Turning Heartbreak Into Purpose! Gregory Swan and Dr. Gary Latson

Gregory Swan and Dr. Gary Latsen joined the We're Out of Time podcast to share how the loss of their sons inspired their journey into advocacy. It really gives us purpose in our sons passing to be here and to advocate. I was a mess for a long time. The work that we're doing is the pathway out of the grief. I lost Drew on April 3rd, 2013. This is my son Trevor. After my son passed, I had a really hard time of grief. As a Mr. President, the grief parent is the linchpin to kids paying attention. The We're Out of Time podcast team extends heartfelt thanks for helping the show reach number two in Apple Podcast's mental health category and number sixty-eight overall among top shows. Your support means more than words can express. Thank you for listening to the We're Out of Time podcast with Richard Tate. If you haven't already, please follow the podcast, rate and review. And if you're getting value out of We're Out of Time, share it with someone else you know. If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 888-831-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. Please, We're Out of Time. Today, we're on We're Out of Time for National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day. I'm joined by two fathers who turn their greatest loss into a mission to save lives. Better men than me, for sure. Greg Swan is the co-founder of Fentanyl Fathers, a national nonprofit bringing powerful personal stories into schools to warn students about the evils of Fentanyl. He's also been on the front lines in Washington and state capitals, pushing for stronger laws and awareness campaigns. Thank you. Dr. Gary Latsen is a physician with over 40 years in medicine, including anesthesiology, pain management, and military service. And now leads the Candles in the Wind Foundation and works with Fentanyl Fathers dedicated to ending drug deaths through education prevention and family support. Both lost their sons. God, Anne. Both lost their sons tragically to Fentanyl. Okay. Greg, let's start with your son, Drew. Tell us about him and what happened, please. Thank you so much for caring as much as you do. We are, I'll tell you about Drew's story to answer your question. It's just so comforting to know that there's somebody who has the empathy, the ability to care about this subject. And I met your beautiful son, Dominic, who didn't lose, you know, a son. How did that feel for you guys when you met my kid? I remember meeting Drew right at the same age or having him at right at the same age. I have dreams about him at that age and I just instantly loved him. Did you feel a sense of loss? Because I felt the second my son was talking to you guys, I was like, oh my God. Sometimes there's a twinge of like almost jealousy that other people still have their children and we've missing one of ours. But I don't want to take that away from anybody. Everybody's children are beautiful and I celebrate that you do still have yours. And I was like, you know, give him a hug. Spend the time you have with him because it's so precious. When Drew was that age and a little even younger, I would teach him just like Dominic was the little young man shake my hand. It's nice to meet you. I was kind of impressed with them. And I would tell I would give Drew a dollar if he would shake a person's hand and say, how do you know my dad to start a conversation? And these people were always astounded when that happened. So I pass out dollars. One day I gave Drew a dollar just for nothing. And he said, what's this for? I said, just for love. He goes, love. Love costs five dollars. That's so good. That's so good. But no, it was great to meet him and we're thrilled to be here. And it is, you know, I can go there just like anybody else and be, you know, cry my eyes out about Drew. The work that we're doing is the pathway out to keep my head above water of the grief. The grief is bad, but I lost Drew on April 3, 2013. He was 24 years old. I got a call. It was 12, 38 night from my son, Jack, Drew's brother. And the phone rang twice and my wife said, you better pick that up. That's bad news. 12, 38 night. I woke up. I was in a stupor and he kind of blurts out. Daddy's sitting down. He's sitting down. And I was, you know, wandering, state of consciousness, waking up. I said, no, I'm sleeping. What's going on? He goes, I need you to be sitting down right now. I sat up and bet I'm like, and I started to realize something bad was coming. And I said, say it, Jack. And he said, Drew's dead. And when he said that, that just that, that those words marked a before and after period in my life. For sure. I was, I was happy and fairly maybe naive. How much I took life for granted, even though I've had some challenges. I was doing good. I was a real happy person. And when I lost him, I mean, I, my reaction was very similar like DEA agents and other people will say when they show up at the house and tell a parent, they lost their kid. They let out not a scream, but a sound. They call it a sound and they say the sound never changes. It's the same sound. What is it? It's like a guttural reaction from ages past animalistic of loss. It's like you're from the wolves. And I, I got up out of bed and I was screaming no, no. And I told, you know, I thought at that point I had a relationship with God. I told him where he could go and it wasn't to heaven and I flipped him off and I said, you and I are breaking up because you just took what I really cared about. So we're done. And then I, I went and I went and sought out Jack. A lot of, I talked to schools and I might share that occasionally and people come up to me. Did you make up with God? Definitely. Yeah, we made up. I mean, the only way back out of the grief, I had to go to someone who could help me out of that. I was a mess for a long, long time. I wrote, I read all sorts of books about the afterlife, but I really had, I really, you know, parents are paid to love their kids, but I really liked Drew. I really did. He was so like, I just gave you an example. He was so funny. And he, you know, he always called me his hero. I poured my mother, whether she meant it or not poured a lot into me in terms of how great life was and how there's always a positive angle to everything. God is working on me and all this. And I poured that into Drew. I gave him what she gave me and as a result, you know, everybody wants to get it wrong on their first kid. He kept telling me his whole life till the day died. Dad, you're my hero. Is that the part that you remember most? Like what's the part? I remember that's still so vivid for you about your son. I believe, maybe it's denial, but I believe he cared so much about me. He wouldn't do this to me. I believe his soul is moved on and he's waiting for me on the other side. That's the most powerful thing. I don't think of him in the past tense at all. And I just, something as simple as taking the garbage out. Where I live, I take the garbage down to the basement and there's a collage of them there. And I always look forward to taking the garbage out because I talk to them there in this little collage and just get repumped up and to go back. But I was a mess for a long time and it was through advocating that I finally found a pathway back. There's a story behind that, but I don't want to take up more of your time. But let's get it over to you. Let's get to the doctor. True. On me. This is my son, Trevor. He was a wonderful kid, bright, intelligent, funny, also mischievous. You know, always doing practical jokes, sneaking around doing crazy things. And then around age 11 or 12, he changed. Somebody had introduced him to cannabis and he liked it pretty soon. He liked cannabis more than he liked anything else. And I, you know, say anything he wanted to do if it didn't involve cannabis, he didn't want to do it. So he didn't know what time with me. Do you know why that is? Because the cannabis gives them something that they seem to can't get any other way. Was he depressed at that time? No, he was quite happy and, you know, it was for kicks and because it was the cool thing to do and all that. Now he became depressed and had problems later. But when he started, he was, I think it was just a mischievous, funny, thrill seeking kind of thing. He was an adrenaline junkie. Yeah, he was a thrill seeker. Right. And then that progressed to other things very quickly. By the time he was 14, he was into ecstasy and LSD and psilocybin and other stuff and experiential things, the thrills and all that. And then, but he would go on and off. He was brilliant. He, even after being in a therapeutic boarding school for a year, he put him in a charter school where he was able to complete his entire senior year of college in three months and took the SAT and blew the top off. We got an old University of Texas. He was 37 when he passed. And how did he pass? He had been on probation for cannabis and psilocybin for four years and so had been more or less abstinent from hard drugs. His probation was coming to an end. He took what he thought was his last drug test. So he decided to go, was living in Puerto Rico at the time, decided to go to the casinos and party, got some cocaine. And was cocaine? Yeah. Cocaine was, stimulants were probably the most referent problem for him. Now, let me ask you a question real quick. Your son was dabbling in drugs. Yeah. Polysubstance. Right. Was yours? Yeah. Yeah. He was clean though. He was clean for like a year and a half, did a lot of good things during that year and a half. How did he pass away? He took an unprescribed pill from a roommate, which we originally thought was methadone. And it was lace with fentanyl. Well, in 2013, I'm actually having a meeting with the medical examiner tomorrow on his, because only 3% of cases were fentanyl induced back in 2013. And he had what is called a therapeutic lower amount, what was it called, within the range? Within the therapeutic range. Within the therapeutic range. So fentanyl, so methadone didn't kill him. So they suspect it was fentanyl because... Let me tell you how it's happening. Okay. The kids today aren't the ones that are using fentanyl, really aren't dying as much. Right. Okay. Because they've got the tolerance. Yeah. And they know how to use it. Right. People think fentanyl is a bad thing. But as you know, as an anesthesiologist, it's a fantastic drug. If you use the right way because of the short life, right? So I brought this packet. I know you know about the packet, but 2 milligrams can be, 2.2 can be fatal. Right. If you're unexposed to it. And this is 2,000 milligrams. Right. Well, the kids that are dying today are the straight A students. Right. Oh, yeah. That go to the rave on the weekend. That's what happened to Drew. That's right. He relapsed at a rave in Miami. That's right. He was given a Molly and he called me, his brother and his mother and said, I need to get back on track. I slipped up and we're like, wow, you relapsed because we were real serious about his recovery. Sure. And I remember the day he died. My wife came in and said something in my office like something really bad is going on right now. And she had this premonition about Drew and I got home and as I'm driving home, my son Jack called me. He goes, I got some bad news for you, Drew's relapsed. I'm like, and as I got out of the car and closed the door, I looked at the handle and thought to myself, at least he's still alive. He wasn't. We found out later that day that it got him. But he relapsed at a rave in Miami on a Molly. And we think he was seeking methadone to detox. To detox. Yeah. Right. So the kids that are dying today are the straight A students. Yeah. Because they don't have the fentanyl. They don't have the tolerance. Right. And they don't know how to use it. Yeah. My son was a professional and he'd used cocaine intermittently throughout his life, but he never used opioids. His sister had been involved with a heroin addict at one time. Yeah. And gave him a really bad time for opiates. So he studiously avoided opiates. Yeah. He was that's cocaine with fentanyl. He was a specialist. Yeah. Right. Yeah. He liked cocaine. Yeah. Okay. Just like me, by the way, I didn't like opioids at all. I like to be awake for my high. Right. Okay. But the reason you do it is to keep your heart in your chest to calm you down so that you can enjoy your cocaine run. Yeah. Okay. What happened to him is he wasn't used to that. And essentially what he did was a speedball. Yeah. He didn't. I don't think he knew that there was fentanyl in that cocaine. That's right. And he died alone in his bathroom. That's exactly. He was all of the night. So it's just it. It was an accident, but it was tragic. Yeah. Yeah. After my son passed, I had a really hard time of grief, but I was still working. So I had to go back to work. And I didn't for months, I didn't even tell my coworkers that my son had died of a drug overdose because of the. Stigma. So you felt shame over. Yeah. Why did you feel the shame? I shouldn't have. No, but don't judge it. Yeah. Why? Why did you feel the shame? The stigma people feel that people that die of drug drug problems are sort of self induced and that maybe they're parents didn't do a good job. OK, well, then you can tell those people whenever you speak to them that Richard Tate says go yourself. Thank you, Richard Tate. Thank you for that. No problem. But eventually, you know, in my grief and struggling with it, I started doing research and I started realizing, oh, my God, this was 2022. And really, people weren't talking about fentanyl, but I started finding people like like song for Charlie and fentanyl fathers and sit following on LinkedIn and I'm going, I can't sit back and do nothing. I've got to do something. And so I decided I'm going to live my grief out loud. I, you know, said I'm going to tell everybody what happened. I'm going to start a nonprofit. I'm going to publicize this. I'm going to start educating doctors, which, you know, is sorely needed. And so that made that my mission. Well, that's a great thing that you that you just pointed out because doctors don't know anything about it. I give I give CME continuing medical education lectures on addiction and it's outrageous. It's amazing how clueless people are. It's amazing. It's it's in the public doesn't know this, right? They think, oh, the doctor knows, but the doctor, what do you get a week at most in medical school on addiction medicine? And and we're so busy working that we're not we're not circulating among the teenagers and stuff like that. We don't know what's going on in the drug scene and all that. I I grew up in the drug scene, so I sort of understood it and I struggled with my son's recovery for 25 years. So I was aware of the drug scene. I kind of kept my fingers on it. But other doctors, particularly in 2022, didn't even realize that people were dying of fentanyl. It hadn't really been put out there. Even when I left Cliffside, I sold my last treatment center in 2018. And it was not even a thing then. Well, it wasn't. It wasn't it wasn't bigger than anything else. Yeah. And yeah, it was right at the bubble. That's right. And started going right when I left. And then the second I left, the world went insane. Yeah, you're right. One 2022 and and then, you know, so now. You know, doctors are more aware because of the news and everything else, but they don't really understand that this is the most. This is the thing that young people are most likely to die of. Well, no, no, the thing. And they're crying. The thing most likely to die from are the doctors. And let me tell you why. Yeah. Okay. Because if you put a patient on opioids for longer than five to seven days, you don't have it. It's got you. Right. Okay. And then the kids are looking. Yeah. All right. And you can't do the doctor shopping anymore because all these systems talk to each other. I could have gotten away. I got away with it for three years. Yeah. So the Rush Limbaugh Rush Limbaugh. Oh, yeah. He's doctor shopped. Is he is he passed? Yes. But he was he was he was like the doxycontin. Right. He was fairly addicted to me too. That was Drew's. That was what got Drew and was that doctor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He had a sports injury. That's right. Yeah. But I can tell you to illustrate and to validate your point about doctors not knowing much. I have a I think a very relevant quick story about that. I was in a head on car accident broke my pelvis in 2017. So I'd be put on pain meds. Really hurts to break your inner dude-ness. It's ridiculous. And so I was on a lot of percocetadate. Fortunately, even though I'm in recovery, that was not my drug of choice. I like to be stimulants. So you like to cook. Well, I like Adderall anything that would keep me still. Did you ever use with your son? No. Okay. No way. So anyway, what happened is I was on a ton of these pain meds. It was like seven percocetate a day. And so I went to my doctor. I said I can walk now my pelvis is healing. Can we get off these things? And he's like, Oh, yeah, just go cold turkey. I won't say his name because I like the guy. But he said, I went cold turkey and by three o'clock in the morning, I felt like I was being electrocuted. And I literally understood as an hour would go by just one second went by and the clock and I had to wait till eight in the morning to see this guy again. Grab them and say, that was the most irresponsible thing you ever did. I give me the drugs and we're going to and I'm pulling your medical card. We're going to do it my way. I'm going to taper off. And I when I walked away from percocetate, I was down to just a dot on my tongue, like from one sixteenth to one twenty one thirty two to nothing. And I never noticed it. I said, it's called tapering. It was all legit, you know, and he goes, fine, we'll do it that way. I'm fine with that. I'm like, who told you how he works? How ridiculous is that? And dangerous. And there's a there's a great Ted talk of a guy that similar story had been on. A car accident had gotten hooked on the law, didn't purchase it. And his doctor tried to taper him in two weeks. And it's like he was describing how the agony that he went through with draw. He went through it because he didn't he didn't know any better. But he said it was the most miserable experience of his life. Do you know what's funny? Is it? Do you know what's funny? We do that all the time. But it depends on the amount that they've been using and the duration that they've been using for. Right. Right. So I just had probably my favorite client of all time. OK, here. And he was on opioids for 20 years. My age. Yeah. OK. Twenty years. And he went ahead and it's and we had the conversation that we always have. OK, do you want this really comfortable or do you want to do this a little quicker? What do you want? Sorry. Right. And this guy, you know, was very well off. And so he said, no, I don't mind how long I have to be here. I just want to not suffer. And it took us he 90 days to detox this guy. OK. For 20 years. Yeah. 90 days. And then he sits down with me because I go to say goodbye and he looks at me and he says, hey, man, can we talk? Maybe I don't. I don't know if I should leave. And I said, babe, if you don't know if you should leave, then you shouldn't leave. That's the red flag. Mm hmm. I said, you do what you want. But why not? You just detoxed. Why not go through an entire month and you'll get three years because that's what it's like at my at my place. Right. OK. At Carrera, you do 30 days. That's like getting three years of therapy. Wow. The kid goes ahead and does it. And I check in on him every month. He's almost got a year so. But that's awesome. But I check in on him every month because I just love this guy. Yeah. And he's doing great. That's great. Great relationship with his wife. Mending his relationship with his kids. Great relationship with his old man. Yeah. OK. I mean, that's it. I mean, doing really, really well. So you got it. It's different for everybody. Most of these places will put you in. Yeah. Right. And the same detox protocol for everybody. And that's wrong. Well, some try to, you know, particularly if you get put in jail or prison, they want to detox you in 72 hours. You know, they basically withdraw you. They give you some medicines to try to make the detox a little bit easier, like like dexmeditonin or something like conidine, something like that. To take away some of the misery. But they expect they basically just let withdrawal happen at its, you know, fastest pace. It's worse than that. It's worse than even that. Yeah. One of my best friends from childhood was on like four or five hundred milligrams a day of OxyContin. So you know how bad that is. Wow. Right. I mean, I was the same way. And so these guys were on it. Michael and his other friend, Michael survived the detox in jail and his friend didn't. Didn't survive the detox. Didn't survive the detox in jail. When I was going through withdrawal, I understood right away why people rob drug stores, why they would order and try to believe the lie that it's really the real drug when you're ordering it online, whether it's San X, OxyContin, Perkz, Adderall. None of that is true. It's laced with fentanyl. But to believe it because you're so desperate. And I remember when Drew graduated from college, I was with him and he pointed out the apartment he was living at. You go, you see that apartment up there? Did I go, yeah, is that bedroom? I've suffered more hell than you ever want to know that I've gone through. That's right. That's right. That's where I would detox. That's right. It's the worst detox you can have. That in Benzos. Absolutely. Greg, I want you to tell me about fentanyl fathers. Okay. Your mission, how many students you've reached so far and the work you're doing? Thanks for asking about it. That's to, I'm from Detroit. And so what we do when we launch a car is Detroit. Yes. Can go on. And what we do is, you know, you don't launch a car to the southeast Michigan Ford dealers, you launch it for the country. And so that means everybody, you have to, you have a target audience to get a brand out. To me, it was very obvious. The most sweet spot to aggregate toward kids who were dropping of this was the high school age to get them to, to herd these cats all in the same room was the high school age. That was it. Yes. Middle school is definitely a place that's not too early to start with kids. Some would argue in grade school colleges where they started dropping, but the, the, the quick genesis of Fennel Fathers was the very first month Drew died. I was on a radio show with a friend who was in the business talking about, didn't know what he died of, hadn't even gotten the toxicology back yet. And just reminiscing about Drew's two hours of that. And I got a little relief from that. I remember getting ready, going to that thing, thinking this is the most important day of my life. I'm talking about it. Five years later, you know, my wife would hear me in the bathtub just crying in the morning, playing Michael Jackson's gone too soon. I was a mess. I really, it was, I was so debilitated. I was very, I had a good business at the time and a lot of people around me kept me going, but I could barely keep going. It, it, you lose is despair and hopelessness combined. And it's that bullet that takes out the kid takes out both parents right at the same time. And I tell you, not to interrupt, but can I tell you what my feelings are on this? Sure. High school is too late. Yeah. Okay. Way too late. Elementary school. Even, even better than that. Yeah. Even better than that. This is what's needed. Every grade starting with kindergarten, right? At the beginning of each semester. So it's kindergarten one through 12. That's 13 years. Right. At the beginning of every semester. So that's 26 times. These kids have to see a video and then have a conversation about it. So think of it this way. Each grade is a different, is a different kind of cartoon. Yeah. Right. So that it's age appropriate. So I'm not saying that this is going to happen, but something like this. Sure. So in kindergarten, my kids liked Caillou. Now, okay. Do you know what Caillou is? Okay. Popular as kindergarteners, but you know what? So it's this little cartoon with this little boy and he's Canadian and he's super sweet, just like Canadians are. And it's just this sweet little cartoon for young kids. And then you get older and then you have the next kind of thing that they're in. And then finally you get to high school and you have the South Park version of it. Right? Yeah. So if you do something like that, okay, it becomes conditioning. Yeah. I can prove it to you. When I was a kid, every morning in school, we stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance. Yeah. Do you know what my age group doesn't do? They don't say I hate America. Oh, yeah. They don't, they don't death to America. Oh, yeah. We don't do that. Yeah. Okay. We were conditioned when we were younger. I can prove it again. We can go the opposite way. Islamic terrorists teach their children before they can speak. Yeah. Okay. To kill Westerners, Jews, everybody. Okay. And then they do. I can prove it again. For the last 20 years, okay, or more, Qatar has been sending a ton of money to our elite universities to establish groups, hate groups. Now, every kid under 30, okay, is got this, I hate our country thing going on. Now, if we can do this from a young age, then this is what needs to happen so that they're conditioned, right, from a very early age, and you have to have the conversation early and often with your children, early and often. I have it all the time. What I was going to say was that the description that you have of a, you know, a yearly or semester, you know, informational thing. Yeah. That's great for giving them the information and the knowledge. But what really is necessary for prevention is for them to hit it emotionally. That's correct. And that's where parents that have lost the kid can break the ice. Okay. When we talk to a high school assembly and, you know, we follow the movie Dead on Arrival, which you've probably seen. And when that movie goes off, we put up a picture of our kid and we say, you know, this is my kid. And he was just as smart as any of y'all. You know, he was just as cool as any of y'all. He navigated the drug scene for 20 years and he thought he was too smart that would never get him, but it got him. So there's none of you in this audience that's so smart that this can't kill you. And you're a thousand percent correct. And that emotional connection for sure. And that's what Lisa is the secret sauce. But that's why we parents have the impact. But it's got to be all of it, guys. Yeah. I'm not talking. I'm not talking about instead of. Right. I'm talking about in addition to. I think I think you proved it. You said I'll prove it and you did prove it because I'm of the same generation where what is up with these people who don't love America? What the heck? I it's so anti my every thinking. And this anti Semitism. I mean, I come from a place where they have this Holocaust Museum in Farmington Hills and they're like so. So we never forget. I'm like, man, I got to give it to my Jewish neighbors. They're going to make sure we never forget. I'm thinking that'll never return. I am stunned that anti Semitism. I'm stunned out loud. And so and so yeah. And so I'm like WTF. So but in terms of this conditioning, you're right. But here's the here's the here's the difference like I actually I was very, very privileged to be able to have this eye to eye conversation with the president when he was there, we were there July 16th. And I said the brief parents are the secret sauce, but here's the thing. And he goes, no, you're absolutely right. He goes the we love our law enforcement, but if kids are getting lectured to by a law enforcement, it's a cliche they often can't afford to pay attention to. So if they're going to pay any more attention in school and there's these anti drug talks in school and there's there's discussion whether or not the jury's out, whether dare ever worked. But the advantage of fentanyl, the upside of fentanyl is that it's deadly. So we're not selling Boy Scouts and church as an option to drugs to kids, which they might roll their eyes at. And by the way, nobody rolls their eyes at us in our high school assembly. No, no, no, no, no, I'm telling you, they're well, it's amazing. It's amazing. No, no, it's not amazing because people are. They're not evil. I mean, these are kids that are looking at fathers that lost their son. They really are amazing kids. And but the thing is when you're talking about life and death, you realize they realize you're not here to lecture me on a healthier lifestyle. That's right. It's not Ward Cleaver. It's like they're doing me a favor. It's a heads up. And when you talk about life and death, that gives you the license to really get their attention. You know what else I love guys? You know what else is a great idea? When a therapist finishes their education, they have three years where they have to obtain their hours. It's about three years and then they can go on and do this. Here's the thing, though. I've spoken at a number of psychological colleges. Okay. I did one last week. There it is. And I can tell you therapists, kids who are going to therapy school, correct me if I'm wrong because you were just there. Yeah. Very altruistic. Yes. The salt of the earth. You don't get into that profession unless your soul was good. Yes. You know, my daughter's one. That's right. So you know, okay. Assault of the earth now. Right now you have what's called preceptors or whatever the hell they're called and they get paid. These supervisors, it's called supervision. And they sign off on your hours and you pay them. Okay. Well, aside from the fact that that's predatory and horrible. Yeah. Okay. Right. That's horrible because these people have nothing. Yeah. Okay. This was my idea. Wouldn't it be great if the president signed an executive? Oh, yeah. I'm all about that. That says, okay. If you're going into counseling for drugs or the homeless issue, it's signed off automatically. Okay. There's no nonsense. Let me tell you something. If I went to Pacifica, let's say, okay, Pacifica, whatever it's called, where I spoke the last time. If I went there, I can tell you I could walk right into the administrators office and say, Hey, give me everybody that wants to go do this thing with us. Okay. We're going to sign off on all their, it's get signed off automatically. Okay. Listen to what we could do. We could kill two birds with one stone. I'm very much my dream is to help the military and the veterans. Beautiful. That's my dream. Served in a military right here. There it is. And I've been treating the military and veterans for 17 years for free. I've always had three guys in my place at all times as I do now. We just got our contract to treat veterans and military. It took us two years. Don't worry. We don't know how to bill for it yet, but it doesn't matter. They've been here for free all the time. So we'll figure it out because you know, it's the government. It's different. Yeah. But think about that for a second. You go, you walk in these encampments and you find all these homeless people and a lot of them are veterans because of the trauma and you find these people and you literally like golden retrievers. You take them and you put them in a place. Now, then you can think about, oh, well, there's all this government property. Well, why can't we do something? I think kaboots mixed with habitat from humanity. Yeah. Right. And then you teach them how to fish. Yeah. Right. And if they can't guess what we do when they come to the grounds, these are the people that give them the orientation and show them around me. Right. Maybe they can't do that. Maybe they just get in the car and they go back to their old encampment. Right. And with the therapist and I say, hey, this is better. I've been here and I've been there. Come with me. Yeah. Right. I mean, these are simple things that can get done in every little city in every little town, right? Yeah. That you can do that make a difference today. Where are you going to have do them though? That's great. So the president just went ahead and allocated $400 million to go to west to the VA campus right here on Wilshire and San Vicente, which is the biggest campus in the country. Fantastic. Okay. So he did that for homeless vets and for substance use disorder treatment. And it's so, it's so he's so aligned like I'm so aligned with him because I was there before he did this six months earlier and I was walking with my buddy who heads the veterans here for the county of Los Angeles. And I'm like, how many people are in that building? Oh, that's a vacant building. How many you got in that building? Oh, that's a vacant building. You could have put a thousand veterans in all the vacant buildings they had there. And I just started crying. Yeah. I said, what is this? Yeah. And the president like is like, yeah, I'm done with this. I'm done with it. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. He moves fast. He makes decisions. He did something. You said you right before fentanyl became a blew up as an issue in 2018. You exited your last place. I had an event like that involving $6 billion, which came from the president directly. I kind of wandered through the desert of grief for a while and then I talked my wife into running for Congress to bring a spotlight to the, yes, to bring a spotlight to the, Is she a congressman? No, she was disqualified at the, at the last minute from dirty pool, but she, we got something very significant done. Her dad was very famous in Detroit. His name is Bill Bond. The movie Anchorman was based on his life. Oh, no. He was a ridiculous guy. Anyway, Christine ran for Congress and we got a lot of free media because she had a famous dad. So we got called into DC and we met with Paul Ryan's team at the end of this day of vetting. And I told my wife, I'm like, this is the one that counts is Paul Ryan. So we walked in there and we had all the, When he is the speaker of the house, age 2018, they had the whole thing light up and we walked in and we were very candid and we're like, look, you got a problem. They're like, what's our problem? We said, well, John McCain did this to the American healthcare act six months ago. You have 35,000 dead Americans on your hands. We think that's your fault. They're like, who do you think you are? What do you mean our fault? Like, well, whose fault is the Democrats? They don't have the house. They don't have the Congress. They're in the Senate. They don't have the White House. Whose fault is it? It's yours because the American healthcare went down. You hung a donut on doing anything for the opioid epidemic. You think that's cool with us or bereaved parents? They agreed with us almost violently. I got a call from the guy who held the spot before his name's Carrie Bendevoli. He goes, swan, what'd you do over there? And DCM like, I thought we were going to be removed under security, but we pushed the envelope. He goes, every Congressman has to know about the opioid epidemic because in the state of the union address this week, he's going to pitch it and he was only going to talk about military, but they talked him into pitching it for two, two minutes, the opioid epidemic. I go, that's great. I guess we did our job. He goes, no, you don't understand. It's going to get budget because you did that. So it got $6 billion. If you go to the White House archive, Melania Trump's pictures there, it says ending the opioid epidemic 2018. Well, it didn't work out. Deaths went down, by the way, a little bit. Ads were out there. Ubico to Sleith. You know, the angle was the sibling and the parent lecturing the using kid in the family to get off the opioids. I don't know who was put in charge of that. It wasn't someone like and with experience. So they, it was a optimally executed, but that money was spent. It also put a lot of heat on the opioids epidemic. So 2019. Fennel explodes and it was exploding and it was approaching a hundred thousand deaths and I thought, I'm not doing anything, you know, to, to help solve this. And when Kerry Lake lost her election, I thought she was going to seal the border down in Arizona. She lost the governor's race. I thought, I got to get in the game and do something. And I talked to other like my parents on a zoom call and like, can we do anything? Are we just victims? And that's how Fennel fathers started. We're like, we're going to go get into schools and the difference that what separates the men from the boys in this business is those who can get into schools and those who can't. And we were failed for a long time getting into schools until we crack the code. Now we're in and we've done 200,000 students and it's we've, we've had data from every single one we take a survey. We know they're before and after lift their awareness and there's 26,727 schools in the country. That's the job. That's we got to get into those, but we got to do both. We have to do. We have to. I agree with you on the Grayson goals. It's always all of you. It's it's we got big lives. There's social media. These kids have the attention span of a net. No kidding. Yep. Okay. No kidding. That's why I'm going to take this from Anthony Robbins. Repetition is the mother of skill. Okay. Okay. We here. Coach Nick Saban. You guys know who he is, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Right. Last guy, he went down to Michigan in his last game. Yeah. Okay. Not happy about that, by the way. Okay. Roll tide. Now listen, here's here's the thing. Okay. This guy said the greatest thing ever. We don't do things over and over again until we get them right. We do them over and over and over again until we can't get them wrong. This is the same thing. Wow. This is this is I like that reps. We do it over and over and over again until we can't get it wrong. This is simple. Listen, can we just get back to common sense here? Yeah. That's all this is. Right. Okay. Yeah. It's like in teaching, they say, you know, first you tell them what you're going to tell them, and then you tell them, and then you tell them what you told him, and then you tell them what you told him again. Right. Right. So I finally get it. That's right. And it's got to be all the time. Early and often. And it's not the facts and figures. I mean, kids can learn that's the number one killer of people and it's the, you know, they can learn all the facts and figures, but it's the emotion. If they don't take it in and realize that, you know, their buddy is going to die of this. You know, I look at him and I say, there's a hundred kids in this room. The chances are at least one or two of you is going to die of fentanyl in the next 10 years. If y'all don't do something. Yeah. Up to you. You have got to reach out to your peers and make them stop. It's up to you. It has to be this rule. You're correct. And if you guys were a thousand percent right, it's got to be emotional. But look, man, everybody learns differently. Yeah. Okay. So think of it like this. Here's the person. This person learns it here. This person learns it here. Some people need it at everywhere. Yes. Okay. I'm slow. I need it everywhere. Yeah. Okay. But when I get it, it's clear. And then I'm like, okay, this is simple. All right, let's get on with this. Dr. Latsin through fentanyl fathers and your own foundation candles in the in the wind foundation. What does your advocacy and your education look like day to day? It's been quite a few, quite a bit of time researching and learning and following other nonprofits to get a pulse of what's going on. Greg gave me an amazing opportunity. I had been trying for two years to get permission to go to high schools and talk to kids and I came across Greg and reach out to him and he had an opening and he sent me down to Miami and lo and behold, you know, he gave me gave me some training and established a format. I got to speak to over a thousand kids in one week. It was the most incredible experience. I can imagine. Do you guys have LA unified school district yet? Now that you know, I've heard mixed reviews on getting in there, but we'll get in there. Yeah. We have we have some really good advocates here in LA that are well, I have. I when I knew you guys were coming and she was telling me about this. I called a girlfriend of mine who either works now there or used to be one of the head people there and we're speaking at four o'clock. Trust me, I'm going to tackle you. Yeah. On that. Oh, don't worry about it. I I I'm like be anybody. Oh, that's beautiful. Anybody who's got a connection like that. That I mean, that's how it's done. No, no, it's how it's done. The problem is so few people want to take time out of their day to do anything for anybody, which is crazy to me. Well, I do I do two or three things. I do speaking with the kids when Greg can line me up for that. I give continuing medical education to doctors and in the other group that'll listen to me. And I also through my nonprofit support getting people into treatment. I have a friend that's a peer support specialist that I recovering on his own. He circulates among the homeless community. And when he finds somebody that's ready to consider treatment, they I live in rural New Mexico, the nearest treatment center, the nearest detox center is two and a half hours away. So I reimburse him for the capability of taking people to treatment. Oh, so you pay for the transportation, the transportation. That's great. It's a very, very difficult set of people to work with sometimes. You know, we have a we have a nonprofit and we've got this other thing. That when people call and we can't place them either at the high end center or the in network affordable center that we have like it's like two hundred and fifty five hundred dollars for 30 days of treatment with HMOs. All that. So it's great, right? But we can't treat everybody. We don't do like government stuff. We don't do the state, you know, like the Obamacare stuff, right? We don't do that. But we have a whole department where we find stuff for them because I didn't want anybody to ever feel like, oh, because they can't come to my place. I don't care. That's like insanity. One of the things that I emphasize is that we it needs to be shared decision making. You know, some people benefit from residential treatment. Some people are not willing. Maybe they're not quite as you know, at the end stage, maybe they're still still have a job, still have a family. They don't want to be away from their family, give up their job. And so they need to be offered other things like medication assisted treatment or intensive outpatient. There needs to be a menu and we need to discuss with people all the different options that's so that we're not forcing them into one mold or another. It's it shouldn't be residential treatment or nothing. Well, I don't mind forcing anybody into anything. Coerced care is definitely a strong thing. I mean, my son's probation probably extended my son's life many years. Listen, there's only two types of people that come to treatment, only two. OK, people that want to get well and people that want to get the heat off. Yeah. OK, so yeah, coercion. Think about it. Coercion is the second one to get the heat off. Well, why is it coercion? Because your wife is going to leave you, right? Or your boss is going to fire you or you're going to end up in jail, right? Or whatever it is, that's coercion. Now, most people say, well, he's got to do it for himself. OK, nothing is killed more people than that. OK. And the reason is is because and I can prove that maybe ignorance. Well, that is ignorance. Right. And so let's do you know how how I can prove it to you? OK, that it's that that's killed more people than anything. Because if those are the only two people that come into treatment, then why do 50% of the people coming in to get the heat off? Stay sober. Yeah, right. Well, there you go. You just did it again. And I've got. Hey, guys, I'm here all night. Doctor. Listen, Dr. Gary came up with something I think is interesting to you. He talked about the stats because he served 90% of anesthesiologist fentanyl. And well, then do it because it's a good. It's an effective drug. Now, I just real quick. Do you have on top of your mind? I want to put you on the spot. What percentage of people do you think are born like addicts or predisposed to addiction? Would you say 10? 5 to 10. 5 to 10. Yeah. That's right. Well, here, this is how I look at it. OK. 10% have a problem. Their problem drinkers are users. OK. Yeah. But only half those about 5% rise to the level of where it's got them. They don't have it. It's interesting. OK. An illustration from. Yeah. This is fascinating. To tens of thousands of patients over my career. You take 10 people and you're talking to them before their surgery or maybe they're of pain. And you give them a bit of fentanyl. I'm talking 50 micrograms, tiny amount. Six or eight of them, seven out of those 10. We'll go, oh, yeah, that feels good. You know, it's it's helped my pain and everything. Two or three of them will get violently nauseated. Never want to feel it again. Uh-huh. And one or two of them will go, wow, what was that? Can I ask more? Right. You know, and if you talk to them while you're doing it, they get violently angry because you just room they're high. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. And there's about the same as the general population. Definitely. There's some people are wired to have a euphoric response to opiates. That's different than the general, most of the general population. You know, most people that get prescribed Vicodin or Norco or Percocet. Can I tell you why that is? It's hooked, but a few do. And it's because of that. It's a it's a predisposition. They respond so pleasurably. It's not just a predisposition. Let me tell you what it really is. Opiates are called painkillers for a reason, but they work better on emotional pain than physical pain. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Wow. As you know, four Advil and two extra strength Tylenol are prescription strength medication. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's right. Yeah. Okay. All right. So why do you need the other stuff? Yeah. Okay. But it works better on emotional pain. Yeah. Yeah. Much better. Right. And I can prove it. When a guy's going through a depression, right? Whereas heads just chewing on them. Yeah. A piece of garbage, giant, like all that, right? Yeah. And then you give them that pill and they go, huh. And the noise is quiet and you're not chewing on yourself anymore. Yeah. Hey, man. Okay. You're doing that until the wheels fall off. Right. Because you were suffering and now you're not. Yeah. Okay. Relief. That's yeah. You're in the addict's head, man. That's for sure. Oh, that's because I'm on that. That's good. All right. Greg. Yes, sir. Why do you think hearing from bereaved parents has such a stronger impact on students than hearing from law enforcement or teachers? We've touched on this a little bit. Just give it to me. That is team me up because that's the linchpin of what we're doing. And this is where I said after we were at the White House and the Halt Fentanylac was signed and we got the privilege of meeting the president. I said, what am I going to say to this guy? I'm going to have one second in front of them. I said, Mr. President, the bereaved parent is the linchpin to kids paying attention. I'll give you an example. I was sitting before a school. There's a thousand kids in the audience. And as they typically do, the principal wants to put on a good impression for us. We're in Miami-Dade and a quick stat on Miami-Dade. Deaths went down by 350 year over year because we'd seen every high school and every middle school in Miami-Dade. It went down what? 350 according to the medical examiner, the coroner and the United Way. 350 less deaths. Adolescent deaths. In Florida or in Miami-Dade. Really? Yeah. Went down because we were comprehensive. Saw every single high school and middle school there. That's fantastic. It was great. And when we started the campaign, guys do it every year at the same high schools. Okay. Thanks. So because you have the juniors and seniors coming out. It's not just that. It's they forget. And it's like out of sight, out of mind. No, you're right. So one of these, we had a thousand kids in this audience and the principal gets up and there's an old Cheech and Chong tape. I don't know if you remember it where the lady saying class, class, please shut up. And it's this parent voice where they're used to hearing that like Charlie Brown's teacher. I told the principal, I go, hey, you don't have to yell these guys or beg them to pay attention to me. I have a little technique that makes them just go dead silent. She goes, I need that technique. I go, you can't have that technique because you'd have to lose your kid to get that technique. But just give me the mic and just introduce us. And I got it. All I say is the simplest thing. Hey guys, like I'm Ward Cleaver, like I'm so clueless. I don't even know they have social media and they're like, who's Yahoo from wherever. Hey guys, I'm here on a sad mission and I pointed to the screen where we're about to start. I lost my kid to this dead silence, put their cell phones down, they lock in. And there's one thing that kids are really, really good at and it's recognizing authenticity because they're so played all the time. Like, go ahead, freak show. Let's hear what you got. And then we have a riveting 45 minute, very disciplined communication set for them with movies and PSAs and stats and all that and a commitment not to do it at the end. And we measure it, but we're there to prevent them from ever starting. Don't try. Don't die. It's our message and they're very, very moved by it and they're crystal clear. They're more likely to go near and drink gasoline than they would go near an unprescribed pill afterward. No, they're good. They're like, I'm going to go out of this world some way. I ain't going out that way. And one of the things we'll tell them is take your precious little body, little Einstein's and toss it off the side of a mountain. You know what that's called? Base jumping. You'll die one in 5000 times if you have wings on. You do this eight and 10 times. You're gone and you're taking out your parents too. And these kids don't even have enough grip of their own mortality. The number one reason for not doing it or not trying it and getting the memo is they don't want to do this to their mother. They don't want their parents to come in and find their feet cold in the morning and collapse. And then they're really young enough. The second they're at 13. Okay. We've got sixth graders. They don't care. Sixth and sixth graders. Well, sure, because now you get to the point where it's about socialization and fitting in. And, you know, when you're in elementary school, you don't have that when you're in elementary school. Okay. Yeah, parents are still good. Parents are still your friends. Once you hit adolescence, parents are the enemy almost. That's right. You know, I noticed you kissed Dominic, which was beautiful. And I kissed my son, Drew, until you just figured it out that I couldn't kiss him anymore. Well, my son hasn't figured that out. Don't let him. I wasn't, you know, I just wanted to kiss him and right up until he was, you know, a grown up. But Drew helped me start writing a book called 1001 Great Comebacks to Peer Pressure. And we wrote that book. We finished it with some kids from SAFE, Students Advocating Fentanyl Education, and it's available for free at the bottom of our website. I'm not pushing our particular website, but it's fentanylfathers.org at the bottom is a free book. And you had said you were given this free book by Jackie Segal, which is how her daughter was thinking. I was giving it. I was giving it by David Segal. The man, your brother, your brother. So David, David is one of my heroes and Jackie's really picked up the mantle. But I, she was, she spoke also in front of the president. She said, unless she got it wrong, her sister died on the same day. Yes, David died. I think it's the same day. Right. And her sister had overdosed on a line of cocaine and was laced with fentanyl. So it's now she's out of the box fentanyl champion. So we combined forces and created something called angelarmy.com. And we are, she's going to, we're going to. That was my, that was, that's what I wanted to, that's when I wanted to bring up. That's how to scale. The, to scale it. Because remember these, these, these therapists, these brand new therapists, and you can say, Oh, well, they're not seasoned. Yeah. You know what? They're not seasoned, but you want to know what else they're not. That's what gives them jaded. They're not, they're not desensitized. Yeah. The process of helping another human being. Yeah. Yes. But I interrupted you. Tell me what angel army. No, so it was great. So it was been, it's been great to get to know the seagulls. They, they wanted to do the same thing. Their daughter Victoria didn't necessarily die of fentanyl. She had an overdose. I think the, the final cause was methadone, but I don't even know if they were testing in 2015. They're, they're, they're opioids. It doesn't matter. And you know what else? Well, you hear her die, her sister died of fentanyl. So just this year, 2025. And then she lost David and she had, and she had a lost another family member too. And I remember we, we did the, the White House that night, that night we had dinner with, believe it or not, cash, but tell the next day we were doing Fox and friends, 30 million viewers. That was cash, but he's a phenomenal. He's phenomenal. He's a great guy, very normal. I told him about the, this, there's something called, there's a something out of St. Louis called contaminated a movie and it talked about in China, they're selling fentanyl precursors to Western customers. And he hadn't seen the movie. I'm like, run, don't walk to see it because you need to see that this is celebrated and supported and underwritten by the Chinese government. And sent to Mexico where you have a guy in a hazmat suit. Yeah. Kidding with an ore and a big VAT. And that is the level of sign. Oh yes. That's it. Yeah. Right. And then they take it and they put it in the pill molds. Yeah. Right. And they're like a chocolate chip cookie, right? Exactly. Right. Some of the, it's like sometimes you get a pill with too many, too much fat. Exactly. And many chocolate chips and sometimes you get it with none. Guess what you do when you get it with none? You die. Or you, you take another one. Right. Yeah. And then you die. Right. Right. Right. And in the national geographic has something on that called a story about that. The precursor is coming in. But anyway, Jackie and Fennell and the Victoria Voice Foundation, we've been working with them. They want to use this as their speaker organization to get out. And we, we said, look, let's get every single bereave parent that we can. There's a million of them just since 2019 on Fennell issue. There's a million. Wait a minute. Do you know what I, do you know there's something called Alexandra's Law? Do you? Yeah. You know. And you know Matthew, right? Yeah. He's a paludah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm having dinner with him tonight. Okay. So you tell him you came and he says hi to you. Oh, it says tell, tell him I said, tell Richard said hello. You tell him, you tell him, I said hello. Yeah. So one of the reasons I did this was because of Matt's daughter. Yeah. Alex. Yeah. And it just destroyed me. Yeah. So I started this thing because that hit me and my buddy, Nathan, Huckman introduced me to Matt. Wow. That's great. You know, there's another law called Melanie's Law and she died, she was 15 years old. She died in a Hollywood high school on property. They, San Diego got together and they mandated fentanyl awareness. The first one in the country mandated fentanyl awareness education in the schools. You got to warn these kids. That's been my heart forever and I followed them doing that. And then Melanie's Law ended up on Gavin News since Desi signed it. And so it mandates fentanyl awareness education, but they're not compliant. The California schools are not compliant. So we have some parent couples that are going into schools and reminding them that you are obligated by law to train on this. We have a DEA approved program, the Fentanyl Fathers Program. Anybody getting federal funds for anything? Okay. For anything? I don't care if it's to the schools or whatever. If there's federal funds being sent to California and California doesn't go ahead and do what they're supposed to be doing in this realm. Okay. Just don't give me any goddamn money. Yeah. No money. You get none. Okay. That's what I love about this guy. Yeah. That's what I love about him. Yeah, for sure. He's not, he's not listening to the noise. He's not being told. He's not around. And he's not being told. I can't do this. He's like, yeah, okay, cool. I'm the president. You're not. Go do it. Yeah. I love that. Yep. Love it. Oh, yeah. And so we're, and so we're just basically bent, resolved to scale. And the way to scale is give these brief parents who definitely want to tell their story. Not all of them are public speakers, but they have their five minutes story down. It may suck the life out of them that day, but it gives them purpose in their pain and it gets them out of bed. And at the end of the day, as a brief parent, the ultimate thing I think we could give them is to say, had your kid not died, a hundred kids would have died because you weren't there telling them about your kid. Do you know what bothers me more than anything in the world? You guys took your pain, okay, and made certain that other parents didn't feel the way you feel. I don't, I never want another parent to feel. Never. Ever. It's the worst. Listen. Absolutely. For me, it's something I could never get over. It is the, it is the, you're a lover, your daughter, the way you talked and I met Dominic. No, you couldn't. No, it's, it's the worst thing that can ever happen to a parent. It's the most unnatural thing in the world to bury your child. I just can't even discuss it. And I've got a podcast on this where I'm continually re-injuring myself all the time. Yeah. And it's torture. Thank God for guys like you because we're not going to get it done just scaling with brief parents. We need people, champions like you. I was so excited to meet you and I knew you were friends with David Siegel and so was the president, was friends with him and talked about that. David was a hero. He marched up the steps to Congress and said, this is what you're doing. Yeah. Okay. And he's responsible for having the Narcan. Yes, he is. No, no. Oxon awareness day is June 6th. And that's a tough day to get a lot of attention because it was formerly known as D-day, which is it's still celebrated. But yeah, it was a 10 year anniversary. Jackie, we're in town not long ago celebrating that with them. And they've got juice. They had both the Florida senators there, three Congress people there. Of course. They've got juice. They're serious people. Yes. They are. All right. I call Donald Trump the fentanyl president. Okay. He's done way more than any other president around drugs ever. He's mentioned fentanyl more times in his first 100 days than the last three presidents combined. Yep. Okay. He's refreshing. Yeah. And even though fentanyl wasn't an issue down the line, still opioids, fentanyl opioids interchangable. Okay. Greg, you were at the HALT Act signing recently and met with the president. Let's tell everyone what this act is about. The HALT fentanyl Act made all fentanyl related substances permanently illegal by putting them in schedule one, the strictest drug category. What does that mean? Well, fentanyl was raised and the precursors were raised to a level where marijuana is going the opposite direction, going down to schedule three maybe. And this is a big issue now with the DEA and all that. President said, this doesn't seem like much at the service it goes, but this is one of the most important pieces of legislation I'm ever going to sign. It allows you to put guys who are in this game away for 10 years minimum where justice is served to the parents where you're more likely to get into a new business. If they die. No. No, no, no. If you have 100 grams on you, I believe. I think it was a bit. Milligrams. Any dealing doesn't have to result in death. Now there's a mandatory minimum. Is a mandatory minimum of 10 years. And he does have a lot of empathy. He's talked to parents. He's like anybody. He's he hasn't lost a kid and he's really hammers his kids, you know, no drinking drugs or smoking every time they leave the house. And his kids are good kids, you know, President Trump. Well, kids are older now. Yeah, but you have to tell him not to do drugs anymore. But he was very, very on top of that. Absolutely. He really I've always I personally have always liked him. But the he said he talked to a parent where he really won me over as a champion was he said I talked to a brief mom and she said it gets worse. Not better. It does. It's not better. I'm like, thanks for saying that. How he's right. She's right. Right. It does get worse. It is. It's bad. Well, you as you grow through your grief and talk to other parents, you realize the magnitude of the problem. And how many families are affected by this? You know, it doesn't it's not just the loss of one life. It's the the destruction of many more. I mean, how many marriages break up because of the grief that the parents are you kidding? That's any how all of them. Yeah, all of them. How many siblings end up, you know, with depression and PTSD and everything. The the ripple effect of this problem is just it's it's incalculable. It's destroying us from the inside. You know, the other thing that President Trump did is yesterday, he just announced that he's really going after the cartels in their terrorist status. And you remember ISIS, that ring of bell? Yeah. Where are they? They're gone. They're gone. Why are they gone? Because he made him go away. And I was I was on a a a a podcast. This is like, I think the third one I've ever done. This is a real privilege to be here. Thank you. Is Martha McCollum. She goes, what do you think the cartels are going to go away quietly? A 14 billion dollar industry? I said, I hate it when anybody dies, but I can tell you this, there will be blood and there is going to be blood because it's going to be you. It's now a tour between us and the cartels. And guess who's going to win that one? You just look at the if I were in the cartel business, I'd be looking for another job. Yeah. I tell my peer support guys that search a community that says you better be telling your your buddies that are addicts now. You better say, you know, what are you going to do when there's no fentanyl anymore? Because it's going to dry up and never be completely open. Well, then they're going to find something else like pink or aint to see the right. Well, we kind of said, you know, if you if you could pass out buprenorphine, you know, if buprenorphine was as easy to get suboxone, if suboxone was as easy to get as fentanyl, right? You we'd save a hundred that we'd save 20,000 lives a year at least because suboxone doesn't kill people. Can I tell you what I like? Can I tell you what I like about salt the most? Sure. The way we've been getting jerked around is through the ingredients in these drugs. So you get you change one little thing and then it's no longer against. Oh, yeah. No, yeah. Right. Yeah. That's over now. That's it. If you switch the precursors even a little bit chemically, it won't help you. No. That says the whole thing like that is and and and I swear I was thinking about that last year and I'm like, this doesn't sound right. This is horrible. A lot of these problems people say, well, they're complicated. No. OK, they're not. You make them complicated. I'm not saying this in a way that's full of ego. OK, I know for certain. OK, that if I had a blank check, OK, for less than a billion dollars, I could clean up the entire city of Los Angeles. Yeah. For certain. Yeah. And I could do it in less than two years. Yeah. Now, that would be my full time job. Yeah. But I'm not a CEO anymore. I'm the chairman. So I got all the time in the world. Yeah. Just this morning, I was walking along this Santa Monica strip over to the beach and there were at least 10 people slumped over. Obviously, you know, the result of addiction and then were they slumped over like this? Some of them were of the Mets, and kind of the fentanyl slump or the xylosine slump. And then there were others just, you know, sacked out. Some girl just said it was somebody's daughter. Some girl was unconscious on the beach. And, you know, I could tell she was breathing and she twitched her foot once in a while. So I knew I didn't need to run over and get her an arcane. But, you know, it's just tragic. It's everywhere, you know, around here. And wouldn't that girl's mom love a phone call knowing that her daughter's still alive? But she doesn't know where she is. I'm sure. I'm not like you got to go look. A lot of them, man. Yeah. A lot of them. I've had calls with parents. They don't care. They're done. Well, and then when this happens, okay, then they're on it. There's a million bereaved parents in the country. We want to aggregate at least 100,000 angel army. We want to, like FedEx or UPS, have a logistical, non-sexy approach to this army going out and taking responsibility for a state and for a county and for districts to make sure every school sees a bereaved parent presenter. There's 26,727 schools in the country. How many? 26,727 high schools. Is that high schools? Is that public or private or both? That's both. That's both. We want to hit them. Yes, we want to hit the others. But this is our starting point and we want to go in there with parents and talk to them. We know that it's doable. We know that we have the resources to do it. It's got to be implemented and executed at the state and then the county and the district and the high school level and it's completely doable. Can I make a suggestion, please? Okay, because you guys are right there on the J curve. You're right there about to blow up, right? So it can still be modified. Modify it to start in the elementary schools. Okay, you got it. We're going to go in and do with elementary schools in Miami now this year. You have to. We're doing it and I applaud them for saying that. I would argue like one thing you've mentioned is that it's a personal story. It's a tragedy, but if it's 100,000, it's just a statistic. But this is killing more people than Vietnam 9-11, childhood cancer, global plane crashes, drunk driving all combined. But I just want to say this in terms of the reach. Go ahead. You were going to say something. Well, I was going to say the best part about you guys and I was saying it earlier and naturally I forgot what I was going to say. But the best thing about you guys is that you guys turn this pain into making certain that the parents, that other parents don't go through this immeasurable pain. But the thing that disappoints me the most is when parents don't. I've got one of the reasons I came back. So there was a bunch of reasons. But one of the reasons I started this was because one of the clients, one client I had passed away from fentanyl and he had seven years sober. Oh, but he got into a car accident and the doctor put him on these medications. Oh, yeah. And now he's looking and he took one pill and he was slumped over in the car in less than a minute. Wow. So and the parents blame me. They blame me. And the reason I know that is because I wasn't invited to the funeral and I told them I wanted to go. And these people called me for everything. Whenever they had an issue with the kids and I'd get on the phone and say, you want me to come get you or you want to do it this way? And they said, no, no, Rich, we're fine. We'll do it that way. This is the one time they didn't call me and they told everybody it was a heart attack. Oh, yeah. That's because they're because they felt shame. Yeah. They were embarrassed. Yeah. And that made me insane. Yeah. Well, we don't play nice in the sandbox. We would leverage our way into schools. But if someone wants to be complicit in the ignorance of kids, they're our enemy and we don't let them stand in our way. Now, I would argue that everyone is responsible for this and I'll give you my take on that. It comes from the book of Proverbs, Solomon wrote this. Proverbs chapter 24 verse 11 and 12. He said, hold back those staggering towards the slaughter. Stop those going towards certain death. If you claim it's not your responsibility, God who knows all hearts knows yours and he knows you knew. It's a real scripture. It's a real good luck explaining that on judgment day. If you say it's not my job, this is our number one responsibility. You know it's killing people. You have us on your podcast. We know it's killing people. We're trying to scale this. The president knows he's signing laws and he's behind us on this. We got to get the army, the angel army parents together and go in and because with the brief parent is the linchpin to this. Tell these kids and these kids lock in. They lock in. But start earlier. Yep. I agree with you. I agree. Absolutely. Because and I like your idea of the cartoon or social media for the young year. That's right. And then at some point we get a brief parent in front of it may not be appropriate to tell a story of the death to a fifth grade. Why not? Well, no, no, no, no. This is not listen. And not instead of in addition to. Okay. Yeah. Okay. This is a great this is a great point and there's a lot of curriculum out there. I will definitely take your advice and go go younger. But in terms of executing, if you're going to stretch, if you're going to prioritize, we want to hit these high schools first and then. We want to hit the middle schools and the grade schools because the high schools is right before they really start dropping. Once they get into college, they don't have mom and dad there to lie to them to say door dashes at the door and their drugs arrive. I know, but I did a thousand middle school students the week that I went down to Miami. Better. And it was better. It was amazing to see sixth and seventh graders listen up and and and you'd tell them you'd ask, you know, how many of you have a family member or someone you love that's been affected by this. I was like 40 in every audience. Yeah. The little hand. Amazing. You know, some of sometimes it's their parents that have died. They lost their parents. They lost the sibling. They lost the cousin. Yeah. It's crushing this country. This is our number one problem for sure. It's not unusual for one or two to be brought to tears. And while that's. We don't want to make people. We don't. We don't set out to make people sad. But if it elicits that emotion, it tells us we're getting through that we're we're making an impact. And that's all right. You guys are magnificent. All right. We're going to go to one quick a couple of questions from the audience. OK. OK. Tyler from Phoenix is asking, my son has mental health struggles and I'm worried he might self medicate. I know he's on Snapchat. How can I stop this before it's too late? Very dangerous on Snapchat because he can order up drugs and they can be delivered right to the house and for for a price. That's a real problem. I'd love to send him the free book of Victoria's voice. We give it to every student in every assembly who wants this book and we give that out. So that's a real benefit from Jackie Segal and explains the mental health that they go through. 50% of kids are struggling from mental health as you know. But we know that they spend three hours a day scrolling through their phones. Three hours. Who told you three hours? CNN. Yeah, they're wrong. 10 hours. They're wrong. So three hours. But if they were three hours, we wouldn't have a problem. One thing I learned in, you know, in recovery is the serenity prayer. Grant me serenity over things I cannot change. Well, you're scrolling through three hours a day of three things you can't change. That's going to cause stress and anxiety. You know, we talk about the greatest generation. These guys were came from poverty, went into World War Two, how they turn out so good. And these kids have a problem scrolling, but that's they have these, you know, I'm talking about. They have these mental. The best was the best was COVID. The best was COVID where everybody just lost their minds. Okay. And it's like, dude, you're not asked to fight a war. You're asked to sit on the couch. She's shut up. Jesus. You have the authority to say that. But they do have, but it doesn't matter. They do have this stress and anxiety. What do they do? Well, that is your lane doctor. That is your lane rich. Our lane is one way that doesn't work. And that is anything that's unprescribed. It's going to kill you. You need to have a chance to get into therapy. You need to have a chance to have, whether it's a pastor or a therapist or all, you know, all the good things with sports and all the other things you can do. One thing that will not work is Adderall Xanax, Percussa OxyCide and order it up. And by the way, it's in the marijuana supply period. The best thing it is. The best thing. Well, not when you get it from a dispenser. That's right. It's the only safe way. But also keep in mind in California, 80% of the dispensaries are getting it from cartels. I don't know if you knew that, but the DEA confirmed that for me last week. I didn't know that. Well, if that's true, then that's bad deal. One point I always make to my audience is I say, the most dangerous thing on the planet is white powder. For sure. Anytime you get a white powder, you have no idea what's in it and how potent it is. You might snort one line and get high. The next line, you die. Sure. Look, Adana went down in our town and she's in denial that she took any drugs, but she was revived by Narcan. That means she had opium. It's my theory is that she probably took a line of cocaine that was was laced. Yeah. And the problem with that is they have these test strips and these kids think if they do the test strips, they're safe and they're not because one part of the pill is this way. And the other part is different and same with the powder. So it's the harm reduction. I'll show you how potent it is. It just doesn't tell you how much fentanyl is in it. It just says it's fentanyl or it's not. Right. And they go, oh, it's okay. It's got fentanyl in it. Well, that's what I paid for, but they don't know how much is in each pill. It's ridiculous. All right. Let's move to the next one. Okay. Sarah from Los Angeles is asking if I find a pill in my child's room, is there any way to tell if it has fentanyl without sending it to the lab? Yes, you can use a test strip, but it's not that reliable. Well, the other thing is help. If it's positive, you can confront your kid and say, this could have killed you. If it's negative, it's not certain because you can have negative results from that test strip and it still may have failed. Well, the other thing is the DEA this year saying it's just five and 10 pills are laced with fentanyl, deadly fentanyl. Last year, it was seven and 10 and went up to eight and 10. And you can assume at that point that if your child has an unprescribed pill, if you didn't get it, mom, it's got fentanyl in it. You can absolutely assume that. Yes. It's like playing Russian roulette with four of the five chambers loaded. It's not if it's when. Well, one of the things I explained to them is that, you know, pills that are sold on the street, you know, to each other, think about how difficult it is to get a prescription, a truly pharmaceutical manufactured pill on the street. Right. On the streets. It's not. Whereas it costs the cartel pennies to produce fentanyl pills. Do you know how much it costs for a pressed perk on the street? I just found out 20 bucks. Two bucks. Oh, yeah. It's it's it's less than that. It's it's a hundred dollars for for 50. A hundred bucks for 50. Yeah. Two bucks. That's crazy. In Phoenix, you can get cheaper if you if you buy it in bulk. So you're not a mathematician. You're a doctor. Right. Got it. That I saw the reals term like that. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, he'll figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think it's probably as little as 50 cents in some places. That's for sure. We have a video on the on the front of our final files.org site, which shows Russian roulette and it's a gun being loaded. Some schools don't let us show it. Yeah, you can't. It's a gun being loaded with Adderall pills and it's talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And why why would there be fentanyl and Adderall? Well, it's because a kid, a college kid can carry a pocket full of Adderall. And if he gets says, oh, it's just that Adderall used for studying. But the dealer knows that he can sell that he can. He can some of the kids know they're getting fentanyl disguised as Adderall. Some just think they're getting Adderall and it's mixed with fentanyl because it gives them a high. These kids selling the selling pills are going to go away for 10 years and they're just another punk in their school at the end of the chain of the drug supply, which starts in China, goes to the cartels, goes to the distribution and finally ends up in a local area. And some guys like getting it from his distributor. And there's there's five chains of command, but the last guy to sell it gets nailed because guess what? Children, Snapchat is does keep their records and they if something someone dies, they will go back and find out you sold it to him. It doesn't disappear. Einstein. If you if you sell drugs to children, you should go away forever. All right. Here here we go. Mary Ann from Seattle is asking, I want to talk to my kids about fentanyl. I'm afraid if I push too hard, they'll shut down. How do I start the conversation the right way? Well, you're a hero to want to, you know, educate your kids. And I would recommend to watch one of our presentations right on the front of our homepage. Joinangelarmy.com become an advocate that way. There's a way that kids in schools can talk. It's called students advocating fentanyl education safe for short, have high schoolers talk to them about it. But an illustrative movie on the front page of fentanylfathers.org, you show them that they will be in tears, but they'll be crystal clear. I think that's an easy way to do it. Sit down with your child and watch the 20 minute movie called Dead on Arrival at the fentanyl fathers website. It will make an impact on you and your child. And it can be a starting point for that conversation. Good. I'm going to watch that with my children tonight. Fantastic. All right. Before we wrap, I want to show something that can save a life. How do you use Narcan? And we are going to let the doctor do this. Absolutely. So Narcan is a specific antagonist to opioid medications like fentanyl or heroin or perfaset. Anytime someone has been overdosed with an opioid, what kills them is respiratory depression. It basically turns off the drive to breathe. So if a person is not breathing because of opioids, you can simply spray Narcan in one nostril. And within 30 seconds or more or a little longer, it can begin to reverse that effect and get them to resume breathing. Now you can assist breathing while you're waiting for it. Do you mind? That's why it's here. Okay. So you shove it up the nose because you don't have to have CPR. We tell people this because a general person can do this. You have to have access to this, know where it is carrying your purse and your glove box. You shove it up the nose all the way and you unload it like this. Ready? Yep. The reason we do that in public is because it's not illegal drug. It's sold over the counter. It's $45. But most places make it free. We're making it available free. It's something called NarcanNow.us. Anywhere there's free Narcan, it's going to be listed there. You can get it in the mail from AndoverGhost as well. And we found them for $22. Yeah, it should be free. Do you see a kid paying $22. It should be free from any government. Let's re-hand them out like candy. Okay. And you can, but let's just tell you about it. Okay? Okay. All right. The president went ahead and took $400 million from there. I think it was the whole thing. I don't remember. From the Narcan, free Narcan and put it into the veterans' substance use and whatever. Oh, right. People had a huge problem with that. Yeah. And the reason I didn't was simple. Two reasons. Number one, it's $22. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay? If you're going to be using drugs and you know what you're using or even if you don't know what you're using, you know now because you'd have to be under a rock. Yeah. Okay? For the $22. Right. Well, and there's a variety of other non-profits in states and the counties that give it out for free. That's right. Then in Mexico, the health department distributes it. So it's available in multiple places. In Florida, we do with the South Florida opioid alliance. In Michigan, we do with the Alliance of Coalition. They have, they get it for free. There's a streamline to that. The American Society of Pediatrics recommends that any parent, any family that has kids between 10 and 20 should have Narcan in the household and it should be in a central location where everyone knows where it is. I agree. Because it could be a sibling saving their brother or sister. Yeah. Four to seven minutes before brain damage. You already got a, yeah. So Lazarus drug brings back. In the kitchen have it where everybody knows where he is and they know how. I wish the guy was with Drew had it because Drew was exhibiting signs of an overdose. He said, Drew, you sure you're okay? He goes, no, no, I'm good. I just need to go sleep this off. And he went into the house and laid down and died. And he died because he stopped breathing. You turn blue and you die. That's right. Because the stem in the back, do you know what it is? Never use a loan and carry Narcan. Well, we're using a loan. That's, that's what they're doing. They're using a loan. So the two things that I've got a problem with with this is two things. Number one, everybody uses a loan. Yeah. Okay. And number two, when you're not using a loan. Okay. They leave you there. If you are in the presence of somebody that is overdosed and maybe there's drugs in the house or whatever. But you call 911 to help rescue whoever's overdosed. Anybody in contact with that will not be criminally charged because you're in the service of trying to save some. They're gonna hammer that to kids. Okay. Because that's very important because they will. They'll dump them off into a field and they'll die. There are cases where somebody's overdosing in the back seat of the car and the kids are so scared that they, that they, they let them on parking. They let them die in a field. Yes. Yeah. Because they're scared to call 911. It's impossible for someone else that hasn't experienced that similar loss to truly understand what you're going through. And when they put us together in those groups, it is very therapeutic. I mean, I'm going through it now and it's very helpful. So, and it's free to any, not almost free to anyone. So. No. And by the way, we're going to have something called the Angel Army Ascendancy in Orlando in January. We're all, we have 400 brief parents getting together. We hope to have the group train there who sings this song, calling all angels and we'll train them and power them, encourage them to go out and hit these schools. If they need help, we'll set them up with a companioning. Yeah. And we'll have one fun day like a Disney day, but that's coming up. And we think that Jackie is going to help comp a lot of the people who can't go there to stay at the Westgate resort. Yeah. Do they own that resort? Yes. Well, then I think she can handle that. I think you're... She says, she said as much. Yeah. She's, she's, she means what she says and she says what she means. Right on. Okay. Greg. Yes, sir. Dr. Gary. Thank you guys so much for coming today. Would all people be like you and have the empathy for the dying in this country? Our number one problem. Thank you for caring. Doing your, your responsibility. Taking responsibility. Thank you. Thank you for helping us and for having the... I said, I, I tried to dabble in recovery treatment and I realized that emotionally, I didn't have that knack. Right. And so I have great respect for people that can help people through recovery because it's a very, very important part of this puzzle. We can't, we can't completely prevent it. Prevention is important, but there's what 20 million people that are currently dependent on opioids in this country. Thank you guys for coming. Okay. I really appreciate it. I know how hard this is and, and I'm sorry, deeply sorry for your loss. Okay. How can people reach you? Thank you so much. Thanks for your empathy. It really gives us purpose in our son's passing to be here and to advocate. The way to reach us is fentanylfathers.org or angelarmy.com. And to book us, hit up our guy, Mike at fentanylfathers.org. If you are feeling down, anxious, depressed or suicidal, any of those on that spectrum call 988 and they will talk you off the ledge there, fella. You'll be fine. Just live another day. And if you are a loved one has a problem, reach out to carerotreatment.com or onecallplacement.org. All right. Thank you very much. See you next Tuesday. And so forth, so all we do is borrow. Who said to live this way? We'll have a little faith in things you cannot explain. Good bye, my cherished friend. May you ever grow in our hearts. You gave us joy and lived your life. But now we're torn apart. But now we're torn apart. You called out for humanity. You whispered about your pain. Now you're longed in heaven. And the stars spell out your name. And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind. Never knowing how to call when the pain blew in. You couldn't understand the choices that you made. Your candle blew out long before. I love you, baby.