All right. Good evening. Thats wonderful to see you all again. Most especially the students from university and high school and delighted to have back the last time some of may have seen don, it was during covid had to do a webinar version its much better have back in person. I feel fortunate i kind of a friend and through the council now i think we know each other about ten years. Youre one of the worlds foremost experts on the cartels and the narco violence that goes along with it in mexico. But youve also covered Central America of brazil, gangs in jamaica we will get to yemens book and a little bit later, gun money about the flow of of a huge number of weapons flowing in the united into mexico, but just because its so much in the news lately, i just want to look a little bit more at. The fentanyl crisis and maybe. Can you those people come to some of the basics and why it is kind of in recent years, a lot of the cartels in mexico have taken a shift away from almost what wed call plant based, you know, narcotics, you know, the huge fields of marijuana or opium or coca leaves, you know, that could be, you know, need large amounts of space to be grown too. Synthetic drugs, a lot of ways are much more deadly, much more lethal, such as fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. What exactly. Is fentanyl how is it created and why is it so, i suppose, attractive to the cartels . And why is it so concerning to everyone, you know, beyond the cartels . Mexico in the United States. Yeah. Thank you very much. And yes, it was great. Be here again. Ive got a Good Relationship with houston going back some years. I work for the Houston Chronicle back at 2000 photos and five from mexico as a as a freelance as a super stringer the courier back then and yeah my my fourth event with wrote out he always takes me to good a barbecue and cajun food that ive always a memories of houston so i would say what weve seen and what were witnessing now in our lives is a revolution in terms of the Illegal Drugs and this move from the plant drug. So we had, you know, marijuana going back for a lot of years, a lot of decades, and then cocaine, which is still a chemical process. But cocaine where you have the cocaine leaves and then you get the cocaine and heroin in which is, you know, you have the opium and then make the heroin and then weve seen now this revolution to drugs made from synthetic chemicals. I need to talk more to chemists about this as any chemists at end, please come forward. Id love to talk to you about about the the chemical processes and what weve seen mexico. This is really when there was a kind of Ground Breaking thing that happened. One of the pioneers was going back to 2007 you had a china is a pharmaceutical importer called san diego and he was chinese by birth naturalized mexican and he set up the links between mexican drug cartels and chinese pharmaceutical companies. And he would in his it was for crystal meth methamphetamine before fentanyl he would bring in precursors including various things various different types of chemicals and sell them to mexican cartels who then cooked them up into crystal meth. And he was making so much money he had in his home, mexico city, a mansion in mexico, 207 million in cash. What it was bust, there was a big question of where is this guy . Turned out he was like all people, lots of money. He was in las vegas and he was going up there. He was going to las vegas with spending than 100 million in cash in casinos, going to vegas with a suitcase of money and spending all his money making from this a crystal meth. The casino, and would pay him back some of the money. So he was laundering the money effectively through, the casinos. He also bought one casino. Croupier one woman who was running cartel booze. He bought her 1,000,000 house and. He eventually of the casino to pay some of that money back. So this guy was eventually arrested. Hes now in prison in mexico he was a kind of pioneer of this. And then you saw it graduate school kind of gradually up and then moving as well. Crystal meth as well to, the fentanyl. So crystal is crystal meth is like a synthetic drug, replaces the cocaine high in way its a stimulant and now its already quite recently the tables have turned so have more crystal meth being seized on the southern border. Then you have cocaine. Youve also now got more fentanyl than heroin. Now, fentanyl is a synthetic drug, which originally was made by a Pharmaceutical Company and patented, you know go back to the 1950s, which is a form of operator opioid aids are synthetic formulas which which the opiates and opiates have form direct derivatives of the opium poppy meaning their painkiller meaning theyre down as meaning they make people feel good they make people feel get rid of pain. And often for a lot of people, its both physical pain and mental and emotional pain. The stuff is so much stronger and its been a real game changer in that. I mean, they took people to talk about being 40 times stronger, 50 times stronger. The level Overdose Deaths because its so, you know, its gone off the charts. I mean, we see 170,000 Overdose Deaths in the united in 2021, 70,000 those they had a fentanyl, at least one drug in the system. So that is incredible and. Its a huge increase this is not at all normal levels. Now why do the cartels do this and money is the obvious thing when youre dealing with plant based drugs you to rely on crop so you had a bunch of people growing opium growing coca and growing marijuana. They could be sprayed, they could seized by the military. They could know affected by the harvests. You know by the temperatures. You had to wait for them. They had to bring that stuff down and process. So cocaine was the biggest moneymaker. But cocaine, you could buy a kilo of cocaine for 2,000 in colombia. Pressed up and sell it for like 15,000 in mexico and 30,000 over the border and 100,000 went against the towns. But this fentanyl, you know, you can produce this for a very small amounts and make you know, you can produce a small amount for a few thousand dollars thats worth 500,000, 800,000, 1,000,000. So the of this is what was a game changer. I mean, marijuana know the old school of marijuana that was big seized marijuana fits in a football stadium. You know these huge amounts of marijuana fits in a football stadium. Then have these big seeds, the cocaine kind of fits in a room and these big bricks of cocaine. But now, fentanyl, you could have fentanyl in, one of these glasses and thats to kill, you know half a houston. So it is some of the hype. This is true. Its a very venomous drug. And weve got a revolut weve had a revolution in terms of drug Drug Trafficking and drug use because of that. And it puts in a very, very difficult situation it just to stay with the production of it in largely mexico. Most of its in mexico in recent years under some pressure, the chinese have put in some regulations to try and restrict the exportation of, some of these precursor chemicals. But a lot of people, the United States say its not enough. Also, uschinese relations now are probably the worst theyve been since perhaps the 1960s. So theres the challenge of of when that flow of precursor chemicals, easy flow from china, stop and maybe the even scarier thought maybe you could talk about youve written how some of the cartels themselves are saying lets cut out paying the chinese the middlemen. Were going to hire our own chemists. Well make it in mexico or or also what percentage of fentanyl is made in the United States itself, do you think . Right. Yeah so so first about with china, and im not familiar with the inner of china and the ccp and so forth. What we we saw from pressure from the United States. So now that everyone knows how many types of fentanyl there are and anyone guess how many of fentanyl there are, you know, any guesses. Well, more than a thousand types. So, first of all, there was lots of press on sunday formulas. So in china, these same labs just made out. There were other forms. Eventually under more pressure. They said, okay, were banning all fentanyl forms. Any of these things we said, if its a week, we can stop. However, it appears that the not only are pharmaceuticals coming out of china, theyre also out of india. And from chinese organizations. Is making fentanyl in india and other Asian Countries now. A lot of this stuff now as well is that you have precursors. So you have precursors which we some cases these are not illegal that its very hard to see these when you i guess why dont we talk to more chemists now to be qualified to try and draw make sense of all of this stuff. You get these new precursors all the time, formulas, find that find out youve got some weird list of numbers and letters trying make sense of. Now, a lot of this stuff comes over in ships over the pacific and into mexican port of manzanillo on the pacific coast, even if say even if the customs people were honest, itd be kind of hard to stop because youve got fentanyl, have it a false bill of lading. You go, you go through these these you know, you can hide it and so forth. So what do you looking for . How much such . However there is big corruption. And i talked somebody with a lot of experience working in the port who told me that intermediaries there, you can pay them 40,000 and your container goes through and they have 3 million containers a year going to that port. So they bring them then they can either fentanyl or precursor says make this in mexico and then take over the border of the united. You know, youve got huge seizures and the seizures theyre finding are off the chart. I talked to one these guys some years ago. I talked to one guy who was in prison in the United States, in North Carolina for flying cocaine. He flew east, fly cocaine back in the day. He was flying cocaine straight over the border from mexico to the United States under radar with the lights off. But that he started just flying cocaine from venezuela and colombia to mexico. And it would be go under the border. He was in prison in the United States. And i asked him how much of the drugs that are seized, how much out there. And he said its about 4 to 1, meaning for every ton of cocaine they seized theres four tons on the street or four tonnes that are getting through. So all the feds are there finding out that theres like four times as much still still going through now. Theres also, you know, like this is according to a dea agent. He was saying, you know, he had information on the and this is all this story has been around as well that in mexico there is cartels who want qualify chemists to work for them to to find better formulas. So then you can even take this stage back and thats why its i need to take tool to cabeza the satellite. What does it mean if you take the precursor sources and you start making your own precursors and youre making these from very much base chemicals and very much stuff thats inside the farmers pharmaceutical industry . You know, its very, very hard to an eye on that. Now in the United States, there is fentanyl taking imported directly to the United States as well well. It seems its difficult. Its impossible to know exactly when you got this clandestine. But the evidence to point from what im seeing much is coming through mexico right now than is directly in the United States or being synthesized in the United States because the quantities, the pure quantities, just look at the numbers youre seeing on southern border of fentanyl seizures there. And, you know, as you mentioned, its its catastrophic in recent years, the number of Overdose Deaths, the United States has basically quadrupled, you know, 70,000, just fentanyl alone. Do you see any kind of correlations, maybe kind of unfortunate distinctions between, say, what we call the crack epidemic, epidemic of the 1980s and nineties that disproportionately affected a lot of times urban in a lot of our big cities as. And then it was labeled and as a crime problem as opposed to now maybe weve progressed as a country the fentanyl crisis, other opioids have disproportionately affected more white and often rural or midwestern users addicts. And maybe its seen more as a Public Health issue. Do you think there are disparities there or maybe overall should be happy that were hopefully trying to treat this more a an issue of addiction as opposed to at least the lower levels crime . Yeah, what a comparison. Back to 19, a 1980s and want to reagan and motley crew and all of those great things ghostbusters and back to the future i mean a very very different world isnt it if you look at the crack epidemic, i think its an interesting point of comparison. Theres so many different things. You look at the crack epidemic and i mean, i just looked at some of these numbers before i came out. Something some of the questions and i know looking at this but like in 1988 its kind of the height of the crack epidemic, the Overdose Deaths in the United States, 5000, less than 5000, 2021, 107,000. So very, very different scale now, theres more to it than that. Know, drug addiction doesnt only hurt with drug deaths. You have, you know, addiction which can damage family is and you know people you know all these of things a lot of the in the crack years, the crack epidemic there were a lot of the deaths, the violence and the horror was people shooting, fighting over the profits. This on the corner, you had a lot of crack being sold, a lot of people got crews on the corner selling crack and a lot of money. And then people fighting said very, very high murder rates in certain cities in the United States in the 1980s, fast forward to now and. So we see it as a health problem. I think the United States has not grasped or really got a clear policy on it. In some ways, i. On one side, you have certain elements the Republican Party who are saying, you know, we need to, you know, take out the cartels and call them terrorists and, kind of bomb mexico and so forth. Now, i think theyre wrong thinking. This is some quick fix. You could just do this. You could just like do a chicago style operation. The movie sicario kind of go over the border and just kind of bomb these things. Because ive been covering these cartels the last 20 years and youve got like hundreds of thousands of people involved in this youre not going to just bomb it away, gone over, but i think its a fair point. And i know apart from the fact that youre violating mexican and, you know, it comes into a very, very big dispute. But on the other side, they are making a point. This is a real its a real political issue. Now, on the gang, on the broad elements of the democratic side, youve got people saying, oh, weve got look more towards more towards health, whatever harm reduction, but not really a clear policy, again, of what that is. I mean, really, how you have much better treatment because. You shouldnt it should not be acceptable having. 170,000 people dying of overdoses and a lot of young people up in the prime of their lives. So in a sense, you could say, well, if you know, this is affecting Middle America in some ways, and its also right now the united is not really handling it in the same way. Now, the crack epidemic is looming. Theres a kind of last note on that in some ways. There was more elements of kind of media around the crack epidemic. Some times that was overly hyped about this whole thing. Stories like crack babies, which were not really true. We know, you know, these kind of babies born on crack and stuff, which are kind of not really true and there was kind of a lot there was certainly a lot of very aggressive, kind of hardcore policing, putting a lot of people in prison over that. But but a different world now and certainly not a kind of clear solution or really they started treating it number one priority and and and well turn to kind of some, you know, policy ideas. And there are no easy there are no easy answers. Obviously, as you know, its like foreign. But at least you have a selection, a choices. This is an enormous market. Its estimates the rand corporation, 150 billion annually. The united that americans spend on Illegal Drugs. That creates kinds of disproportionate in terms of of of every year various sectors Society Economics in terms of those willing to resort to violence maybe just for two or three examples could you talk about, i think whats reflective of corruption, the difficulties at the highest levels . And first, about the capture and eventual release of el chapo, some and then in terms, sadly, the levels of corruption go to the very top. The former secretary of public security, which would be the equivalent roughly of the United States secretary of homeland. The home fence, luna garcia, or even their secretary defense cienfuegos, both accused in corruption, bribery. You talk about how it has gotten such levels all across the board of politics in mexico. Yeah, absolutely. So who has heard about el chapo has had its its funny isnt it. I mean, i know thats not a joke. Oh chapos got a name recognition probably now than any president of latin america yet you know how famous even within that america itself as well. I went to some of el chapos trial in new york and saw him first hand a few feet away. It was kind of a mix of kind of seeing all this violence, but also of this kind of sun or or struck, seeing the figure a few feet away, the courtroom, another and i heard of el, if you would pay me with his sons various sons they call lost. The little chapos and hes got a whole bunch sons but for particularly accented the head of a kind of new faction the Sinaloa Cartel or the cartels. Well lost chapters and they got really big into fentanyl. There was some of the ones who really saw this are profits of this. They run a pretty hard cartel himself, spending a lot of time in sinaloa. And the last couple of