WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 757 - Sam Quinones

Episode Date: November 6, 2016

On the eve of the U.S. Presidential Election, you owe it to yourself to hear this conversation between Marc and journalist Sam Quinones. Sam's travels in Mexico and his curiosity about the epidemic of opiate addiction in America led him to discover how cheap heroin production, pain management proliferation, impeccable marketing and unfettered capitalism combined to create a crisis that is at the heart of modern American dysfunction. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth

at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuckadelics what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is wtf my podcast tomorrow is election day it's election day tomorrow. I just did Carnegie Hall. I'm looking to the future for the country and I'm looking to a tremendous career and personal achievement. Just two days ago, my cat LaFonda was in trouble. There's a jumble of things that I need to share with you. But let's start with this. Tomorrow's election day. Go do your

civic duty. Go be part of democracy. Go and vote. You know the right vote to make for yourself. I personally, I prefer the person who's had a lifetime of experience working towards being able to do and do well the upper management position of president of the United States. I think that you should vote for that person, not the impulsive, mentally ill, self-centered liar. Because if you are still thinking that that person is the right person to lead our country, I think you're probably fundamentally un-American and don't really have a sense of how democracy works or what democracy is or what personal freedom is

and what the country should really look like and how it should progress. But that's just my feelings. I don't like to be biased, but I stand by my belief that if you vote for that guy you're a sucker and a moron there's no other way to look at it and i know you've all made your decisions and maybe you're thinking i'm i'm being too abusive or or i'm not being tolerant of other views i'm fine you're fine we're all people most of us are decent people just try to pull your head out of your ass

if you're thinking of voting for that idiot it's embarrassing oh yeah and before i forget uh there's no third party in america that's not how the uh system is structured there isn't a third party there may be there could be why don't you work on that on the downtime in between presidential elections? You can use that time to start getting behind candidates on local and state levels if you want to try to have a third party foothold. Don't just all of a sudden decide every four years that you're going to vote for any idiot who represents something different because you don't like the other two there's no third party pick a team all right the cubs and the indians right they were in the world series on that last game no one was rooting for the yankees you dig all right again i don't love my tone when i'm in this place, but it's tomorrow.

Now, let's move on to other things. So and do the other voting to vote for the numbers and the other people on the ballot. The vestiges of democracy exist. They're always there to be brought back to life. There is always hope. I am not cynical, but do not, if you can help yourself, vote a fucking lunatic into the White House. A fucking lunatic. I don't care what you think about criminal this, criminal that. Vote for the person that can do the job. It's a big job to be global middle management. You got to be able to function as a person to do the job to maintain a functioning country, not a dysfunctional person

who is a lying sack of shit, who is bankrupt morally and psychologically. But again, I don't want to get anyone upset. We're all people. We're good people. Americans are all entitled to their opinion and to their vote. And you do it by yourself in that booth. You do it by yourself in that booth for a couple of reasons, right? So you don't have to tell anybody because a lot of you are going to do the wrong thing, and you might hang around people who are more reasonable and level-headed. So you're hedging your bets by not talking

and going in there quietly voting for the wrong person. So just maybe if we all end up standing behind the same fence wearing the same outfit, when someone goes, who the fuck voted for this guy? You want to be able to go, I don't know, right? It's fucking crazy. Where in your heart, you thought you'd be wearing the other uniform. A little extreme, but God bless America. So, onward.

Vote. Next. Next up. Well, I did it. Can I talk about my personal achievements? It was pretty amazing, pretty overwhelming. I performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City on Friday, November 4th, 2016. I had my friend Nate Bargetzi open for me. I did a two-hour show. It's a little longer than they expected. Not the crowd, but the venue and the

festival. Kind of rushed the after party a bit with all of my old Jewish relatives and different representatives of mine. But that's not the point. The point is that I'll tell you exactly how it went. I got to be honest with you. It wasn't so much that I was nervous. I mean, I'm at a point where I'm not afraid to do stand up. But there was something about Carnegie Hall and something about New York City and something about the opportunity and something about the reality of it that was hitting all the triggers. Just sort of like, nah, I'm not worthy. I don't know if I can do it. What if I buckle? My vessel was shaking.

My vessel was shaking. Do you understand? The ship was, I was going through turbulence heading into new york i didn't bring anyone with me i told sarah she couldn't come because i just i needed i didn't want to worry about anything but doing that show and i got to new york i didn't do anything differently than i usually do i checked into the hotel i went to vaselka i had some borscht i went over my notes i was keeping it loose like I usually do. I knew I had some big set pieces. I knew there was a lot of things I wanted to say. I knew I could stand up there for two to three hours. I just wanted it to be good, but I wasn't sure as of Thursday night exactly what I was going to be opening with. I was even writing new jokes and putting callbacks together, adding things in my mind on my notes Thursday night.

Friday morning, I'm up. You know, I'm trying not to freak out. My mom's going to be there. I'm just trying to take it easy doing the New York thing. The weather is beautiful. It's just gorgeous out perfect fall day i'm only allowing a couple of people to come backstage if they want to come backstage i just want to be me and another comic nate backstage i don't want any management i don't

want any family i don't want nobody but i wanted sharpling there i needed tom sharpling in the room because he grounds me, makes me laugh. We're kindred spirits. I just like having him around, so I asked him to please come backstage. So it was just me, Nate Bargetze, Tom Sharpling, backstage at Carnegie Hall when we go out there to do that sound check. And I got to tell you, man, that stage is gorgeous. That room is gorgeous, obviously. Obviously.

You know, we're just sitting back there. Nate decides to pull up a list of everyone who's performed there, which doesn't always help. Doesn't always help to see the legends that you're going to have to fill the same space as they did. But, you know, Nate and I walk out there and it's a theater. And I've done theaters before and it's beautifully structured. There's a nice rounded element to it. There's many tiers to the balcony, but somehow it still feels intimate. And I had that moment where I stopped freaking out and I stood there and I'm like, oh, I can do this. I live up here. I live on these stages. This is, it's just a theater on some level level my friend Don even trying to make me feel better he told me like if there's any way I can level your expectation uh you know my mom was in a

barbershop quartet that won came in second place in a contest and she performed there and he said they're just happy you're going to sell the place out and then I started to think about it I mean how many of those classical events really do sell out how much action does Carnegie Hall's you know really see but that why would i be doing that what do i got to diminish in order to feel better why can i just why couldn't why couldn't i be an alchemist that transforms dread and anxiety into excitement and joy that was that was really the experiment at hand. But checking the sound, you felt the weight of the place. It was empty, but it felt like a special place.

But I felt like I got this. I can do this. I've been doing this more than half of my fucking life. So Nate goes out there, kills it, does a beautiful 15 minutes, and he brings me on, folks. He brings me on, and the acoustics in that know the acoustics in that place the sound of it the history of it all of it everything that that got me there and everything that that that place represents and everything that everyone in that room represents all 2600 of them that came to see

me they're applauding and i get out there and i'm just shattered just shattered like just overwhelmed with emotion and i just felt it in my whole body just this rupture beginning to happen and i had to get hold of myself i was like there's no crying we don't open the carnegie hall show with crying i said to me from the inside that is not how this is going to go I mean I don't mind crying God knows I've been talking about it for a while having it happen but I just even even if they understood I don't want to start in that place I got to pull it together god damn it and I felt that happening I was on stage and then I took my stool. I sat in my stool. I took my seat and I started to talk,

but I was very emotional and I wasn't really connecting. And I was trying to feel the room, trying to feel how do I connect with this room? And I felt the emotions and I felt the insecurity and I felt the weight of not really preparing how I was gonna open clearly. It was all there. But you know what the the weight of not really preparing how i was going to open clearly it was all there but you know what all those things did all those things that the emotions the insecurity the uh the not knowing it fucking it just grounded me right there in the goddamn present on that

stage sitting on a stool in carnegie hall that big, vast, empty stage that is Carnegie Hall. Nothing else but me in a stool and a mic stand. I don't know what happened, but I broke it open. I felt the love of my fans. I felt the room. And then I just locked in and I kind of had these a couple of out of body experiences where I'm like, you're in it, dude. You're just look at you on stage at Carnegie Hall. I think I even stopped and said, I'm gonna feel great about this. My mother was in the room, a lot of other relatives, old friends,

and I just stayed up there, and I improvised, and I did the jokes I wanted to do, and I stayed in the saddle of it, and in the present, and felt it all. I did some big, big riffing. I wanted to read an email from my father that had come that day. And I'd given my phone to one of the women who works for the festival. And she was outside somewhere, not on stage, obviously. So I started calling her for to come on stage and bring me the phone. And she wasn't showing up. So there was this amazing theatrical improv that was literally theater. There's 2600 people wondering whether or not someone was going to walk through a door, the expectations. And then I didn't think it was going to happen. And then she showed up and opened the door. Everybody cheered. I got the phone. I read the email, got some laughs with that. And then I actually found myself for a split second about to check my texts on stage at Carnegie Hall. I was about to check

my texts. So that has to indicate that I was pretty fucking comfortable. And I got to be honest with you. I think I brought that room right into me and put it back out. I think I made Carnegie Hall, the giant that it is, into a small, beautiful little cradle of people that were just, I was hanging around, talking, getting some laughs. I made Carnegie Hall work on my terms. And it was one of the most exciting events in my life. And I'm very happy that some of you were there to witness it. I feel great about it. And now things are going to change.

Things are going to change. Not in a bad way. But they're going to change. But thank you for all your support. And thank you for believing in me. And thank you for being there if you were there. And I'm proud of myself and i think my mommy is proud too what are those changes is that what you're gonna ask i'm gonna fucking take it easy folks i've been chasing my ass for fucking years i've been you know chasing

this comedy dream you know I do this podcast. I'm happy to do the podcast. It's really what I was meant to do. I'm good at whatever the hell happens in here. I'm good at stand-up. I'm a great stand-up. I've never been a better stand-up. And I just proved that to myself, finally.

And to be honest with you, I don't know what anyone thinks of me, you know, in the big picture, but I know where I stand now. And from here on out, because I can, I'm going to take my time building my act. I'm going to take my time really thinking about, you know, putting together, you know, shows at my own pace. There's no fucking hurry. I'm going to do a bunch of dates in the spring. I'm probably going to tape a special. But after that, I'm going to take it easy a little bit. Obviously, the podcast

is not going anywhere. But I'm going to take it easy. And I'm going to do something. I'm going to take some months and figure out something amazing to do. See, I'm drawn to these big lines. Being dramatic. I'll probably just end up

doing what I always do. Compulsively going to comedy clubs three nights a week to do 15 minutes so I feel like a human with an outlet, with a craft and a skill. LaFonda, I brought back to the vet since I last talked to you in a panic. She's up and around. She's kind of running around a little bit. She's eating more. She's about 80% of what she used to be, but she's 12 years old. And if she can just stay there and not decline, I'd be happy. She didn't die while I was doing Carnegie Hall,

which I thought was gonna happen. And she's doing okay. I don't know if she will stop doing okay once the steroid wears off, but she's alive. She's up. She's kind of mostly herself and uh i'm grateful for that so so i am thrilled to have sam quinones here on the show i had this

book sitting around for a couple months. It's called Dreamland, The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic. And I just saw it sitting there. It gets sent to a lot of books. And there was something about it though. I'm like, yeah, I would like to know. I would like to know. I want to know. I want to know about that. I want to know about this plague. How did it happen? How did it happen on a societal level, on a business level, on an economic level? You know, what, you know, and it seemed like one of those books. And it was one of those books.

It was a book that should be read now heading into this election. It should be read for a lot of reasons because it really shows you through the lens of opiates through the lens of black tar heroin and that business and the lens of of opioids oxycontin oxycodone and that business you see what economic difficulties and and different parts of the country and shifting trends in manufacturing and job availabilities you see uh the immigrant experience in in in in a couple of ways. You hear the voices of law enforcement, of drug addicts, of people who are dealing with that. But ultimately, it's really a portrait of America in the last couple of decades in a very specific way, but it's all-encompassing. And Sam, Sam Quinones, he spent a lot of time in Mexico. You know, he's got several books available that you can, you know, get them as

well. Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream and True Tales from Another Mexico are a couple of his books. He lived in Mexico for over a decade. He was on the immigration beat for the LA Times for a long time. This black tar heroin thing was sort of a fluke. But he's a man who understands the immigrant experience. And a lot of what happens in this book, Dreamland, is really an amazing story about Mexico in a lot of ways, as much as it is about the United States. And it is a page turner. And he's the real deal. He just lives down the street from me somewhere, not far away. And I reached out to him. Someone sent me, said they knew him, sent me an email and connected us. And he was thrilled to come over. he but see what you'll hear here

not unlike my talk with david simon is is a real journalist and a guy who pursued the story from nothing the story did not exist and it was out there to be told and it's an important one so listen to a very engaged, very intelligent, very thorough and on the level journalist talk about how America got destroyed in a lot of ways by opiates. in a lot of ways, by opiates. This is me and Sam Quinones talking about Dreamland, the true tale of America's opiate epidemic. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series,

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Demick. You know, I had this book. You had your book sitting around in a stack of shit that comes to me because I get shit sent to me. I get a lot of shit sent to me. Right. And for some reason, I was like, you know, just the subheading, you know, like Dreamland, The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic.

Like, I've seen books about things before, but I just didn't let this go. Like, it was just sitting there for months. Well, great. With other stuff, and I'm pushing aside other stuff. I'm bringing books to libraries because I don't want to throw stuff away but i kept that there and then i decided one day i'll just pick it up i've been waiting on it kind of and i couldn't fucking stop you know and i hadn't had that right now i hadn't had that happen though with a piece of journalism since uh fast food nation since schlosser's book right and it's sort of similar in the way it breaks

shit down and it's readable and it gets into all the nooks and crannies and all the different layers of what you're dealing with it's not about hamburgers but it's about heroin that was sold like hamburgers in a way it was about franchising right what was compelling to me was it's really about america yes like it's it's, you know, part one of the elements of the decline of America, but it's something that really is sourced in in, you know, a failing economy, you know, outsourcing an overambitious corporate environment, a pharmacological environment. And New Mexico plays into this, too, a little bit. And I grew up the thing about the story. I realize is that when I when I got into the book, I thought I was writing a crime book. I thought I was writing a into this too a little bit and i i grew up the thing about the the story i realized is that um

when i when i got into the the book i thought i was writing a crime book i thought i was writing a dope book i had lived in mexico for many years for what uh i was a reporter down there as a journalist freelancer just kind of winging it and i wrote two books down there why mexico i just went down there uh because i've i believe that mexico was becoming enormously important first at that time to california and then of course later to all of the united states right um and i went down there and i went down for three months uh to study spanish a little bit because my spanish was really bad yeah and uh i ended up finding a job at a little funky magazine yeah and staying for 10 years and i wrote three two two books about Mexico and did a lot of

travel. So, so my focus was not about the United States. I didn't even really know when I started this, what an OxyContin was or a Vicodin was. When did you start? How many years ago? This was 2009. And so I came back to the, to, to the United States in 2004 to work for the LA Times. And meanwhile, as a staff writer. Yeah. And meanwhile, the whole drug war in Mexico kicks off, gets very, very medieval. And about- The cartels. Yeah. And it's not just the cartels.

It's the cartels feuding where they used to not. They used to kind of have the gentleman's agreement. And then, of course, you get the government fighting them all and the cartels fighting each other. And it gets very, very sinister very quickly. And so in 2008, I was put on a team of reporters to write about the drug war. I was in LA. I spoke fluent Spanish.

Yeah. In New Mexico. So my job was to cover how drugs were trafficked once they crossed the border. It was a very good idea. Yeah. Nobody writes about that kind of stuff. Right. And I had written a couple stories, and I was casting around for another one.

And I find a series of stories out of the town of Huntington, West Virginia, where a dozen people had died of black tar heroin in six months. Now, before that, as just kind of background, I had worked as a crime reporter. A big part of my career was as a crime reporter in the city of Stockton, California, which if you know Stockton is a really good place to be a crime reporter. And that's not a great thing for Stockton. No, but I love the town. I want to say this. I don't let people talk bad about Stockton. It's one of my favorite towns. But what ended up happening was I learned there a lot about heroin. And in Western United States, I learned we didn't have the white powder heroin that you saw in the French

Connection and all that stuff. We had only black tar and it all came from Mexico. And it really didn't cross the Mississippi River. But that was post like what, 95, 96? That was in the 80s and the 90s. Right. So I come upon this story that kind of breaks down everything I thought I knew about Blacktar heroin. One was that it was I thought it was from Mexico but I looked and West Virginia

had the fewest number of Mexicans in all of the United States. What made you read these stories about Virginia? I mean, where'd they come from? I was just tooling around. I actually, right now, can't remember. I just came across this stuff, and I got more, and Googled more, and pretty soon, we're heading

to West Virginia. It's like a dozen people dying in six months. They'd only had one overdose in 10 years. Right, right. And it seems strange to me. Why is there black tar heroin in West Virginia? What's it doing east of the Mississippi River? Why, if there are no Mexicans in West Virginia, is there Mexican heroin there?

Yeah. So I make some phone calls. You know, if you're a reporter and you don't follow up on those hunches, you might as well find another job, basically. I call Huntington PD. Huntington PD says, you know, all that dope was coming from Columbus. And I call Columbus and DEA, and thank God I run into this magnificent DEA agent. DEA agents can be, it depends.

Some are great and some are not so great when it comes to explaining stuff to the media. This guy was fantastic. Plus, he was pissed off. He was really mad because he'd been there 10 years. And he said, I've been in business 25 years, okay? I got here 10 years ago. We had no heroin, none, in Columbus, Ohio. Yeah.

I was like, okay, what happened? He says, well, about 10 years ago, we began to see these Mexican guys tooling around town, their mouths in cars, really inconspicuous, not dressed out, not flashy cars, old cars, baseball caps. They looked like Home Depot day workers. Right. And he goes, their mouths filled with little balloons, a tenth of a grand doses of black tar. They had a big bottle next to them, so they'd swig it down if the cops stopped them.

Next to them. No guns. This was the other thing. I had grown up, my career had started in the crack years and that it was all about guns that's how you got market share you killed your rival sure and also the history in our minds because you're how old are you i'm 57 i'm 52 so like heroin was like new york mafia exactly and you know you had the example of al capone you're the colombians in miami the bloods on the coast drugs market share is gained through the barrel of a gun.

Sure. And these guys, none of that. He said, this is the weird thing. They don't use any guns. And he also said they're on salary. And in the drug world, nobody's on salary. You're not a salaried employee in the drug world. You sell your dope for more than you bought it for.

That's how you make a money. Right, you step on it. Exactly, right, yeah. And so I'm like this is bizarre and then he said something that kind of like uh changed my life well first of all he says they deliver it like pizza yeah and that was weird so he's like they they an addict will call an operator you know the operator is like standing by and uh the operator then calls one of these drivers who's around the town tooling around town with a mouthful of heroin.

Right. And they meet the guy in a Burger King parking lot or a Target parking lot, some parking lot, something like that. So the difference was, it's no going to the bad neighborhood. There's no like- Convenience. It's all about convenience and customer service and bringing the dope to you. And that sort of like, that plays in, which you'll talk about later, I'm sure, is just the shifting of the clientele. Yeah, that's another point.

But what's a change your life? Then he goes, he says this. He says, the crazy thing is, man, they're all from the same town. Now, I had lived in Mexico, and I was, I think, probably especially ready to hear that. Because when I lived in Mexico, that's a very common phenomenon where you have one town where everybody does the same job. Everybody's a construction worker. Biggest example is all the immigrants. Everyone from one town is a landscaper in Dallas, for example. There's a town I wrote about in my first book where everybody makes popsicles and they have

these popsicle shops all over Mexico. One of the great, great business stories of Mexico, how poor rancheros got to be middle-class business owners through the popsicle shops all over Mexico. One of the great, great business stories of Mexico, how poor rancheros got to be middle-class business owners through the popsicle. And then in front of the town, you go to the town. I went to this town several times. You go to the town, and in front of the town is a two-story concrete popsicle. It's amazing.

Somebody put a photo of it on my website. And also, that brings to mind the nature of a different sense of competition in Mexican businesses that you made a point later in the book to kind of talk about how, you know, there was no shame in selling the exact same thing down the street. The only angle you have is to undercut the guy a couple blocks away. And that's a frequent thing if you go to like artisan villages where everyone makes the same kind of ceramics. Right blocks away that's a frequent thing if you go to like like artisan villages where everyone makes the same kind of ceramics right and that's you see this in like

michoacan states like that or oaxaca you see this where people just sell the same stuff and and how do you make a bit living at it well you just yeah you you undercut and eventually it means it's a you know row to the down you know row to the bottom basically but when he told me that there's for there i was like ready to hear that i've been to and the reason that's true is that that um in mexico it's very hard for people at the bottom to get the kind of access to education yeah that will allow them to become a mechanical engineer for example just really hard to have so you get these villages where everybody does this there's a village village near Mexico City where everyone, literally true, everyone is a pimp.

And they all pimp girls to Mexico City. And then they figured out Queens, New York. And they began pimping girls to Queens, New York and building enormous houses. You go to this house, you go to this village, and it's now packed with castles. And there's a four-story pagoda. And it's all built by construction workers from a village down the road. So what I'm saying is that when he told me that so wait what they they would go they would create almost franchises in queens with women from mexico basically families their families were all pimps

like the mom and the sisters and the wives and the and of course the men yeah would pimp out these very naive country girls in mexico take them to Queens, New York. It's a huge, huge business and made that village very, very wealthy. The name of the town is Tenancingo in the state of Tlaxcala. It's very well known as a pimp town. So, anyway, I was, like, ready to hear. I was like ready to hear that there. So when I, during that conversation, I realized there must be one town in Mexico where they sell,

where they sell heroin like pizza in Columbus, Ohio. And I thought, that's a hell of a story. And so I kept on and he said, he comes back on the phone. He goes, the name of the town is Tepic, Nayarit. And right there, I kind of knew that he was wrong because Tepic, Nayarit is a, is the capital. Tepic is this capital city of this little small state called Nayarit. And right there, I kind of knew that he was wrong because Tepic, Nayarit is the capital. Tepic is the capital city of this little small state called Nayarit. 350,000 people in the city.

That's not where these kinds of systems grow up. They're in small villages. And so I kept at it because I knew he was, he wasn't lying to me. He just didn't have the right information. I knew he was wrong. Right. And so what I did was I just wrote to all these guys. The other thing he told me was, we have arrested these guys and arrested and arrested, and

they just keep on sending more people. We put these guys in prison, and more guys arrived two days later or a week later. And so he gives me a long list of all these guys they've been died in, put in federal prison. I write to about, I can't remember, 15, 20 probably of of them and hey say would you like to talk about your heroin system that kind of that's the way i do my job as a crime reporter you just right reach out to people in prison that's a very effective straight question exactly you want to talk about this and and you get about a 10 response rate and and even though sometimes or no but but um you don't need many

to really tell you this the the beautiful full yeah yeah meat of the story which is what happened basically i waited for a month got no nobody you know responding and then one out of the blue i'm in my office little office like you got here kind of um in my garage and this guy calls and he says he's been doing he's doing 15 years for being the operator the phone operator in the pizza delivery system in Columbus. The dispatch. Right. And he says, no, we're not from Tepic.

We're from a small town called Jalisco. Now, that threw me too because Jalisco is actually the name of an enormous state where Guadalajara is located. So I'm thinking Jalisco, Nayarit, it sounds to the people who know a little bit like saying Arkansas, Nebraska or something. It doesn't make sense. And as he's talking, I'm Googling. And sure enough, there's a little dinky town called Jalisco right next to Tepic. It's about a few miles away is all. And I'm like, holy shit, man.

It became clear that there was like this one town. Because he knew the system. He knew how it worked. Yeah, yeah. Oh, he knew it all. He knew it all.. Yeah, yeah. Oh, he knew it all. He knew it all. But you also knew how these small towns worked. Exactly.

And this had to be it. And he goes, and then I said, well, but then see, the amazing thing was the dude starts talking about all these, he says, no, it's not just Columbus. And I'm like sitting there in my chair chair seeing this like enormous thing develop as he's talking no albuquerque yeah no you know charlotte minneapolis indianapolis reno portland seattle uh denver uh indianapolis on and on and i'm like thinking one town i looked it up 20 000 people in the town yeah the county is about 45 49 and i'm like and shit man this is like a massive a massive thing that there's one little town is a is a is a purveyor of black tar heroin to i count

eventually 20 states what town that the size of like this neighborhood almost you know and the and in your mind you're like this is the biggest story this is huge this is huge this is like my god i can't believe it and yeah and then see i begin to invest so i begin to write to more guys you know and and begin to call towns to find and what i find is that for so long towns in the states in the states these cities that he has mentioned and i the other thing i tell him is uh so when'd you guys go to new york because i figure i'm from the 70s i've watched all these heroin movies you know serpico French Connection all these great movies I'm thinking they got to be in New York because that's the heroin he goes no we never go to New York yeah I'm like what why because there's and

stupid me there's gangs there they got guns they're looking these guys yeah look these guys are looking for the easy way yeah the town that is like without competition has no gangs right has no button mafias no heroin oh and in many places no heroin almost at all right like columbus ohio which had virtually no heroin worth a name before these guys show up right and so anyway um i begin to to write to all these guys and then i start talking to cops and see what i found was the heroin had been such a low priority drug for so many years because you had cocaine and crack and meth and of course heroin was still stigmatized and it was a very specific client and also for many years the number of pop of addicts did not

grow right because it was needles it was dirty everybody yeah it was a while in new york in the 80s where the heroin grade got higher and you could snort it. And that kind of built a new market, I remember. But before that, it was really just for real dope fiends. Yeah, exactly. And so who cares? It's not a big deal. But usually I found one guy, one cop in each town who really, really knew his stuff.

And the first guy was a guy named Dennis Chavez in Denver. That guy's a walking encyclopedia, since just retired actually, a walking encyclopedia of information on the Jalisco boys. He's the one who coined the phrase, the Jalisco boys, which I use in my book. I found a dude named, a guy, I have a lot of respect for cops who have really dug in, like reporters trying to understand their beat, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Ed Rupplinger in Boise. Now, this guy speaks no Spanish. Yeah. And he just begins to notice this crew all of a sudden, the same way the DEA guy in Columbus began to notice. This crew driving around and all this stuff, the same story pretty much. See, he speaks no Spanish. He's all alone in Boise.

Nobody really knows of, thinks Boise. And he's trying to make connections and no one's taking- And his friends, his colleagues are all laughing at him. And he puts together the whole system from like, I don't know exactly how he did it, but he's a tenacious cat and a guy who just kept at it and becomes to understand that Boise is actually a minor franchise spot for a family that actually owns like eight franchises in Denver, Portland, Reno, I think it was, L.A., Southern California, Honolulu, et cetera. And he puts it on, traces it all back to this one guy back in Jalisco, Nayarit. Tejada? Was it Tejada?

No, it was Garcia Langarica. This guy, because of a lot of problems convincing prosecutors that this was an important case in the middle of the meth war, in the middle of the coke thing and all that stuff. This guy, Poya, this is his nickname, Garcia Langarica, basically is still down there. He's not been prosecuted. But the amazing thing

was i i talked to this guy he's he had retired too he was he was uh off the job and i called him and he's like what yeah that case was like eight ten years ago and he couldn't believe that someone wanted to talk to him about this the boise cop the boise cop rupplinger he was fantastic i just i like drained him and and then i went to Boise and he showed all these, this reporter from the LA Times and boy, what are you doing here? That just didn't make any sense. But I could see that this was this huge network of guys and they all designed, you know, they knew kind of what, what, what the public, what the cops,

what the politicians, whatever, what the media all thought was a pot was a great drug bust lots of dope lots of money lots of toys like cars and jewels and whatever boats and stuff and they designed a system to look exactly like the opposite right of that and that started kind of in california right in southern california not far from here like in canoga park van eyes and and a couple of things happened. This is where that town kind of migrated. The Jalisco. From Jalisco.

People, legit migrants, guys who were working in a- It's a sugar cane town. Right. Sugar cane, avocados, stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. Avocados came later, though, right? Later. But, I mean, right now, that's kind of what they do.

And they moved there. To Canoga Park. Canoga Park and Van Nuys. Yeah. they do and they they moved there and a few canoga park canoga park and ben eyes yeah and a few of them had um connections to the mountains of naira where the indians grow the opium poppy and they knew how to cook black tar heroin a little bit like uh well no the guys from jalisco a few of these two or three of these families and they they knew how it's a little bit like a backyard barbecue kind of process it's not that difficult to figure out.

They begin selling this stuff as a sideline, I think, to junkies in the park. Yeah. You know, cutting off little pieces of addicts who come up to them. But a couple of things happen in LA that are really important to all of us. First of all, they're all from the same town. Yeah. So they can't kill anybody who comes up to compete with them. Right. Right?

Yeah. They just got to let competition happen. Yeah. Because they know where each other's moms live, basically. You don't go shooting each other if you know where each other's moms live. Right. Right? Yeah. They just got to let competition happen. Yeah. Because they know where each other's moms live, basically. You don't go shooting each other if you know where each other's moms live. Right. Right. Well, then what happens is the cops begin to arrest these guys because there's more

of them. Yeah. And it can become more obvious. But also really important in L.A. is that in the early 1990s, the Mexican mafia prison gang sends out directives to start taxing all the street gangs, the Latino 1990s, the Mexican Mafia prison gang sends out directives to start taxing all the street gangs, the Latino street gangs. They need to start taxing all the dealers in their area. For tar?

Anything, whatever you're selling, dope of any kind. Right. And funnel the proceeds to the Mexican Mafia. It's a very well documented thing. It's a kind of a protection racket. Yeah. It's called taxing. Right.

And it's all over Southern California. Latino gangs doing this for more than 20 years now. Sending money back to Mexico. No, no, no, no. The Mexican mafia is the prison gang. They don't have any connection to Mexico. They're called the Mexican mafia. It's a prison gang that really controls the Latinos, the street gangs in the prison system. But they figured out that on the outside were all these gangs in this area and some others

that were willing to do their bidding, like damn right, whatever you say. Even though you're in prison, I'm on the street because I'm one day going to go to prison and I want to be on your good side. And I look up to you like you're some kind of Major League Baseball player or something like that. So they begin to order these gangs. And through the 90s, this is what happens. All these Latino street gangs begin taxing the local dealers and funneling the money to the mafia members. With the threat of pissing off.

Yeah. Whatever. In order to avoid that, the Jalisco boys go to cars. So if you're not standing on the street or in a house, it's not so easy for them to tax you. So they go into cars, larger clientele. They begin to move out from there. And so that forces them- That's the basis of the business model.

Exactly, right. Of the dispatch model. It was pagers, that kind of thing. Pay phones and pagers. One way or another. But that was back then. And as they saturate a market, they do what any capitalist enterprise does when it sees its profits drop. And that is they expand.

They go for new other markets. And that's what they did. So in the early, well, by 1990, 91, 92, they were moving to Pomona, Ontario. They were moving to Reno. Portland was a big place. And at that time, what they would do to drum up business is they'd find the old junkies or they'd go to the methadone clinic and they'd hand out samples. You have to understand, these guys knew no English.

They don't know the methadone clinic world. So how do they get kind of Indian guides? I feel like the Spanish explorers use, you know? Sure. And the junkies are that. And then they just find them and they spread out. Exactly. And they're the ones who take them to Honolulu, to Portland. Just find the junkies are that and then they just find them they spread out and they exactly and they're the ones who take them to honolulu to portland just find the junkies yeah

and they give them free dope for uh for the introduction once you figure all this shit out where when when is the next epiphany that the that oxy the oxycontin epidemic yeah played directly into the evolution of the the middle class white junkie phenomenon. That came- And also the working class and poverty class white junkie phenomenon. That came more later when I began to, because the obvious question, one of the obvious questions I had out of Huntington, West Virginia was not just why is black tar heroin there, but why is there any appetite for heroin

at all? I mean, I don't consider West Virginia or didn't consider West Virginia a big heroin place, right? I mean, it's just not, that wasn't the place, you know, Chicago, it was East LA, it was New York. And then also in the late 80s and the 90s, you heard Portland, Seattle, but that was all part of this, right? But I didn't see West Virginia.

So my question was, why would they have any appetite at all? And little by little, I began to realize, I was almost done with that story for the LA Times when I began to realize, there's an even bigger story. You're publishing these pieces because I noticed in the book, it is written in short bursts, which is great for me, that you were organized eventually. Sure. So they were printed. So you were writing on black tar and all of this. And I got to the end of that story to finish that story up. And I began to realize, you know, if I had two more, three more days worth of space,

I would write about the bigger story, which is OxyContin. And all these guys, all these addicts, like almost 100% of the new heroin addicts like almost 100 of the new heroin addicts are folks who are um started with pills with pain with pain pills through one way or another and i begin to think damn this isn't this so what i'm seeing here is actually the second half i backed in right to the story most people come to the story through the pills you know so what was that what was the moment in the garage where you you were like holy shit um i think it was talking early well a couple of times first it was i think talking with i believe it was a cop in huntington later uh and he was saying telling me this and i began to think damn this is this is really big but it wasn't until i started the book uh in 2012 13 that i began to realize the whole, I had no background in health reporting.

Right. I was a crime reporter and an immigration reporter and stuff like that and border reporter. And I had, so I know I had no background. So I began to talk to historians of pain. Yeah. There is such a thing. In fact, you see- That's where you started? Yeah. Because you knew that the oxys were coming through the pain management system.

Right. I kind of had figured that out. And I spoke with a great professor over at UCLA, Marsha Meldrum, who is a historian of pain, literally. And they have a big library collection called, I can't remember the full name of it right now, but it's a collection of oral history of pain, talking to doctors and how do we treat pain and when do we recognize it. And she was the one who kind of laid out for me the whole history of pain,

a lot of which I talk about in the book. And then she talks about how in the 90s, a lot of these pain specialists began to lobby very hard for a very much more liberal use of these pain pills. They were joined, very importantly, by certain pharmaceutical companies, especially Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin. But previous to that, talking specifically about pain, nonspecific pain, pain as pain, talking specifically about pain, nonspecific pain, pain as pain, that what you do in the book that I thought was fascinating was that this was not a, this was not a practitioner before. You know, pain was something that doctors didn't understand. Yes.

Pain was something that like, I don't know what to tell you. I can give you this. I can give you that. Yeah. I'm sorry you have that. If it's injury related, it's more understandable, but it's fibromyalgic or it's nonspecific. Most Western doctors are like, I don't know what the fuck to do here. Take a pill.

Right. But not opiates necessarily. Yeah. Maybe Vicodin, maybe codeine, Tylenol, whatever, which are mild opiates. So what became fascinating to me in the book was the history of pain is what you call the fifth vital sign. Right. history of pain is what you call the fifth vital sign right that it became established by a certain uh uh medical institutions as being you know something we need to treat our hippocratic oath

is to help and and we got to help these people right right and that that i learned later as i was doing the book as i got into the book i'm not sure i knew all of that that part of a journey of a book is you find new things out and you let the facts take you instead of having some very concrete way. Because pain management is something in my lifetime, it's in your lifetime. And you sort of flesh it out in the book as how it evolved as a business and how it eventually corrupted as a business. But what was fascinating to me all the way through it is that I'm sure from talking to the woman about the history of pain that you you became mildly obsessed with the idea of the morphine molecule yeah that that's kind of where the book begins to be less of a crime book

and i begin to realize there's this unseen particle yeah right right in one plant that bizarrely this plant has evolved to become absolutely essential to the dominant mammal on the planet, right? The opium poppy I'm talking about. And within that opium poppy, there is a morphine molecule. And within that molecule, we have the possibility of heaven and hell. Freedom and complete enslavement. But it's historical. This is not last 20 years.

This is hundreds of years. I know. This is kind of what- Smoking opium all the way back. Right, exactly. And it starts in it. So we've got a long history as a species with this plant. And it struck me as this particle, this molecule could create the most blessed relief.

Right. Freedom from the most tortured kind of pain. Worst pain. And it could also be the source of the greatest debasement, the greatest enslavement we've ever known. People who spoiled kids who will then walk through the snow for five miles to find their junkie or you know or prostitute themselves or kill people or sleep in a railroad car all of that in one little thing and i began to understand the basic question here

is can mankind have it all can we have uh freedom from pain and freedom from addiction. You know, all these like philosophical questions, and it hit me that I'm not used to- That's not a journalist's area. And much less a crime reporter's background. You know what I'm saying? It just doesn't make any, that's not what you usually do. It really took you to task as a human thinker.

Yeah, exactly. And it became a big part of the book because as it turns out, we've been trying to find that pill for a long time. That's what they thought OxyContin was a species, but also here in the United States tried to find this drug, this holy grail, couldn't find it. Finally, what they decided was maybe the key is not in the drug, but in just simply a different way of administering it. So OxyContin comes along as this drug that is going to, because it's like leaked into your system, a time released into your system over 12 hours right

that maybe a new way of administering an old drug is really the answer they certainly underestimated the smarts of junkies yes figure right but also they also i think they also really the other thing they did was they they began to believe kind of in a religious fervor this kind of religious fervor gained gained power within this uh movement and the pain management pain management movement to say yes we've got it we've got it and and the evidence that that this would not addict people was uh nil well that way you that's all through the book and that was interesting to me because that was the journalist whatever uh existential and and philosophical conversations you were having with yourself, is that what these doctors were hanging their beliefs on,

that the rate of addiction is low if the person is in real pain, was like this, the amazing moment in the book is like with this Dr. Jicks, what was it, the Jicks Johnson? No, Herschel Jick and Jane Porter were the people who wrote it. A letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, right? It's because, see, at that point, people wanted to believe. I know, but it was like, but once the letter is out there, it was taken out of context. Totally.

The information was not substantiated by any research, and it just became this gospel. Gospel, and nobody, it just took its own life. It became viral. Yeah, the letter is, just to explain to just took its own life yeah the letter is just to explain to your people who are listening to the letter says uh that this this doctor has gone through a database of hospital patients and found uh and asked the question how many received narcotic pain relievers while in hospital and how many of those got addicted to them and this was from 1980 and he writes this letter saying in in my hospital database, I found 11,000 people got these medicines

while in hospital, and four got addicted. The New England Journal of Medicine, in its letter to the editor, publishes this letter. Under the headline, Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics. The worst headline.

I mean, just an amazing thing because this becomes the cornerstone, the intellectual cornerstone. It's so funny because it's really equivalent to that clickbait in a way. Pre-clickbait. Absolutely. It's like, read this letter, read this letter.

It doesn't mean anything. And this guy never intended that. He forgot about the letter. I know. That was the most hilarious thing about, in a darkly funny way, is when you go back to talk to him, you finally talk to him. He's like, what? What are you talking about?

Well, by that point, but it took years for him to figure out that his letter had been cited over and over something like 900 times right it's cited and used to substantiate the business model of oxycontin right which they they rammed down the country's throat right exactly and oxycontin is crucial to all this there would not be a heroin problem in america right if it were not for oxycontin because oxycontin unlike the vicodin the percocets and stuff which which have tylenol and acetaminophen in them um so you can mess around with those pills but if you really want to develop a very large tolerance addiction to those you're going to just destroy your innards your liver and kidney so oxycontin has no no tylenol no acetaminophen. It's just straight dope, straight oxycodone, which is an opiate very similar to heroin.

So it serves to be the bridge between those low-dose pills and heroin. It builds up people's tolerances to 200, 300, 400 milligrams a day. So they're paying on the street after a while 50 cents to a dollar a milligram. That's 100, 200, 300 bucks a day. They are desperate to find something cheap that 100, 200, 300 bucks a day. They are desperate to find something cheap that will take care of their addiction every day. And Mexican heroin is the answer, but would not have gotten there had it not been for the bridge of OxyContin.

Well, had not all those addicts been created and the pill mills created them to a degree, right? I mean, because that seems to be the bulk of it, is that once this information, this that was really misinformation, contextually speaking of the JICS quote, once the pharmaceutical company, specifically Purdue, got hold of that,

and the the american medical association had uh over overrode the stigma of prescribing opiates which they were nervous to do for a reason see that's the weird thing about the book too is that like the reason there was a stigma was because they knew there was a good reason they knew they had we had 5 000 years of experience as a species with the opium right they knew everybody knows that you know two things great pain painkiller and very addictive in the same common sense medicine and docs knew that back then and that's why it was and that's why purdue had a hell of a time because they had to override common sense medical school teachings uh kind of a a collegial kind of attitude about people who prescribe those as being kind of quacks.

There's a whole lot of attitudes in the doctor's world. Well, they found that one doctor, though, the champion, the whole- Portnoy. Portnoy. Russell Portnoy, right. And you think that his intentions were pure at the beginning? I'm not sure if pure is necessarily the word. I would say that I don't believe him to be some kind of snidely whiplash kind of evil guy.

He was- Wanting to addict a country. Right. No, no. He was formed in the period when doctors would never prescribe this stuff. I mean, they would never, people would be screaming in agony and dying of, you know, like horrible things for three months to live. And still docs would not prescribe these pills that could give people a three month end of

life of, you know of decent freedom from pain. And so if you grow up in that, if you're an idolistic doctor and you grow up and you see that firsthand, I believe it can really sear you. It can really affect you. And I believe that's kind of what happened with a lot of those younger fellows. They then began very, very irresponsibly, in my opinion, to take money from these pharmaceutical companies as well. And that's where people begin to believe, hey, these guys' motives are questionable.

Well, having grown up with a doctor, I know that they're relatively myopic. They're not really knowledgeable in the world of addiction or psychological therapy. And you were pretty clear in the book that the insurance company's role in this was not minor in that they limited a doctor's ability to do his job thoroughly. So, you know, you have Western docs who are either orthopedics or general practitioners who are dealing with chronic shoulder pain, chronic back pain, whatever the hell it is, workman's comp money, and they don't have time or the real philosophical or experience to sort of really kind of let's see where you're at.

Plus, you know, you've got these doctors who are meeting face to face with these pain patients who are insistent, begging, crying, mad, whatever you want, a variety of things. And it's very difficult for you as a doctor to say, well, I got something to help you, but you can't use it because it'll addict you. They wanted freedom or permission almost to use these drugs. And because they had these patients coming in using up all their time that they didn't have and all this stuff at the same time too, it's really important that in some areas of the country, particularly Rust Belt, Appalachian areas, you get the doctor is the key to a

life of, to a post-industrial life strategy. Meaning the doctor can get you with the right comments on a form or the right check boxes, can get you a worker's comp, can get you SSI or SDI or a variety of things like that to allow you to then go on with your life after the mill closed or the coal mine closed or the steel plant closed or whatever. And that's why I believe the pharmaceutical companies knew that. They knew that in certain areas, they had data that showed that doctors in those areas

prescribed more than doctors in other areas. And that's why they hit those docs. They were already, those docs were already used to prescribing and going along with people that they saw who were in dire straits, who were really in serious trouble economically, sometimes physically too, but a lot of times it was more economic than physical. So you're saying that because they were in existential pain due to economic realities and they were hopeless. Or they just needed that government check to get them through. So you're saying, okay, so the doctor's signature is just a government check so they can survive, not necessarily to give them drugs.

No. In fact, at first it was more, I want that SSI or SSDI check. So I can live. But then pills come out. The pills come out in a big way and they swamp those areas. Ohio, West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee. And they swamp those areas. And all of a sudden, the great thing that you receive is not that $600 or $1,000 check.

It's the Medicaid card where you can go to any doctor. And now there's all these doctors wanting to prescribe these drugs. And you can get them to prescribe. And for a $3 copay, the taxpayer will pay for you the the patient to go to any pharmacist who will give you the drugs and and and and get them and get them uh fulfilled and then you can sell those on the street right for ten to eight six eight ten times what they're worth so that begins the the the economy but but that was completely assisted and enabled by, you know, you focus, you know, the book, the title of the book is Dreamland, and that's about a pool in Portsmouth, Ohio. Right.

And which ironically becomes the most devastated area. Yes, the pill mill capital of America. Pill mill capital of America because of legislation that enabled it. And then, you know, because of a very bankrupt and corrupt doctor who created the model, the franchise model. That's the interesting thing about this. When you start talking about opiates, you immediately start talking about business models

because it creates customers who cannot not buy your product every day. And so that's what I learned also in the course of writing this book. He creates the idea of the clinic, the doctor's clinic, which is just basically printing out prescriptions, handling hundreds of patients a day, people coming from all different counties and states.

But their money is made on cash per prescript. Like, you got a $200 to $500. You cannot get these prescriptions. Federal law says you cannot get these prescriptions filled over the phone with some exceptions. And so you got to be in person. So every time you go in, you got to pay a couple hundred bucks. And these docs are going to say,

hey, no insurance accepted here. Cash, 200, 250 bucks a day. And they will, that's a huge amount of money every day that you're seeing. And of course you get lines out the door, people in their pajamas, because they don't, they just want their dope.

They don't give a damn where they're. So, but these docs, the reason why it becomes dubious is they had to know there was no way. Of course. Here's the thing. Doctors view this as this great, great boon or great tool for their practice.

I think in the long run, it actually was a curse. It, a lot of doctors, and i'm not saying i'm not sure about proctor but there are other doctors who who do not start out to be scoundrels and scandalous quacks you know they start thought they were helping people and and little by little they get worn away that ethical compass that moral compass and that that aligns with the tolerance of these patients growing so also and the the insistence, damn it, doc, I need this.

Yeah. That kind of thing. And once you get worn out on that, and after a while, it's like, oh, what the hell? Everyone's saying I should do this. The JCO or this medical institution is telling me that pain is the fifth vital sign. We have to treat this. And pretty soon, you just go with the flow. Plus, the money is huge.

It's just monumental. And then after a while, those doctors who may have started out as like really great, you know. Decent guys. Decent people get worn out and corrupted. Yeah. And then also, like I thought, another pivotal point was that the doctors who knew exactly what they were getting into, that the way they hired these

doctors is because like any idiot could open up a pain management clinic. They just need to find some bankrupt, morally bankrupt doctor to write the scripts if he still had a license. So they would find these docs that had been kicked out or accused of things in one state, but were still licensable, I guess. So one of the ironic things is in this area where there's no jobs and no money, presumably, and where it's very difficult to find healthcare, all of a sudden you get the arrival of all these doctors to this area, except for they're all alcoholics or drug addicts themselves.

Some of them. Accused murderers. Exactly. And they all come, and it's like I viewed it as you know um when jesus is on the cross and they give them vinegar water what you know give them vinegar that's kind of the way it was this these these these crucified regions please give us health care and all of a sudden who arrives junkie docs these scoundrels these guys who are already like and or they're senile or you know it's just it's it's just this awful um uh story of how they just destroy the people.

But it's all about business. So the model that Proctor, who is this massive scoundrel from day one. He's out now, by the way. But he wouldn't talk to you, right? No, he wanted money. He wanted money. He wanted me to pay him. I was like, hey, man, I don't pay felons for...

But so that business model spreads to Florida. And the Florida model, which everyone heard about those pill mills, this became a currency among these desperate and poor people was getting these pills, driving busloads of junkies to get their pills, splitting up the pills, using them as currency. And then the Walmarts were being pilfered daily and fencing stuff for pills. There was an entire economy built around moving these pills and robbing Walmart. Yeah, and Walmart, I have this theory.

Here's my theory. Yeah. That if in all these small towns in that area of Columbus to the north and eastern Kentucky and West Virginia and all these areas, had there been a more robust, locally owned economic kind of ecosystem, local stores and merchants, everyone knew each other, this would not have spread as fast. It spread fast because of Walmart. Walmart, first of all, has taken up all those stores on Main Street and plopped them down

onto the floor. So you can buy a T-bone steak and children's clothes and an Xbox and a chainsaw in the same place, right? The same cart. And they are not as – those greeters getting $9 an hour who are 65-year-old ladies are not very – they're not going to face off with some white-eyed junkie, right? So they end up – Walmart becomes the one place where you can go and easily steal what you need for your addiction. Yeah. You don't have to go to four stores along Main Street where all the former owners would

have, the owners would have known you. Oh, yeah. Would have been there to defend their shop. Who's the shady guy? Exactly. We know these guys. Yeah. You're not coming in the store, let alone like I'm going to watch you.

So Walmart becomes this one place. And so you see these pilgrimages of people in Portsmouth down to the Walmart to figure out how to steal their daily. And the other thing is OxyContin was really important in this as well because the other pills don't require like a huge amount of of um uh they don't require a huge amount of capital outlay each day you got you want to get get uh you're you're feeling well on vicodin uh yeah that's going to cost you have two or three pills are going to cost about 10 bucks right oxycontin ups this ups the ante incredibly so now you're at your addiction again is 100 200 bucks the only place you're going to figure out where to steal 100 to 200 bucks worth of stuff is in walmart and it just so happens that in all that area a lot of those towns

had had their main retail you know right almost everywhere but it's empty it's interesting because it's like you know metaphorically you know walmart is the harbinger of the end of small town America. Right. And in this case, like almost literally. Right. And Oxy is the death. Yeah, exactly.

Right. And what ends up happening is my feeling as I got into this book was, this is why I focused on the pool. The swimming pool in Portsmouth, Ohio was a stand-in for all the communities that have been destroyed. That pool was like this life-giving force. It was one of the largest pools in America. In the 50s?

The size of the football field from the 20s till when it was born, when it was built. It was a place where the cycle of life took place. So you were, you know, everyone like that was the Baytown babysitter. Everyone saw each other. You grew up under the watchful eyes of all these different people. And last thing you want to do was get kicked out of Dreamland for the summer because it was like the place where everyone hung out. And the other thing was, this guy who owned it, it was like another time in America where this guy was this corporate owner. He owned a shoe factory.

He didn't need the money from the pool. So what did he do? He invests in the pool itself. More land. Yeah. Basketball court. Picnic table. Responsible corporate. shoe factory he didn't need the money from the pool so what did he do he invests in the pool itself more land yeah basketball court picnic table responsible corporate precisely yeah and this guy puts the money back into the pool so basically life it's the cycle of life you're a toddler yeah you're at the shallow end you're in you're in middle middle school you're in the middle of the pool with all your friends the deep end is for the high school students and the young adults you a lot of people lost their virginity out in the pool out in the the fields of dreamland

and their kids start again so that's and once you lose that this is the crucial thing it seems to me one they lost that in 93 they grew they dug it up and it's like a joni mitchell song you go there now it's a big parking lot with um a o'reilly's auto parts store there in 1993 they lost that they'd lost the steel factory they lost the shoe factories and in 93 couldn't keep the pool open anymore they it got dug up and paved over and it was almost like they lost this this part of themselves or this this this societal immune system went away. It was like the Indians when vulnerable to smallpox when the Europeans came over.

You know, they're just... And so that whole town just is totally vulnerable. Everybody goes indoors. There's no place. Walmart takes the place of Dreamland as the place where you see everybody. Hey, not for very long.

You know, hey, how you doing? That kind of thing. But no, there's no other public place to commune, to be a part of the human society. And everyone goes into it. And then the pills come and just lay waste, just lay waste to that town. But my feeling is, had they had this community that was destroyed over a period of about 15, 20 years, had that been able to stick around, these pills or the heroin would never have the problem that became and in portsmouth well yeah right and all over and i think also you know you sort of spend some time in the second or towards the end of the book about the isolating nature

of opiates and where they're done and how it's done and how it's a yeah a weird secret in your room kind of thing and then like it evolves like and i guess to bring the helisco guys back sure you know they start to become predators around these pill mills around there. Well, one of the things that happens is that I thought was wild. One of the guys I wrote to turned out to be the most important person in the whole story, the guy called The Man. The Man, yeah.

Yeah. This guy was, I didn't know who he was. I just wrote to him because it was on a list of an indictment. And it was under the condition you wouldn't use his name? Is that how that works? Eventually. That's the, I interviewed the guy nine times.

Right. He lives in California. Yeah. And I just said, okay, in exchange for your story, I'll just leave your name out of it for the moment, until he dies,

then I'll make it public. But his story was crucial, and I think in like the Hall of Fame of dope trafficking, he's got to be one of them, because he was the guy, the Jalisco boy, first of all,

he's not from Van Nuys. Yeah. and he hooks up with the jalisco boys in um in prison in nevada in the 70s yeah and then early 90s okay so he gets out and and they have this system and and they have labor and they tell him look we have all this stuff what we don't have we don't speak english we don't know the methadone clinic world and we're not we don't know the methadone clinic world, and we don't know the addict world. You bring that to the table. So he becomes almost adopted. He's a Mexican-American guy, fluent in Spanish.

He goes down to Mexico, lives in Jalisco, has his crews up here working with his partner, and they do Reno, they do Portland, they do Denver. They create the cells, the dispatch cells. And then he decides to go out on his own and he is the one who brings by pure coincidence there's no conspiracy theory here he's the one who brings all that black tar heroin to columbus ohio first in 1998 summer of 98 i've tracked this i think i pretty much know exactly almost exactly when he got there like like probably July of 1998. He gets there just as we've got a pain revolution in America saying we've got an epidemic of pain.

We've got to do something about it. Just as pain is the fifth vital sign. Just as all these pain specialists are saying we've got to use all these drugs that we're not too afraid to use up to now. Just as Purdue Pharma is marketing OxyContin as if we're over-the-counter stuff. And just as the pill mills are exploding, beginning to explode as a business model, he arrives in Columbus. So the reason I focused on the Jalisco boys is not because they're the only heroin traffickers in America or even the only Mexican black tar heroin traffickers. They are, though, the kind of vanguard of those new way of selling dope which is without violence which is you know customer service yeah trying to but they wouldn't let people stop

exactly oh you're quitting here's a little here's some here's a gift yeah because i love you so much you're confusing my dope you know and then and then but they're also very important in all this that they're also the first ones to recognize the enormous heroin market that overprescribing of opiate painkillers implies. And to then systematically exploit it. So he follows the pills. He goes and where are the pills going? Charlotte, okay. Indianapolis, Nashville, places like that.

And then, of course, from there it explodes. And I think you're very empathetic in a a way, to these kids who are coming up. The law enforcement's constantly talking about, we can't stop it because they keep sending more of these farm kids. And all they're looking for, this is the difference, really. That's sort of interesting. It's somewhat similar to America, but it is uniquely Mexican in the way that what implies success there. There is some of it here in America, but all these guys want is 501 Levi's, a nice hat,

a horse, a house with a second story. These are all things, but that's really the end game for them. It's just that they are addicted to something. It just doesn't happen to be a black tar heroin. They are addicted to the idea of coming home the king. Being a big shot. Yes. Coming home

the king and giving away perfume to your girls and black Levi's 501s. But I didn't get the sense in reading it that any of them necessarily thought it would be forever. No, I don't think anyone thought it would be forever. They were trying to get the certain things that would allow them to be men of standing. Property, a nice used truck maybe some livestock uh yeah definitely livestock um they they wanted that and they but they above all what they they a lot of them went with the idea i'm gonna buy a taxi i'm gonna buy a little business i'm gonna you know yeah ends up none of that happened very few though because they come back and they want to be the king and they begin

to spread their money around and blow their money on. They get this narcotic boost from being the guy who pays for the beer in the plaza all night and all the girls want to talk to him. Right. Which is exactly what would have gotten them caught as drug dealers here. Exactly. Yeah. They don't party here. They wait to spend their money back home.

And that was the interesting thing. They're all on salary. They're all just, they don't live with anything. They're sleeping on the floor. You got to dispatch. They get paid. They move the product. And very few of them are on the dope.

If any of them. Heroin is still a very stigmatized drug in Mexico. People are on cocaine. People use meth because a lot of that has been created or stayed in the country before coming here. And marijuana is smoked by relatively few folks. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, marijuana is still viewed as kind of like a scuzzy, almost like a child molester.

Marijuana is kind of like a child molester. Yeah. But the scuzziest of all is certainly heroin. I knew, I heard of one guy getting addicted to his own product. Everybody else was just into alcohol. And they were also into sending their money back constantly because they never want to get busted with lots of money. Right, and some of these dopers were kind of like the guys.

Oh, no, of course. See, here's the thing about this. These guys are not cartel killers. This system works because it channels that desire of this young kid who's got nothing, who's got these cheap pair of jeans and no girl will talk to him. It channels that desire to become the guy or a guy of respect. Yeah.

Right? Anybody can use this system. You don't have to. A cartel is like a GM. Right. You got to kill somebody. And it's a very tough way to make a living, really, if you're at the bottom. And so these guys are seeing this system like, hell yeah, I'll do that.

Cash. really if you're at the bottom and so these guys are seeing this system like hell yeah i'll do that cash and the other thing is had there been another big job uh that that was kind of became popular in that area these guys might all be landscapers in dallas you know it just so happened that in this one village where everybody does this you know it's such a common thing as i said everybody does the same job yeah that in this one village you get guys who are making money selling heroin and everybody sees a whole generation, probably really two generations of guys grow up in that town seeing this as the way out. And it's an amazing transformation of the town, but it's a middle class transformation.

It's not like people have Maseratis and zoos. They have a better house. They have a nice Dodge truck. And they have more money to spread around, but not like their Chapo Guzman. Right, right. And I think it was important towards the end of the book, you sort of captured, you dealt a little bit with high school sports and also about basically what really turned the tide, unfortunately, but I think is right. basically what really turned the tide, unfortunately, but I think is right. Culturally, there's a racial divide implicit in dealing with this problem because it was all of a sudden a middle-class white problem,

whereas crack and the old-timey heroin, there was not the attention paid. Yeah, it's a complicated thing because you're absolutely right. Most of the people, I would say 90-plus percent of the people getting addicted to heroin nowadays are white. They could be low income whites in Appalachia, could be Charlotte's nouveau riche, but whatever the case, they're white. And so this has also created a new way of viewing addiction. Which is good. Which is good. Which is good. It's a way of saying we don't you know we tried this story is about isolation versus community right so for the longest time we've tried

we had the silver bullet of every pain you have we use this pill for uh every addict needs to be thrown in jail there's one way of doing everything and now we're coming to an idea like no we need to add new things and so what's happened is people are coming to view this as a disease uh treatment finally necessary finally after many years these are red states and that's where it's most And so what's happened is people are coming to view this as a disease, treatment is necessary finally after many years. These are red states. And that's where it's most interesting to watch. To see how red states-

Because it was all tough love, jail culture. Exactly. And that's where tough on crime had been political dogma. Right. No one questioned it. If you questioned it, someone to your right was going to out tough you on crime. Right. And now, for example, in Northern Kentucky, where I've spent a lot of time, it's just

south of Cincinnati, you cannot get elected in these counties as a Democrat, but you also cannot get elected as a Republican who wants to be just throw away the key kind of the old style. Well, they have heroin courts now. Exactly. Right. And they have a whole new change, like people are coming to understand. And it's really like kind of you know people now who are addicted. The pastor's son, the football. Right, but that took a lot.

You talk about it in the book that the stigma still was there with heroin, that you had these parents that were like their kids died of a gunshot wound, a self-inflicted gunshot wound by accident or a heart attack, but no one was willing to say. Or died suddenly. Right, and then they all started to find out that this tar had gotten hold of them. As a guy who's sober,

it's no big mystery. Once you smoke that shit for the first time because some of your friend turns you on to it or whatever, once it becomes easy, like dope. I mean, needles are still rough,

but I think a lot of those, it starts out with smoking that shit, foiling it. And then the needles needles like that that's all the relationship but it seems that that really blew up too that needles became destigmatized among a class of people that would never have thought and that was the the horrifying thing to the parents um when i uh when i start when i was in the middle of this book my wife and i talked a lot about how it was going and what the response to it would be. And we were both kind of convinced that the book would come out and die. Yeah.

Because nobody, the parents who had lost kids or kids were addicted, very, very few of them wanted to talk about it. It was like this silence. Everybody around the country had these kids dying. And nobody, it was like the plague, but nobody wanted to talk about it this one guy told me you know his kid had died um he said all around this country there are probably millions of parents who go to bed every night in the darkness of their bedroom holding on to a floating album crying and their biggest fear is that everybody else will figure out how their kid actually died yeah and it's a it's a sad, tough image that I held. But the truth was, I never,

I really thought that that was the way the book was going to be received. It's like, no one wanted to talk about this. I was wandering around America seeing all this shit, you know, and no one wants to talk about it. And I would say one of the gratifying, beautiful, sweet things is it

since the books come out the opposite has happened and I cannot tell you it's like this amazing I go to these book signings it's a it's a beautiful grandparents come up hold my hand don't want to let it go hug me and I'm like I was not expecting I was expecting I was expecting people to say yeah whatever and and let's move on because no one gives a shit about this topic. Right. It's junkies, right? Right.

And the truth is that, well, I felt that that was going to happen and it didn't. And since then, since the book came out, April of 2015, it's just been spooky because I felt all alone. I remember feeling so alone nobody was talking about this and even the parents if you can't I'm in the media if you can't get parents to talk about how their kid died you are you have lost the battle yeah you know one gives a shit and the politicians politicians began to pay attention you saw the Republican candidates yeah all these guys but in Ohio and all passed legislation. Yeah, Kasich was really great.

He passed Medicare, universal Medicare, against the opposition of his own party's state legislature, and largely to provide a treatment for every Ohioan, basically. I thought that was a pretty gutsy thing to do. But it was rare the politician wanted to talk about this because the parents were mortified. But now what you're seeing, and I know it must be so hard for these parents, and I feel for them when they do this, but they put in their obituary the truth. Like they'll say he died. And then at the bottom, he lost his battle with addiction,

with heroin, remembered parents, all that kind of thing. I put those up on Facebook now whenever I see them because I know how devastating, first of all, just to lose a child. I have a child of my own and I just don't know how you go on, honestly. But also to lose it to something so fucking shitty as black tar heroin or pills or this kind of addiction uh and that what that means is once when they've died it means you really have been going through five years of torture of the kid ending up in jail oh yeah stealing from you stealing from the grandmother all that stuff and why and you did amazing research with the people that were sort of like so many different disciplines in areas of government and law enforcement, you know, from the state coroner's office to the city coroner's office to the to the DEA to the courts themselves.

Yeah, that and that was the other thing about, you know, that given we live in this culture where everything is so fucking interconnected, it's so porous. it it's so porous there's no boundaries you know transparency is almost compulsive that all these things could be going on simultaneously with no fucking communication at all right to put it all together and it takes a reporter to do that but see that's the thing this is all about it's the drug itself is kind of like the the the the the symbol or the barometer of our times you are our own isolation heroin is the most isolating the most isolating drug one of the things i noticed as i was doing the story was i was in the middle of it i was realizing you know the only people i'm talking to are people with making uh with a government paycheck government's government workers this at a time when we have done our utmost to laugh at government to destroy government

to call government the problem. Here we are, the thin line between us and complete opiate breakdown are coroners, public health nurses, ER docs from county hospitals, cops, DEA, prosecutors, jailers, courts, et cetera. We have come from a time, the last 35 years, we have exalted the private sector. We have said, said oh wall street thank god you know you you are wonderful you're so efficient private sector is so efficient so so power job creating and government you're a bunch of dunderheads you're a bunch of losers you're a bunch of loaded bureaucracy all this kind of stuff and we don't want and you know crucially and all that we don't want to pay taxes that helps us allow allows us to understand to to rationalize how we don't want to pay taxes well because they're a bunch of incompetence and government and and the truth is this is the story of of the private

sector capitalism gone completely awry where they killed the towns exactly also all the profits go to private companies the private sector sector, all the costs, complete socialized- No corporate responsibility. None whatsoever. And at the same time, all the costs are borne by jails, ERs, coroners, et cetera, et cetera. You can name them. And to me, it felt like this was also the bigger story, that we had spent 35 years of saying government was the problem, the private sector, we should exalt it. All these people make so much money. I think basically Donald Trump is the outgrowth of that attitude.

It doesn't matter what he says. He's made a lot of money, right? I think. I don't know. He's the equivalent. Exactly. interesting about that and i talked about a little bit on this podcast is that the people that blindly vote for them are the people that are angry and hopeless and feel like their way of life is diminishing the same people that that get strung out at in the lower class on oxys and who are filled with nothing but hate for themselves and for a system that's gotten away from them and he

somehow because of his tone they feel like he speaks for them. And I really think, I would love to see a survey of how many people who support Donald Trump have opiate addiction in their family. Not because it addles their brain, that's not what I mean. What I mean is their American dream has collapsed. How much part of that is opiate addiction? Because it has a way of destroying any brightness in your life. Or your kid is well yeah or your kid is addicted or your cousin right and well if it's not the middle class in the lower class it's

like it is a an indicator of despair yes and and also but also kind of yeah an indicator and also some of course uh the cause of it sometimes too because once you get involved yeah no yeah once you get involved in it it it, it's not the addict who gets addicted. It's the entire family. It's the grandmother and the uncles. I thought it was fairly, you know, I was crying at the end because I'm very sensitive to this stuff after spending 17 years of my life in meetings and being wired to understand that struggle and the sensitivity to it that, you know, that, you know, now you have a sort of re-engagement with responsible pain management that is multidisciplinary, you know, certainly within the Veterans Administration and within some of the original pain management ideas.

Yeah. You know, around social work, psychology, diet, exercise, all that stuff, which was essential. And still you have a hard time getting insurance companies to pay for that stuff. Right. And then, you know, alongside of that, you've got in Ohio, there's a rebuilding going on and that some of the junkies are getting help and they're coming back to the town center. Right. There's another story, not that the first story doesn't exist anymore.

It's just that it no longer monopolizes the town. And I went back to Portsmouth. You know, when I was writing the book, I was very conscious of the fact that I did not want to write a book that was about despair and destruction and degradation and end of story. You can't write a story like that. I didn't want to read it myself if I wrote it. And so I was on a very interested in learning or seeing where a hopeful sign might be, but

I'm a reporter. I don't write for Hallmark cards. I don't write for Chamber of Commerce. So I needed to find something that was real. And so it was in Portsmouth that was surprising enough, the place where I found it. Because if you look on the surface, Portsmouth looks pretty bombed out.

There's still hookers by the tracks, a lot of abandoned buildings, not much community there. But as I went back, I went to portsmouth ohio six times great town yeah i met some fantastic uh really generous uh people when i was there and um what what what they showed me or what do i what i discovered was that there was finally once you separate supply from the addict once you cut down on those pill mills and get rid of them and legislation did that and the legislation did that then of course the DEA comes in and shuts them all down and prosecutes these guys. They're all, most of them are in prison now.

You get breathing room. The addict doesn't have to dope right in his face, you know, and has a chance. And when you get that, more and more people, by the time I was there, the last time I was there, it was 2,000 people were in recovery for opiate addiction in Portsmouth, Ohio. That's about the 10th of the town. Shows you how widespread it was. That does not mean that there are great jobs to be had in Portsmouth yet, or there is not a lot of addicts still, or there's not a lot of heroin.

It just means that there's not the, as one woman put it, it just means that the story of let's get high all day, steal the copper wire and get high all day, is not the only narrative in town anymore. And you're seeing people kind of break away from, it seems to me the town believed the dependency dogma that everyone else was trying to shove down its throat, that Wall Street and Chicago University of Chicago Economic School said, we are no longer a country of

manufacturing and we're a country of financial services and portsmouth bought that and let all those jobs go and just and and spent 30 years bickering and recalling and all kinds of crap and now it seems to me the town has done the crucial first step which is to take control of its own future and not believe the bullshit and that's why on a on a town believe the bullshit. And that's why- On a town government. Town government. But also, that's why I love the story, man.

This has brought tears to my eyes. The shoelace factory? The shoelace factory, man. Before, they would just say, you know, a town wanted- a business was going, oh, well, okay, what can we do? Woe is us, you know? The fatalism was drenching in the town. And this time, the last- this time the last this was the

largest shoelace manufacturer in america in its heyday still a very competent and and well-run company up to the point when certain of the family that owned it took over and then began to run down or downhill the guys folks in town just common ordinary schmoes like an insurance agent a lawyer construction contractor they say no we're not you cannot allow this to happen anymore you know damn it and so they pull their money and they buy it out of bankruptcy and they employ all these people and all of a sudden that town has like an example of how not to be an addict how not to be how not to be like fatalistic and inert and beaten down you have this and now they now they're exporting the shoelaces to Taiwan and to Mexico and Italy and places like that.

And they've got their fantastic company. Mitchell Lace? It's called Mitchell Lace. Yeah. But they changed the name when they out of bankruptcy to Soul Choice. But that was almost part of, I didn't think of that at first as a heroin story, but really it is. It's like you saying as a community, we're done taking the crap that tells us that everything that we do is pointless or history. Yesterday's news and might as well let go of it. And we're about ready now to take control of our own life, which is opposite of what an addict does right an addict

kind of relinquishes all all control to the enslavement to the to the to the to the molecule yeah and also it's easy to be cynical like that well that's a horrible part about this story is that you know when you know crack and heroin and cocaine and a lot of that stuff you know not so much cocaine because of where that went but certainly crack and the original heroin when it was kept in the lower classes or in the black communities there was a cynicism and a cultural racism around like who gives a shit right so now like even and it took a decade for this awareness to come right because all of a sudden you know and even the wealthy who were losing people were unwilling to get engaged a lot of see this a lot this had we paid attention to our great canaries in our coal mine in this

story, which is Appalachia, we would have noticed this years and years ago and really done something. But we're used to, as a culture, it's low-income whites. No one gives a damn about Appalachia, right? And Rust Belt places. They lost. They're losers. Right, right.

This is evolution. Exactly, right. And so why do we care about them? Well, we paid attention. We might have spared the rest of the country this. Have we ratcheted back significantly on how liberally we prescribe these pills, which is the whole problem. I mean, this is the first drug scourge that doesn't start with street mafias and drug dealers. It doesn't start with street mafias and drug dealers.

But also what's interesting, though, about this particular drug scourge is there was a racial component implicit in the marketing scheme. Is that these Jalisco boys were told on the top down, don't sell to blacks. Yeah, don't sell to blacks or Mexicans. as well is that we, this, we would not be discussing treatment. It seems to me as a, as an alternative, if this scourge had the same amount of violence associated that crack had. Right.

It doesn't seem to me like reasonable to assume that this is a, this, this has been, is a, has changed America because it's quiet. Yeah. And it's also young, silent,

white, well-adjusted kids. Right. Uh-huh. Yeah, and it's also young, white, well-adjusted kids. Right. And it's like football is a gateway to heroin addiction in America today. That's an amazing statement, but I believe it to be true. Well, you've proved it a little bit in your book. Yes, exactly. And all across the country, you see this. Why?

Because that's how you treat pain now, with these massive doses of pills. And that's how you treat pain now with these massive doses of pills. And that's how you get these guys back on the field. But to me, this is about how it seems to me that heroin is one of the most important forces for change in America today. I felt that at the end of the book. And it's like I couldn't put it down. Great. Couldn't put it down. And I think it's really, but I think it's really one of those books that will change anyone's mind,

not just about drugs or about business or anything else, but about what the fuck happened to America. You know, midway through the book, that was my realization. This is not about dope. This is not a crime story. This is what we've become as Americans. We've become so isolated. Consumption

is the road to happiness. The government is the problem. The private sector, we applaud any damn thing they do. Never send them to jail for anything, apparently. And heroin is the poster child, is the expression of all those values we've fostered over the last 35 years. The heroin addict is the guy who gets addicted to heroin, becomes narcissistic, hyper-consumer of product, you know? And the bedroom. In his mind. Exactly, right, of course.

And the bedroom is now the hallmark institution of this. It's not the crack house. It's not a shooting gallery. It's the bedroom where everyone grew up in. Exactly exactly and all the parents thought you were safer because no one wants to go outside we have this horrible fear no one's outside no one's playing in the streets we're all terrified of what the kid could endure or suffer a skinned knee or something like that outside and so it's they bring them inside it's in the it's in the bedroom where kids are are are hiding their dope shooting up their their dope, and dying.

Private bedrooms are like the hallmark institution of this whole epidemic. And it's like this shows us who we become. Heroin kind of shows us who we become. But it's also very important, very important to say this. It's about the only issue on which Republicans, Democrats can actually come together and find some kind of common ground. And so maybe within heroin, there is some optimism, the positivity, maybe as one woman said, maybe at the end, if we become more communally minded, if we don't applaud the private sector, everything, everything they do and all this, maybe in the end, and maybe if we raise our kids in a more communal way, maybe in the end we will say we will have heroin to thank. There you go.

Well, it was important work and it was great work. Oh, man, thanks very much. I really appreciate your interest in it. Thanks a lot, man. What a great conversation. What a great conversation. What a great book. Dark, not entirely hopeful, but there is some glimmers of hope

that have to do with changing legislation, changing how we look at drug addiction, changing some laws, progress, progress against closed mindedness make sure you vote tomorrow and thanks again to Sam

really enjoyed talking to him we've got something special for you on Wednesday if you need a little come down after the election we're posting the special show we made a year ago called Lauren's Stories the episode has only been available for Howl Premium subscribers, but on Wednesday, you can get it right here

in the WTF podcast feed. So enjoy that. All right? I'm going to play some guitar a little bit. This is the last guitar I'll play before the election. So? So what? so Boomer Lives! It's winter and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats.

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