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The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #1379 - Ben Westhoff

Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist who writes about culture, drugs, and poverty. His new book "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic " is available now on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Fentanyl-Inc-Chemists-Creating-Deadliest/dp/0802127436

Joe RoganhostBen Westhoffguest
Nov 7, 20191h 56mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:05 – 1:24

    From music journalism to rave deaths: discovering adulterated “molly” and China-made synthetics

    1. JR

      Hello, Ben.

    2. BW

      Thank you for having me, Joe.

    3. JR

      My pleasure. Um, this is a subject that scares the shit out of me. Um, you, y- and how did you stumble upon the story of fentanyl? Because weren't you, at one point in time, didn't you write about, like, rap music?

    4. BW

      Yeah, I have a book about NWA and Tupac-

    5. JR

      (laughs)

    6. BW

      ... and I interviewed, like, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, all those people. Yeah. But I was the LA Weekly music editor.

    7. JR

      Ah.

    8. BW

      And I started looking into this story about why people were always dying at raves. So, like, I don't know if you remember a few years back, every time there was a rave, they were like, "One person died, two people died or more."

    9. JR

      Yeah, yeah.

    10. BW

      And they always said it was from ecstasy. But I knew that ecstasy was really not that dangerous of a drug. You know, MDMA, pure MDMA, very few people die from that. So I was like, "What is going on here?" And I looked into it, and it turned out it was all adulterated. It wasn't real ecstasy. It wasn't real molly. It was adulterated with all these new drugs. And I kind of went down the rabbit hole, and I found out that all these new drugs were made in China, they were all synthetic, and there were, like, hundreds of them. And then it turns out that the most, you know, the worst of them was fentanyl. And that's how I got onto the topic.

  2. 1:24 – 2:37

    What fentanyl is (and isn’t): hospital origins, legitimate uses, and why it’s so dangerous outside medicine

    1. JR

      And fentanyl, m- most people think of fentanyl, they think of it as being a new thing. But it's not really a new thing, right? It was, wasn't it, it was invented in the '50s or something?

    2. BW

      Yeah. Yeah, it was invented by a Belgian chemist. Um, he was trying to find something that worked better than morphine in hospitals.

    3. JR

      But doesn't morphine work really good?

    4. BW

      Well, it does.

    5. JR

      (laughs)

    6. BW

      But for things like, um... Yeah, traditionally people have gotten a lot of mileage outta morphine. But, um, for things like open heart surgery-

    7. JR

      Oh.

    8. BW

      ... he wanted something that came on really fast and it lasted a long time.

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. BW

      And so he manipulated the chemical structure of morphine, came up with fentanyl. It was a blockbuster drug, you know, and still is used in hospitals all the time. Um, it's used, you know, there's the fentanyl patch for people with cancer, chronic pain. And then when you get a, like, a colonoscopy, they give you fentanyl before that. And then, uh, women who have epidurals during childbirth, that, I believe, is usually fentanyl. So it's still an important hospital drug.

    11. JR

      And so how did it come to be that this drug from the 1950s sort of reemerges? And it reemerged during the rave scene, is that what it was?

  3. 2:37 – 4:33

    Early illicit fentanyl in the 1980s: mystery overdoses, rogue chemists, and the ‘infinite analog’ problem

    1. BW

      It was actually before that. It first started killing people a little bit at the beginning of the '80s, and, uh, nobody knew what it was.

    2. JR

      And it was from China then as well?

    3. BW

      No. The, back then, um, it was these kind of mystery chemists, these guys who... There was this one guy in particular called George Marquardt, and he was, like, a, a genius maniac who read all the chemical literature. He learned about fentani- fentanyl. He's like, "I should try to make this. I bet it would be a hit with, um, recreational users." And so he started making it, um, and it stumped authorities because these people would die. They would have track marks in their arms like it was heroin. They would have syringes, but they tested them afterwards and there was no heroin in their system. And so they're like, "What is this?" And the only way they finally found out was that there was this, uh, scientist testing racing horses, and apparently fentanyl was being used to dope horses.

    4. JR

      What?

    5. BW

      To, like, um, so they would withstand more pain and would go longer and faster and could-

    6. JR

      Really?

    7. BW

      ... train harder. Yeah. And so, so this guy made the connection. He's like, "Oh, this is fentanyl. This is this new thing." And he actually predicted what was gonna happen. He's like, "We are in trouble now, because not only is there fentanyl, you can make a new... If you ban fentanyl, you can adjust the molecule, make another type of fentanyl. When they ban that, you can make another one, ad infinitum," basically.

    8. JR

      Wow. So the, the thing with horses would be that they would be in pain so they wouldn't run as hard? So they would force them to run harder by dulling the pain?

    9. BW

      I guess so. Yeah, I don't know all the details of it. But, you know, it's performance enhancing, basically.

    10. JR

      Doesn't it seem kind of counterintuitive? You would think that, like, an opiate would, like, make them sleepy, right?

    11. BW

      Well, I don't know all the details, yeah.

    12. JR

      Right, maybe it just has a different effect on horses.

    13. BW

      That's fair.

  4. 4:33 – 5:46

    The internet accelerates designer drugs: medical literature goes online and ‘legal until scheduled’ becomes a business model

    1. JR

      So then the internet comes along, and through the internet people started scouring the medical literature and scientific literature and chemical literature, and then they find fentanyl.

    2. BW

      Exactly. Yeah, because back in the old days, um, you, you know, scientists would publish a paper. They're trying to find a new drug that they can patent. Say the drug isn't a hit, no one wants to buy it. It goes on some dusty university shelf, never is heard from again. But in the internet age, all of these papers start going online. And so these rogue chemists that I reference in the title of my book, they start finding particular scientists who work on the type of drugs they're interested in, and then they start going through all of their papers and they pick out drugs that, uh, they think would work recreationally. And so when fentanyl first came out, it was totally legal. People, you could walk around with a giant bag of it. They couldn't do anything. And so it set in motion this sort of cat and mouse game between law enforcement and drug chemists, which really still persists to this day, although mostly in China now.

  5. 5:46 – 10:38

    Personal experience, heroin vs fentanyl, and why party drugs are now a ‘DARE nightmare’ in real life

    1. JR

      Have you ever experienced any opiates personally?

    2. BW

      I've taken... Yeah, like tramadol and like Tylenol 3 and stuff like that.

    3. JR

      Tylenol 3 has opiates in it?

    4. BW

      I think it's codeine-

    5. JR

      Hmm.

    6. BW

      ... which is a low-level opioid. And I don't know, to me, it, it always gets me stoned, but it never seems to, like, deal with the problem. I don't really like opioids, you know what I mean? It, like, I can't sleep and it's just not my thing.

    7. JR

      It's not your thing. Yeah. I, uh, had s- the old NyQuil had codeine, didn't it?

    8. BW

      Did it?

    9. JR

      Didn't it? Did we, we've been over this, haven't we?... didn't we try to figure this out? I, I remember I took NyQuil in the '90s, in the late '90s. I was sick. It was, like, the last time I ever took it. And, uh, it was wonderful. I was lying in bed-

    10. BW

      Uh...

    11. JR

      ... going, "This is amazing. I don't even give a shit if I'm tired or sick."

    12. BW

      Yeah. (laughs) A lot of people say that. It's like-

    13. JR

      I just sank into the bed. I was like, "Ah." And another time, I had a morphine drip. I had knee surgery and they gave me a little morphine drip and any s- every time I, I wanted, I could just hit this button.

    14. BW

      Uh-huh.

    15. JR

      And get a little bit more mor- I was just hammering that button-

    16. BW

      Uh-huh. (laughs)

    17. JR

      ... just lying in bed.

    18. BW

      (laughs) Well, that's, like, the irony of, uh, the opioids. It can produce the greatest pleasure-

    19. JR

      Yeah.

    20. BW

      ... and the greatest pain. You know, I think Sam Quinones said that. Like, um, "How can one molecule p- give you the greatest pleasure imaginable and the worst pain imaginable?"

    21. JR

      Yeah, Lenny Bruce had some crazy quote about it, something about that it was like getting hugged by God. I forget what the quote was. But, um, I, I, I've never had experience with heroin. Um, but I knew, I've known people that were addicts, quite a few, and a couple of them that died. And one of them that I knew, there was this guy who was a pool hustler, back in my pool playing days in New York. And, uh, his nickname was Water Dog. I forget his real name. I think it was Bill. (coughs) But, oh no, that was Buffalo Bill, was his other nickname. I don't remember his real name. But anyway, this guy was a, an elite pool player, big time gambler. But the thing was, he had to do heroin first. So, like, they would play games for, like, $10,000, these huge games. And all these guys would come from the tri-state area. They would come around to watch these matches and bet on the side. And, uh, Water Dog would go to the bathroom and everybody knew what was going on. He would go and shoot up, and then he would come and he would sit on a chair like this. Just sit there for, like, a half an hour. Just sit there.

    22. BW

      Wow.

    23. JR

      And then, and then when it was over, when the half hour was over, he would just, like, "Okay." And then he would go and play.

    24. BW

      He was in the zone.

    25. JR

      And he couldn't miss. And he was playing this guy, um, this, this dude that I knew named George, who was also a big time gambler. And he was just screaming and yelling that, "This motherfucker, when he's on this stuff, he can't miss. He can't-"

    26. BW

      Uh-huh.

    27. JR

      He had no nerves. Like, nothing bothered him. You could scream in his face, he would look at you like an alien. Like, it didn't, didn't bother him at all. Like, like an insect would look at you. And he had this incredible ability to play, like, uh, uh, at the very best while he was fucked up on heroin.

    28. BW

      Uh-huh.

    29. JR

      And I remember thinking, "What a bizarre drug." I mean, think about all the amazing artists that it's claimed.

    30. BW

      Yeah, I think about jazz and all the great improv-

  6. 10:38 – 16:34

    High-profile deaths and counterfeit pills: Prince, Tom Petty, Mac Miller—and fentanyl’s spread beyond “junkies”

    1. JR

      (laughs) So, uh, when, you know, what, what scares me is, you know, I mean, I just know people that party. I know people that take pills. And it seems like fentanyl is... Things are getting cut with fentanyl a lot.

    2. BW

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      It's not, you know, it's not a, an uncommon thing for all sorts of different drugs. Like, how many different drugs are cut with fentanyl, street drugs?

    4. BW

      Oh, man. It is, like, an awful time to be a young person on the party scene. Um, you know, like, when I was coming up, and probably when you were coming up, they said... The DARE program and all that, Say N- Just Say No, they made it sound like every drug could kill you, right?

    5. JR

      Yeah. Right.

    6. BW

      Now, unfortunately, that's, like, almost reality, that basically any pill or any powder, if you didn't get your pill from CVS, you know, your pain pill, or from a pharmacy that's legit, it could be cut with fentanyl. And that's how, uh, Prince died, that's how Tom Petty and the rapper Mac Miller all died, is that they were ta- thought they were taking legitimate pain pills.

    7. JR

      Is that really what happened?

    8. BW

      That is really what happened, yeah.

    9. JR

      So, Prince got his from this, the black market?

    10. BW

      Yeah, well, the guy who supplied Prince has been... He refuses to really say exactly where he got it. But he-

    11. JR

      He's still alive?

    12. BW

      The, the guy who got him for Prince? Yeah.

    13. JR

      Where is he?

    14. BW

      I don't know. I think in Minneapolis or something, yeah.

    15. JR

      They should find that fucking guy.

    16. BW

      Well, the doctor is also, um, like, settled, uh...... or something. I think the doctor might have been involved somehow. It's a mystery where he got these pills, but, you know, Prince was, like, doing the splits on stage at age, you know, 58 or whatever, and he was definitely a guy who walked around with a lot of pain. He was a Jehovah's Witness. He was not a recreational drug user as we think about it, you know. He was... He wanted pain, and I'm sure for years his handler or whatever was buying them off the dark net-

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    18. BW

      ... or whatever, and, and they were fine for years. But, but then a drug dealer trying to save some money, increase profits, cut it with fentanyl and-

    19. JR

      (imitates explosion)

    20. BW

      ... that's, that's how he died. And I heard Tom Petty actually, um, s- suffered an injury or hurt himself at one of his concerts, and he just literally walked outside and asked, like, the first sketchy guy he saw if he had any pain pills, and that's what killed him.

    21. JR

      Jesus Christ. Oh. God. And, and-

    22. BW

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      ... Prince needed hip replacement surgery, didn't he?

    24. BW

      I think that's right.

    25. JR

      Yeah.

    26. BW

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      It's so common, for some reason, with people who perform on stage, who do a lot of, like, jumping around and going crazy. My friend Maynard, uh, lead singer of Tool.

    28. BW

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      He was... He does jujitsu. He's really into jujitsu. And he's like, "Man, I just have no movement in my hip. My hip is, like, so locked up." And the doctor went to look at it, and they're like, "Hey, bro, you've... You got no hip left." Like, "It's just shot." And it was from stomping on stage.

    30. BW

      Oh, really?

  7. 16:34 – 19:28

    Contamination myths vs real risks: weed pesticides, synthetic cannabinoids, and how ‘Spice/K2’ is made

    1. BW

      Yeah, I'm... And so I'm already, like, trying to think about how I'm going to talk to my kids who are younger. But, like, you know, I hate to say it, it seems like marijuana, if you can smell the buds, if you can see them... You know, there have been kind of some scaremongering on the internet and certain police departments saying that there's been marijuana cut with fentanyl. But if you go on Snopes.com, they sort of debunk all that.

    2. JR

      They-

    3. BW

      So I think marijuana is... If you can smell it, it smells like weed-

    4. JR

      Mm.

    5. BW

      ... you're probably pretty safe.

    6. JR

      Well, there are a lot of people that are growing marijuana that are using pesticides and chemicals-

    7. BW

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      ... that are, that are dangerous. And there was one... What was the company that got caught recently, Jamie? They, they tested their stuff.

    9. NA

      Kushy Punch, I believe, yeah.

    10. JR

      Say that again? (laughs)

    11. NA

      Kushy Punch, with the microphone that I fucked up with.

    12. JR

      Oh, Kushy Punch. Um, we had a guy named John Norris on the podcast, and he wrote a book called Hidden War. And he started off his career as a game warden, you know, um, investigating people that caught too much fish-

    13. BW

      (laughs)

    14. JR

      ... things along those lines. And he thought, "Hey, what a great job this would be. I'm gonna get an- get a job in the great outdoors. I love the outdoors, and, you know, I'll get to do some good for the wildlife." Well, turns out along the way, they started stumbling upon these public land Mexican cartel grow operations-

    15. BW

      Oh.

    16. JR

      ... where they would grow these marijuana plants, just giant...... plots of them and they would use these extremely toxic pesticides.

    17. BW

      Oh, yeah.

    18. JR

      And also, they would use poison to keep animals out. And they had vats of this shit laying around, and some of the marijuana was actually infested with this shit-

    19. BW

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      ... or infected.

    21. BW

      Yeah. My friend, uh, Amanda Chicago Lewis is this great journalist, focused on, focused on marijuana. And yeah, she put the fear of God in me about those pesticides and carcinogens. And, um, the other thing is just, like, these, you know, these different oils that people are smoking, some of them are marketed as, like, all natural-

    22. JR

      Mm.

    23. BW

      ... but they find synthetic cannabinoids in them.

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. BW

      And, um, basically, you know, synthetic cannabinoids like K2 and Spice are what they're known as sometimes, and those are, people call it synthetic marijuana. But the big difference is that, um, THC is known as, like, a partial agonist. So it will, like, these receptors, it will s- it will activate them to an extent, you're chilled, it's relaxed. But the cannabinoids, they also, uh, interact with the cannabinoid receptors same as THC, but they're full agonists. And so, they make you basically, like, go crazy and your heart starts beating fast, you start, um... People overdose and die on these, these cannabinoids. And, um, they, these are all made in China too. I, I went into a lab-

  8. 19:28 – 26:49

    Inside a Chinese lab: Westhoff’s undercover visit, analog loopholes, and industrial-scale production

    1. JR

      In China?

    2. BW

      ... in China where they made these, and they made fentanyl analogs.

    3. JR

      They let you in?

    4. BW

      Yeah. I mean, it was, it was a whole thing. I, like, wrote them on the internet. I made a fake email address and I said, um, "I'm a drug dealer. I'd like to visit your lab. May I do that when I come to China?" And they said, "Yeah."

    5. JR

      What? (laughs)

    6. BW

      Yeah. That's like-

    7. JR

      Did you have a fake drug dealer name?

    8. BW

      Um, I called myself... What did I call myself?

    9. JR

      (laughs)

    10. BW

      Uh, I tried, I had this, like, Skype avatar picture where I looked like a bro, like a 23-year-old dude with, like, big hair, like, kind of a stoner look. And, uh, they just, um, they said, "Yeah, come by." And so, so I went to Shanghai, and, uh, I met this guy at the train station and he owned his own lab. And he asked me if I was a journalist actually, like, pretty straight away. He was like, "A- are you a journalist though?" And I was like, "No." (laughs) I was like, "No, crazy question. Do I look like a journalist?" No.

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. BW

      And so, he didn't, he didn't know whether to trust me, so we went to his apartment. It was, like, the top floor of this fancy high-rise. He's a total family man. He had, like... He lived there with his wife and kid and, uh-

    13. JR

      Stranger, brings a stranger to his home.

    14. BW

      Yep, yep. Um-

    15. JR

      Meets a guy who says he's a drug dealer.

    16. BW

      Yeah. (laughs)

    17. JR

      Picks him up at the train station, says, "Hey, come to where my kids sleep."

    18. BW

      Yeah, exactly.

    19. JR

      Wow.

    20. BW

      And so, then he showed me 'cause he had... They had the website. A lot of these companies in China, they make legitimate chemicals and recreational chemicals, and they specialize in drugs that are legal in China, but banned in the West, so banned in the US. So all of these-

    21. JR

      What is illegal in China?

    22. BW

      Well, in the US we have this thing called the Federal Analog Act. And so, that bans all these drugs even before they're invented. So anything that's similar to marijuana structurally or in effect, anything that's similar to opioids, it's just automatically banned, automatically scheduled. But in China, they have to do it one by one by one by one. And so, fentanyl itself was scheduled in China, was banned in China decades ago. But these chemists spe- like this one I met, specialize in this window when something is banned in the US, but it's still legal in China, but it's become popularized on the internet. So there's all these websites, these web forums where these, like, drug nerds basically are like, "You can't get fentanyl, but you can get this thing that's kind of like fentanyl." And that's what this guy said.

    23. JR

      That's a hilarious term by the way, drug nerds.

    24. BW

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      (laughs)

    26. BW

      Yeah, that's what they are.

    27. JR

      Jeez.

    28. BW

      And like Psychonauts, I'm sure you've heard of Psychonauts, right?

    29. JR

      Sure, yeah.

    30. BW

      They specialize in these new, uh, usually psychedelics they tend to prefer-

  9. 26:49 – 31:50

    Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS): bath salts, flakka, NBOMe ‘N-bombs,’ and prohibition-driven escalation

    1. JR

      This is where bath salts came from, right?

    2. BW

      Exactly, yeah. Bath salts tend to be cathinones, so synthetic cathinones. They're- have you ever heard of the khat plant, K-H-A-T?

    3. JR

      Yes. Yes.

    4. BW

      Yeah, so the-

    5. JR

      That's, uh, the- the, um, hijackers, uh, pirates in Somalia-

    6. BW

      They- they take that, yeah.

    7. JR

      They love to take that stuff, yeah.

    8. BW

      It's really popular in the Middle East. It's like a- it's a stimulant.

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. BW

      It gets you really, um...

    11. JR

      Have you tried it?

    12. BW

      No, I- I never have, yeah. But I, uh, grew up in Minnesota, though, and there's a big Somali population. And so a lot of- there was a big controversy in Minnesota whether or not to ban khat leaves from being sold in regular stores.

    13. JR

      Is it legal?

    14. BW

      I think it is, um, I think it's not legal in the US now, if I'm not- but I don't know for sure.

    15. JR

      Hmm, interesting. It's K-H-A-T, is that-

    16. BW

      Yeah, exactly. And so the synthetic cathinones are the synthetic version of that, like made in a lab, but they're- they're, you know, there's tons of different kinds. You don't know how strong it is. And the bath salts, um, they, of course, it has nothing to do with, like, salts for your bath, you know?

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    18. BW

      This was a misnomer and they also wrote- called them, like, incense.

    19. JR

      Mm.

    20. BW

      Sometimes plant food. And on the back of all of them, it would say, "Not intended for human consumption." So, that was, like, the way they got around, they thought they could get around the Federal Analog Act because part of the law says that something is automatically illegal if it's intended for human consumption.

    21. JR

      Mm.

    22. BW

      So, these guys were like, "Not intended for human consumption."

    23. JR

      Right. Just put it in your bath.

    24. BW

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      Your bath smells like fucking toxic chemicals.

    26. BW

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      Do you remember when the homeless guy ate someone's face? Remember that? And they said he was on bath salts.

    28. BW

      Yeah, but that was actually disproven. There was none found in his system.

    29. JR

      He was just crazy?

    30. BW

      Yeah, the cannibal, C- the Causeway Cannibal, I think they called him.

  10. 31:50 – 40:54

    Policy responses and harm reduction: decriminalization vs legalization, supervised injection sites, test strips, Narcan

    1. JR

      (inhales deeply) Now, the crazy thing is that this probably could be fixed with legalizing all drugs, but nobody wants to legalize all drugs. It's such a catch-22 because, like, if you had heroin available at the corner store, um, you would have no need to buy fentanyl. And if it was, like, at a reasonable price where they couldn't undercut you, like, "Hey, heroin's five bucks. I'll sell you fentanyl for a dollar."

    2. BW

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      I mean, it's, it's a terrible thing to even say. I don't want people to be able to just go buy meth. But-

    4. BW

      Yeah. Well, the way to think about it, I think, is like, um, decriminalization, a lot of times, is, like, a better alternative, in my opinion, in my, you know, my research-

    5. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. BW

      ... than legalization, right? So, like, the presidential cand- candidate Andrew Yang talks about decriminalizing opi- opioids.

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. BW

      And so when I first heard about that, I was like, "What?" I was like, "That is a bridge too far." But the more you think about it, it's like, people get arrested for using fentanyl. They go to jail, and then the recidivism rate is, like, through the roof. People, like, get out and they start using again. They don't get the treatment they need. You know? And so, the opiod, you know, like, people don't realize that fentanyl is killing more people than any drug in American history, ever, on an annual basis. More than heroin, more than pills, more than meth, more than crack. And so things just get worse and worse every year. People aren't talking about it that much.

    9. JR

      But how is decriminalization gonna stop that? Because decriminalization will just make fentanyl more available. Uh, the, the point of legalizing all drugs, and I, again, this is a very, very messy subject, and I'm not a proponent of legalizing all drugs. I'm, I'm sort of agnostic on it. I'm like, "Hmm, I don't know. I don't know what the fuck is it, uh, what, what is the answer?" But if you legalize them and you can buy them from reputable sources, you would know that you're actually buying cocaine. You're not-

    10. BW

      Nah-ah.

    11. JR

      You're not buying some fake Chinese spice jam-

    12. BW

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      ... thing, whatever the fuck they call it. You're buying actual cocaine. And you, look, we know if you buy whiskey, right, you get a, a thing on the label that tells you what proof it is. You know that if you have-

    14. BW

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... you know, three drinks, you're gonna be fucked up. And we can regulate that. We could sort of adjust. Like, "I, I had two already, I'm good." You know? But if you don't know what's in it, you don't know what the dose is, so you don't know what you're okay with and what you're not okay with. One, one of the good things about alcohol, like you get a beer, that's a beer.

    16. BW

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      You know what that is.

    18. BW

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      You know, you know how much alcohol's in there.

    20. BW

      Yeah. Well, in some countries in Europe, they actually give, um, free heroin-

    21. JR

      And needles.

    22. BW

      ... to addicted users.

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. BW

      Yeah. And so that, you know, it's often not the heroin that kills people at all.

    25. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. BW

      It's the dirty needles. It's, um, the criminal lifestyle used to, like, pay for the money to buy, prostitution, things like that. And so, um, I went and visited these places, uh, called supervised injection facilities. Have you heard about these?

    27. JR

      Yes.

    28. BW

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      Where would these, where do they have them in this country?

    30. BW

      Well, they, they don't have any in this country.

  11. 40:54 – 50:17

    The dark web dealer’s ‘ethical’ pitch—and the scale of the crisis (30,000+ deaths/year)

    1. JR

      (laughs)

    2. BW

      Have you ever heard of carfentanil?

    3. JR

      What is that?

    4. BW

      Uh, it's 100 times stronger than fentanyl.

    5. JR

      Oh, I have heard that.

    6. BW

      It's an analog.

    7. JR

      Recently.

    8. BW

      It's used as like an elephant tranquilizer.

    9. JR

      Ugh.

    10. BW

      And so, in the, one of the Jurassic Park movies, that's what they used to, uh, tranquilize the dinosaurs.

    11. JR

      Oh, yeah.

    12. BW

      Um-

    13. JR

      That's right.

    14. BW

      And so, I, I interviewed a bunch of dark web dealers for the book. I even actually, like, met one in person.

    15. JR

      What'd he look like?

    16. BW

      Um, well, he asked me not to say, but I, he-

    17. JR

      You don't have to say what he looked like, but-

    18. BW

      ... he came with his daughter. He came with, he looked, he was like a buff dude. He was like a, he, um, was like-

    19. JR

      Whoa, you're saying too much.

    20. BW

      ... in his 30s. He was like-

    21. JR

      You're already saying too much. We're gonna find him now.

    22. BW

      (laughs)

    23. JR

      Like, like when you were recording like, "Oh, what is that orange vat of-"

    24. BW

      (laughs)

    25. JR

      ... you know, like, "Did you do that kinda same shit" when you were talking to him?

    26. BW

      No, no, because he knew I was a journalist.

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. BW

      I told him I was. And he wanted to say-

    29. JR

      And he met you?

    30. BW

      Yeah.

  12. 50:17 – 55:59

    Geopolitics and supply chain: China’s precursors, subsidies, cartel links, and the risk of displacement to India

    1. BW

      Well, the, you know, um, the, the war on drugs stuff, it, it's, it's increasingly gonna be turned towards China, you know? And in fact, Trump, um, has been meeting with the Chinese president and all the trade war stuff, the increasing the tariffs, this is now tied into fentanyl. And so, supposedly, in a couple of days, this might be out by then, but there's this announcement of a new partnership. China says they're finally gonna crack down on these drug labs.

    2. JR

      Hmm.

    3. BW

      And, um, we'll see if it happens. But the point is, like, we can do everything we want to try to, you know... We can go to war with China over this issue. But, uh, you know, what is our past record in this realm? Like, the DEA helped kill Pablo Escobar, right? But since then, there's more cocaine coming out of Colombia than there ever was before, you know, nowadays. Um, El Chapo was arrested, tried. That's doing nothing to stop, um, the drugs, the cartels, the drugs coming into the US. And, and, um... Uh, and there's every indication that if we do get China to stop this insane... Like, 90% or more of the illicit fentanyl comes from China. That if we do get them to crack down on it, the industry is gonna go to India. And India is already starting to see these huge busts. Like, there's these Mexican cartel members getting busted in India-

    4. JR

      Really?

    5. BW

      ... for buying fentanyl.

    6. JR

      In India?

    7. BW

      Yeah. Uh, the thing is, like, China and India have the, the two biggest, um, chemical industries when it comes to generics, um, kind of low- lower level chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The US has the most profitable pharmaceutical industry 'cause we make, like, the brand name drugs, things like that. But when you're talking about generics and stuff like vitamin C, acetaminophen, which is the drug in Tylenol-

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. BW

      ... these are all made in China, a place like India. And so, they have this huge kind of brain trust of, uh, chemists. You know, people go to university, they, they learn how to be chemists. And then a certain amount of them get into the illicit industry, right? So, Mexico doesn't have that. Mexico doesn't have its own chemical industry and, uh, a bunch of scientists who can make fentanyl, who can make these new drugs. So, so that makes India so, um, susceptible to it. And, and the biggest problem is actually not even the fentanyl itself. It's the fentanyl precursors. And do you, do you know what those are?

    10. JR

      Yes. The chemicals that are used to make fentanyl.

    11. BW

      Exactly.

    12. JR

      Yeah.

    13. BW

      And so, that was sort of the main investigation in my book. Like, almost, like, um, 80 pages of the book are dedicated to this one company. Um, they're called Yuancheng, this Chinese company that makes more fentanyl precursors than any company in the world. You know, they, um, they, they're legit-... An- and not only that, they sell them to the Mexican cartels. And they're totally, um, sanctioned. Not only sanctioned by the Chinese government, but they get tax breaks from the Chinese government. They get, um, subsidies. They get their land subsidized, their staff training, things like that. And that was sort of the most jaw-dropping, uh, revelation that I had, was that the Chinese government is not only failing to crack down, but they're encouraging this industry.

    14. JR

      Wow. They're encouraging the industry. That's insane. So, it's just... The, the, the idea is, "Look, it's making a lot of money. Let's just keep making money."

    15. BW

      Yeah. It's, um... A lot of people ask me if they think this is a blatant conspiracy to, to try to, like, inflict harm upon the US, a subversive form of warfare. And so, I think it didn't start out that way. I think that these, these benefits were given so that China could increase its exports, could grow its economy, particularly when it comes to chemical exports. So, that's why these tax credits started. They're called value-added tax rebates. And so, what that means is, any chemical that you use to, to, um... Any, uh, ingredients you use to make a chemical for exports, you can write off the cost of those, of those ingredients when you export it. So basically, it's like a 16% tax rebate.

    16. JR

      Hmm.

    17. BW

      And so, they originally did that just to try to, like, improve their economy, improve their exports. But what's crazy to me now is that, um, last year, in the middle of the trade war, this was, um, at the height of when you heard about the trade war every day. You know, Trump was raising tariffs and doing this and that. Right at the height of that, China increased the tax rebate for fentanyl from 9% to 10%. So, it was almost like a... It seemed like a thumb in the eye.

    18. JR

      Right.

    19. BW

      You know? Like...... for fentanyl-

    20. JR

      Yeah.

    21. BW

      ... it's, I don't know. It's-

    22. JR

      Yeah, it definitely seems like a big fuck you.

    23. BW

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      Yeah. Wow. Um, n- this is what's crazy about this, is that, what you said before, no one running for president is talking about it. The, the president has talked about it briefly, you know? It's, but it's not, I don't see any movement. I don't see any big steps being taken. I mean, I don't, I don't know what big movements could be taken. I mean, how do you eradicate this stuff?

  13. 55:59 – 1:01:47

    Treatment beyond punishment: MAT (Suboxone/methadone), ibogaine, MDMA/PTSD research, and psychedelic ‘rewiring’

    1. BW

      Well, have you heard of, uh, medication-assisted treatment? This is, like, what I was talking about, Suboxone, methadone, and there are these opioid blockers too.

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. BW

      So, so there are all these drugs for low level, you know, low level opioids. So, you take your daily Suboxone shot and you don't crave fentanyl, you don't crave heroin anymore. But it, but it can't just be the drugs. You know, you see in TV shows or whatever, just this line of people and, you know, they go back out on the street and then they're, you know, get back to whatever they were doing. But medication-assisted treatment combines that with traditional counseling and therapy. Because a lot of times it's not just, um, it's not just chemical hooks, you know what I mean? It's people's lives, they have problems, they're, like, out of work.

    4. JR

      Right.

    5. BW

      They got terrible family problems, they have trauma in their past. And if you can unran-, you know, unravel those problems, really get to the heart of things, people can quit, and they do it all the time.

    6. JR

      There's another method that is not widely discussed but it's incredibly effective, and that's ibogaine.

    7. BW

      I've heard about that. Yeah.

    8. JR

      Yeah. Well, I know many people that have kicked pills because of ibogaine, kicked booze, uh, kicked, uh, destructive, self-destructive habits because of it. And it's-

    9. BW

      And is it a root or something?

    10. JR

      It's a plant from Africa, I believe. It's from the Iboga plant, uh, and I, I believe it's from... See if that's from Africa, I don't wanna be wrong about this, um, it's legal, uh, in Mexico. And, uh, a friend of mine, my friend, Ed Clay, went down to Mexico because he had an issue with pills, he hurt himself.

    11. BW

      Oh, really?

    12. JR

      Got on pills, was real- really fucking up his life, went down there, got treatment, was so stunned by it that he started, he opened up his own place down there to try to help people.

    13. BW

      Oh, really?

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. BW

      Wow. What part of Mexico?

    16. JR

      So, uh, iboga- I don't know, substance derived from the plant, yeah, African shrub called tabernanthe... Is that right? Tabernanthe iboga, which is known for-

    17. BW

      Oh.

    18. JR

      ... its psychedelic qualities and used in African spiritual ceremonies. Some claim it's something of a miracle cure for opiate addiction with minimal withdrawal symptoms. Um, th- there's something that happens with ibogaine when you take it, that it does something to re- rewire the areas-

    19. BW

      Mm-hmm.

    20. JR

      ... of the brain that re- uh, respond to opiates and that sort of, uh, are hardwired for addiction. It rewires them in a way that they have a very low recidivism rate.

    21. BW

      Mm-hmm.

    22. JR

      A very, very ro- low, y- you know, repeat addiction rate.

    23. BW

      Yeah. Like, psychedelics seems to be-

    24. JR

      Yeah.

    25. BW

      ... so much potential.

    26. JR

      Yes.

    27. BW

      There's, um, this, um, professor that I, uh, write about, his name is David Nichols, and he basically spent his whole career studying psychedelics as a way to help people beat cocaine addictions, alcohol addictions, even fight things like PTSD. And, um, it was actually found that, uh, MDMA, ecstasy, is like this amazing drug for PTSD.

    28. JR

      Mm. Yeah, I've heard this. The, that maps is in the middle of.

    29. BW

      Yep, exactly.

    30. JR

      Yeah.

  14. 1:01:47 – 1:21:52

    Culture detour: Sasha Shulgin, Hamilton Morris, and a long hip-hop deep dive (Biggie, Tupac, Nas, Kool G Rap)

    1. BW

      Yeah, there's this guy, um, called Sasha Shulgin who, uh-

    2. JR

      Sure.

    3. BW

      Yeah, you know Sasha Shulgin?

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. BW

      So I got to go to the farm where he designed all his drugs. And, um, you know, he dedicated his whole career to trying to, um, you know, discover new psychedelics that could be used as medicine.

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. BW

      And so he took like the, the chemical structure of mescaline, was one of his most, um, often used, they're called, uh, the scaffolding effects. So it's like that's the chemical scaffolding, and so he would tweak little bits to try to come up with new drugs, sample a tiny bit himself. If it did nothing, took a little more, little more, little more till it, till it had an effect. And he invented over 100 new drugs. He, he was working for, um, Dow Chemical, uh, the people who invented Agent Orange, um, at the start of his career, and he invented like psychedelics while working there that have like the Dow, you know, Dow was like pat- patented. Um ...

    8. JR

      Wow.

    9. BW

      And so he invented this drug that was known as, uh, STP, is a psychedelic, it stood for serenity, tranquility, and peace I think. And so this was like a hippie era drug and there was, um, the Hells Angels actually got into selling it and distributing it. It was a, it was this, this crazy story. But they, but the problem was the Hell Angel- Hells Angels got the dosage wrong, so they gave everybody way too much, and there was this big, um, this big protest in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, in San Francisco, it was called the Human Be-In, and they were protesting the banning of LSD that year. It was 1967. And so everybody went to the Golden Gate Park, took this stuff, this STP in these really high dosages, and they all like lo- (laughs) they all like freaked out and ended up in the hospital. And so ...

    10. JR

      What's it made out of?

    11. BW

      I don't know. It's, it's, it's some kind of now related LSD. Has a diff-

    12. JR

      Is it available now?

    13. BW

      I'm sure it is. Yeah, on the dark web you can de- I'm sure you could get it. Yeah. Um, I don't know, it doesn't sound that great even in its regular proper dose. Sasha Shulgin has those books called PCAL and TCAL which are basically cookbooks in uh, how to make all the psychedelics, and even he like wasn't that crazy about this one. But, but anyway after all these people in Golden Gate Park started freaking out did Dow Chemical realize that it was their guy doing this, they're like, "All right, all right, that's enough."

    14. JR

      Shut him down.

    15. BW

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      Um, have you ever heard of, uh, Hamilton Morris?

    17. BW

      Yeah, yeah.

    18. JR

      Yeah.

    19. BW

      He's great. He's OG.

    20. JR

      Yeah, Hamilton's Pharmacopoeia, he's great. Yeah.

    21. BW

      I've seen him on here, yeah.

    22. JR

      Yeah. He's the most knowledgeable person that I know in terms of-

    23. BW

      For sure, yeah.

    24. JR

      ... like the history of these things. And he interviewed Sasha before he died.

    25. BW

      Yeah. He loved Sasha.

    26. JR

      Yeah. Yeah, he did.

    27. BW

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      Yeah. Yeah, he's, he takes a scientific but yet, uh, uh, a connoisseur's approach-

    29. BW

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      ... to drugs. I mean, he's very scientific about like the what's happening-

Episode duration: 1:56:02

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