The Fentanyl Apocalypse: Why a Century Old Narcotic Exploded in Popularity Out of Nowhere

In this thought-provoking episode, the hosts delve into the alarming rise of synthetic opioids, specifically focusing on the fentanyl crisis in the United States. They explore the historical context of drug epidemics, drawing parallels between the current crisis and the 1980s crack epidemic. The conversation touches on the origins and manufacturing processes of fentanyl, its potency, and its distribution routes, primarily through Mexican cartels. The hosts also discuss the impact of aggressive pharma marketing on opioid addiction and the subsequent legal actions that shifted drug supply to the black market. They engage in a hypothetical debate about potential solutions, including the controversial idea of government-regulated drug distribution and penal colonies. Throughout, the dialogue is interspersed with humorous personal anecdotes and cultural references, offering a balanced mix of serious analysis and light-hearted commentary. [00:00:00]

Speaker 3: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. I was, in case you don't just have some idea, but it's eating at the back of my head. And I'm like, you know, I've heard that there's like a, a drug crisis right now, right?

Like I should just like, look at the numbers of that. Because recently I was doing an episode about how the drug crisis in the eighties contributed to, you know, Black poverty and the breakdown of the black family and like, could that be the thing that actually caused it? My hypothesis is actually it's not.

But then I started looking at numbers and I want you to pull up the graph I sent you of drug overdose deaths. Right,

Speaker 2: because I'm I haven't seen the graph yet, but I remember from our kids there was the war on drugs. So I always kind of thought your,

Speaker 3: your background assumption right now. There's not that big of a drug problem

Speaker 2: or that there's always been a drug problem and we're always going to have to fight.

Oh, okay. I'm looking at the graph now. So everything seems kind of like, you know, not trending in a good direction, but not looking [00:01:00] insane. With prescription opioids, just kind of trending up or

Speaker 3: half the

Speaker 2: asthma tope. So to give you

Speaker 3: an idea

Speaker 2: of what happens in 2015 at that point, synthetic opioids,

Speaker 3: because it's interesting for anyone who can't see the graph at 2015, just all of a sudden, synthetic opioid drugs just exploded with the most common one being fentanyl.

Speaker: Well, I guess that means I can get rid of all my hot grandma merch. I'll just donate it to Goodwill. You know what gilf means, right? Yeah. God, I love fentanyl. You said it, pal.

Speaker 3: Onto the scene specifically by now, by 2022. There are 73,654 people dying a year in the United States alone. That's around 200 deaths in the US per day from Fentanyl. It's nearly 70% of all drug overdoses in 2022. And to give you an idea of how much of a rise this is it rose from 2013 to 2022 by [00:02:00] 23, 000%.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No, this, this is insane.

Speaker 6: Sadly, you know what it reminds me of, seeing it? These white folks look exactly like us during the crack epidemic. It's wild because I even have insight into how the white community must have felt watching the black community go through the scourge of crack.

Because I don't care either.

Hang in there, whites. Just say no! What's so hard about that?

Speaker 7: Okay, Shallon and I are going to play out a scenario to make you understand. I will play a drug dealer. The hero of our story! No, not a hero! Bad guy! So, pretend Shallon walks by me on the street. Remember, we say no to drugs. Hey little girl, you want to buy some ecstasy pills?

Speaker 8: No thank you, I only do crack!

No, no, Shallon,

Speaker 7: no! You just say no,

Speaker 2: Like clearly out of nowhere, but what's interesting too about [00:03:00] this graph. I just want to point out to those who are listening. It's not as though out of nowhere, suddenly synthetic opioids in isolation are a big problem. Now they are like by many, many orders of magnitude, a bigger problem than the other.

Drug involved overdose deaths from 1999 to 2020, but even, and this is by far, it's like the second to last of the, the overdose types listed on this graph, graph, but benzodiazepines is, is up. Close to, it's getting close to 10, 000 in 2020, and I just thought benzos were like an eighties thing. So even stuff that I thought had seen its heyday was like gone now lots of people, more than ever, more people than ever are dying from it, it seems.

Speaker 3: If you're looking since 2011 to 2021, and keep in mind it's higher now, there's been a 338 percent rise in drug deaths.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Speaker 3: Wow. And this, like, when I saw this, I was [00:04:00] like, I need to understand what's going on here. Was like, a new drug invented? Was like, by the way, there wasn't. Fentanyl has been around since the 1950s.

Speaker 9: I want To use heroin, but I also want to get stuff done. That's why I reached for Heroin AM, the only non drowsy heroin on the market.

Speaker 10: I would call Time Out to inject black tar heroin, there was almost a stigma about it. But with Heroin AM, I'm almost more alert than if I weren't on heroin.

Speaker 12: Side effects include, it's heroin. So, all that stuff.

Speaker 3: Was it a new production mechanism for the drug? No, no new production mechanism for the drug.

Speaker 13: Like a lot of people, I love to smoke. But my friends and family always make me go outside to do it. So that's why I now use e meth. It's crystal meth, but electronic. And thAt means I can ride the Ice Pony anywhere I want.

Speaker 14: Thanks to E Meth, I can now even smoke inside my favorite restaurant. Excuse me, sir. You can't smoke meth in here. [00:05:00] It's okay. It's electronic.

Speaker 16: I don't care.

Speaker 14: You're in my living room. And you're naked!

Speaker 3: Was it some economic situation that caused the drug to explode? No, no new economic situation. And I was like, maybe it was like a new, Distributor or mechanism of production. Well, what I had read

Speaker 2: before was that it was specifically China flooding the market with synthetic opioids.

Is that it?

Speaker 3: Also not true. No, they're mostly produced in Mexico. In fact, one of the things that did change that led to the explosion of the drug was the main movement of the manufacturing of them from China to Mexico.

Speaker 2: Is Mexico getting them from China? It's, but it's specifically the manufacturer. Sure.

Speaker 3: Mexico is the manufacturer. Mexico does buy some of the precursors from China, but they can likely get the precursors from many other places. China is not the bottleneck here. It is the cartels in Mexico.

Speaker 4: Wow. Okay.

Speaker 3: So, yeah, [00:06:00] it's, it's, it's not China. So it's, it was a mystery to me, which I was going over and it actually took me a while.

Cause it's like, I'm, I'm not going to figure out what actually happened here. And I believe I have figured it out. But. We have to go in to what Fentanyl is first because I didn't really know what Fentanyl is or why it was a cool thing for people to be doing. And I should note here, I'm, I'm saying that.

If there's an A. I listen to this, I said that sarcastically. Obviously, something that's leading to this much death isn't cool. It's horrifying. So fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that can be produced in laboratories using chemical procedures, unlike heroin, which requires cultivating opium poppies and used to be the former major drug.

So it's Cheaper to manufacture, it can, it's easier to produce in large quantities, and it's less dependent on environmental factors and crop yields. More specifically, it is completely synthetic. With opioid, you are relying on opioid poppies. With fentanyl, you do not [00:07:00] need Any of the opioid poppies now fentanyl is extremely potent.

It's about 50 times stronger than heroin and a hundred times stronger than morphine. That means very small amounts of fentanyl can produce strong effects. A little fentanyl goes a long way in terms of doses. Traffickers can transport smaller volumes for the same profit. And what you'll note as I'm going down here is this is sort of the perfect drug from the perspective of a drug trafficking business.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Speaker 3: Smuggling and distribution. The high potency of Fentanyl makes it easier to smuggle compared to bulkier drugs. Small packages are easier to conceal and transport, which lowers the risk of detection at the borders, and hires the profit per smuggling unit. Fentanyl is also highly addictive, creating a reliable customer base.

Users quickly develop a tolerance and dependence. to fentanyl frequency and repeat purchases from addicted individuals and ability to mix fentanyl with other drugs. And this is really important. Fentanyl mixes not when I say, well, I mean, it leads to random deaths very frequently, but it [00:08:00] is mixed with other drugs and can be used mixed with other drugs much more freely than other types of drugs that were on the market before.

So it can be used to give anything to people. Sort of a kick from the perspective of the drug seller and make anything else artificially more addictive which is often what they are trying to do So you've got lower production costs, higher potency, easier smuggling, and stronger addictive properties.

This combination of factors results in a much higher profit margin compared to traditional opioids like heroin. A package of fentanyl weighing 11 pounds could sell for 15, 000 in Mexico and fetch up to 100, 000 in the United States. A massive markup.

Speaker 2: You know, you're describing all this and it makes me think of our search fund search days.

So Malcolm and I Like our day job is in this form of private equity called search funds, where you raise money from investors with the promise that you'll find and then acquire using their money, a business, which then you [00:09:00] will operate and like run more efficiently. And they're always looking for the perfect business, you know, something that's just kind of, a little poorly managed by an amateur entrepreneur that under your management with their advice could be run more efficiently and make even more money, but that, you know, they just want to step back and retire.

I'm hearing this and it just, it's ringing all these bells from those days. I'm like, okay, recurring revenue, like lightweight you know, just sticky customers. It's, it sounds, you

Speaker 3: don't have to worry about supply

Speaker 2: chains. Yeah. Integrates well with other products. Well, this is amazing. What a configuration.

Speaker 3: Yeah. The thing that gets me, and this is the thing that really is transformative from a business model perspective about Fentanyl, is that it is completely synthetic. It doesn't require, and most of the synthetic things that are put into fentanyl and AI wouldn't go down how they were made with me.

I really tried guys. Cause I wanted to get the, like the biggest, most holistic picture, but it's a low

Speaker 2: cost of goods sold. Probably

Speaker 3: they, they can usually, they usually have [00:10:00] other real industrial purposes which means. That is hard to ban them almost to the extent where one of the questions I kept asking myself is, why are they making this mostly in Mexico and not in the United States?

Speaker 2: Yeah,

Speaker 3: it just seems like it would be easier, right? It must be that the labs are actually pretty expensive to put together. And if that's the case, that would make all the more

Speaker 2: reason to do it in the U. S. What do you mean expensive? No,

Speaker 3: because then there's the variable cost of a lab being raided, and in Mexico that cost would go to almost nothing.

Oh, because

Speaker 2: law enforcement is much weaker in Mexico, therefore it's a better market for the Yeah, and

Speaker 3: the gangs have better control of the regions they control. Also keep in mind, if, by the way, if you're like trying to picture fentanyl because you're like me and you had no idea what fentanyl looks like it's transported in a powdered state.

Simone Collins: Mm hmm.

Speaker 2: Yeah, anyone who's gone through IVF will probably be familiar with this or like who's dealt with other drugs. Like there are many, if you're injecting something drugs that come in a shelf stable powder, and then to inject it, you reconstitute it with saline solution. So [00:11:00] you take a syringe, you take out a certain amount of saline solution, you insert that.

And you to mix in with your powder, but before that, like the powder doesn't need to be refrigerated. It's an incredibly small vial, very concentrated. It's like, so easy to deliver. And of course, all these other things too. This is so great. You don't need specialized equipment for this. You can just use standard medical equipment.

That's sterile. And it's pretty easy to get, it's, man, this,

Speaker 3: yeah. And, and it's a good business case, right? Like you can see, but then this brings a mystery. Why wasn't anybody trafficking it in large amounts before 2014? Yeah. Right? Like that's a question that I, it's a head scratcher and we've known how to make it since the 1950s.

It's been made illegally for decades at this point. So it's not a new idea that you could make this illegally. And when you ask AI, it keeps giving me answers or look up news articles that are [00:12:00] just like, that's obviously not it. Like it'll say, oh, the rise of the dark net. And it's like, well, it's not the rise of the dark net because.

That wouldn't change what drugs would work well, right? It would

Simone Collins: change

Speaker 3: the access to drugs. And I can see that having a big when we're looking at this overdose explosion. But, or they'll be like, Oh, COVID. I'm like, what, what are you talking about COVID? What are you talking about? So can you guess what it is?

Actually, no, but I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure I figured I don't

Speaker 2: think I'm informed enough to know. So my guess here, if I'm looking at the graph and I'm looking at the medications that are there, this doesn't perfectly track with my theory, but A lot of readers are sorry, a lot of listeners of this podcast have also read this book.

It's called blitzed. It, it's sort of about like amphetamine use during world war two. Yeah. Well, but also like by a lot of people at that time. And it was just this like, You know, feeling down after having a baby as a [00:13:00] new nursing mother, try amphetamines. You'll feel great. Like it was just a cure for everything.

But I don't think we saw the same number of overdose or even interestingly It seems addiction wasn't that widespread a problem. This is a widely marketed product. And, and like just all over the place, women are being encouraged to take it. It's a pick me up. It gets, you know, powerful back

Speaker 3: then.

Fentanyl is

Speaker 2: extremely powerful. I'm giving you that. But like people could take more pills, for example, to increase their dose if they developed resistance. I think a lot of it had to do also with contextualization. Like that, that you were taking it to solve a problem, to be more productive, but that if you discovered that it was kind of causing problems in your life, you would stop taking it because your goal wasn't to get high.

Your goal was to be productive. It was to take care of your baby. It was to like manage your business. It was to do your work. It was to fight in World War II and do terrible, evil things. And I also even see [00:14:00] that with Like, problems with benzos in the 80s, you know, it was just like, you're stressed out and need to need to calm down the cocaine was huge in the 80s.

Right. And that that maybe like, you know, it was it was to work hard. This is the time. But I think that now it's a cultural issue. And I guess it's because I'm addicted to calling everything a cultural issue. But now like the

Speaker 3: exact point I'm making is it's not, it's not, they were not doing the same thing in blitz.

You are comparing marijuana from the 50s to marijuana today. So you

Speaker 2: think that the nature of this is just that now everything's so powerful and in the past it wasn't?

Speaker 3: It wasn't powerful. Yeah. It wasn't drinking the equivalent of watered

Speaker 2: down wine. And now you're

Speaker 3: comparing light beer to moonshine. And you're trying to figure out why people aren't dying from light beer.

Okay. It's a completely different phenomenon. Well, so is that

Speaker 4: why?

Speaker 3: No, that's not why.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Speaker 3: Because for a while now we've had the ability to concentrate it. So [00:15:00] why? Is Corporatism. What? It's big American companies. What? That's why we have this problem. So now I'm gonna tell a side story which will reconnect with the fentanyl story in just a second.

Pharmaceutical companies, particularly Purdue Pharma, engaged in aggressive marketing tactics to promote opioids like Oxycontin. They were spending billions upon billions of dollars marketing these drugs, okay? They downplayed addictive risk. Companies falsely claimed that opioids were not addictive when used as prescribed.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Purdue Pharma, for example, misrepresented Oxycontin as less addictive and less likely to cause withdrawal than other medications. Misuse of scientific evidence. Percy Pharma cited outdated narrow narrow and misrepresented studies to support claims about OxyContin safety.

They used a 1980s letter to the editor, not a research article, as evidence of low addiction rates, taking it out of [00:16:00] context. Aggressive marketing tactics. Companies used sales representatives to frequently visit and persuade doctors, provide financial incentives and gifts to prescribers and funded

biased continuing medical education programs. They targeted vulnerable populations. Companies deliberately targeted susceptible prescribers and patient groups, including those more likely to become addicted. Promoting off label use. Some companies, like Purdue Pharma, were found guilty of unlawfully marking opioids for unapproved users, including long term chronic pain management.

Failure to report suspicious orders. McKesson Corporation, violated the Controlled Substance Act by Failing to maintain effective controls against diversion of opioids and reporting suspicious orders to the DEA. Deceptive marketing practices. After Purdue Pharma faced legal action and reduced its marketing of Oxycontin, competing companies increased their opioid use.

marketing efforts 160 percent [00:17:00] specifically targeting Oxycontin prescribers funding front organizations companies allegedly funded non profit organizations to influence prescribers beliefs about opioids a false appearance of independent advocacy so very interesting there were billions of dollars in the U.

S. trying to get people attached to opioids so do you know when the major lawsuit happened that shut most of this down? 2014.

Speaker 4: Oh, gosh. Oh, oh, no. Oh, so all the people who

Speaker 3: were addicted because of the company and we're buying it from the

Speaker 4: companies.

Speaker 2: Now we're buying it from

Speaker 3: yeah, Santa Clara County along with Orange County followed the nation's first government lawsuit against drug companies for their role in the opioid epidemic.

Speaker 2: So they clamped down and suddenly everyone's going to Mexico.

Speaker 3: Well, it [00:18:00] wasn't just that they clamped down, they created an environment and I want you to, I'm going to put a graph on the screen here. So the first major clamp down was in 2014, but then in 2019, that's when the extensive lawsuit in New York, this was when the New York attorneys general filed what can be prescribed as the nature's most extensive lawsuit.

Total companies responsible for the opioid epidemic. And I want you to Look at what happens in 2019 to the rates of opioid use. They explode again. With a second big jump. So, what happened was twofold. Major companies were able to spend billions of dollars getting the general public addicted to opioids.

And then, the, the the cartels who may not have seen a business case for the opioids before this, were now like, oh, this is much better than heroin, let's go with this!

Speaker 2: Oh boy.

Speaker 3: And that is what ended up happening.

Speaker 2: So I'm glad we're having this conversation because this is a thing you just, [00:19:00] we haven't talked about a lot personally, and I feel so on the fence about it.

I, I read the book on the Silk Road and the Dread Pirate Roberts and how it all came to be and that he was such a, an ideologically staunch libertarian, especially when it came to access to drugs. And he was basically just. Very in favor of this being free and untraceable. I'm in his ideal world.

Everything would be totally decriminalized. All drug use. And I, there's a part of me that's like, yeah, if this were, if this were not criminalized at the very least, we would see safer products out there. What you

Speaker 3: forget is the murders that are committed because of drugs, which is a really, really high rate.

But

Speaker 2: what happened after the corporate [00:20:00] corruption stopped? so much. Overdose deaths skyrocketed. They weren't high before. I mean, it kind of implies to me that they were like,

Speaker 3: I haven't, I haven't gone into the murder rate increase and stuff like that, which is

Speaker 2: bad. It's horrible.

Speaker 3: So I think that the, that the externalities here are so high that it does not make sense.

So libertarian stuff makes sense when there is no externalities that need to be priced in, but the externalities are too high. We need to go with penal colonies. I think that's the real solution here.

Speaker 4: Back to Simone's dream, make it happen.

Speaker 3: I was actually recently talking to someone and I actually quite like the idea of shipping because it would be, our, our, our criminals within our prison system cost so much.

What if Haiti? We ship them to Haiti and we paid the Haitian government to, for, for every criminal we were shipping them. They would likely be honestly better educated than the average Haitian citizen right now. How much? How much? Well, no, Haiti just has a huge problem. He's experiencing an

Speaker 2: insane brain drain, yes.

Anyone who gets educated gets [00:21:00] out, yeah. If you're like

Speaker 3: a doctor, or you can get like a an educated job, you're going to flee the country right now. It's a terrible place to be. I'm, I'm saying this objectively and not as a Even Haitians in the U. S. are gonna be like, Oh, yeah, like, I have a college degree, that's why I left I wouldn't mind shipping criminals there, they'd probably be slightly better in terms of being able to help stabilize the economy.

Speaker 2: If criminals go there, though, they then also have to Get some governing rights. I think because one of the reasons why Haiti became so terrible I mean, it's right next to the it's right next to the DR right like they're on the same freaking island and the DR is okay It's not perfect, but it's nice.

There's lots of resorts there a lot of tourism and then you have Haiti It's deforested. They've they've ruined their environment. They've they've really screwed it up. I feel like I want to, I want to give these criminals a chance, Malcolm. You're not giving them a chance.

Speaker 3: We can send criminals there, but they at least need to be armed and have a defensible location.

Speaker 2: Yeah. [00:22:00] It's, it's cruel and unusual to send them to Haiti, Malcolm. That's not fair.

Speaker 3: Many criminals would jump at the idea.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Haiti versus jail. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe honestly, maybe Haiti's for sale. This seems like the kind of thing Trump could do is. Okay, he tried to make some other big country moves.

He tried to

Speaker 3: buy Greenland, which was a really smart idea. Greenland

Speaker 2: would have been great. Maybe he can settle for Haiti. It's probably on sale right now. Turn it into a giant penal colony and just send them out there.

Speaker 3: That's your plan. I don't know if that's well, I, I, or, or, you know, if you don't want to do something as controversial as that, it's just, I feel like it could solve two problems with one stone.

You know what I mean? Help

Speaker 2: Haiti and yeah, you're

Speaker 3: going to have a hard time getting like educated people to move to Haiti right now. And that's what they need to fix their local economy at the moment.

Speaker 2: No, but hold on, [00:23:00] let's, let's go back to the whole libertarian idea. So, so, but you're saying that if we decriminalized illicit substances that.

There would be more violence. Cause I think the problem is that because we shifted from a corporatized market of opioids to now an illegal market, it's worse. And if it were a legal market, probably overdoses would be somewhat less and probably criminal activity would be lower because it wouldn't be criminal.

And he wouldn't have these. Very dangerous and heavily armed gangs doing it and production would be in the United States. And I feel like production would be a little bit higher quality. And I'm not saying don't have some equivalent of.

Speaker 3: Okay. I, I, I was going to say anything around these types of drugs, like in terms of you're like, okay.

You know, they shouldn't be produced. I would not have them produced by corporations because then the corporations have a motivation to get people addicted and we've seen that they are motivated by that. It has

Speaker 2: to be small businesses only somehow. No,

Speaker 3: not small businesses only. [00:24:00] This is one of the few areas I would say something should be the government.

I think the government should sell

Speaker 4: Wow. That's an interesting idea.

Speaker 3: Frostpunk 2, one of the laws you can enact is government booze. Where the government sells all booze.

Speaker 2: Well, I'm so glad Frostpunk has given you the

Speaker 3: Frostpunk's my favorite game. Favorite universe inspiration you need for governance.

We have one of those universes where they're like, I kinda like to live in this one. , frost Punk is mine. A lot of people are like, wait, you wanna live in the Frost Punk universe?

Speaker 18: Has, let me tell you the news. My head's been, we I've been down on knees he spoke to me in a voice. So cut you down. You can run home for a long time. And hired your hand

Speaker 3: this is why you live a life of purpose. You have a community. You're fighting for the survival of the species. You don't have to deal with too much indulgence or the, the temptation of indulgence which in many ways is [00:25:00] worse than, you know, not just having a purpose and doing your thing.

You see in Frost Punk one, the core. Question of the game, right? In, are you going to choose Like, which vice are you going to choose? Are you going to become fascist, or are you going to become a religious extremist? And here I am, like, why can't I just do multi track drifting?

 Like, why can't I be both fascist and a religious extremist at the same time?

And when I should say fascist, they're not really fascist. It's more like Pragmatic and totalitarian in terms of how they're ruling the colony which is interpreted in modern parlance and like, aesthetics is fascism, but that's not real fascism. Real fascism looks much more like modern, like the modern Democrat movement.

If people want to see what real fascism looks like, they can look our movement. Are Democrats just fascists? Because I think that people have forgotten or like it's something like that or like [00:26:00] what, what fascist have forgotten what fascism is and have gone down these like really long pipelines.

You know, they point out in that video, you're like, what's a capitalist? They're like, okay, they tell you what's a communist. They tell you it's like three words. What's a fascist. It's like a five paragraph explanation. And I'm like You know, there's a faster way to explain that. The reason you don't know it is because it would show you that the modern democratic party, it's a fascist party.

But anyway totalitarian and centralized is, is the other option.

Speaker 23: I have heard that there are those who would defy us. Who choose oppression or ascension for papyrus. This is did I and these pariahs . Winter

Speaker 24: blizzards to infinity, so sing the hymns and legionaries. Hand in and skin the sinners if you wish to skim divinity. Each shiver will deliver us, deliverance in time.

Earn the innocence for penitence if we preempt the crime.

Speaker 3: But it, it, the game and two, it keeps trying to like, give me options. As if, like, I'm supposed to hate [00:27:00] every one of the options, and I just love all the options. Like you've got the evolvers that are like about you know, anything to adapt to the new environment, like chopping off limbs and replacing them with stuff or like putting attachments on people's hearts to like make them be tolerant to colder blood.

And you've got like the. the religious faction, which is all about, you know, trying to bring a degree of meritocratic equality to everything, but also through the guise of religion. And I'm like, I love both of you guys. You don't need to fight. What are you looking up? You're clearly Googling something.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So, well, I'm just, I really want. And I think through more decriminalization it because saying, let's just have the government provide drugs is not going to happen in our lifetimes, unless something really awesome happens,

Speaker 3: they're already handing out fentanyl on the streets in major cities,

Speaker 2: right, except here's the thing.

So Oregon was the first, and to my knowledge, only state to decriminalize drugs. And I just double checked because I heard [00:28:00] this, but now Oregon is, is. Recriminalizing them. Doing. Yeah. Because, well, I think the bigger problem and I was trying to find out if this was indeed confirmed because I've heard this, but I've not yet read it properly yet.

But Oregon could not afford the treatment centers that it had tried that it was obligated under the new law. I think to set up for people when they had serious addiction problems. And I think the problem with their D criminalization was that it also included a commitment to treat people who are addicted and that's prohibitively expensive.

And that is where I struggle with decriminalization even to the level of government provision of very addictive substances is you are going to end up with a lot of people just super addicted. I mean, a couple of generations later, though, that type of. That any set of genes that allows for that to happen really easily is going to be bred out of the population because these people are just going to die.

[00:29:00] I

Speaker 3: think you need the counters to this freely and easily accessible. And that's the problem is opioid agonists are criminal. Well, they're difficult to get with naltrexone being the main one. And I think that naltrexone should not just be something that you can get easily for free anywhere, but it should be, I think, a cultural norm among many groups.

And naltrexone, by the way, is just one of those, like, insane wonder drugs. Like, aspirin or something like that. So, for people who don't know, like, aspirin is, like, insanely good, like, across everything. It, like, almost does no harm and, like, has a ton of weird side benefits that you wouldn't expect.

Naltrexone, the core opioid agonist. It's so for example, I take it for alcohol so I don't get addicted to alcohol. And throughout COVID, I never got COVID and I was like, Oh, am I one of those weird people who's immune to COVID? Then I look up and there's a study saying naltrexone creates COVID immunity and I'm like, Oh, okay.

I didn't realize that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we couldn't figure out why whenever our whole [00:30:00] family tested positive, you wouldn't test positive.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't realize I was taking a low dose antiviral. So it's, it's one of those things that just has like a ton of positive externalities. The only real negatives to it is quote unquote, like theoretically can damage a liver.

I guess if you have a very weak constitution, but I get checked all the time. And I had problems with my liver when I was drinking a lot. I don't have trouble now. And I drink. Still quite a lot. But with Naltrexone and so like to me, basically

Speaker 2: considering what it's treating, your body will be better off even if it's a little harder on the liver to start.

It's 100 percent worth it in vast majority of cases.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And then the other thing is, Oh no, it makes you not want to do other addictive things like repeatedly check Facebook repeatedly check my YouTube stats got to keep that up. So I know that like, like I'm still valid. Like and subscribe, by the way.

Speaker 2: Also, [00:31:00] actually, if you are willing to and you have an iPhone, could you please leave us a five star review in Apple podcasts? It would mean a lot to us, but okay, what I'm hearing from you is you're saying in an ideal scenario, the government would provide any highly addictive substance to It would also provide very readily, probably for free subsidized by the profits of drug purchases, naltrexone, and then probably we'd see fewer deaths on the whole and a healthier society on the whole.

Speaker 3: No, I would add one additional thing to this.

Speaker 2: Hmm.

Speaker 3: I think that the drug centers and the places where you buy the drugs, they need to be cordoned off areas. So if you choose to be one of the people who's buying fentanyl, you cannot live in, [00:32:00] you know, outside specific sort of cordoned off communities. Now these communities would have jobs, they'd have ability to work, but you wouldn't be able to easily interact with the rest of society.

We're at like

Speaker 2: drive.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the best way to do this is to build them in remote locations. That you know, and likely around some sort of a business that could use it. Maybe it's near some mines. Maybe it's near some. Do you

Speaker 2: want people working in mines while high off their minds?

Speaker 3: Well, I don't I think you could if you knew that the settlement just be testing, which is do you test for specific things?

Simone Collins: Okay,

Speaker 3: but like or like rural Alaska or something like that. Like I think that there is Rural areas and you could do this at a state level where you could say You could concentrate these individuals and prevent them from being the problem that they're being was in cities. And then people are like, well, then everyone wouldn't go, but what you do is you way, way, way lower the punishments [00:33:00] here.

Like you get to live your regular life. You have to buy from the government, but you have to be one of these people who's taking this and people can be like, well, that would hurt your, Career prospects and everything like that. It's like, yeah, it's a hit, but typically when you start to get desperate, you're desperate anyway.

And it's probably better just to separate them from society. And then

Speaker 2: here's where I think you're making a mistake. I think it has to be, well, what we found works well with alcohol seems to work well, which is we, you're not allowed to do various things while drunk or while high with, with other drugs that are considered legal.

And that's where the punishment lies. But as soon as you make it so restrictive. Where you literally have to live somewhere different or work somewhere different to access these, you're going to have a black market for them. And it's the black market that creates the problem in the first place.

Speaker 3: The problem isn't the black market.

And also the problem isn't the wealthy guy who is mixing fentanyl with like his party drugs [00:34:00] or something like that. It's the, the gang member and the, the low income individual who just doesn't have as much to lose by moving. The, the crime is not being committed by Yeah, I, I don't think it's going to cause the externality.

Do you think it will? And at the end of the day, I think we should at least try it. I mean, they tried what was, what was that? Where they hand out money to people experiment

Speaker 2: universal basic income. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Universal basic income. Why, why can't they try a penal colony? You know, we, we have, we have the lefty side of the EA movement trying their stuff.

Why can't the righty side of the EA movement occasionally try something?

Speaker 2: Eventually there will be depopulated towns like those Japanese towns now that are basically ghost towns. We already have actually a decent number of ghost towns in the U. S. where we could theoretically try something like this.

Speaker 3: Well, yeah. Yeah. I think you make a good point. It's like, these are just ideas now, but they will be [00:35:00] easy ideas to implement in maybe 50 years time.

Speaker 2: Oh, definitely. And at that point you can even insert the equivalent of one of those electric fences for dogs. But for humans, because you have something embedded deep within your spinal cord that will tase you whenever you try to leave the bounds.

So it will work just fine. Absolutely. And if you look

Speaker 3: actually at the graph, well, you look at the rates that fentanyl addiction is rising. Like if we don't find a way to stop this, right? Like it's exploding upwards. It's asthma topic at this point, it's not leveling off.

Speaker 2: Well, what do we do with our kids? I mean, part of this also.

I still feel that there's a big cultural element here. And I feel like we have these conversations around masturbation as well, around lots of behaviors that when you make it illegal, when you make it shameful. People do it behind closed doors and in a way that's even more damaging.

Speaker 3: No, no, no, no. So masturbation is a [00:36:00] human instinct that is pre evolved because we had to reproduce in a historic context.

You are born addicted to arousal patterns. And you're

Speaker 2: born wanting to feel good.

Speaker 3: Yeah, but you were not born addicted to fentanyl. You need to take fentanyl the first time to be addicted to fentanyl.

Speaker 2: Yeah. You don't

Speaker 3: need to masturbate the first time. You don't even need to

Speaker 2: take fentanyl one time to be addicted to fentanyl.

Speaker 3: What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2: How many times have I taken fentanyl?

Speaker 3: Okay. So you, you would have to take it multiple, multiple times. I've taken it

Speaker 2: six times. No, seven, very low

Speaker 3: addiction rate.

Speaker 2: Well, okay. Yeah. But also like, I don't think women who've gone through multiple rounds of IVF, because that's when I've had fentanyl, they like typically give it to women.

During egg extraction embryo. Yeah. Or egg retrieval. They say I don't hear about that ever being an issue and people are given clearly thought it was an issue with you. They joked about it. They were like, you don't need to do more rounds.

Speaker 3: It's just getting so many rounds done to get fentanyl.

Speaker 2: Yeah, [00:37:00] like, as if. I don't think. There are easier ways, clearly, to get it. I mean, it's still offered. It's still, it is still integrated. I mean, I'm sure I've also been given it during or after C sections and stuff too. And just, you know, not really aware of what exactly is in the mix, but yeah, I just don't, I think a lot of it does.

There is something to be said for context and culture.

Speaker 3: Sorry. I'm talking to someone here who has done Fentanyl before. Really

Speaker 2: good. Really fantastic. That whole like sleepy eyes rolling back into your head, very relaxed tappy feeling. That's it. It's great. Like I wouldn't pass up an option. . Yeah.

Speaker 3: So I, I the, the, wait what was the wider point I was making here?

Speaker 2: My, my point is that I, I think that there is a role that culture plays and that when. Medications when substances are treated in an instrumental fashion, and here's the appropriate place to do it. And here's the [00:38:00] appropriate place not to do it. When they're when they're societally legalized, culturally legalized, we can build frameworks for managing them.

And then when we make them societally legal legal, like, this is a bad drug. We don't talk about it. Don't ever do it. And so there's no framework to do it. Occasionally. properly, then people will only do it improperly.

Speaker 3: You have this impression. So her family has done lots of drugs and is never addicted to anything.

My family gets addicted to the littlest effing thing. If you take one drug ever, you're going to be addicted forever. Ever, ever, ever. You are approaching this from a family that basically does not have opioid pathway. That is why you think this. No, you don't. Like, for example, you just drink whatever you feel like, right?

Like you have no like drive to drink.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I, it does seem, it does seem kind of like my life. My entire life is on Naltrexone, [00:39:00] whereas. You have to take naltrexone to feel my life.

Speaker 3: I actually really agree with that sentiment. Actually, even your behavior pattern is like someone on naltrexone. Yeah.

Speaker 2: You show me anything rewarding and I'm like, okay.

Speaker 3: Yeah. It's like when I took you scuba diving and I was like trying to show you all the wonders of nature, and you came back and you were

Speaker 2: like,

Speaker 3: you were like, what were you pointing at? And I was you were like, it was a fish. You're like, why did I go down to that reef? It was just a bunch of fish. Like you have no wonder, like the world or anything like that, like the things that cause opioid pathways in other people, you just do not experience.

And so you're just like, ah,

Speaker 2: whatever. Yeah. I wish, I don't know. There must be, we should go through Nebula to see if they have any random polygenic scores related to. Like addictive behavior, like, would it be possible in the future for people doing [00:40:00] PGTP? To select embryos for lower risk of addiction, it might be very meaningful because we're already full in to an era in which we are constantly going to be subject to addictive pathways, social media, every day

Speaker 3: that I intermarried with you, because that is one of my biggest risks in the current era is I am really susceptible to opioid pathways and it's only going to get so much

Speaker 2: worse.

It's so much worse.

Speaker 3: Actually, so, so by the way, fun aside here, when we're speaking about your naltrexone character. Yeah, but we can just give naltrexone to kids as an option, right? You know, like not that I would give them, I'm not saying I would do that. I'm just saying that having access to opioid agonists might be useful in an age of constant dopamine, dopamine loops in an online environment.

And obviously I wouldn't, you know, without illegal changes or stuff like that, my wife is running for office. Suggest that this stuff [00:41:00] be more widely accessible. What I would say well, it prevents anything from being addictive. If you happen to be born with an addictive But, but, but, side note here, when I was talking about Naltrexone watching an anime recently, And it has replaced.

So occasionally I'll watch a show and I'll be like, this is my new, like peak Simone vibes show. The first, the first peak Simone vibe for me was Julie from Avatar, the last airbender barracks assistant. I'll forget it. It was very Simone. Not a goblin slayer. No, no. Which character would you be in Goblin Slayer?

Just

Speaker 2: the person autistically who only wants to do one thing.

Speaker 3: Oh, no, no. I'm thinking like in a cuteness sense, like girlish. Oh,

Speaker 2: aw.

Speaker 3: And it was Tomo chan as a girl because I was like, yeah, she's got that very like confident sort of vibe.

Speaker 25: Seriously? This is all because you have a crush on the captain, and you're like a couple lost puppies in love, and you need me to come save you? Why does she sound so happy?

I always [00:42:00] dreamed of what it might be like to be that girl other girls came to for love advice. If these chicks are asking for my help, then being me must be the ultimate female goal! I'm willing to help if you're willing to take it.

Speaker 26: Why do I feel so reassured?

Speaker 25: Man! Never in my life did I ever think I'd be a love guru! They were both talking to me like I was totally one of the girls! And who knows, maybe I'm setting a new standard for ultimate femininity! Ha ha

Speaker 26: ha ha!

Speaker 25: Wait, hang on a sec.

Speaker 3: But

Now, Peak new Mao Mao from a plastic areas diary is so Simone. I have to put like a clip on screen here or something like this.

Speaker 31: Similar to the Jade Pavilion, the servants here are hard workers. There are a few idiots who could learn a thing or two from .

If he knew so many high ranking rich guys, he should have offered them sooner. With access to this kind of referral base, I could have decimated my loan amount. I'll just grin [00:43:00] and bear it.

 The only thing I missed was my freedom to experiment with poison.

Speaker 32: You shouldn't be dabbling in poison at all.

Do people ever tell you you're hard to read?

Speaker 31: Yes, routinely.

Speaker 3: But I am loving it. I finished the series by the way. It's a sweet series. You might actually like it. It's dubbed as well. So, you know, when you're watching your mindless brain rot, it takes place, just a pitch here because you'd like this, it takes place in the emperor's court in Imperial China. Yeah.

And, you

Speaker 2: know. Imperial China doesn't do it for me. I'm super about Japan. I'm super about South Korea. You know? Yeah. I've toured the Forbidden Palace. I've gone to like the beautiful temples in Beijing. I've traveled. I mean, I've gone all the way. No, it just doesn't.

Speaker 3: What is it? Is it the, the, the costumes? Is it the

Speaker 2: It's really hard [00:44:00] for me to put a finger on it. Like I'm just,

Speaker 3: cause she loves like court life stuff. And yeah, I love court life stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 2: I'm just picturing burning cows. I, I, I can't really well articulate this burning

Speaker 3: cows.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Like offerings to the gods. But that, I mean, no, this is just, it's, it's very, it's a very vibes based, I hate that word, but like, it's very vibes

Speaker 3: based.

It's like Simone, we need to, I, I'm not, I'm not happy with your vibe. It's it

Speaker 2: feels, I mean, all, all of, all of these, you know, courts and stuff are bureaucratic. But for whatever reason, I don't know. Chinese historical courts feel stiflingly bureaucratic instead of like fun bureaucratic.

Speaker 3: It's a, yeah, it's an element of the show.

It's lots of bureaucrats. Well, it's, it's, it's, it's over the sort of competition between the courtesans and the, the main [00:45:00] character is an incredibly competent person, which you like.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think here's the thing is. In historical Japanese, European, Korean court dramas, there's this sense that there could be some disruption, that, you know, the entire order could change, you know, that, okay, well, now the Boylan's are gonna take over, whatever, like, Okay, good

Speaker 3: point, yeah.

Speaker 2: There is, there is room for an upset. The furthest I ever really see an upset go in like Chinese court dramas is like, I'm going to be the number one main b***h. Like, like dreaming big is not like the, the, the oppressiveness of this, like Confucian system. On one hand, it is admirable because it's so effective, but on the other hand, It is to me the most horrifying stagnated thing ever because you can't overcome it.

It cannot be disrupted. It cannot be shaken. And I see that as [00:46:00] a point of, of stifling. It's like being buried in a coffin and slowly running out of oxygen. I can't deal with it. So

Speaker 3: you need, you need the disruption. You need the turnover. Which court does it best for you out of all the court systems? Which one do you like shows on the most?

The French

Speaker 2: court. The French court. Louis the 14th. You like,

Speaker 3: wait, you like the French, I'm sorry. And violin era. Yes. Henry Court,

Speaker 2: hands down. '

Speaker 3: cause there's so much turnover in the hands on King

Speaker 2: Louis the 14th, but specifically under the Sun King, he created. The most beautiful prison for an extremely threatening nobility.

And he trolled the hell out of them with his etiquette system. He just, I I've never seen an ownage of other powerful people by one powerful family or really person in any other point in history. just trounced and just [00:47:00] humiliated. King Louis XIV, he is, he is the king famous for building Versailles, turning a mosquito ridden swampy hunting lodge into one of the most famous now tourist destinations of all time.

He grew up in this period of a series of rebellions of nobles That were extremely threatening to that, you know, he's like in hiding in the countryside for a lot of his childhood. He's he is a very acutely aware of the fact that there is a wealth of very powerful, like the most wealthy, powerful people in his country.

He is this boy king with his mother serving as I think region for a while. Along with Cardinal Richelieu, I think I'm getting the names wrong, whatever. It doesn't matter. But like he is growing up with all the cards stacked against him in such a threatening and hostile environment. What does he do? He builds Versailles.

He takes this hunting lodge that outside of Paris that, you know, everything, the whole court used to be in Paris. You know, he was surrounded by this like den of wolves there. And what does he do? He moves the court. To this hunting lunch that he's building up. That is a complete dump. That is absolutely horrible.

I mean, it reminds me a lot of [00:48:00] Washington, DC, you know, like just like bad environment, blah, like, why would you go there? No one wants to be there on the like stairwells and stuff. If I remember like during construction. Yeah. I mean, like people got there literally their s**t under control over time. But yes, it was not, no one wanted to be there.

And as it was being built. But this is, this is again, this is what makes him so impressive is he's like, all right, this is where the court's going to be everyone. This is where if you want to matter. You have to be here and, and we have nobles like literally living in closets in this palace. It's under construction.

It is a mess. There's construction materials everywhere. You are shitting in the stairways because there's nowhere else to go. Like, but you are there. And then he over time builds this elaborate set of court etiquette, not because he, you know, Is a weird pompous b*****d, but because he is using it to control the nobility, he is using access to him.

He is using proximity to him like many Kings have before and many Kings and well, and, and leaders have sense, but like, he's using it as, [00:49:00] as a tool, but he's like, literally making these people obsess. That he's like turning them into Instagram stars like it's like now it's they're spending all their money and time instead of thinking about overflowing him, although people still think about overthrowing him all the time, they're thinking about fashion, they're getting about how to get closer to them, how to get their wife, and like, you know, some bedchamber role, so she can be one of the people who hands the stockings who hands the stockings to the other person who finally puts a stocking on one queen after they switch out for another person like these, these rules are elaborate, he's literally reading off legal documents to people while taking a dump in his beautiful little bathroom.

Like, just the level of humiliation that he's subjecting the most senior people to is, is insane. And, and that's what

Speaker 3: you would do as queen.

Speaker 2: I don't, I don't have the IQ for that. I don't have the social acuity. But he, so like he turned this whole thing into this, like, Amazing troll where he like creates this.

It's like, it's like squid game. It's like reality TV. He like suddenly creates this and he's like survivor [00:50:00] bachelor edition, like all of it put together and he completely distracts them. And he creates this amazing French court. And, and he sleeps with everyone's wives while he's at it. And has amazing romances.

And it's just like, what? And then his brother, his brother, this fabulous

Speaker 3: one. Right.

Speaker 2: Well, he, I mean, he had male and female lovers. He had a wife, he had children, but yeah, no, he had amazing gay lovers. And he would sometimes just fabulously like, well, and people are like, well, there he goes, he's wearing a great dress today.

And they didn't make a big deal out of it. Cause that's just how things were. People just, if you want to pull it off, pull it off. Okay. And then he would go and like kick ass and battle because that's what you do. And come on, that is a court. That's a court screw. This like imperial nonsense in China. I'm not into that.

You can't, you don't see right.

Speaker 3: You're right. It

Speaker 2: is less

Speaker 3: spicy. I mean, the, I, I still honestly, I'm more pro the Anne Boleyn story. The, the King Henry story. I

Speaker 2: just, I found that more depressing because here you have. You know, to like both the Boylan sisters, incredibly brilliant. Also trained in the French court.

All [00:51:00] right. How did they get so cunning and smart and great? And you've

Speaker 3: got like these amazing characters, like Cardinal Wolsey, who's like so intelligent and so cunning. And in the French courts, all the intelligence is, it's sort of like a female intelligence, I guess I'd say, where it's like petty and throwing people under the bus.

It's not about actually trying to build a sustainable, better. Everyone in the British system, every one of their plans was to create a utopian, better society. That is true. That is true. They were all fighting

Speaker 2: over how to create the best, the best world.

Speaker 3: Or the, I mean, a few of his wives were just like boring, like woman, woman, like the Spanish one that he started with.

Catherine of

Speaker 2: Aragon. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Well, but she was. But she was doing her job as a pious wife. Everyone is main character syndrome. No, no, no. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Well, yeah. And yeah, I, yeah, I guess the, the, everyone's fighting for themselves in the French court, whereas in the English court, everyone is fighting for the species.

And I get that even [00:52:00] Catherine of Aragorn was doing what she thought for the betterment of humanity. King Henry VIII totally thought that although he hid his distractions. Yeah. The Boylan sisters were just being They were being used, like every other woman who's thrown at him, except for that, like, no, they were trying to create a Protestant

Speaker 3: revolution in the country.

Like they were very religiously focused. They, they might have quote unquote been used, but they weren't like being used, used. They were religious extremists in their own way.

Speaker 2: I mean, I have respect for that. I mean, it, but it's not as fun and interesting.

Speaker 3: We've got, we got the Johnny anomaly call now. So we got to hop on that.

Speaker 2: Okay. I love you. Bye. I mean, bye. And hello again. Bye.

Speaker 3: I'm like,

Anything else new today?

Speaker 2: No, I shared with you my friendship model. That was my only fun thought. The rest of it was just. Oh, yeah, we really got to do an episode on

Speaker 3: that. I'll put that in the notes. Hold on. I'll put it right here. Get rid of friends.

Get rid of friends to do waste of time.

Speaker 2: Well, and [00:53:00] the real realization that I had since we talked about it was that the only friends that people originally had were utility friends. And how can we be the b******s for being utility friend fans when that was literally why everyone had friends in the past.

Speaker 3: People don't know what you're talking about. Basically what she was. No, I'm talking to you, Malcolm. Not

Speaker 2: this isn't for the podcast. It is the podcast.

Speaker 3: That's why I was asking if people like hearing. I really

Speaker 2: need to be careful about what I say.

Speaker 3: So the utility friends, the concept that she's talking about here is to say that the amount of friendships people have had has gone down dramatically recently, because a lot of the things you formerly would have asked a friend to do, like drive you to.

Simone Collins: You're ruining the podcast. Take this out. Yep. Let's just start. Okay. I'll just like episode.

Speaker 33: Titan, what are you working on?[00:54:00]

Speaker 35: I'm working on my hair.