#243 ‒ The fentanyl crisis and why everyone should be paying attention | Anthony Hipolito

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My guest this week is Anthony Hippolyto. Anthony is a Deputy with over 24 years of experience in law enforcement. He retired in the summer of 2021 and was kind of about to sort of move on with the next phase of his life when something drew him back into public service. And that something was the growing concern over the amount of accidental overdoses, poisonings, effectively on account of illicit fentanyl use. My wife and I heard Anthony speak at a local school meeting a few weeks ago and and we were really moved by the talk. In fact, it's a really powerful talk and we'll link to the entire talk in the show notes here. By the way, the show notes for this podcast will not be behind a paywall. So this one really is a public service announcement in many ways, and therefore everyone will have access to the show notes. But as soon as we saw the talk, I realized that I wanted to do something to help amplify his message in any way that I could. And there was no better way to do that I could think of than to have him on the podcast. So this podcast is not that long relative to most of our podcasts. We start the discussion, of course, by explaining what's going on here, what the semantics are. I mean, what is fentanyl, how is it making its way into drugs that are not fentanyl? I think there was a day when I just sort of assumed that people who were dying of fentanyl overdoses, they wanted fentanyl, but they were taking too much. Turned out that's not really the case. What's really happening is that fentanyl is being used as a feedstock to produce other drugs because it is both so much cheaper and secondly, produces a better high. And therefore, if you're trying to make sleeping pills or benzos or anything, unfortunately From Percocet, pain pills, which also produce a high, of course, to Adderall and things of that nature. They're putting fentanyl into these things. And to be blunt, they're just getting the dose wrong. They're getting it wrong by an enormous amount. And effectively what's happening is kids are accidentally taking something that they don't know what they're taking. So we kind of go through the ins and outs of all of that stuff. I realize, and I say as much in the podcast, that I'm not really speaking through this channel to the kids that are probably most at risk, kids that are unfortunately as low as middle school, but certainly high school and college. Probably not a lot of people in that demographic listening. But who is listening are people like myself, people who are parents. If you have kids, I think you really want to listen to this. The other thing I'd say is if you ever yourself use illicit drugs, I know a lot of people that recreationally do use illicit drugs. I think you want to listen to this as well. I don't think most people appreciate the prevalence with which fentanyl is making its way into other drugs such as cocaine. And again, the intention isn't actually to kill the cocaine user. The intention is, as we'll discuss, to produce a superior product. If you're used to listening to the podcast on audio, this might be one where you tune into the video as well. Because we include in this a couple of videos that are quite powerful. You can certainly listen to them in audio and go to the show Notes after where we'll link to those videos separately. But if you're on the fence about whether or not you want to listen to this one or watch it, this might be one to watch. We close the discussion really with what can you do? What can you do as a parent? What can you do as far as talking to your kids, monitoring social media, having Narcan around, knowing how to use it, all those sorts of things. I think the final thing I'll say is that, and I didn't say this when we were on mic because I didn't think of it until after, but after we finished the interview, I got talking to Anthony and I was just again, kind of thanking him for all the work he was doing and how relentless it is. I mean, he's basically like a one man show traveling all over Texas, but now also being asked to go and speak in New York and being asked to speak in other places, asked simply, how is this being funded? And I realized that it's only being funded out of the Hays County Sheriff Office community outreach program, and they don't really have much money. So my wife and I are going to make a donation there, and I thought I would just throw that out there in case anybody else who listens to this thinks they want to figure out a way to at least get this message out there beyond what we're doing now. And again, I would probably encourage you, wherever you live, to maybe connect with your local sheriff's office and find the similar entity there to figure out how you can get this message into the schools where you live. Because, again, some of these stories are simply baffling kids that are dying in class, you know, kids that are thinking they're taking Adderall to help them study, and instead it's laced with Fentanyl and they die right in front of a class of 24 other children. I could say a lot more about this, but I probably already said more than I need to. And I think the discussion with Anthony speaks for itself. So with that, let's turn to that discussion. Anthony, thank you so much for coming over. Not just coming over, coming over on a Sunday. I don't normally record podcasts on the weekend, but my wife and I saw you speak, actually saw a video of you speaking. We couldn't make it to the actual event. We were both so moved by it and thought, you know, if there's anything that I can do to use sort of my platform to get this message out more broadly, basically, to everybody, because it's hard to say that there's someone who doesn't need to hear what we're about to talk about today. And basically, if I had tried to slot this into our normal podcast schedule, we wouldn't be having this discussion until about June. And I was just like, you know what? Honestly, like, if it makes the life of one person different by doing it. Now, we're going to record this at the beginning of February and turn this around as quickly as possible. So this will probably give listeners a sense of why this is an important episode. But let's just start. Who are you, Anthony? What do you do, and why is it we're sitting here today?

Well, I appreciate the invite. I'll never say no to talking about fentanyl and talking about the dangers it presents to everybody. It knows no boundaries, right? It's black, white, brown. It's rich, poor. It affects anybody and everybody. Not only in Hays county, not only in Travis County, Texas, but the entire world. So that's how prevalent this stuff is. And scary but again, I appreciate the invite, and I don't care if it's Sunday, so I really appreciate you fitting us in and getting this going. I've been in law enforcement for 24 years. Worked at the Austin Police Department for 23 years. I retired July of 2021. I grew up and basically lived my entire life out in Hays county, and I wanted to get out there and serve in the community that I grew up in. Right. So I took the summer off during the 2021 year and started in September. I've been friends with the sheriff out there for a long, long time, and he consistently recruited me to get out there. So I got hired by the Hays County Sheriff's Office September, and I've been there just 18 months or so now. I'm currently assigned to the Community Outreach Unit during my time at apd. APD is a large department. Right. So you're able to do a variety of assignments. Obviously, you have to start out on patrol, but I worked patrol several stints. I promoted twice. So each time you promote, you gotta go back to the patrol division, you know, answer 911 calls and all that good stuff. But I worked in organized crime. I worked in public affairs. I did internal affairs. I did some undercover work. I worked mounted patrol, bike patrol on 6th Street. So in a larger department, you're able to specialize a lot. So I was able to experience a lot and learn a lot about the department, the inside, what makes it tick, and all that good stuff. But it was just time for me to move on and reached the point where I was able to retire. So I jumped out to Hays county, and again, I'm on site of the Community Outreach Unit. And all we do is get out in the community and visit and show the citizens of Hays county that we're human. We're police officers, yes. Or sheriff's deputies, yes. But we're humans. Our job is to get out in the community and reach people and talk to them. And we do that through a variety of ways. We have a Citizens Police Academy. We do junior deputy academies. During the summer, we visit hoas. But obviously now, over the last, since about August, it's all fentanyl all the time, just because of what's going on.

So you retired in the summer of 21. Up until the point of your retirement, how big an issue was fentanyl making its way into other drugs?

Yeah, so at that time, fentanyl was around. At the time I retired, I was in organized crime. I was a sergeant over the criminal interdiction unit. And that's what we did on a daily basis, was battle the Mexican cartel. Obviously, i35 runs up and down through the middle of Hays county, through the middle of Austin. I had about 10 officers that were assigned to me, and we had officers that did interdiction work up and down I35. We had officers that worked at Abia. We also had officers that worked with FedEx, with UPS, with the Postal Service, to try to interdict not only drugs, but money, guns, and any type of criminal element. So at that time, I think I did about three, three and a half years in that assignment. And we started seeing fentanyl probably 2017, 2018, but it was more on the black market. People would order that in the dark web, and it would be sent from China, be sent FedEx or UPS. And the majority of our seizures at that time were through FedEx and USPS. We would work with the postal inspect and security folks with UPS and FedEx, and we would intercept boxes and boxes of illicit counterfeit pills. So that's where we started seeing it. What's going on now is the Mexican cartel being that they're very competitive and they want to own the drug market, they have gotten into the fentanyl game, and that's why we're seeing it become more and more prevalent over the last number of years.

Now, I kind of been sort of asleep at the wheel here and haven't paid a lot of attention to this until maybe the past six months. Back when I worked in a hospital, we used fentanyl all the time, was a very potent intravenous narcotic. So you had morphine, which you would typically give in milligram doses. Right? So if a patient was having a lot of pain, you would use an intravenous infusion of morphine. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 milligrams. Right? So, you know, thousandths of a gram of morphine. Fentanyl was much more potent, came on quicker, and it was dosed in micrograms. So now you're talking about it's a lot smaller a dose, and it was a very good drug for pain and sedation. So if a patient was having even something like a colonoscopy, for example, you would use maybe 100 micrograms of fentanyl. So that's 0.1 milligram, and say a couple milligrams of another drug called Versed. That kind of makes you drowsy and makes you forget what's going on. Anesthesiologists use this all the time in the operating Room. So it's. One part of anesthesia is the pain part is the fentanyl. But again, I never knew it existed outside of a liquid form, and I had no idea that it was being put into other drugs. So when did that transition take place? What is it about this drug? And I guess we could maybe. Why don't you explain to people how these drugs work and why we're even having this discussion? What's the problem with them? Is it just that they make people high and it's bad to be high?

You explained it perfectly how powerful this fentanyl is when you're talking micrograms. And that's the difference between the fentanyl that the doctors would prescribe and what the Mexican cartel's making in their labs in Mexico. The difference is what they're making is synthetic opioid. The same molecular. Whatever that is. Molecular structures. Whatever structures is all the same. It's just they don't need the poppy plant to make it. That's the difference. The big difference is the dosage. They don't know how to control the dosage. I don't think they really grasp how powerful fentanyl is. And what we're talking. Two milligrams can kill you, right?

Oh, my God. Two milligrams. I mean, that's beyond lethal dose, right?

Beyond lethal dose. And that's. We're seeing more and more of that as we're learning, as we're getting more toxicology back from these victims.

Tell folks, just so they understand, like, why does this drug kill you? Is it giving people heart attacks? Or what is the actual thing that's killing people?

How it works is when you take the fentanyl and it has a lethal dose and it basically attacks your respiratory system, right? It slows everything down. You get that euphoric high, but you don't realize that it's shutting your body down. And once your respiratory system starts shutting down, your heart rate starts going down and you can be dead in an instant. And that's how powerful and scary this stuff is.

And I'll tell you, even in the hospital, we saw that that was not uncommon in a hospitalized patient, that you accidentally gave too much, you misjudged a person's sensitivity, and you gave them 100 milligrams, 100 micrograms. I'm sorry. When they probably should have only had 50 or 75 because you didn't understand some other factor about them. And all of a sudden, they would slow down their breathing rate to the point where you would either have to put a breathing tube in them to breathe for them, or. Or you would have to give them something like Narcan to reverse the effect. Again, there were actually examples in the hospital I trained in where patients had narcotic overdoses completely by accident, but due to the potency of these drugs, especially to fentanyl, less common with morphine, more common with fentanyl. And so you think, gosh, if that can happen in a hospital, how much more likely is it if you get this dosing schedule wrong outside the hospital? And as we're about to discuss, they're not off by 10 or 20%. I mean, they're off by an order of magnitude in this. Okay, so let's go back in time and again, think about this. Over the course of your career, what was the bread and butter of the DEA and law enforcement when it came to illicit drugs? When I think about this, I'm thinking it's cocaine, it's marijuana, methamphetamines like heroin. Those would be your big four. When did it turn into other drugs like Percocet and legal drugs, but being used illicitly and sold illegally, when did that transition take place?

I think when you look back at it, I think it's 2010, 2011ish, 2011, when you started seeing the pain management doctors recklessly prescribing the oxycodone, the Vicodins, the Percocets, and there was no regard for anybody. You know, that's how powerful all these pills are. People get addicted to it. So that's why a lot of people, when they have surgery, they don't like taking these pain pills because they're so addictive and they're afraid they're going to get hooked on them. And once we started seeing that 2010, 2011, people would Dr. Hop, if one doctor wouldn't prescribe, they would go find another doctor. And once they found that doctor, they would continue to go back to them and they would just stockpile the stuff. We started seeing that probably 2010, 2011, that the opioid addiction was pretty prevalent. This is the fallout of it. The fentanyl game has just elevated the opioid crisis to a whole, just entire new level.

And why is it that we think that fentanyl is being even put into these things? I guess one of the things I understood from your talk was that once the military and police authorities kind of crack down on Mexican cartels, the poppy fields are getting harder and harder to grow. But you can now make this stuff synthetically. Presumably, that's cheaper, less labor, easier to do.

Correct.

Did that immediately shift production to China?

When the Mexican cartels, when they found out about what China was doing over there, they started buying the precursor chemicals from China to start making this again. It's synthetic, so it's an illicit pure fentanyl. They want control of the drug game. They want that. And it's much cheaper for them to make the fentanyl than it is to cocaine, the heroin, the methamphetamines, simply because they don't have to worry about the poppy plants. They don't have to worry about the weather, they don't have to worry about the labor. They don't have to worry about a variety of things when they're trying to grow the poppy plants. So when they found out they can make it synthetically and make it just with chemicals, that's when they started buying from India and China. What we're learning now and what I've heard, they're starting to make the precursor chemicals themselves and in Mexico as well, which is obviously making it cheaper so they don't have to buy it from overseas, so they can make it much cheaper and much faster. Once they get that fentanyl by the kilo, they just ship it across to their counterparts here in the U.S. yeah, maybe.

Before we go any further, because there's so much more I want to probe on this, let's kind of bring it back to a story. We'll show a video now that you shared that night when you gave the presentation here at the school district about the parents of a boy who lost his life. So let's let folks watch that now.

This is Kevin McConville. He was 17 years old, And he was my baby boy, my pride and joy. Born May 9, 2005. Amazing kid, full of life and loved the outdoors.

Very creative.

Was playing a career in the military and possibly becoming a welder. He would have been a senior this year. He has a little sister that he loves very much. The night of August 2, he asked if there was any more pizza. And I told him no, unfortunately, and I could make him his tuna. And he said no. Said, I'm just gonna go upstairs and go to sleep. I said, I love you. He said, I love you, too. The following day, I found him in his bed asleep. What appeared to be asleep, but he was gone, and I couldn't bring him back. Later, we found out that after their investigation, they said that there was a pill found next to Kevin in an Altoids tin can with a pill in A bag. It was a light blue colored pill with the M30 logo stamped into it. And they said they're believed to be fentanyl. These are the counterfeit pills that are going around. I contacted one of his friends shortly after he had passed away to let him know that Kevin was gone. He was very heartbroken and he had told us that Kevin confided in him that he was taking Percocet and Xanax to help him sleep. I think one of his. I don't want to call him a friend. I can't call him a friend was doing it as well. And that friend originally gave him the pills because he probably confided in that person. And Kevin probably took them before and nothing happened. And so he continued to take them. I can't tell you how many times because I don't know. But it doesn't matter how many times you could take it. It could be your first time, it could be your last time. And no parent wants to see their child in that position in that. He looked like he was asleep.

That's a hard video to watch.

Very hard, and it's powerful. That's one of the reasons I put it at the beginning of our presentations, because I want that to be the attention grabber. I want kids specifically to sit back in their seats and really bring it home, personalize it a little bit. Because that's somebody their age that has fallen victim. Because not everybody knows somebody that has died from the fentanyl because it's. Although it's very, very prevalent, these deaths really, in the kids hasn't been as prevalent as what we're seeing these days.

I think the other thing that you made a really important point of in your talk is we really want to talk about these as what they are, right? These are accidental deaths. These are not people that are intentionally taking a dose that is so high to end their life. This is someone who thinks, in the case of Kevin, that they're taking something to help them sleep and then they don't wake up. Do we know, by the way, what dose was in Kevin's system?

I don't think toxicology has come back on Kevin's case quite yet. But as you mentioned, he was taking Xanax or what he believed to be Xanax because he needed help sleeping. So whatever he was battling personally led him to seek these pills to help him sleep. We all battle our own demons. We all have our own stories. We don't know what Kevin was dealing with personally. Did he have issues at home? Was he Getting bullied at school? Was he girlfriend just break up with him? Is he getting bullied on social media? The kids these days battle so much more than what we had to deal with simply because of social media. So that's what I tried to relay to these kids is I want to get rid of the stigma. Let's figure out why you're making that decision.

Why were you needing Xanax to sleep in the first place? And why are you seeking this thing out?

And it doesn't mean you're druggie. I preach that over and over because I'm not trying to do a say no to drugs talk. I'm trying to personalize it. I'm just trying to bring as much awareness to this crisis. And it is crisis and what we're dealing with. I want to be able to personalize it. And we have to get rid of the stigma. We want kids to be able to come forward and ask for help. And whatever Kevin was dealing with led him to take these pills. His parents had no idea what was going on until his mom or his dad walked into his room the next morning, and he was lifeless. And they've been very brave. They've joined us in several presentations. It's very hard for her, but I think it's also good for her and other parents to talk about it. They're very therapeutic and they're very passionate about helping, saving somebody's life. They'll never know why. That's the hard part for them. I still talk to them on a regular basis. They're actually having the celebration of life here in May for Kevin back home in Nevada. That's where they moved from. So that's what I really, truly want to focus on for not only kids, but adults. Like, why? Let's figure out the why.

I did the calculation the other day. I was with my wife and my daughter, and I just did some numbers in the back of it. Does my calculation come out right to you? By my calculation, every five minutes, someone accidentally overdoses in the United States, meaning dies as a result of an accidental overdose. Does that sound about right to you?

Yes. Five minutes sounds pretty accurate. I think I heard that this morning. On another, I just happened to be going to the gym this morning to work out, and I popped in my phone and it was a podcast about fentanyl. Like, I didn't pull it up. I was wicked, being that I was coming here today to talk about fentanyl and that stat was there. So that's.

Yeah, I mean, I basically just looked at the last 12 months of CDC data on how many people have died. And again, it's important to understand this is not including people who overdose as a way to end their lives. This is people who think they're taking either just a straight up recreational drug like cocaine or something that's laced, they take too much of it, or they're in the case of what we're seeing now, more and more of those. Do you have a sense of what percentage of accidental overdose deaths today are attributable to fentanyl directly? Fentanyl is in the drug that they are taking.

I think two thirds. About two thirds, yeah. That's why we don't. I catch myself because I say overdose a lot. You bring it up again to poisoning. They're not intentionally trying to kill themselves. They're taking a drug. For whatever reason, they're not waking up. So they're being poisoned by these drug dealers, by the Mexican cartel. And that's sad. Yeah, it's insane.

Maybe I'm silly for trying to apply logic to this, but if I put myself in the head of the drug cartel, the goal is they just want to make as much money as possible. Killing your customers can't be good business. So I'm asking you a question you can't possibly answer. But just sort of thinking about this, like, why in the world haven't they figured out a way to get the doses right? I mean, because again, they're not off by a little. When they get it wrong, they get it absurdly wrong. As you pointed out. You might as well be giving these people cyanide pills. If I'm understanding you correctly, there are kids that are taking 2, 4, even 8 milligrams of fentanyl in a single tablet.

Yes. And that's very scary.

Just so people understand, like, this is 100 times a lethal dose. You might as well have cyanide.

One of our 15 year olds that passed away in August. August 21st, Noah Rodriguez, a sophomore at Johnson High School.

This is Janelle's.

This is Janelle's son.

We won't watch that video now because it's a bit long, but it's very moving. We'll link to Janelle's talk, which we saw at the district there.

He took some Percocet, what he believed to be Percocet, and his mom got a call at midnight, August 21st to someone screaming on the other end of the line saying, noah, we believe Noah's overdosed. We believe he overdosed. So I'm doing cpr. Janelle was in Buda. The overdose of the poisoning took place down in San Marcos. So by the time she got there, her mom and dad had already made it to the scene. She got out of the car and her mom just shook her head, saying, he's gone. What she has since learned, as you mentioned, Noah had 8 milligrams of fentanyl in his system. They got toxicology back just a week or two ago. And it was pure illicit fentanyl that was in his system. That's four times the amount that it takes to kill somebody. It's insane. It makes no sense. I get that question all the time. Every person, like, why are they killing their customers? And to me, it's happening so often, they don't care what they do. Obviously they don't want four kids to die in a four week time frame because that's when they get the attention of the DEA and other law enforcement. But if they kill a person here or a person there, to me, they don't care.

Because someone, they don't care. I mean, yeah, there's no question that they care care about the kids. I just think even if you were thinking about this through the lens of having a business empire, how about just floating below the radar and not killing anybody? And as you said, I mean, the numbers are exploding. Ten years ago, if you said to me, what is the greatest threat to a young person's life? By young person, I mean under 40, I said it's two things. It's only two things that matter. Everything else is noise. The only two things that matter is dying in a car accident and suicide. You're going to take your own life or you're going to die in a car. And again, we can get into all the whys. It's alcohol, it's a whole bunch of reasons. But as you know, today, accidental overdose dominates those two. Like they're now the rounding errors, 100% in one decade.

Numbers have gone up exponentially since about 2010, 2011.

And I just want to make sure listeners understand you're not using the word exponentially. Hyperbolically, you are absolutely correct. It is not a line, it's an exponential line. I think somewhere here I even have these numbers. I couldn't believe when I saw it in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. Just looking at fentanyl seizures, you go from 200,000 to 1.5 million to 4.1 million to almost 10 million.

You brought it up in 20, 2021. If you're between the ages 18 and 45. Fentanyl was the number one killer. It wasn't gun violence, it wasn't car crashes, it wasn't suicides, it wasn't Covid, it wasn't any of those things. It was fentanyl poisonings. And unfortunately, I think when we get the 2022 numbers back, it's not going to be 18 anymore. It's going to be 13 or 14 to 45. That's strictly because I believe, and the DEA believes that the Mexican cartel are specifically targeting our young folks. And that's why we're seeing that.

Can you say a bit more about what that looks like? How are they doing that?

One of the ways they're doing that is they started making what we call and law enforcement and DEA calls is a rainbow fentanyl or candy fentanyl. And it's made to look just like candy. It looks attractive to the young folks. It looks pretty right. It won't kill me. It won't happen to me. And they're also targeting young folks because they want to get people addicted to a lot younger, so they have that customer base a lot longer.

Tell me what the chain looks like. So you're saying like if 13 year olds and 10 year olds are potentially now being targeted, you're going to expand your market. Who's the drug dealer in that situation? How is it getting its way from a Mexican cartel to distribute these much more friendly looking drugs? It's no longer a shady looking Percocet with a stamp on it, by the way. I think we're going to link to some photos of these that you shared. Yes, because this is the other thing that surprised me is how good the counterfeits are. You can't tell, they're indistinguishable.

Yes.

I always assumed when people were getting counterfeit Percocet, I was always like, well, they just don't know what real Percocet looks like and that's why they're being fooled. But that's not true. This is color matched, printed, identical, which, by the way, Anthony, you'll have to forgive me. This brings me back to my frustration. You figured out how to color match perfectly stamp and manufacture this, and yet you're off by a dose of 1000 on the active ingredient. It just boggles my mind.

I'll never understand.

But so back to the question. We're now seeing this in middle school, is that right?

Yes, as a matter of fact, our most recent death in Hays county was a middle school student. She was 13 years old. It's all related back to that. Nobody.

So how did this drug get into. How did she acquire this drug?

So basically, what? Majority of the time, they'll make the illicit pure fentanyl in Mexico, smuggle it across the border to their counterparts here in the United States, and then it just gets distributed to every major.

Tell me how that happens, by the way. I'm so ignorant of it. So the fentanyl is coming over in a powder form?

For the most part, yes. And it's blocked in a kilo, just like a brick of cocaine would come.

Across or kilo of fentanyl. What is the wholesale price for that?

I'd have to look that up, to be honest. I don't know what that means.

But it's cheap compared to a kilogram of cocaine, a kilogram of heroin, a kilogram of any other drug. Based on the fact that you get to make it synthetically.

Correct.

Okay, so your feedstock comes to Mexico now from China. They synthetically manufacture pure fentanyl. It gets shipped, and it's cheap as hell. They get it across the border. Again, walk me through that. What's the most porous part of the border that brings this stuff into the United States?

Vehicles.

In small batches.

It depends various ways. Right, so they'll load cars up, they'll load semis up, they'll strap it to people's bodies, they'll send it via airplane. Drones are real big now getting across the border.

So drones that fly at what altitude?

High enough to get over the wall? High enough to not be detected. Just. They have grown their business models. I mean, they're. If they were innovated in other ways, we wouldn't have traffic problems. We wouldn't have. I mean, it's insane. They're so ahead of the game of law enforcement. Like, some of this stuff's not even getting detected by X ray. Some of this stuff's not being detected by narcotic dogs. They're finding various ways to smuggle it in. When I talk about the candy fentanyl or the rainbow Fentanyl, they're actually smuggling it into the country. Inside Skittles? Inside nerd boxes? Inside. It doesn't have Skittles in it, but it's full of.

Wait a minute. You mean in Mexico, they make things that look like Skittles? Or they're just putting pure fentanyl into a Skittles box and shipping the Skittles box?

Yeah, they're making the fentanyl pills look.

Like a candy and putting them into a real candy box.

Into A real candy box.

And then that just comes over in a regular truck.

In a regular truck, you would never even know.

So unless you've got a sniffing dog or if you do a random inspection.

At the border, I think I heard a stat to where the folks down at the border probably intercept 5 to 10% of the narcotics that go across the board.

Again, not to get so off on these tangents, but is that a staffing issue? Is it simply a numbers game where unless you're willing to stop and seize every vehicle crossing, which would of course make transport over the border impossible, that's all you can get?

I mean, it's just. There's so much of it, and it is a staffing issue, but it's a variety of things. They're so smart in how they get it across the border that we're not able to detect it. I heard a stat this morning, actually. It was between 5 and 10% that they actually were able to intercept at the border. So that leaves other law enforcement entities throughout the country to try to intercept it.

And just from a jurisdiction perspective, the border seizure is the responsibility of border patrol, or dea.

It's the Border Patrol.

So the second it's they make it across the border, it's a DEA law enforcement issue.

It's an every law enforcement issue. 100% once it gets across the border. Yes, it's a DEA, it's the FBI, it's the ATF, it's local law enforcement, federal law enforcement. It's anybody and everybody that specializes in tackling the Snarcotti game.

And just so I understand the logic, they're going to put these things in Skittles because the idea is a kid that tries one of these Skittles, even if they're 13, is going to get high and getting high feels good and they're going to want more of those Skittles. Is the impression that the kid thinks it's a Skittle or pretty quickly realizes this is no Skittle, but whatever it is, I love it and I just want more of it.

I think they do that specifically just to smuggle it into the country.

So it's not that they're selling Skittles?

No.

So they're going to break it apart when it's a Skittle and turn it back into pills?

Yes, it's a fentanyl pill, and that's how they'll sell it.

All right, so let's go back to this girl in seventh grade. How did she come into possession of this stuff? Was it through an older Sibling or was she the direct person who got it from a dealer?

I don't know the specifics on her case. But how it works today in today's world, it's social media, and that's how a lot of the stuff is sold. It's how it's bought. It's social media, it's Facebook, it's Snapchat, it's Instagram. They're very blatant about, especially on school campuses. If they bring it to school, all they have to do is put an emoji up on their Snapchat. All the kids know so and so has pills today or they're downloading these encrypted apps, Telegram signal to where once these messages are sent and received, they disappear. So it's hard for us to go back and try to trace where these pills are.

And that's kind of the issue with Snapchat as well. Correct.

So anytime in Hays county that we have an overdose that's fentanyl related, our narcotic folks actually go and respond to that scene to try to get the phones, talk to the witnesses, talk to the friends. Their sole goal is to try to trace back where these pills are coming from and to see if they can find out who specifically sold these pills to these kids to put them in federal prison.

The people who are selling pills to kids. Do you have a sense of how many steps they are removed from the guy that receives the brick of fentanyl? Is that two layers, three layers?

Like it's multiple? It's not a two or three, it's multiple. There's different plugs in each city. It's just a whole enterprise on how it's distributed throughout the country. It's pretty insane.

Let's talk a little bit about what happens to a person when they overdose. There's another video you shared from an elementary school. Actually, it was a surveillance camera. So again, Anthony, you know, these are hard videos to watch, but I don't think we're going to shy away from that. I think it is important that people understand how uncomfortable this is. There's probably a lot of mixed emotions that are going on around the person who stops breathing. On the one level, there's the obvious fear and panic and oh my God, what is happening. On the other level, is there some sense that you get from talking to people who have been there that there's a hesitation to call police or paramedics for fear of reprimand because, hey, we're obviously doing something wrong here.

In this particular video, the passenger that wasn't getting poisoned. I think it was several 20, 25 minutes, I believe, before he even called 911. And I think that's specifically attributed to not wanting to get in trouble and not believing his friend is dead. So I think that's the big.

What is the law with regard to that? How clear is the law on prosecution of people who are, let's just say someone calls the police immediately, calls the paramedics, everybody shows up. Are they going to be prosecuted for drug use?

If they're in possession of it, yeah.

Let'S say they are.

So if they are in possession of it, yes. We had a young man who overdosed on one of our high school campuses that had, I want to say, three or four illicit counterfeit pills on him at the time. He pretty much died in class. And I think that's still in criminal proceedings. Yes. If you're in possession of it, obviously we want to save your life and we'll deal with the criminal part later. But when you're in possession of it, yes, you're more likely going to get charged.

I know this is beyond both of our pay grades, but is that the right solution to the problem in that situation? I don't know if you heard this. I just read it this morning. British Columbia being the latest example of, at least in this case, a province or a state is decriminalizing, from a personal possession standpoint, any drug. So this is going to be their attempt to say, how are we going to address this problem? Now, it's not entirely clear to me how that fixes the problem. I can see scenarios where it makes things better. For example, it would presumably reduce any friction to someone calling for help the moment someone is down, because you now don't have to fear that you're going to be prosecuted. But what are your thoughts on that? If you go back to the case of that kid who basically died in class, it's a miracle he's alive. Taking off your law enforcement hat, just from a personal sort of philosophical standpoint, do you think that's the right thing to do?

I think it's probably on a case by case scenario from a law enforcement perspective and there's laws that we have to follow. If we have to end up putting that young man in jail, it doesn't mean he's going to spend the rest of his life in jail. It doesn't mean he's going to be in jail. We have to file the appropriate charges. Right. But also our main concern is to make sure he's alive, make sure, he gets the help he's needed. So we don't necessarily arrest him that day. Like that young man went to the hospital and got treated. And then we turn those pills in, get him tested. If it comes back with illicit narcotic in it, then we would look at filing charges at that time. Filing charges and put somebody in jail at that immediate moment is not a priority. Our priority is obviously life.

I don't think I'm close enough to the data because I know that Oregon has done this. We see it now in British Columbia. Portugal did this 20 years ago. Portugal, I believe. I think it was. Portugal basically decriminalized for any personal possession, any drug. And interestingly, their accidental overdose rate dropped to lower, I believe, than any country in Europe. Now, that said, it is on the rise again along with this problem. So in other words, the fentanyl is raising all boats at the moment, including even Portugal. And truthfully, I just don't know where I stand on it because there's a part of me that still thinks that's a band aid. And I think what you said at the outset is the problem. Even though it sounds like a cop out, it's not. I think it is the problem, which is why do you need, fill in the blank drug 100%? Why do you need Percocet? Why do you need Xanax? Why do you need whatever it is? And without the answer to that question, I think it gets very difficult to think about this 100% again.

It doesn't make you a bad person if I have to arrest you today because you have three pills on you. I have a job to do, but I still need to treat you respect and I need to try to help you. Like I'm going to put you in jail today when you get out, let's figure out a way to get you the help you need or find you someone to talk to to figure out again why. Why are you making that decision? Without that why, that person will never be able to get the help that they need. Specifically, they don't know the why.

Do you see that that side of the equation is getting as much attention? Like I would like to believe that with all of the attention this is starting to get, and once you're at the point where every five minutes one of your citizens of a country this size is killing themselves accidentally with poison, that should be enough to get attention, do you feel that most of that attention is being channeled into seizure, stopping the cartels, the law enforcement side of it? Do you feel like enough of it is going into the. That side of it that you're talking about, which is the mental health side?

No, I don't think so. I think because it's becoming more and more prevalent, more and more people are starting to ask for help, and we're starting to learn that there's not enough rehab places for these people to go to. Several kids have come forward at Haysi and asked for help. They've talked to their pediatricians, they've talked to counselors and teachers and. And some of the issues they're running into is they're being told, well, give me six weeks and I'll have you a bed. Or give me three months and I'll have you a bed. That's not acceptable. It's not just a law enforcement thing. It's not a school district thing. It's a community that needs to collaborate together to try to figure out ways to help everybody, to help the folks that are struggling. We're not going to save everybody. We're just not. I've been a cop for 24 plus years. I've arrested many people that have had drugs or put drug dealers in jail. So we're not gonna save everybody. The war on drugs. We're never going to win. We're just not. But if we can take 10 pills off the street a day, that's what we're seeing now, is probably six people that we've saved because six out of every 10 illicit counterfeit pills have enough fentanyl to kill somebody. So if we can take 10 pills off the street, we're potentially saving six lives. And if I can go talk to a group of 300 students and I can keep one kid from making that decision to take a drug, or if I can get one of those kids who's struggling with an addiction to say, hey, I need help, then I think I can sleep well at night knowing that we're doing something to help.

So I want to talk about that because I think that's sort of why we're sitting down here today. Right. Which is one of the things that moved us about kind of your presentation was just how much you were putting of yourself into this, how much you're going around just talking to random parents like us, going to school meetings, doing all this kind of stuff. But it's so much of what you talked about blew my mind. I want to get to a few more of those things before I come to the nuts and bolts of it. I have a lot of technical questions about Narcan and all that kind of stuff, but I've been hearing some other really frightening things. So talked to a friend a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who goes to Burning man every year. As you know, Burning Man's a place where a lot of drugs get done. And he said, maybe I heard him wrong or maybe he got his facts wrong. So maybe someone listening to this will correct this. But he said that at Burning man, there were at least two deaths attributed to fentanyl in drugs that normally would never have fentanyl in them. One was cocaine and one was ketamine. Ketamine, of all things. Ketamine is a perfectly legal drug. Now, it probably was being used off label, so to speak, but clearly this was a person who was using counterfeit ketamine. What is the breadth of drugs that you're seeing? This. So we've already established it's going into every single counterfeit pillar ill out there potentially. So that's going to be all of your pain meds, of which I'm guessing Percocet, Oxycodone, Oxycontin, Dilaudid are your big boys. Then you've got it going into the benzos. That's your Ativan, your Ambien. Is it going into sleeping pills and stuff as well? Adderall, stimulants, any pill, anything that's a pill that kids want is going to be laced. That's frightening because I can hear this from my daughter saying, it's not uncommon for kids to say, I need something to help me study, I need something to help me sleep. Where else is it going? Has this crept its way into anything that has to do with marijuana?

Yes. We're talking every illicit recreational drug that's out there. Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, Molly pills, X, marijuana. We haven't seen this particular here in Central Texas yet, but DEA says you guys know how prevalent vapes are throughout the country, in all the schools. It's just a matter of time before we start seeing it in Central Texas. But they're starting to see vape pens that have the THC in it also contain fentanyl. So any illicit drug, any vape.

And again, just to be clear, there's no reason to do this unless you're trying to get people higher than normal.

That's the only reason.

There's no cost benefit to putting fentanyl into thc. They're totally different agents.

Correct.

So they're basically saying, we're betting that you're gonna like this THC so much. More. Cause somehow it's gonna get you the marijuana high, which is totally different from the opioid high, and we're gonna make a more addictive product. And yet again, they screw it up and put too much in.

It's a competitive market, so they want people to seek them. Them being the drug dealers, out for this particular drug. This drug dealer has the strongest cocaine on the market. Everybody go to him or her. These folks are thinking they're taking cocaine, not realizing that when the pure fentanyl gets here to the country, that the drug dealers on this side of the border are starting to put fentanyl in all their drugs. So when they sell it, they want their stuff to be more powerful. They want that street cred because it goes out on social media. So. And so has the strong cocaine. Go see him or her. That's the only reason they do it, is they want to stand out above the rest.

Is there any drug this has not made its way into yet?

No.

So right now we're sitting here in Central Texas. It hasn't shown up yet, but do you think that's just a matter of.

Time in the vapes?

It hasn't shown up in the vapes, yes.

But fentanyl's been seized.

Yes, yes, yes. I just mean in vapes. And is it showing up in cocaine? Is it showing up in other drugs here?

100%. To me, if you buy cocaine on the streets today, the chances of fentanyl in it is probably 90 to 99%, if I had to bet.

And most of the time you probably get away with it because it's not a lethal dose. But you're playing Russian roulette.

And I bring that up in my presentations specifically regarding the pills because six out of every ten illicit counterfeit pills has enough fentanyl to kill you. I stress it to the parents and the kids. You're playing Russian roulette by taking a pill that you don't know where it came from. Because we're seeing so many deaths and poisonings throughout Central Texas and the country that, yes, you're playing Russian roulette. And there's no other way to put it. It's just. Be blunt. Yeah.

I would guess that the majority of people listening to this podcast are parents or they're going to share it with someone who's a parent.

Right.

I got to be honest with you, I don't think there's a 13 year old listening to us right now. I don't think there's a 19 year old.

They don't like listening to cops either.

Yeah, but there are a lot of parents listening to us. What can we do? So let's start with you're just talking to me and my wife. We've got a 14 year old daughter, 8 year old and a 5 year old boy.

So that's one of the reasons I'm pretty passionate about it. I've got kids. I got a freshman in high school and a senior in high school. I've seen firsthand how it's affected my community. But as parents we have to be nosy, right? We have to take off the blinders and we have to stop saying my kid won't do this.

How many of the parents, Anthony, that you've met who have lost a child were so shocked that it was. I never even knew this was happening. Versus I'm sure there are some cases where my son has struggled with drugs his whole life. How many are in that former category where they literally are dealing with two complete shocks, the loss of their child and the fact that they had no idea their child was in need or in use of this. How often is it that case?

You hear it a lot. I don't have an exact percentage, but you hear it a lot. It may not be because they don't know, it's that they refuse to believe it. And I get it. It goes back to the stigma. I'm embarrassed if my kids are doing drugs, I'm embarrassed if my kids are druggie. So I stress the stigma. Like we have to stop with the stigma to stop with the judging and we have to work together as a community to get this as low as possible. We're not going to get rid of it, but if we can move it around a little bit, then we're doing what we can. But yeah, I hear too much. And as a parent I catch myself sometimes. Nah, not my kid.

Right.

But I have to remind myself because I see it so often like it could be my kid. Social media. Both my kids have phones, they have social media. Actually my freshman no longer has social media. But you have to be nosy.

Luckily my 14 year old's not on social media. We're going to try to keep it that way as long as possible. You mentioned like this emoji means this. This emoji means that. Is there any chance a parent is going to figure that out?

When I talk about social media to the parents, when I go talk to the PTAs or I go to HOA meetings, I stress if you going to give your kid a phone and if you're going to give your kid social media, you better learn as much as you can about every single app that's out there, because I guarantee you, your kid knows more about that app than you do. So if you give them Snapchat, you better have it on your phone as well. And you better learn as much as you possibly can and figure out the tips and tricks that they probably know on how to hide things. They're always gonna be more savvy than we are. But it's our duty as parents. If we're gonna hold them responsible for that, we have to learn about it. And I stress that so much. It's not only the apps, it's the games. Roblox, it's the encrypted apps, Signal, Telegram. I try to put as much information in my presentation in regards to social media, just so it gives parents something to think about. I showed that slide.

We'll link to a lot of these videos in this as well. So we're going to have people going to leave all these resources in there for folks to go to tell us about Narcan. So we used to use Narcan in the hospital. Mostly the use was at the end of surgery, if a patient needs to be brought back and you mistimed the opioid dose, you know, you would use it. A lot of times you'd use it in the situation I described earlier, which is, oh, you accidentally gave that person, you know, 120 or 125 micrograms of fentanyl. But in reality, that was a bit too much for them. Their breathing rate is slowing. We gotta back that off. I've already forgotten how long Narcan lasts for. But if a kid is down and you give them Narcan, are they out of the woods or is there a chance that they have so much drug in them that even though they start breathing again, they're gonna crash?

And that's one of the things we try to talk about because kids have started going out and buying Narcan and carrying it with them and saying, hey, I'm gonna pop this pill. Talking to my friend. Hold on, Narcan. I'm gonna snort this pill. If I fall out, can you please shoot me up? What they really don't understand is this Fentanyl is so powerful, one injection of Narcan or one nasal spray in Narcan is not helping because it's so fast acting. I don't think there's a set time. Because everybody's different, right? Everybody is built differently, metabolism different. There's not a set time. I try to explain that in my presentation as well, but the quicker you get Narcan into that person's system, the better chance they have to live. But what we're seeing in a lot of these overdoses and poisonings throughout Hays county is one injection's not working. We had a kid two weeks ago. They took 15 doses of Narcan.

Fifteen doses?

Yes.

In the field.

In the field before they were.

It's just to play ignorant. I'm sorry, paramedics are not yet there. They're there, but they don't want to intubate yet.

Correct. Paramedics are there and they're not. Deputies throughout Hays county carried Narcan as well. So usually if we're first there and we know it's a fentanyl related overdose.

Or poisoning, presumably you're just giving Narcan no matter what.

Correct.

The guy could be drunk.

It's so prevalent.

You're just going to give them.

Because it's not going to hurt them if they're not. We try to play it safe and if we even suspect there might be some kind of poisoning, we're going to shoot them up with Narcan. It's very easy.

Do you do intramuscular or intranasal?

It's a nasal, just like an Afrin. You're battling allergies. The same thing. But this stuff is so powerful. And depending on how long it's been, their respiratory system could have slowed down to where the Narcan is not going to get through. So that's where the CPR comes into play, not only with the Narcan injection, but the CPR just to get the blood flowing again. And that way the Narcan can get in there and attach to these opioids.

So should parents. I mean, lesson number one we're taking away is be really hyper vigilant about social media. I've read horror stories of. Yeah, drug dealers on Snapchat are basically offering dropdown menus, Right. It's like, do you need something to make you feel happy? Do you need something to help you sleep? Do you need something to help you study? I mean, it's very banal language. Yep.

And they're not shy about it.

But every one of them is Fentanyl. Yes. It's some derivative of fentanyl into some other pill. It's gonna be stamped as a different pill. And then these kids die. And the few times that kids have taken screenshots of their Snapchat is the only way that these Stories are coming to light where you're making the clear link to this innocent little high school kid is sitting there studying and wanted something to help him study, Wanted Adderall or wanted this thing or the other, and life is over. So that's lesson one. How long does Narcan last? Does it have an expiration date on it? I don't care, so you don't worry about. So is it something parents should have in their house? Is it something kids should be carrying around with them in case they. If your kids are going to a party, would you tell them to carry Narcan in case something goes wrong with some other kid there?

I have mixed feelings about that, but I tell the parents, if you have kids middle school or above, have Narcan at home somewhere where you can find it under stress. We all react differently under stress, so it's very important. Have Narcan on hand.

Don't have it in the box in the garage, in the top corner where you need the ladder to go up and get it.

Have it somewhere where you know 100% where it's going to be, and you're able to use it right away. Because it may not be your kid that's battling whatever they're battling. But little Johnny could be spending the night with you that weekend and hanging out with your son or daughter for the weekend, but you don't know that he or she's battling anxiety. You don't know that their parents are going through a divorce. You don't know if that person get bullied or they simply need medication to help them sleep, and they've gotten pills off the street because they're going to go spend the night at somebody's house and they're battling anxiety. It may not be your kid, but if somebody's spending the night at your house and they start getting poisoned, they start showing signs of an overdose. If you don't have Narcan on hand, you're going to feel really bad.

Can Narcan be purchased without a prescription?

Yes. You can go to websites. The federal government will mail it to you. It's becoming more and more prevalent. You can go to Walgreens and buy cvs.

So we should all be just going out, buying Narcan, having it in the kitchen drawer where it's under any situation, you can access it.

It's sad that we have to do that, but it's the world we live in.

You almost think of this like we have fire extinguishers and fire blankets in the house in case one day the grill catches on fire or there's an oil fire. So. So you just sort of have it. Tell me why you have mixed feelings about if your son is going to a party. And let's just assume, even though we should never assume, that you feel very confident that your son's going to break some rules. But not this rule. Your son's probably going to have a beer. He's not going to take a pill, that he doesn't know what it is. Do you worry that that's sort of. Well, tell me what your reservations.

To me, it's almost like you're given permission in the same hand. It's almost like a designated driver. That Narcan is your designated driver. So I guess if you're going to take drugs, you're doing it responsibly. I guess, but they're legal.

I was just thinking more of. You're not even saying to your kid like, it's okay to take drugs. You're saying if somebody else does and they get into trouble, you could almost do it through a selfish lens, which is, I don't want you to have to experience this tragedy that will change your life forever. You watch a video like that one we saw and you think, there's two lives that are lost. There's the kid who dies and there's.

The kid who watched 100%.

And if you can take that away.

In that aspect, 100%, I'm completely on board with it. What I have mixed feelings about is.

Take your drugs and have your Narcan.

Hey, hold my Narcan. That's where I have mixed feelings.

As do I, because. And my mixed feelings aren't even ethical. They're practical. Which is, how do you know your buddy's going to give you the Narcan? Correctly? How do you know you have enough? Like, you're really playing with fire in a dangerous way there, Anthony. Anything else parents can be thinking about here? Because I have to be honest with you, there's a part of me that's. And maybe this is just the skeptic in me that's thinking, wait, Peter, don't overreact to this. Don't freak out. I mean, of course you can believe it. I had a discussion with our 8 year old, right? And I'm like, okay, Rhys, if anybody ever gives you candy at school, unless it's in the wrapper, you don't eat it. I don't know if you're as old as I am, Anthony, but I don't know. How old are you?

47.

Yeah, see, I'm older than you, but I bet you still remember when we were kids, do you remember all the panic about never eat an apple at Halloween because the razor blade's in it?

I talk about that in my presentation because of the candy fentanyl, right before Halloween. I would get the question all the time at every presentation, should I let my kids go trick or treating or can I go trick or treating? And what I told them is like, your neighbor's not trying to poison you. Go out and have a good time. Let your kid go trick or treating. But then I referenced the 80s when I was trick or treating. I had to come home and dump it out because of the razor blades. Razor blade, yeah.

So you grew up in Texas, I grew up in Canada. It's amazing to think that everybody was putting razor blades in apples. Apparently across the globe, right. It probably happened three times. And yet it somehow created a moral panic. And I guess I think about this sometimes. Right. Is where's the line here? I think when I look at these stats, it's hard to say this is a moral panic. When you think of other examples of moral panics, things that were. There was a very prominent one, right, which was like all the satanic cults that were killing babies all over the place. Remember that whole thing that was kind of another 80s weird thing. Turned out not to even be the case. This is different.

This is real.

You have the bodies. This is one of the body bags there. You've got more than 100,000 body bags in the past 12 months. It'll be very interesting to see what the 2022 numbers are.

I keep waiting for those to come, and I'm. I'm not looking forward to them because I know they're going to be scary, but they're real. This is not a panic. I'm not trying to scare people when I go and talk to them. I just tell them what I owe, because it's real. It's not going anywhere. Going to become more and more prevalent. And unfortunately, we're going to start seeing stuff that's stronger than fentanyl because they're starting to change different structures and the molecule structure to make stuff stronger than fentanyl. We haven't seen it in Central Texas, but up and down the east coast they've seen like nitosines and I think it's called isotopes. There's some other stuff that's exponential.

There's another variant of it called sufentanil that is sufentanil, carfentanyl, sufentanil is like insanely potent. I was told from somebody on the inside that it's the single greatest regret of the FDA was that they authorized sufentanil. Sufentanol, I think, is technically a Schedule 2 drugs, meaning it's highly, highly controlled, but still medically can be used for cancer patients and things like that. But I've been told that they have enormous buyer's remorse at having authorized it, allowing it to become legal in that setting, because it makes fentanyl look weak. And you've sort of opened up an.

Awful Pandora's box in that aspect. They're also trying to create the Narcan, like a super Narcan to try to battle what's coming. And unfortunately, it's just a matter of time before we start seeing that here in Central Texas.

Anything else, Anthony, that you want to get across to, I think specifically to parents, either for them directly or things that they can talk with about their kids? Obviously, the most important lesson I take away from this is being very open with your kids. I mean, the first thing that I think we said to our daughter was, anything you have a question about, let's just talk about it because I'm not going to give you like a legal answer. I'm going to give you a medical answer. I'm not going to tell you this is right or wrong. I'm just going to give you the medical. This is the no judgment view of what this is. I don't know if that's enough.

It's something. No. And that's what I don't think probably enough parents are doing. Like I said, I have two kids, I have two daughters. I've seen so much in my 24 years of law enforcement. There's a ton of stuff that I want to unsee, but I've always been upfront with them about the world and what I encounter and what's out there on the street. Because I want them to know, and I'm not trying to scare them. I want them to know exactly what's going on and how it affects you. So we need to start in elementary school. You mentioned talking to your 8 year old. It's huge. The schools out in Hays county have started hanging signs and posters that are age appropriate, talking about pills, talking about fentanyl to where that conversation is starting at a younger and younger age. We haven't gone into the elementary schools and talked to the kids, but we go and talk to the parents. We go to the PTAs, we hold public presentations because I want Those kids, the parents of those elementary school, to start having those conversations at that age. That's where we'll start seeing the difference. The more knowledge they have, the more right decisions I think will be made. And again, I don't try to scare people. High school kids don't want me to go up on stage and preach to them. I just try to humanize the badge as much as I can and just try to show them I care about you guys. Because it affects first responders too, right? We go to these calls and we can never unhear the mom screaming because there are kids lifeless on the ground. I can't unsee that. And that affects not only officers, but firefighters, paramedics, doctors, the stuff that we don't want to deal with either. We don't have to experience that. We sign up for it. Yes, we're going to try to save everybody. But yeah, just start those conversations as much as possible. And never, never not think that your kid won't do that. And just be nosy, really. You just have to be nosy. Unfortunately. Never believe your kid won't do it. I just have to stress that a lot because I've heard it too many times. I never knew my kid would never do that. And as parents, we want to believe that. I don't want to believe my kid did what they did, but they did. Let's figure out why you know your kid better than anybody. If you start seeing the different signs, their friend groups are changing, the grades start suffering, they're losing too much weight. They're gaining too much weight. You know when your kid's off. I mentioned my freshman not having social media. I gave her social media at a too young of age. I tried to compare her to my older daughter, who was much more mature, and it affected her because she battles anxiety, depression, some other things. And I took social media away from her. Probably about two months ago. She came up to me and she's like, I want to thank you for taking TikTok away from me because I'm so much happier. I didn't realize how much it affected me because all she would do is sit in her room and scroll. It's just mindless stuff. It holds so much power over your kids. Just be mindful of that. Get to know your kids. Sounds funny to say you should know your kids. But some parents, they don't get to know your kids. And we start seeing something's off, start having those conversations.

You know, the way I think about what you're doing, Anthony, you're a guy Walking down a beach. And it's not just you. There are a lot of people doing this. But I think this has become your life's mission now. Your guy walking down a beach with another guy. I'm borrowing this from a story, and there's 100,000 starfish washed up on the beach. And you're walking with this guy every few steps, you pick one up and you throw it back in the ocean. And the other guy says to you, anthony, what are you doing? And you said, well, the tide is out and all these 100,000 starfish on this beach are going to die if they don't get back in the water. You pick one up, throw it in. Guy looks at you funny and he says, anthony, you can't possibly save all these starfish out here. You can't possibly make a difference. You pick up another starfish, you throw it in, you go. Made a difference to that one. And so I don't know how many you're going to save, but if you save 100, if through your work, a hundred lives are saved, that's a hundred lives that are saved. Most people go their whole lives don't save a life.

Yeah.

So I want to thank you for what you're doing. I want to thank you for taking time on a weekend to come here and talk with me about that. And we're going to put in the show notes for this. We're going to have all sorts of additional resources based on anything that you tell us we should link to for other folks. So thank you, Anthony.

Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Thank you much. So, so much. It means a lot.

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