which shows Russian roulette, and it's a gun being loaded. Some schools don't let us show it. It's a gun being loaded with Adderall pills. And it's talking about, yeah. Yeah. And you know, why would there be fentanyl and Adderall? Well, it's because a kid, a college kid can carry a pocket full of Adderall. And if it says, oh, it's just that Adderall used for studying. But the dealer knows that he can sell that he can, he can, some of the kids know they're getting fentanyl disguised as Adderall. Some just think they're getting adderol, and it's mixed with Fentonville because it gives them a high.

These kids selling pills are going to go away for 10 years. And they're just another punk in their school at the end of the chain of the drug supply, which starts in China, goes to the cartels, goes to the distribution and finally ends up in a local area. And some guys like getting it from his distributor. And there's five chains of command, but the last guy to sell it gets nailed. because guess what? Children, Snapchat is, does keep their records. And they, if something, someone dies, they will go back and find out you sold it to him. It doesn't disappear.

Einstein. If you sell drugs to children, you should go away forever. All right, here we go. Mary Ann from Seattle is asking, I want to talk to my kids about fentanyl. I'm afraid if I push too hard, they'll shut down. How do I start the conversation the right way? Well, you're a hero to want to educate your kids. And I would recommend to watch one of our presentations right on the front of our homepage.

Join angel army.com, become an advocate that way. There's a way that kids in schools can talk. It's called students advocating fentanyl education, safe for short, have high schoolers talk to them about it. But an illustrative movie on the front page of fentanylfathers.org, you show them that they will be, in tears, but they'll be crystal clear. I think that's an easy way to do it. Sit down with your child and watch the 20-minute movie called Dead on Arrival at the Fentanyl father's website.

It will make an impact on you and your child, and it can be a starting point for that conversation. Good. I'm going to watch that with my children tonight. Fantastic. All right. Before we wrap, I want to show something that can save a life. How to use Narcan.

and we are going to let the doctor do this. Absolutely. So Narcan is a specific antagonist to opioid medications like phenyl or heroin or perforcet. Anytime someone has been overdosed with an opioid, what kills them is respiratory depression. It basically turns off the drive to breathe. So if a person is not breathing because of opioids, you can simply spray. narcan in one nostril and within 30 seconds or more or a little longer, it can begin to reverse that effect and get them to resume breathing. Now, you can assist breathing while you'll wait before.

Do you mind that's why it's here. Okay, so you shove it up the nose. Because you don't have to have CPR. We tell people this because a general person can do this. You have to have access to this, know where it is, carrying your purse and your glove box, you shove it up the nose all the way, and you unload it like this. Ready? Yep. The reason we do that in public is because it's not illegal drug. It's sold to the over-the-counter. Sure. It's $45, but most places make it free. We're making it available free. It's something called narkand-now.us. Anywhere there's free narkand. It's going to be listed there. You can get it in the mail from Andover knows as well. And we found them for 22 bucks.

Yeah, it should be free. Do you see a kid paying $5,2? It should be free from any government. Let's, we hand them out like candy. Okay. And you can, but let's, let me just tell you about it, okay? Okay. All right.

The president went ahead and took $400 million from there. I think it was the whole thing. I don't remember from the NAR can, free NARCAN, and put it into the veterans' license use and whatever. Oh, right. People had a huge problem with that. Yeah.

And the reason I didn't was simple. Two reasons. Number one, it's $22. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay? If you're going to be using drugs and you know what you're using

or even if you don't know what you're using, you know now because you'd have to be under a rock. Yeah. Okay. Pot for the $22. Right. Well, and there's a variety of other nonprofits in states and counties, they give it out for free. That's right.

In Mexico, the health department distributes it. So it's available in multiple. In Florida, we do with the South Florida Opioid Alliance. In Michigan, we do with the Alliance of coalitions. They get it for free. There's a streamline for that. The American Society of Pediatrics recommends that any parent, any family that has kids between 10 and 20 should have Narcan in the household, and it should be in a central location.

where everyone knows where it is. I agree. Because it could be a sibling saving their brother or sister. Yeah, four to seven minutes before brain damage. You are. You got to get it. So Lazarus drug brings back. In the kitchen, have it where everybody knows where he is and they know how it.

I wish the guy was with Drew had it because Drew was exhibiting signs of an overdose. He said, Drew, you sure you're okay? He goes, no, no, I'm good. I just need to go sleep this off. And he went into the house and laid down and died. And he died because he stopped breathing. You turn blue and you die. That's right.

Because the stem in the back. Can I tell you what else? Never use a loan and carrying our head. Well, you're using alone. That's what they're doing. They're using a loan. So the two things that I've got a problem with with this is two things. Number one, everybody uses a loan.

Yeah. Okay. And number two, when you're not using a loan, okay, they leave you there. If you are in the presence of somebody that is overdosed, and maybe there's drugs in the house or whatever, But you call 911 to help rescue whoever's overdosed. Anybody in contact with that will not be criminally charged because you're in the service of trying to save something. We hammer that to kids because that's very important because they will.

They'll dump them off into a field and they'll die. There are cases where somebody's overdosing in the back seat of the car and the kids are so scared that they did they cut them off parking? They die in a field. Yes. Yeah. Because they're scared to call 911. It's impossible for someone else that hasn't experienced that similar loss to truly understand what you're going through. And when they put us together in those groups, it is very therapeutic.

I mean, I'm going through it now, and it's very helpful. And it's free to any, not almost free to anyone. And by the way, we're going to have something called the Angel Army ascendancy in Orlando in January. We have 400 brief parents getting together. We hope to have the group train there who sings this song, calling all angels. And we'll train them, empower them, encourage them to go out and hit these schools. If they need help, we'll set them up with a companioning.

And we'll have one fun day, like a Disney day. But that's coming up. And we think that Jackie is going to help comp a lot of the people who can't go there to stay at the Westgate resort. Yeah. Do they own that resort? Yes. Well, then I think she can handle that.

I think here. She said as much. Yeah. She means what she says and she says what she means. Right on. Okay. Greg? Yes, sir.

Dr. Gary, thank you guys so much for coming today. Would that all people be like you and have the empathy for the dying in this country, our number one problem? Thank you for caring, doing your responsibility. taking responsibility. Thank you. Thank you for helping us. And for having the, like I said, I tried to dabble in recovery treatment and I realized that emotionally I didn't have that knack. Right. And so I have great respect for people that can help people through recovery because it's a very, very important part of this puzzle. We can't, we can't completely prevent, the prevention's important,

but there's, what, 20 million people that are currently dependent on opioids in this country. Thank you guys for coming. Okay. I really appreciate it. I know how hard this is. And I'm sorry, deeply sorry for your loss. Okay. How can people reach you? Thank you so much. Thanks for your empathy. It really gives us purpose in our son's passing to be here and to advocate. The way to reach us is fentanylfathers.org or angel army.com. And to book us, hit up our guy, Mike at fentanylfathers.org. If you are feeling down, anxious, depressed, or suicidal, any of those on that spectrum, call 988 and they will talk you off the ledge. They're and you'll be fine. Just live another day.

And if you are a loved one has a problem, reach out to Carrara Treatment.com or one call placement.org. All right. Thank you very much. See you next Tuesday. way to his borrow who said to live this way oh have a little faith the things you cannot explain goodbye my cherished friend may you ever grow at a heart together's joy and lived your life

but now we're torn apart you call out for humanity and whispered about your pain Now you long to heaven and the stars spelled out your name And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle Never know when the pain blew your candle