America's Invisible War: Fighting the Fentanyl Epidemic

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Derek Maltz is retired from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA, after 28 years of dedicated service.
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Mr Maltz is also a national security safety executive who appears on national news networks as a subject matter expert.
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Our subject matter today is the fentanyl crisis in our country, killing tens of thousands of people per year.
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I am honored to present to our audience Derek Maltz, a man who deals with factual information, no sugarcoating, and tells it like it is.
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Welcome, derek.
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I want to let you know that you are my first person to interview for this podcast the Fatal Facts of Fentanyl.
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My hope is to launch this show with a bang.
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Your expertise and direct candidness will bring awareness and education.
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It is time for America to wake up.
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Let's go, derek.
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I'm giving you full reign to present all of the facts of fentanyl.
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Please tell it like it is, no holding back.
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Lisa, thank you very much.
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I appreciate it, yeah, and this is really important, and I'll try my best to keep focused on the facts because there's a lot of misinformation.
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But so first fact is that Mexico and China must be the top national security concerns for everyday Americans as we face the worst drug crisis in our history.
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We've never seen anything like this.
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I know there's mainstream media reporting makes it like this is just you know, ongoing problem that we've had for years.
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Reporting makes it like this is just you know, ongoing problem that we've had for years.
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No, this is Mexico and Chinese transnational criminals working together to kill our young Americans at levels we've never seen as an example.
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It's hard to get the statistics because it's very inefficient the way they collect statistics around the country and the way the CDC puts it together.
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So it's a little bit behind, but in a 12-month period ending November of 2020, according to the CDC preliminary statistics, over 92,000 Americans died from drug overdoses.
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The vast majority are from fentanyl.
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We believe the numbers are going to be way higher.
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There's been a study in Georgetown University that was done.
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These statistics are just not very accurate.
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They're going to be a lot higher.
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So, in my opinion, okay, based on the deaths in this country over the last several years.
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The cartels should be the top day-to-day threat impacting America's future.
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They're killing off our future generation and, by the way, they're killing more Americans than any terrorist organization probably in the history of the country that I'm aware of.
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Like this is something you know off the charts, right, and nobody seems to be talking about it.
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The cartels are using advanced communications.
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They're beating the system because we have antiquated laws.
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They're taking complete advantage of the vulnerabilities and the weaknesses at our southern border, so they're just moving their people into the country every day, all day long.
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They're making billions of dollars from all these migrants that are coming in from around the world.
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So that's another whole story for another day.
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But in reality they're setting up their command and control cells throughout many of our major cities and then they're setting up operations in all the rural areas and you know, pretty much everywhere in America they control the drug market for not only fentanyl and counterfeit fentanyl pills, but also methamphetamine, for cocaine, for heroin and for marijuana.
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But the reality is is the two biggest threats right now is the fentanyl, the fentanyl mixed in other drugs and, of course, methamphetamine.
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So I mean we can go in many different directions.
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I mean whatever direction you want.
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I could talk freely about these topics.
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Yes, sir, thank you for your expertise.
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Yes, sir, like you said, we can go in so many different directions in the cause of this and we, today we are going to deal with the facts of fentanyl.
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Can you tell me, in your opinion, what is really bringing the influx of this all of a sudden into our country?
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I know it's fentanyl.
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Illicit fentanyl has been around several years, but right now we are hearing more and more and more deaths every day caused by this, either by seasoned users or people buying these counterfeit pills.
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I mean, that's astounding to me.
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Can you elaborate on these counterfeit pills that are being sold on the Internet, like on Snapchat, to our children, you know, middle school, high school and all age groups, sir?
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Yeah.
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So that's a great question and that's kind of what's missing in the mainstream media, like people aren't talking about that.
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So a little background Probably in let's say, 2006, 2005, the Mexican cartel started expanding their different product line, so they started trying to make methamphetamine in Mexico.
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So what they've done is they've turned to the Chinese and they started like first getting pure fentanyl from the Chinese in the kilogram quantities, importing the fentanyl into Mexico and then mixing the fentanyl in all types of drugs and then obviously making these counterfeit pills as well.
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Well, what happened was the Trump administration put lots of pressure on the Chinese government, so they started getting smart.
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As far as exporting pure fentanyl, they were charging like $5,000 a kilogram in China to the cartels and then they were basically, you know, the Mexicans could make multi-millions of dollars off one kilogram of fentanyl.
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But since the pressure came down on China, they started getting smart and they started exporting only the precursor chemicals, for the most part to Mexico.
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So you know, China's been sending fentanyl into America for a long time, like during a period of time like, let's say, 2009, 2013, 14, 15, 16, 17, and then 18, you know, started slowing down a little bit in 19.
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But the Mexican cartel started, you know, taking advantage of the massive amounts of profits by getting involved with fentanyl Right, they're in the business to make money, right, and they want to start getting people addicted.
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So, fentanyl because it's so addicted to people, they just decided that this is a no brainer.
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We can make more money.
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We don't have to grow any of this stuff in the poppy fields and deal with the irrigation and deal with the weather and paying all these farmers.
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We're just going to buy the stuff made from China or we're going to make it ourselves.
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So what's happened is they realized that America has all these people that were addicted.
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So they had a market for opioids, right, fentanyl is an synthetic opioid.
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So they started pushing it into the country, you know, mixing it with heroin, mixing it with cocaine, mixing it with meth, and all these people started to start.
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They started dying all over the place because the cartels don't have like quality control, chemists, when they're making this stuff in these laboratories in the jungle.
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And then they started doing the pills, right.
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So they started buying pill presses from China.
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They start sending pill presses into America.
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So it became this fentanyl madness, right, just came about like all of a sudden, right.
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So just to give you an indication of that and I know I go all over the board, but this will kind of help understand this In 2015, the DEA Phoenix division seized zero Mexican oxy counterfeit pills right, they're known as blue 30s, m30s.
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But now if you look at the evolution in 2016, they seized 20,000 pills.
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In 17, it was 54,000.
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In 18, it was 380,000.
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In 19, it was 1.4 million pills.
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And in 2020, the DEA Phoenix alone one DEA division seized 6 million fentanyl counterfeit fentanyl you know, counterfeit prescription pills right M30, blue 30.
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And so they're pushing it out in such large volumes.
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A lot of people started selling it on social media, right?
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So there's been quite a few deaths of young kids that bought one pill to try a pain pill.
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They thought they were getting a pain pill from their buddy or their friend in college or in high school, or sometimes just going on Snapchat ordering an Oxycontin, percocet right, xanax right.
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These are pills that mommy and daddy take, so they figure it's okay.
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Next thing, you know, the parents are finding them dead.
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This is moving quickly.
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We're starting to see these overdoses all over the country.
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I collect the news stories every day.
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Not only do I collect the news stories.
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But I talk to families like yours God bless you and sorry for your loss.
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But I talk to families like yours, right, god bless you and sorry for your loss.
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But I talk to families and they send me photographs and stories of the kids that they're losing and it's becoming very overwhelming.
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I can't even keep up with the pictures, right, that I'm getting.
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I make the photo collages, I push them out into the media, I provide them to Congress, I do whatever I can to get the awareness out so parents don't go through the same tragedy.
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But the reality is this is the way I like to say it the Mexican cartels have formed a lethal partnership with the Chinese transnational criminals and they're basically destabilizing our country right underneath our noses and they're basically destabilizing our country right underneath our noses and the mainstream media.
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The politicians are burying the story.
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That's as simple as I could say.
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They're burying it because it's political.
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But here's the sad part, lisa.
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The sad part is this didn't start on the Joe Biden administration.
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This didn't start under Donald Trump.
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This has been going on a long time Throughout the Obama administration.
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When I worked at the Special Operations Division, this is when we started seeing a lot of this stuff, even in the Bush administration.
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This is an evolution.
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This is a problem that nobody wants to deal with, nobody wants to talk about, nobody wants to provide the facts.
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This is a bipartisan issue.
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This is not and should not be political.
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Unfortunately, now we have these open border policies and these migrants are coming in, like you know, at levels we've never seen.
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So it's opening up the floodgates, and now it's becoming political and nobody wants to talk about it.
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Political and nobody wants to talk about it.
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There's gag orders that you know, some of the federal agencies.
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They can't do national news stories about this stuff, and so it's really disgusting because families are being destroyed and our future generation is being killed off.
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And you know, I feel that the Chinese are, you know, deploying their unrestricted warfare against America, using the Mexican cartels to do the dirty work right, and so they're destabilizing our country with all this death and destruction, and we're not even talking about it.
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So it's really, really disturbing, and I'm going to continue to push as much as I can and as hard as I can to try to get the messages out.
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So thanks for, you know, asking a very good question.
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Yes, sir, thank you, Thanks for being our voice, especially during, I believe.
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You went before Congress a lot of different times and thank you for that.
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It does sound like a crisis of mass destruction.
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To me, it sounds like an act of terrorism.
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How do you feel?
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about that and what do you think needs to be done to hold these people accountable?
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Do you think we can hold these people accountable?
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What needs to be done?
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Okay, so that's also a very, very good question.
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Thank you All right, obviously you know this topic very well.
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So, number one, it is terrorism, because they're using a weapon of mass destruction against our country.
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So what does that mean?
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Right, when we think of a weapon of mass destruction, we don't think of this poisonous fentanyl.
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Nobody does right.
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You got to have a new mindset for this.
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But let's just keep it real simple.
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If Al-Qaeda had 50 pounds of some biological or chemical weapon sitting in Mexico ready to deploy on America, what do you think would happen?
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Our intelligence community, our Department of Defense, our law enforcement, working with our counterparts, would go after that really aggressively to try to destroy it, to try to save lives, destroy it to try to save lives, and they would get it done, because we have some phenomenal people in America and some of these other countries are really, really sophisticated investigators and we have really good tools and authorities.
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But, for whatever reason, right now we have thousands and thousands of pounds of fentanyl sitting in labs in Mexico.
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A lot of times we know where these labs are.
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We should be destroying these labs.
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We should be stopping the flow of the cash back to the cartel so they can't continue to operate, so they have to be treated as terrorists.
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We've been very vocal about that for several years now.
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President Trump was real close to declaring them as a terrorist group, but you know, of course the politics got in the way.
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You know Mexico is our you know southern trading partner and trying to keep relations and nobody understands it.
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We're not talking about starting a war with Mexico.
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We're not talking about bombing the country of Mexico.
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We're talking about destroying this terror organization that's killing our kids at a level that we've never seen in the history of the country.
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This is something new.
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This isn't the ongoing crisis.
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This isn't like exaggerating.
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Just look at the statistics, just look at the print media every day and look what's happening in our country.
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Like one example I like to give, because in the morgue out in Franklin County, ohio, the coroner put out a report in the first six months of 2020, there was like a 75% increase in overdose deaths, but there was like 85% of those were related to fentanyl and synthetic opioids.
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So it's not from kids taking mommy and daddy's legitimate oxy or Percocet that's being prescribed by a legitimate pharmacy from a legitimate doctor.
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That's not what we're talking about Now.
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That stuff's bad and the kids will get addicted from taking that stuff.
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So they need to stay away from mommy and daddy's legitimate medicine.
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But my point is that's not what's killing them now.
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What's killing them is these counterfeit pills and the pure fentanyl that's coming in from the cartels in Mexico.
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So it's got to be, you know, messaged a little bit better so people understand.
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Like, what is killing the kids?
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Why are we seeing the level of death and destruction like we've never seen before?
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And the answer is fentanyl.
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And the answer is because Mexico is working very, very closely with the Chinese transnational criminals and they're really doing a good job at carrying out their agenda.
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Yes, sir, it seems like it's a multibillion dollar industry in this world and unfortunately we are feeling the wrath of it.
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Can you elaborate to?
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It seems like there's just no sense of urgency to address this and do you have any strategies to do this?
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And what about educating our children about this?
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There's so many things that need to be done.
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So, again, this is a compliment to you, because I didn't know of you to be like this, professional, like global podcaster, and your questions are really outstanding.
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I wish we'd get these kind of questions on the national news.
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So thanks again.
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I mean first of all, the drug education efforts were pretty much shut down, like I remember being in DEA when we lost our budget for demand reduction.
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But because DEA agents cared about kids, we had many people, including myself, that would go to schools, that would go to community groups and discuss these emerging drugs, especially these synthetic drugs that were made in labs in China and the methamphetamine explosion, but we had no budget for it, right.
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And then they have the drug czar's office.
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Right, and the drug czar's office, they have a good program with the HIDA program, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program, and they've done some good job at training law enforcement and providing resources to state and locals.
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But what they failed to do in the drug source office for many years is they failed to educate our kids about the dangers of these poisonous substances, right.
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So we had a whole like 10, 15 years with no education.
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Years ago we used to have these PSAs right Public service announcements Like I would never forget.
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The one that hit me was when this little girl was talking to her mother after she was killed.
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She says Mommy, you killed me because the bomb that went off was because of the marijuana that you're smoking and the money went to the terrorists.
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They made a bomb and the bomb killed me.
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It was a very impactful video.
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I still have it.
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But we haven't seen that stuff in years.
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People just completely ignored it.
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We stopped the DARE programs in high schools.
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We stopped the education programs and health and you know the health classes.
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It should be mandatory in every school.
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We have to hit the kids when they're young.
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You know they had massive you know, you know drug.
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You know, I'm sorry massive education on cigarette and tobacco smoking for years, which definitely impacted, you know, our kids as far as like staying away from cigarettes.
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But here's the point.
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So we missed all the drug education.
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So we had this huge demand.
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And then the cartels not just Mexican cartels but the Colombian cartels took advantage of the addicted population.
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Cartels took advantage of the addicted population.
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At the same time, we had the corporate cartels getting away with dumping 100 billion opioids into the American population.
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In a nine-year period, washington posted an outstanding investigative story and they determined there was 100 billion pills opioid pills, pills dumped into America.
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So it was like the perfect storm.
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You had white heroin coming in from South America and Mexico, you had these corporate cartels dumping the opioids on our kids and our communities, and then you had the fentanyl start creeping its way in.
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So you're right, there's been no sense of urgency Like, keep in mind, right, think about it like this On 9-11, which was a total disaster, there were 3,000 Americans, or 3,000 people died, almost 3,000 in the trade center.
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And then you look at the Afghan and the Iraqi war and about 7,000 Americans died in those two conflicts.
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So that's a total of 10,000.
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By the way, my brother came back in a body bag fighting for the country in Afghanistan, right, so that's 10,000 people.
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Then, if you look at how many died just last year alone from drugs, 92,000 approximately.
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I'd say 100,000 is going to be closer to the number and look at that, that's like 10%.
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You know what I'm saying.
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It's such a low number in those three catastrophic events in our country's history.
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But yet all these people are dying from drugs and no one even talks about it.
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So, yeah, they set up task forces.
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So I remember Attorney General Sessions set up specific task forces to address this, even before Sessions Eric Holder.
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They had the transnational crime strategy where they had Sinaloa cartel and now they have added the Jalisco New Generation cartel to the list of major targets that were putting this poison in our country.
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Right, but unfortunately there's no accountability.
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Like they never ask for results, they never stay on top of like progress that's been made.
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You still have interagency games being played, agencies working in silos and we're not using all the tools of national power.
00:20:47.593 --> 00:21:04.070
Now, the sad part is a lot of these agencies work very hard every day, but what good is it if you're not working together to go after the threat and use all the authorities, all the capabilities that you have in your arsenal to destroy this threat to our national security and to save lives?
00:21:04.070 --> 00:21:10.865
So that's one point that really gets me passionate because of the lack of urgency.
00:21:10.865 --> 00:21:18.525
Like how can you not get you know crazy when you see all of these kids that are dying and you read the stories?
00:21:18.525 --> 00:21:23.606
I mean, like anybody with a heart can understand that we need some more aggressive action.
00:21:23.606 --> 00:21:34.613
We can't just have talking heads talking about these things, you have to have action to do something about it and right now I don't see a lot of, you know, unity of effort to go after this threat.
00:21:36.339 --> 00:21:37.240
Yeah, so you're right.
00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:38.801
This is an American issue.
00:21:38.801 --> 00:21:41.683
This is not a Democrat issue or Republican issue.
00:21:41.683 --> 00:21:44.286
This is not about Beltway politics.
00:21:44.286 --> 00:21:45.006
I'm sorry.
00:21:45.006 --> 00:21:53.791
This is affecting everybody directly or indirectly in this country and we just need to do something and we need direction.
00:21:53.791 --> 00:22:04.647
And it's like it really does make me suspicious of our government and our mainstream media why there's no talk about this or public health awareness.
00:22:04.647 --> 00:22:10.644
I mean, this should be across the country, educating people and to bring awareness.
00:22:10.644 --> 00:22:12.929
Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
00:22:13.028 --> 00:22:14.913
Like what the hell is going on.
00:22:14.913 --> 00:22:16.547
So, okay, couple of things.
00:22:16.547 --> 00:22:27.349
Number one just keep this in mind and I have I have significant firsthand experience when I make this statement, so I'm not making this up there's a reason that I called the Beltway the land of the make-believe.
00:22:27.349 --> 00:22:33.700
Okay, because there's a lot of stuff that goes on in the Washington DC Beltway that the public just has no idea.
00:22:33.700 --> 00:22:43.326
There's a lot of self-serving individuals here that only care about themselves and their bank accounts, as opposed to the mission that they signed on for.
00:22:43.326 --> 00:23:15.291
And, don't get me wrong, there's also a significant amount of people that go to work every day and work their butt off to try to do the right thing to save lives, but some of the leadership people they get appointed to come in they don't have the requisite skills, they don't have the experience, they don't have the respect of the workers on the front lines, they don't send out consistent messaging and basically, it's basically very dysfunctional environment, right, very bureaucratic, and so the awareness out there is very cloudy, right?
00:23:15.291 --> 00:23:18.413
People don't understand it because they're getting mixed messages, right?
00:23:18.413 --> 00:23:26.021
There's an old saying that I had for many years ago that someone told me a leader is supposed to eliminate confusion and not to create it.
00:23:26.021 --> 00:23:32.323
Right now, our leaders are creating confusion, like one day you hear somebody say the border's closed.
00:23:32.323 --> 00:23:34.186
No, the border's open, come on in.
00:23:34.186 --> 00:23:39.405
Right, we don't have school, you know, open for our kids during COVID.
00:23:39.405 --> 00:23:45.249
But if you're a migrant and you're in San Diego, we have our teachers come in and provide you schooling, right?
00:23:45.249 --> 00:23:50.055
So there's a lot of mixed messaging, right, and so the public doesn't know what's going on.
00:23:50.055 --> 00:24:09.039
They don't trust the government in many ways because the government's credibility went down the tubes, right, and it's been going on that for a while it's not just started yesterday and so there's got to be more leaders that are stepping up to put the problem on the table with solutions and start bringing people together.
00:24:09.480 --> 00:24:17.692
I spent a couple of days down in Arizona at a border rally in June 25th with some great American patriots.
00:24:17.692 --> 00:24:48.923
The sheriffs of the border states Right and also the Angel families were there and a lot of other great leaders, like the former ICE director, the former Homeland Security, you know, the Border Patrol CBP director and then, of course, the current Border Patrol president of their union, their counsel, brandon Judd, so Tom Holm and Mark Morgan, brandon Judd, myself and lots of sheriffs and other leaders started speaking about this and it's really not a difficult concept.
00:24:48.923 --> 00:24:50.567
This is a common sense thing.
00:24:50.567 --> 00:24:52.893
This is impacting all families.
00:24:52.893 --> 00:24:54.561
It's destroying communities.
00:24:54.561 --> 00:25:07.653
The cartels are instigating, agitating, enhancing all the violence that's going on all around America because a lot of these disputes that are going on are drug-related for territory right.
00:25:08.280 --> 00:25:10.388
So it's pretty simple to understand.
00:25:10.388 --> 00:25:15.311
You don't have to have an MIT graduate degree to understand what the problem is.
00:25:15.311 --> 00:25:18.207
Right, but the politics we're trying to bury.
00:25:18.207 --> 00:25:23.983
The problem but the reality is is all the constituents of the political leaders should be pissed off.
00:25:23.983 --> 00:25:30.269
This is not just, you know, this is not just Donald Trump or Republican followers that are mad.
00:25:30.269 --> 00:25:33.852
All these Democrats in all these cities should be pissed off too.
00:25:33.852 --> 00:25:42.682
That taxes are going through the roof, police are retiring at record levels, crime is surging through the roof and our kids are dying at record levels.
00:25:42.682 --> 00:25:44.587
So what am I missing here?
00:25:44.587 --> 00:25:49.269
If you don't have law and order, you don't have a country, and we're on that path, all right.
00:25:49.269 --> 00:25:56.631
And I'm not trying to be an alarmist, I'm not trying to be an exaggerator or try to, you know, antagonize anybody.
00:25:56.631 --> 00:26:06.570
I'm just trying to help save lives, and that's kind of what we have to all do together and the leaders that get elected should be held accountable for inaction.
00:26:06.570 --> 00:26:14.163
Okay, so if you say the Sinaloa cartel is a threat to our national security and you do nothing about it, you should be removed from office.
00:26:14.163 --> 00:26:21.539
It's that simple, and so we need more people speaking up and talking about the problem and coming up with solutions.
00:26:21.700 --> 00:26:25.451
We have a lot of smart Americans that have good solutions on this stuff.
00:26:25.451 --> 00:26:27.125
We just have to implement it.
00:26:27.125 --> 00:26:30.210
We don't have to overthink it, because it's not that complicated.
00:26:30.210 --> 00:26:32.144
If you really think about it.
00:26:32.144 --> 00:26:49.269
You have to have chemicals to make drugs, you have to have laboratory equipment, you have to have the money to actually buy the chemicals, and so you have really the two main components chemicals and money.
00:26:49.670 --> 00:26:53.953
So if you shut down the chemicals, you shut down the money flow and you destroy the labs.
00:26:53.953 --> 00:26:56.596
You're going to put them out of business, so the supply won't be there.
00:26:56.596 --> 00:27:00.260
Supply won't be there.
00:27:00.260 --> 00:27:01.684
If the supply is not there, then the kids can't buy this stuff.
00:27:01.684 --> 00:27:11.666
It's not available, and you have to work at the same time on all the education on these dangerous drugs, which is not that hard to do If the government has billions of dollars to waste on sending it around the world to other countries.
00:27:11.666 --> 00:27:22.273
Why don't they just use some of that money to start a media campaign and start blitzing our network TV and our Internet on all these dangerous chemicals that are killing kids?
00:27:22.273 --> 00:27:24.307
I don't think it'll be that hard to be honest.
00:27:25.259 --> 00:27:26.486
Yes, sir, you're exactly right.
00:27:26.486 --> 00:27:29.148
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out.
00:27:29.148 --> 00:27:35.589
Derek, I can speak on behalf of all parents who have lost our sons and daughters to fentanyl poisoning.
00:27:35.589 --> 00:27:47.711
We're all so fortunate to have you in the ring with us, with your passion and drive to fight this necessary fight and rage a war on this domestic terrorism spreading throughout our country.
00:27:47.711 --> 00:27:53.489
With the distribution of this most deadly drug, they're murdering our loved ones in record numbers.
00:27:53.489 --> 00:28:03.605
Thank you for discussing this drug crisis and how the cartels are in conjunction with the Chinese organized crime syndicate, they are murdering our future generation.
00:28:03.605 --> 00:28:11.109
These facts may be disturbing to some, but so necessary to be brought out in order to bring positive changes.
00:28:11.109 --> 00:28:16.484
Thank you so much for your continued support for all families who have lost their loved ones.
00:28:16.484 --> 00:28:17.185
We love you, we need you.
00:28:17.185 --> 00:28:20.571
Their loved ones we love you, we need you and we appreciate you.
00:28:20.571 --> 00:28:22.314
Many blessings, derek.
00:28:27.339 --> 00:28:28.963
Thank you, I really appreciate it and look forward to speaking again.
00:28:28.983 --> 00:28:29.885
Hopefully, we can make some progress here.
00:28:29.885 --> 00:28:32.893
Yes, sir, I hope so too, as long as we're part, all part of this coalition.
00:28:32.893 --> 00:28:34.481
Yes, sir, I do.
00:28:34.481 --> 00:28:41.713
I have faith and hope in people like you and our country, so we just have our work cut out for us.
00:28:41.713 --> 00:28:42.902
But you know, we're going to do it.
00:28:42.902 --> 00:28:44.085
We're going to do it.
00:28:44.085 --> 00:28:46.551
There's a positive force behind us, that's for sure.
00:28:46.551 --> 00:28:57.477
But I really do thank you and I would like to bring you back for future podcast episodes and we can discuss further some, maybe some new developments that are coming.
00:28:57.477 --> 00:29:00.401
I do see hope every day that some positive changes are taking place, so let's just keep that ball that are coming.
00:29:00.401 --> 00:29:05.068
I do see hope every day that some positive changes are taking place, so let's just keep that ball, that ball rolling, okay.
00:29:05.430 --> 00:29:06.922
Sounds good and thank you very much.
00:29:07.683 --> 00:29:10.554
Thank you, take care, thank you, okay, bye.