#112: Brian Townsend /Retired DEA Agent

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together One. We're live with Brian Townsend. Welcome, Brian. I'm so happy that you're joining us today. Thank you so much man. Yeah. No, thank you. I look forward. To it so federal and state officer over 30 years of experience feels like does that feel like a snap of a finger to you What does that feel like Oh. My goodness, right? I feel like I started yesterday and you know, where did where did life go? I've just been been so blessed. I'm I want to start with, do you are you once you like see the the hot dog factory with the working with the with the with the feds and the federal government slash state government?

0:50 Are you more inclined to trust it or less inclined? Do you think that's but you could be a good answer however you want. You know I'm not trying to put the. Interesting thing is, is when you see how the how the sausage is made you, you, you get a sense of all the things that it's not right all the conspiracy theories, all the, you know, I mean it's, it's people, it's not some system, right? It's just people who make hopefully good choices, sometimes bad choices. And so, I mean, I, I don't know, there's a lot of really good people who are amazing and who have, you know, good hearts and good intentions. But sometimes there's not. So I don't know, I think I'm more trusting. And I think that's my, you know, my, my, who I am, right? I'm, I'm more of an optimistic, trusting person. I want to see the good in people when I want to see the good in the world, right?

1:42 Right, Right. Right. Definitely. I mean, I agree too. I just. I was just curious, you know, because I was like, you know, from someone, you know, someone standing on the outside and talking to someone that's on the inside, you know, I was always curious. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting because you hear all these things and see all these things and then when you when you're in the system working, you know, with the things that you hear about on the news or, or just, you know, through friends or family, you're like, yeah, that's not really accurate, but you. Know like I, I was kind of hoping to hear that by the way, because I think that that that that soothes some of my anxiety. I've been, I've been actively working on being a Twitter addict or an ex addict for a little while now. And I, I think it's just way unhealthy for my health. And, you know, and I just see so much speculation that's like that, like there's no, this is too fantastical. You know, I'm like, you know, but it's just hard to tell nowadays, you know, what's reality and what's not, You know, what people are, you know, what's a legitimate conspiracy and what's, you know, kind of just a little crazy. But you know, I'm just, I'm, so I'm, I'm excited to, to get a little bit of relief.

2:50 Honestly, that's kind of what I'm hoping for. But so you started your career as a, as a, as a local law enforcement right state. I did, I, I, I grew up in, in Northern Virginia outside of DC and I left that area to go to the Midwest to, to Joplin, MO, of all places, right in the middle of the country to go to college. And I love the area. And when I was working on my graduate degree, I started my career in law enforcement as a police officer in Joplin. And you know, originally I had no intention of being a police officer, nothing against it. I end up being probably the best decision I made at that point in my life and, and I had some other opportunities, but, but that one was the most promising and, and it worked out really well because ultimately my goal was the the DEA, the Drug Enforcement. Ministry, that was your goal?

3:39 Yeah, it was my goal. I was the entire time, and I didn't know how I was going to accomplish it, quite frankly. Yeah, absolutely my goal. So being a police officer was a great experience. First, we had a great department, great city, you know, just the people were wonderful and very supportive of, of what we did and, and the Police Department itself. So, yeah, it was great. It was, it was five years, it was short and it was over in a snap of a finger, right. And and how? Long was training for to become the home police officer. So to be a police officer, you typically have to go through some type of police Academy. So at that time we had a regional police Academy at the college and that's pretty common in the state of Missouri. There's a lot of regional police academies and they're usually in criminal justice departments, you know, colleges and universities.

4:25 And, and I don't remember how many, how long it was exactly. I want to say probably 3-4 months. And I of course had my degree, but you that wasn't a requirement. That was just kind of an added. It was kind of what? Was your degree in? I had an associate degree in law enforcement. My bachelor's degree was in criminal justice administration. Nice. My master's degree, and this is where everyone laughs, is in human resource development with an emphasis in training, which was exactly what I had. Yeah, which which we'll get to which you've done right. Yeah. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So you, you, you really you went each step of the way with. I I somehow planned it out very well at a young age and probably frankly accidentally. Definitely, definitely.

5:11 How'd you, how'd you decide to get the human resources master's degree? What was that? What was the decision making costs like there? Well, you know, I, I wanted to stay in the area in the, in Missouri Southern, where I went to for my undergrad at the time, didn't have any graduate degrees. And I really liked that school a lot. But nearby Pitt State, Pittsburgh State University, which is in Pittsburgh, Kansas, you know, maybe 45 minutes away, they, you know, they offered graduate programs and, and I didn't, you know, I didn't want an MBA and I didn't want anything. You know, I just, I looked at the human resources. I had a advisor at Missouri Southern that was just a great guy. His name was Terry, and he he recommended it. I looked at the program and I thought, wow, there's an emphasis in training here. And I've always had this, this, this interest in teaching. And I thought, well, this might be a good fit. And I didn't realize at the time that it was a perfect fit because, you know, like you said, we'll get into later. It was something that I would ultimately, you know, yeah. Go down that path.

6:06 Yeah, Yeah. Really cool. Really cool. I can I ask you now? I guess we'll get into a little later the administrative part of teaching as opposed to the classroom part of teaching. What do you, what do you prefer? Because I, I'm a teacher myself and I'm a little afraid. I love being in the classroom. I'm a little afraid to get into the administrative part of it, you know? Yeah, I know I prefer hands on. I've, I prefer to be, you know, in the classroom and, and, you know, the interaction even more so. Like I know a lot of folks are doing the remote online teaching and, and I'm, I'm not, you know, against it. I just, I truly prefer being face to face with people. I think that's where you really build, you know, beautiful connections and relationships. You know, the administrative part's important obviously, and and I have no I'll will to anyone who who wants to to go into those to to take that path.

6:58 For me, though, I I like just to be I like to be a worker. I like to be on the ground. It's just even, even when I was at Dai, went into management, I missed, you know, being a worker and not that you can't work and not that you can't make a difference in management or administration, but it's a. Different type of responsibility, different type of role. It is right. It really is and, and, and, and it's something, you know, if, if someone's listening, thinking, oh, I want to take that next step, you better think about it because it's going to, it's going to be a lot different than what you're doing now. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, so you always wanted to be DEA. Was that because you wanted to fight bad guys, that because you had family that was in it? Is that because what was it? What was the motivation? Inspiration. I actually saw what drugs were doing to people at an early age and it bothered me.

7:43 It really did bother me to the core where I thought, why are these people poisoning themselves? You know, why are they hurting themselves, hurting their families, hurting communities? And I just made a decision that this was something that I wanted to be part of the solution and, and Drug Enforcement was it. And I didn't really know what the DEA was until about high school, but I and plus law enforcement face it when you're young and you're looking at people driving fast cars and carrying guns. I mean, you know, there's a field of that as well. But but ultimately, deep down, it was the fact that you know what, what can I do to serve my community and to help people who are struggling with with addiction or you? Know right, right. So what So what are some so you went so you went from school, grad school, police Academy five years police work and thank you for your service.

8:33 Thank you for all your service. Is that a typical route for DEA agent? What is it? What do people that you're with, how do they, how do they end up there? You know, a lot of DEA agents don't have that type of background. You know, at the time when I got hired in the late 90s, we had a pretty good mix of prior law enforcement and prior military. I mean, that's, that was pretty consistent. And I think that still is. You still have a lot of police officers who want to work as federal investigators and a lot of military folks as well interested in this career path. But I mean, I'm telling you, we've, we've had, I worked, I've worked with engineers. I worked with an engineer used to work on on fighter, fighter planes, you know, F fifteens and things and he. Just no way.

9:14 Yeah, he. Just had a change of heart. He wanted to be ADA special agent. I've worked with teachers I've worked with, I've worked with folks who worked retail their entire career. It really it's, it's, it's really not your background. It's more about just how that, how that made your DNA, right? How that, how that made you who you are today. You know, did you, did you show up to work? Did you have good relationships? Did you, do you ever get fired? You know, I mean, what is your, what are your Co workers? What are your bosses think about you? You know, it's just what makes you who you are and how did you handle yourself in a, in any type of career situation? And, and I think that's more important than than exact than what you did, because what you did or what you do now can be trained. It's kind of who you are that we're we're very interested in. Wow, and so that goes into the consideration and goes consideration when you wait for the hiring process. So like, you know, I, I got a creative writing and literature degree in college, which is practically useless, right? As in, I mean, I, I love it, but for the purpose of a job, for the purpose of job hunting, I got very lucky that my dad is a small business owner that, you know, I had a family business that I could join and I had something to fall back on and I still work with him to today.

10:27 You know, we, we were very close, although we have to live in a different state to get along, but it's OK. And you know, but, but we, we talk on the phone 100 times a day and we're always, you know, communicating. But you know, one of the things that I noticed, and I actually had to figure this out when I was in college, I was going around trying to find jobs or internships and I had to, and everyone would look at my resume and kind of laugh when they saw the create, you know, creative writing, you know, major degree. And so I got one of the business books, the business schools portfolio covers. So I was, I was walking around with the Business School portfolio and they'd look to my resume and I had a couple, I had a couple of internships where I did some business. Then they look at my degree and like, wait a minute, you get the Business School.

11:11 I don't know, but you know, I just, I got this, I got, I got this. And you know, I thought it'll help me get my foot in the door. But if you're telling me that the DEA would hire just based on any background, that's really cool. That gives people a lot of opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. And I actually like your degree because to me, you're using your brain. Writing is not easy. And I love that. If I were in the hiring, if I were someone who was hiring for DEA and you were in the hiring process, I would certainly look at that. Yeah, because I'm thinking someone that can critical thing, someone that can, you know, bridge decisions, I think outside the box and, you know, ultimately put those thoughts in onto paper and and describe situations and things like that. And I think that's important, especially in law enforcement.

11:51 People don't think about how much writing happens in law enforcement. I. Certainly. And I can tell you early on in my career, I was probably a horrific writer, really. Thankfully I had AI had a supervisor who who was an English major. There you go, and. He would basically take the red pen to my early reports at DEA and, and you know, and I, I didn't, wasn't offended by it. He made me a better writer and I'm thankful for it. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I was thinking about the value of it is I, I teach English now in a, in a high school and, you know, and I struggle a lot with what's, what am I trying to teach, you know, especially with ChatGPT and AI and, you know, and five paragraph essays are going to be essentially useless, you know, in a couple, you know, by the time these 10th graders are in College in three years, you know, And so one of the, one of my main values is self-expression. Learning how to articulate what's AI is not going to be able to do that for you.

12:46 You can't explain what's in here and what's in here, you know, with AI, but you can do it by practicing, you know, communication. And then comprehension is I could give you all the information that you need, but if you can't understand it or apply it in a creative way in your own life, then what's the point really? You know, So I think that it's a skill set that we all need. And then you could kind of just apply it to anywhere, anywhere that you go, you know, I hope at least. I agree. I, I absolutely agree. And I hope you can multiple, I hope folks that are in your classes multiply your efforts because that's exactly what young people need, 100% what young people need. Because if not AI is going to take over the writing, it's going to take over the, the critical to think critical thinking and decision making. And and that's going to be a disservice to them and really to humanity.

13:30 Yeah, definitely. It's actually funny you say that because I, my, my friends sent me A2 like a 2 1/2 minute voice note the other day and it was music and I was listening to it. I'm like, this is fine. It's cool. I like, what is this? He's like, oh, I'm in the gym. And I asked AI to write, to come up with a song with basic inspirational lyrics and just upbeat tone. And I can play it and, you know, while I'm working out. And on one hand, I was a little blown away. And on the other hand, I was like, thank God I didn't like this because I was here. I was because it did feel a little cold. It did. It did feel like it was missing something, you know? And today I was at a jog and I was listening to live Springsteen, you know, performance while I'm jogging.

14:10 And I'm like, there is nothing like a live performance where you like hear like the magic of the, of the human relationship, you know, between the musician and the crowd and musician, his instruments in his band. I'm like, you can't. I don't know how you're going to be able to. I mean, maybe they will one day, but I don't know how it's going to happen. There's something too incredible about consciousness and sharing. That's, that's just human, you know? I absolutely agree That's it's, it's such an important part of us growing and learning and, and and just relationships in generals. Yeah. So what's the difference? I guess you could tell me based on your experience, the difference in people's response when you're a local law enforcement as opposed to federal law enforcement.

14:53 What's reputationally or you know, even for yourself, even within your, I mean, you left the the, the police force to join the feds. Was that was that considered like a common thing or an uncommon thing or what is what do people respond to that like? People were very happy for me, you know, they were very supportive. The bad guys don't like the feds because really it comes down to punishment, you know, and more so now because a lot of, you know, a lot of very progressive prosecutors kind of moved into large cities. And I know there's been pushed to move them out thankfully, but they stopped prosecuting crime. And so when you're, when you have someone who's, you know, let's say if someone's been arrested and they're cooperating, there's no consequences for.

15:37 So why would they cooperate? There's you're not looking at any time at all or, or maybe one or two days. So when they're like, well, OK, that's great. But we're going to bring the federal agents in now, because this is going to be a federal investigation. We're going to be working with the US attorney's office. The the pucker factor increases a little bit. That's good, that's good, that's good, that's good. Absolutely. And I know, and I know state and local officers who actually use that to their advantage. You know, when they're interviewing these folks are like, hey, that's OK, that's great. You don't want to cooperate, but you know this is going to this is going to go to the DEA or the FBI and. Yeah. Do people do do, is it like the shows or movies where people are territorial about their crime scenes or their, you know, whatever they're working on?

16:24 You know, I unfortunately, I have seen that way too much in my career and I hate that I am, I am someone who absolutely believes in deconfliction and collaborating with other folks. I don't care who you work for, what your position is, if the goal is to put someone in jail or holds, hold someone accountable for what they did and that's the goal. You know, I, I can remember investigation we worked years and years ago and this department was just absolutely undermining what we were doing. And these were absolutely dangerous people. I mean, we knew they committed multiple murders, witness and intimidation. So, so law enforcement couldn't really do anything because the case would just fall apart, not because of the law enforcement because because the witness was so scared.

17:09 And we had a really good investigation of doing some Title 3 investigation, which is wired, which is basically listening to telephones, right. And when we had this, this group dead to rights, but then this department was person in this department was actively, actively undermining our efforts. And I remember we sat down with the I sat down with, with their command staff and I said, look, I said, this is ridiculous. I said, we have a goal here. We have a, we have some bad people here. And it wasn't just one or two people. I mean, this was a this was an organization and this was a organization worthy of our attention and worthy of, of being accountable for the horrific things they were doing. And I said, I at the end of this investigation, if you want to get in front of the of the camera and tell everyone that this is your police department's case and leave us out, I don't care. I really don't care.

17:55 You know, ultimately we need to work together to put these people in jail or give the prosecutors the best, you know, evidence in this case we can to put them in jail. And that's my motive 100% period, end of sentence. That's it. And and so it it infuriates me when I see people who hold the cards too close to the chest and don't share because it really does at the end of the day, hurt our communities when when people do that. And and so, yeah, I talked about that quite a bit when we do law enforcement specific training, you know, hey, look, we got to de conflict. We got, you know, there might be someone out there who guess what has a better investigation than you, you. Know, you think it's ego, you think it's wanting or do you think it's career building? Like, I mean, I, I feel like it kind of goes to both, you know, I mean, or, you know, and like you said, maybe publicity, you know, I don't know. You know, absolutely both I, I, I have seen, I've seen, I've seen people who are just mad, you know, I, I, I don't like DEA, you know, I don't like DI.

18:49 So therefore I'm not going to share, which is silly, you know, And then when you dive deep and down, it's usually someone who applied and didn't get hired or something like that. I think this is ridiculous. You know, I grow up. You know what, this is an important position, what you're doing. This isn't, this isn't middle school. You know, your, your best friend asked the girl you like to to go skate with, right? I mean, this is silly. I've seen some ego driven as well. I've seen some folks who, you know, we call it the the blue rocket flame in their in their rear end and they're, and they're trying to get up into the organization as high and as fast as they can. And they'll step on people to do that. And, and not everyone will, obviously, but so I've seen a little bit both and it's, it's again, it's frustrating. And I actually had someone tell me once that it probably hurt me in my career that I wasn't more self absorbed and more taking credit for these things. And I've never, I've never let that bother me. I've never, I've never felt like I needed to change who I am. You know, I didn't want to compromise my morals, my principles, definitely.

19:48 And, and ultimately I've always felt like if I could support my like, especially when I was in management, if I could support my team and give them the resources they need to be successful, then ultimately I'm going to look successful, right? And it's not for me. It's not, you know, it's, it's for the good of what we're doing. I really believe in in mission and team and and I tried to live my life that way. Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I think it's beautiful. I think we need people like that. You know, I feel, I feel similarly, you know, that, you know, I, I people tell, you know, I, I talked to, I talked to customers. I sell medical equipment, right? And I talked to customers and a lot of times I'll be like, listen, I'm going to give you some information or some advice. I'm going to make less money from it. But you know, my goal is like money is not just the end goal, like I need to support my family. I need to put food on the table, I need to pay my mortgage. And you know, obviously, you know, waves of you know, how easy or not it is to do.

20:44 But at the end of the day, like I have what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm trying to raise a family, I'm trying to teach, I'm trying to put some positivity into the world. And I only and and money is just a means to an end to accomplish that. You know, and you know, everything else is just a means to an end, which is like what you're saying, you know, ultimately make the world a better place, get, you know, more drugs off the street, get people, hold people accountable for their behavior. What kind of drugs were you were you focusing on throughout your career? Is it things like marijuana or is it more like heavy, heavy drugs like fentanyl, coke, you know, heroin, whatever it was, are you allowed to talk about? It was marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine. Those were the big three.

21:29 And then ultimately I would start seeing heroin. We all started seeing heroin probably in the 2000 tens. Then that would turn into fentanyl. So at the end of my career, it was pretty much all fentanyl with a few cocaine, methamphetamine, you know, heroin cases sprinkled in. But yeah, that that those are the cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin are the are the BIG4. Yeah, and they're, and they're so it's so dangerous. I mean, you know, I mean, like I kind of hear, I know people talk about coke and coke has kind of become like culturally, almost like it's, it's been culturally acceptable since comedians in the 60s and 70s and everyone, all these actors and, and Wall Street and bankers and it's kind of glorified and like everywhere, you know, and it's, it's terrible. You know, it scares, it scares the crap out of me. Well, it, yeah, it it me as well, all the drugs scared. And I'll even tell you why I don't like marijuana if you want to know.

22:28 But yeah, absolutely. And fentanyl has been the game changer. You know, I, I spent 28 years active in law enforcement, you know, badge and gun. I'm still working with law enforcement almost, well, actually every day, not almost every day in a training capacity. So, you know, 30 plus years working with law enforcement and I've never seen a drug more impactful. I've never seen a drug change the drug landscape like fentanyl has. I mean, recreational drug use, casual drug use, drug experimentation. I mean, we now have a drug in our drug supply that can kill you the first time you use it. We've never had that. You know when you and I were younger, if someone died of a first time drug use from meth or coke, pretty rare. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but pretty rare. I mean they pretty much had to been, you know, trying to consume an entire pound or something. But you know, fentanyl, it only takes only 2 milligrams to kill you.

23:18 You know, only 2 milligrams is a couple granules of salt or sand. So you're talking literally just a speck once it gets into what you think you're taking, like let's say even pills, right? You think you're taking an Adderall or a perc or an oxy, you know a couple granules of of fentanyl and you're dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right away. And it's it's been such, it's been such an issue. You know, I mean, I think that. So I just read a book called American Cartel about the date about I'm sure you're familiar with it, right? Basically. I smiled. I haven't. Read it yet? But I am I I actually have a copy of it at home, yeah. Oh, great. Yeah, so I have a copy of it here. Actually, the book was published before the case was actually finished.

24:02 I had to Google what happened at the end, you know, but but what's what's your take on understanding on, on this, on this opioid crisis that's been, you know, happening to like sweeping, absolutely sweeping the country for the last 20 years? Yeah, and that's, that's one of the reasons why, you know, I have a nonprofit organization that I run called only 2MG and that's the biggest reason why I started this nonprofit was to address the opioid crisis, address the crisis. And like I said, we now have a drug in our drug supply that's changed everything. I mean, game changer is exactly how I would describe it. That's why I'll say it again. That's why after 30 years in law enforcement, never seen a drug more impactful.

24:43 I mean, it's just had a profound impact. It's in everything to give you some perspective in 2000. So, so the DEA runs a program called the National Forensic Laboratory Information System, NFLIS, dash drug, and we work with about 9899% of all the labs out there. So I don't care if you're a state police, I don't care if you're a county, I don't care if you're a Police Department. Wherever you are in the United States, if you send your drugs into a crime lab, there's a good chance that's going to go into this NFLIS drug. And that's how DEA looks for drug trends and things like that. So let me give you some perspective of what fentanyl is done. In 2014, there were about 5500 instances of fentanyl being seized by all of law enforcement in the United States. Again, federal, state and local 5500, by 2019 there are over 100,000, by 2020 there are over 200,000. These are just seized by law enforcement. So from again 2014, 5500 to 2020 / 200,000, that's a more than 3500% increase in just six or four years. Just fentanyl, Yeah.

25:54 And if you look at the, So the number one drug seized in the United States is methamphetamine. And that's historically been been number one for, for a long time now #2 has been historically cocaine. Well, now in a very short amount of time, fentanyl is now the second, second most seized drug in the United States. And then if you if you break the states up separately, I think it's 1616 or I think it's 1616 states now the number one drug seized is now fentanyl, no longer methamphetamine. And again go back to 2014 when there were only fit 5000 exhibits and all of law enforcement. That's how quick it took over. So I mean, it came in our drug supply through because of the legal opioids.

26:39 And, you know, especially in the mid 1990s, you know, with an increase in heroin use and then it, you know, got into our heroin and then from there got into our pills and then from there got into our cocaine and there got into our methamphetamine and it's, it's saturated our drug supply. So, yeah, so the opioid crisis is it's it's devastating, it's impactful when you look at the number of people dying, you know, when I was in school, when I was a police officer in early, you know, in the in the 90s, we lost two 3000 people a year. And I'm not minimizing folks, but that's a pretty low number when you in comparison to today's numbers. You know, 2024 data is not complete yet, but 2023 data is like 107,000 people lost their lives.

27:20 Yeah, I think that when I started my law enforcement career, 34000 people, 2 or 3000 people lost their lives to drugs. Now we're at 100,000 plus. And then when you dive deeper into those numbers, 2 thirds, 75% lost their lives from one drug. No way. And then and those people weren't even, I guarantee a 99.9% of those people weren't even looking for fentanyl. They were for sure right they. Were looking for pills, right? They were looking for coke they were looking for and it found its way into the into our drug supply and it just saturated everything. And now you have people that, who think they're taking a Xanax bar, you know, they think they take, they're taking, you know, an Adderall or an oxy or they think they're just snorting a line of coke, you know, on a, on a Friday night, you know, and, and boom, they're hit with fentanyl.

28:08 And that is driving the numbers significant increase. It's heartbreaking. I had AI have AI have a guy. I have a friend of mine who I did an episode with a little while back and he never, and you know, he, he, he drank every now and then smoke cigarettes, you know, and he's from Savannah, GA. So he used to play a lot of golf and he tore his meniscus and, and he went to the doctor. The doctor said, hey, man, you know, I can't, I can't do surgery for a month. Here's a couple, you know, take, here's a prescription for some painkillers. And he said, come back to me in a month and we'll, we'll do surgery. Came back in a month. He took it every six, you know, one pill every six hours, whatever the doctor said, came back after a month, did the surgery. The guy had another two weeks of pills and you know, for, for the recovery and he started getting withdrawal symptoms. He goes back to the doctor so actually says, oh, you got to go to rehab, You're a drug addict.

29:03 And he's like, I'm a what, I'm an Orthodox Jew. I got wife and kids. I got, you know, I have, I have a, I have, I have a business. I have, I have a life. I have to maintain. I, I can't just go to rehab. What are you talking about? Like I, I have a whole life. And it took him years to kick it. It took him years to kick it. And actually he said the only thing that worked, therapy and and rehab and whatever he said the only thing that worked was he went down to Mexico and did ibogaine one time. He said since then he's not taking a Motrin. He hasn't taken an aspirin, he does not, he has not touched an opioid. He says since the it's been like I think sick, I think maybe 5 or 6 years and just completely cleaned, you know? I'm happy to hear that. Well, I'm happy to hear the back end of that story. Obviously you know that that's, I've, I've heard these similar stories all the time and unfortunately a lot of them turn for the worse where, you know, they, they went to the doctor, we got this prescription and then and then because of the substance use disorder, because of the addiction, they started using more and more and more, or they turn to heroin. Yeah, and as I want to say, so he saw at a certain point he said he was like, at one point he goes, I'm ashamed of it. He goes and everyone, he goes.

30:10 Every addict does this. He goes. I was hiding it for my wife and my family. And he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes. Thank God I didn't get to the point where I was looking for street drugs. So I wasn't looking for any kind of, you know, pill off the cat, you know, about, you know, whatever it is off the street, you know. But I mean, who knows what happened? Absolutely, it happens a lot. And now let me let me give you another story. Now let's just say that it was it wasn't because of an injury and because of a prescription. Let's just say it was because of some type of abuse in life, you know, or sexual or emotional. Abuse. And you turn to drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism. You know. That happens a lot as well. We know that happens a lot of people. You know, there's a tons of reasons why people use drugs.

30:52 But so now you're struggling with not only the drug use, but you're struggling with something that you're trying to escape. So it's a, it's a double whammy, right? I mean, real for a lot of people. And this is, you know. You're treating. You're treating one devil for another, unfortunately. Absolutely. And and until you fix both, it's, it's a, it's a yeah. It's a yeah. And it takes a lot of work. It takes an enormous amount of work. It takes a lot of work. Even if you're healthy, it takes a lot of, it takes a lot of work to just be a regular person, you know? I mean, life isn't easy, you know, I wanted to ask. I was actually, so I was, so I saw on your on your site that you were between Little Rock, Springfield and Corpus Christi, TX. And I want to ask about those places. But one of the things I wanted to ask about geographically, actually what I was curious about Corpus Christi, I kind of see being a big just based on the map it's on. You know, it's by the wall, it's by the ocean, it's by the border of Mexico.

31:54 It's probably DEA heaven over there. I I imagine. Yeah, yeah. Most of our, so most of our work in Corpus, we had a pretty large what we call area of responsibility. Aori think we had 17 counties. So we went, we went, I don't know how well you know Texas, but we went W almost to San Antonio, not San Antonio, but just to the east side of San Antonio. And then we went N just South of Houston in Vic and then we went S very close to like Brownsville and McAllen. So we had a pretty darn. It's huge. Yeah, it is. And there's two highways that go through South Texas right in just literally from Mexico right up it's 77 and 281 and you come into the country through a legal port of entries PO ES and then you have to go through checkpoints.

32:44 And those checkpoints were are very, very, very busy. And anytime the Border Patrol seizes drugs from the checkpoints, the DEA responds and we're the investigative body of those drugs. So even though. You're not. You're not actually confiscating yourself. There's Border Patrol and the Border Patrol calls you once they found something. Yeah, so, so, so they stop a vehicle, let's say it has, I don't know, 1000 lbs of cocaine in it. So they'll, they'll apprehend the, the, the suspect or suspects and then the vehicle and the drugs themselves. And then we'll respond. We'll actually take custody of, of everything the, the suspect, you know, the, the drugs and we'll process that and then we'll work the investigation.

33:27 So even though our office was geographically in Corpus Christi, most of our time was spent down it further in South Texas along the border. So right in the McAllen area, most of our investigations led to the McAllen area or Mexico. Yeah, yeah, I do a lot of business actually in McAllen. A lot of Mexican customers come to the states to buy ultrasound equipment. Yeah, it's very funny. What do you think? The first time I ever went down there, I, I had this, you know, there's going to be cactuses and it was going to be some Wild West town, right? And I go down there and McAllen is a large area like. Like, I actually haven't. I haven't been there myself. It's funny, I I haven't been to McAllen. I've been to, I've been to San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Beaumont, I've been to, I've been to one or two other places, but I haven't been to McAllen yet.

34:22 I want to go. Or not. It's actually, I mean, I prefer all the other places you told me that you've been to before. I go to McAllen. But McAllen is not some little tiny, you know, hillbilly town. I mean, it's pretty built up, pretty good. I mean, there's, you're not going to go without food shopping, you know, there, there's everything down there. It's, it's a nice little area. And the people are wonderful, too, you know, and. And on both sides of the border, for that matter. Yeah. But definitely, definitely, I found that for sure. But so I understand how Corpus Christi and the host like South Texas area is big for DEA geographically especially, right. Like if you're planning to bring to smuggle drugs or to sell or to distribute, I'm sure that's one of the main places to go. Little Rock and Springfield are far more inland and have a lot less, which seem to be a lot less geographical test. I feel like no.

35:11 No, the highway systems. My first assignment was Little Rock, so I spent about 10 years in Little Rock. And how'd you like it there? I actually loved it. You know The funny thing about that? I was in Missouri, in Joplin, MO, if you look at the maps, not too far away from Arkansas. And I'm telling you, I avoided Arkansas. Like it's the play. I just thought, oh, no, they're a bunch of, you know, rednecks down there and no way, right. And when I had an option to go to Little Rock, I'm like, it's only four hours away from Joplin and I had a lot of friends there. You know, I'd started building a pretty big footprint there and, and I looked into it. I thought, this looks like A and no one in my Academy class had any interest at all going to Arkansas because it was the same thing. It was the stereotypes, you know. And let me tell you first of all, that what a amazing place that was. The whole entire state.

35:56 I mean, Arkansas is really a little gem that people, you know, people laugh at, but but the quality of life is pretty darn good. Little Rock's got some issues with crime and things like that. But, you know, I could make that argument in in a lot of, in a lot of cities. But as far as the drug work, as far as being a DEA special agent there, our highway system was very unique. We had a highway that cut in through Texarkana, which is on the bottom left of the state from Texas. And, and then we also had, you know, Hwy. 30 and Hwy. 40. Yeah. And, and so we had one that just kind of cut right across the state. And I mean, you can, we could have cases that tied back to Arizona or California. We have cases that tied into into Texas and the cartels operate in certain areas of Mexico. So so it was pretty cool in a sense that we were working a lot of different type of investigations weren't just, you know, it wasn't just like when in South Texas where I was in Corpus and along the border, it was primarily the Gulf Cartel in the Los CentOS.

36:55 And I'm not complaining. It was huge eye opening learning experience for me. But in Arkansas, because of the, the, the highway system, the traffickers that were coming through, I mean, we were working investigations that were completely different from each other, which. Was right. So, so where? Where are people coming from? Again, Arizona, New Mexico, you know, California, Texas. And these were, they're on their way to distribute to other places and you've patched them in the middle. Yeah, they're on the way to wow, you know, Chicago, Detroit, all these major cities. So, you know, if sometimes we do control deliveries on these seizures, sometimes we would just have investigations that we would link, you know, from the source to the destination.

37:38 And that would mean we would travel to, you know, Miami, we would travel to to New York. We travel to, you know, Chicago, these big cities where the drugs were were going. So. And then just locally, I mean, we had a lot of what we call local or regional impact investigations. So this is when we're just, you know, buying dope and, you know, maybe working undercover and, and quite, I mean, it was it was great. It was a great experience. It was a lot more than I thought it was going to be. Would you? Spend a decade there. I did. I spent 10 years there. I was in, I was not in management. So at this point now, I had about 15 years in law enforcement total and I decided to to go into management and that's when I went to Texas. I see. OK, So what? So you were. So what was your what's being a special agent like on the ground while you were there as opposed to management? Well, you have a lot of freedom.

38:29 You know, first of all, there's no uniform and you wear jeans to work. And, you know, you have a lot of freedom to, you're working in teams and you have bosses, but you really do have a lot of freedom to to really push your investigations in the ways that you want to push them, you know? Do they do they present the case to you or do they say, hey, go find your go get out there and find what you can find? Go out there and find them. And early on I didn't, you know, I was like, how, how the heck am I going to do that? Because I didn't have any relationships. I wasn't from the state, wasn't anybody there. So I got in my car and I drove to sheriff's offices and I drove the police departments and I'd introduce myself to whoever I could. It was whether it was the sheriff, whether it's the chief, whether it was just the Sergeant on duty. I mean, and I shook hands and gave my business card and, and, and just tried to build relationships. And sometimes people were skeptical, you know, like who's this fed coming in our building, right? And then sometimes people said, yeah, that's awesome. We do have a problem here.

39:21 And I'm, you know, it's nice that you're here. And, and I end up building some amazing relationships that way and, and, and working some incredible investigations because of these relationships. So, and then, but every so often you might have a supervisor or, or something happens and, and that comes, you know, there's a, there's a file and then someone supervisor puts it on your desk and says, Hey, look into this. You know, that happens as well. But for the most part, you really do have a lot of freedom and. Do you prefer the direction or do you prefer the freedom? I prefer the freedom personally. I love that. I I love, I love building those relationships. I think that's one of the most important thing that we can do. And I love collaborating and working with those agencies and using all of our resources to, to, to better the investigation.

40:11 So yeah, absolutely prefer that. Yeah, it's cool. It's funny because I've found actually through teaching, it's really interesting that certain students of mine, I used to think that certain students are better or worse writers. And some of them are, of course, but some of them it turns out function better with like, you know, I'd be like, here's a creative prompt. It's it's raining on a Wednesday. Go, you know, and write, write, write for 10 minutes. Go do it. And some students needed the directions. No, I just need some more structure and some more directions of format. And some people, students are like, I can write anything I want. I'm like anything you want. And they just take off with it. You know, they just and, and the places they go are incredible and creative and fun. And I'm sure that applies to everything. You know, there's certain people that are more like, hey, let me just go see what I can do.

40:55 And, you know, give me, give me a job and I'll figure out my way, my own way of doing it. And then there are people that like, you know, being told, OK, here's exactly what you're supposed to do over here and then follow the step over there. So do you do like, did you do what people do? Like the shows you go to, bars you see you, or wherever you examine. Like what's happening? Like what do you do? Well, your life changes when you do go. You're in public, you know, your, your back's always to the wall. You're always looking at, you know, potential threats, you know, things like that. But as far as working or trying to initiate investigations, I mean, sometimes really it's just the relationships, you know, you know, so and so we'll call from a Police Department, say, hey, we just, we just popped a guy with, you know, a pound of meth and, you know, we think he might cooperate. Would you be interested in this?

41:39 And, you know, absolutely. You know, even if he doesn't cooperate, let me come in and take a look. Let me see if I can, you know, exploit the telephones and or communication devices and you know, and help you out and figure out, you know, where the dope's coming from, where it's going and and if there's any Co conspirators involved and how we can put them all in jail. Awesome, That's so cool. So it's almost like leads, almost like sales, you know, like you got to get leads and you got to get, you know, you got to get customers that are going to call you and say, hey, I'm interested in this and and then you got to step up and close the deal. All right. Yeah, right. I mean, that's, that's, it's important. I and I know I'm talking about relationship a lot, but I think that's critical for sure. It's critical in any profession for that matter. Definitely, you know, and for me that was really what helped me was, you know, even though I like the freedom, it was the freedom would start because of because of, you know, that phone call quite often, not all the time, but quite often.

42:28 Definitely. So then they then you get called after 10 years. Hey, we want you to move to management. Or how'd that go? So in within DEA you have a yeah, that's your option. I made a decision to go into management. I liked working cases, but I just, you know, I just made that decision and, and there's a process. You have to take a test, you have to have some support from your, you know, your current management. And I did that and had the support and I got selected. And then you apply for positions and I applied for a couple positions and, and I got selected to, to go to Corpus Christi. And, and that was my first formal. I mean, I had been in an acting capacity, you know, like when your, when your boss is out, you're the boss, you know? Yeah.

43:13 But now I'm now I'm a supervisor and now I'm in South Texas. I'm there for almost 7 years and I have a very high performing, high function team, great men and women and was very fortunate to to. I thought that none of your people got hurt in the line of duty, that no one under your management got hurt in the line of duty. That is incredible. That's how do you do that. Yeah, I'm just something I'm proud of. I, I, you know I'm in. It's got to be rare, no? No, it's not as rare as, as probably it sounds. I mean, it happens, you know, we, we, we have a dangerous job and people do get hurt. But you know, I, I think something that we did really well was, was risk management, you know, operational planning. That's something that DEA does very, very well. And it's interesting, maybe I'm going off in a tangent here, but, but I've had folks that say, I don't know if what I did at the DEA is, is marketable in the civilian world. I'm like, right, first of all, think about what you did when it comes to crisis management, you know, operational planning. You know, that was a Tuesday afternoon for us, you know, Fortune 500 company, if something happens, that's a big deal, right?

44:35 When something bad happens and now all all hands on deck are all reacting to it. And DEA literally that was oh, that's Wednesday. I wonder what tomorrow's is going to be. So you just got used to it, right And not. And I know it sounds arrogant. I'm not trying to to to be cocky about it. I'm just, that's just something we were doing a lot, right. We had to think about, you know, not only our, our own safety, but the public safety, you know, if we're working with informants or we're even the bad guys, you know, we, we can't just, you know, it's not the Wild West. We can't just go and shoot them, right? I mean, we, we, we want people to go home and save all of us, you know, and, and bad guys included. And we want them to go to jail, but we don't want them to. We don't want them to to get hurt. Yeah, and it's better if they don't start to begin with, you know?

45:17 You know. So, so yeah, absolutely. I think that was something that we did very, very, very well and I'm proud of that. And, and, and I think that's something that that is marketable and that is transferable in the civilian or afterlife, you know, after the EPA career. Definitely. And when it comes to like institutional drug abuse, right, Like this book that we were reading about in terms of sorry, like American cartel and the opioid crisis and doctors prescribing medications to people, what can be like, is it what can be done from the DEA? Does DEA say like, listen, this is just within the like the, the within the law, like they're allowed to do it and that's what I can do.

46:00 Or are you trying to come up with plans to kind of prevent that? Or were you, you know, is that, is that a, is that a conversation even? It is a conversation and it's very delicate and political. 1 So here's I'm retired, so I can pretty much answer. And yeah, if you look at the current opioid crisis, it really started because of the Pharmaceutical industry period. Literally, if you go back and I when I train, I talk about this, I spend the first part of my presentation talking about the historical context of what happened. You look at the 1990s with Purdue primarily and Oxycontin, what it did, you know, we changed to pain management in this country. So back to your original question, we, we DEA and the federal government is involved in, you know, regulations, prescription, we, we have what we call quotas. So pharmaceutical manufacturers, you know, they can't just say I have a pill here and I'm going to make a trillion of them tomorrow.

46:56 I mean, you know, there's so many they can do and release things like that. The problem is, is they constantly put pressure on, you know, their, their congressmen and their senators because they, they can financially do that, right? I was going to ask about their revolving door. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. And then So what do they do when they come to, even though we're part of the executive branch, they come to us and say, hey, you need to raise your quotas. And unfortunately, I've seen DEA just do it. And it's, it's disheartening, you know, and and you know, and then, then at the end of the day, who gets blamed? All DEA just let it happen, Right. Yeah. Yeah, well, when the when the senator who controls your purse strings, controls your budget, is telling you to increase the the and soften the regulations and allow the these companies to do more, which they shouldn't.

47:45 And if you do, because you pretty much have to, I mean, I'm just, that's just the reality of it. And no one at DEA Active will tell you that. But I'm telling you I'm now I'm. Retired. It's funny that's. That's the reality of it. Well, first of all, I don't, I mean I don't, I don't not only do I not make the association when I think of the opioid abuse, you know, and I think of the opioid crisis, I don't blame DEA and I don't know many people, you know, I haven't seen that really that sentiment manifest in my world. Yeah, you know, there are people that I didn't mean to cut you off. Good. Please, please, by all means, yeah, the people that. No, I, I, I, there are people that do so, so let me back you up. But I kind of hinted at it a little bit. So in the, in the mid 1990s, we added a fifth vital sign in the medical community pain, right?

48:35 And that had a profound impact, you know, because we were convinced, convinced that opioids were not non addictive. And they would say things like less than 1% of people become. Addicted. I remember that. Yeah, sure, that was all. Completely garbage it was based on. Like cigarettes aren't addicting, right? Or they have, or they haven't found that cigarettes 'cause that that cause lung damage or whatever it was. Yeah, exactly. So so so they they were led to believe that this stuff was non addictive. So what do we do? We literally went from prior to 1996. Let me put this in perspective. If you went to, if I'm a doctor and you came to me and you said, Hey, I'm in pain, I need some opioids, I'm going to look at you and I'm going to say, OK, where's the bone sticking out? Like, prove to me you're in pain. Like, and I'm not saying that you couldn't game the system or trick me because obviously that happens as well. But for the most part, statistically speaking, at least, I'm going to, I'm going to look for some objective way to, to, to measure it, agree and measure that you're actually actually in pain.

49:32 You need an opioid. After 1996 that went out the door. It went out the window. I mean, it literally just was thrown out the window and it was like, oh, you're in pain. Oh, here's 30 pills, here's 60 pills. So, you know, you had your wisdom teeth taken out. You probably went home with 60 hydrocodone pills, no questions asked. You know, your, your son or daughter had a Little League baseball injury. You know, maybe they hurt their elbow pitching or something like that. One home with 306090 pills, no questions asked. So the pendulum shifted from from very objective ways to measure pain to just give it to everyone. So what happened? We saw this widespread abuse and people started dying from legal opioids dying and, and, and then the number of opioids just rose, rose, rose, rose.

50:18 And the height was in 2012. And I think I'm right on the statistic. It was 81.3 prescriptions per 100 people in the United States, not 100,000, not 100 million, but 100 people. So there were 81 opioid prescriptions per 100 people in the United States by two. 1000 It's one of the scariest sets I've heard in a long time. Yeah, and it's insanity. It's insanity. It really is. And and, and and drugs like Oxycontin. By 2004, it was the most abused farm school on the street, You know, in a law enforcement community. We used to call it heroin in a pill. But it is, though, chemically right. Yeah. And then the pro bills, all the the pain management clinics that are still that are still popped up everywhere. All over Florida, actually. Started.

50:59 We have a program now it's prescription drug monitoring program. If you, you and I go to the doctor right now and say we're in pain, they're going to run our names in the system, make sure we're not doctor shopping. That exists because of what was happening. To correct. Yes, I read that that that was the book too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the book, yeah, I can't wait to read it. But that's it's, I'm familiar with a lot of it. But so now, like I said, 2012 was the height. So now people are like, look, we and then people started turning to heroin because heroin is also an opioid. And if they couldn't get enough from their doctor, if they didn't feel like they're getting enough from their doctor, they want to hear it heroin. And we now know through a lot of research that about 80% of all heroin users started with legal opioid prescriptions. Let me repeat that again.

51:41 Make sure that's clear. Anyone who to anyone who thinks I'm might may have said that incorrectly. Up to 80% of heroin users started with legal opioid prescriptions. That's an incredible thought or statistic. Well, I mean, I don't know what else would get people to take care of it. Like, I don't know, I don't know what like to welcome to somebody like, hey man, you want to do some heroin? You're like, no, I don't think so. You know, like it's not the same thing as taking a puff from AJ or having a shot, you know, but like. Good point. And that really started a lot of them. And so then a lot of folks were looking at law enforcement, specifically the DEA saying, hey, we got to do something. So that's when we finally started to regulate the the pharmaceuticals.

52:25 True, because because even by 2013 our federal government says, Hey, we have a problem with with prescription opioid, like it's, it's crazy. And we actually declared it an emergency within the federal government. A lot of people don't know that since 2013. So we started to regulate it. So back to your original question, some people are like, shame on DEA, shame on the federal government for regulating it because then it they a lot of people believe that that forced people into heroin. What? And I would push back on that and say, actually they were already at heroin. We saw heroin spike. We hadn't seen that type of spike since the Vietnam War. So I'm sure there were some people out there that the regulations made, you know, getting legal opioids more difficult. And they probably did turn the heroin, but that process already started.

53:11 So I'm not trying to protect the. Yeah. For sure, for sure, for sure, for sure, totally. Especially when you, especially with that stat back-to-back you up with that fact that 80% of people weren't interested in heroin before they started opioids. That means that something started somewhere, you know. Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, when you asked me earlier, what kind of drugs did I work? You know, early on, like I said, it was marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine. And then we started working heroin cases, you know, and we were all kind of literally scratching our heads at the time going, you know, and I loved it because I hadn't worked any heroin cases up to then. And I was like, what the Hell's, what the heck's going on, right? And, and now we know, you know, now we know what was going on. So I'm actually excited to talk to a former agent about this because I, I found out, I found out about a month or two ago from a good buddy of mine that apparently just because something like cannabis is state legal does not mean that it's federally legal.

54:11 And that if there was, if I was sitting on the street in California or Oregon or New York or Illinois and I was smoking AJ and a fed could hypothetically, and I heard they're not going to bother because it's such a pain in the pain in the butt to deal with, but could hypothetically come over and arrest me for that. Is that the case? Yeah, so, so marijuana, a Schedule 1 drug under the federal government's statutes. And yes, so it, yeah, it's, it's illegal. So how can the states make it legal? Well, that's a whole state versus federal, state rights versus federal rights.

54:53 I can tell you why I don't like marijuana though. Sure, let's hear it. I'd love to hear. It THC levels, so a lot of folks marijuana the THC and marijuana THC is the psychoactive substance. That's what's like that what makes you high, That is what makes you high. And the THC levels, I went to high school in the 1980's, the THC level in the 1980s was about 2% on the high end, you know, in the 1990, yeah, 1990s, two to 4%. You know, by the early 2000s, four, five, 6%. And then you see this increase to where they are now. The average THC levels in marijuana now about 2530%. Yeah, yeah.

55:36 So, so when I hear people, especially parents who will tell me all the time it's just weed, I hear that a lot. Just weed, quote UN quote. You know, I smoked it when I was in high school. What's wrong with my son or daughter smoking it and I have to correct? It wasn't getting short term memory loss, that's why. There's a lot of problems associated with it, but the end of the day it's not the same weed. If you could go into a time machine and grab the marijuana from the 70s and 80s and maybe even the 90s, okay, then it is just weed, you know? But but the, the marijuana that especially young people are smoking now is not even in the same ballpark. I mean, literally, it's not. They ought to call it something else because it's not even, it's not the same thing it was 1015 years ago.

56:19 I mean, it's if you smoke one marijuana cigarette right now, that's like smoking 1213 marijuana joints 15 years ago. It's literally that ratio. So, So what are we seeing now? All the things that was supposed to, you know, the, the stress and anxiety, all, you know, the sleeping, all that stuff. We're actually seeing those things increase, especially in young people, you know, the trigger for psychosis. We know that. And then I talked to, you know, because of my work with only two MGI, talked to a lot of folks in the treatment and recovery community. And, you know, the biggest client that they work with, young people in marijuana, they call it cannabis, same thing.

56:59 Marijuana. Yeah. Cannabis disorder, which is marijuana addiction. Yeah. You know, do they work with meth and coke and other stuff? Yeah, absolutely. But marijuana, young people, number one client, I believe it. And that's across the United States. I believe that. I believe that I the reason why I believe that it it could potentially be so dangerous is because it's because of the no big deal attitude about it. You know, there are things that have big deal attitudes about it that kind of a ready like, you know, again, you tell me I'm not. I was never in my life interested in like an upper like opioids or coke or anything like that. Like if you, like you told me like I like no man, like I want to, I want to leave that stuff alone, you know, And like, it's scary.

57:45 It scares the heck out of me, you know, And even when I was younger, when I was in high school, I remember how it used to be deathly, deathly terrified of, of cannabis because I had friends that were in high school that were cool. And they'd, you know, they'd all all these girls would love them and they were good at sports and then they'd start smoking and all, the next thing, you know, like all they're interested in doing, you know, is smoking. And I was like, no, I can't do this. That scares the heck out of me. And then it became a lot more just like it only became like drinking, like casual, like as casual as drinking. And you know, probably even, I'm sure we're, and we're seeing with downswing in alcohol consumption. I'm sure that's going to. I'm sure there's a direct correlation between how many more people are smoking, are smoking weed now as opposed to people that are not drinking.

58:27 Yeah, we're actually seeing a down a downturn in both young people really, which is 1. I don't know if you ever look at Yeah, monitoring the future study is a is a long term research that's been going on at University of Michigan. I mean, they probably doing it for 2530 years. And every year they, they really dive into drugs and alcohol by young people and they, and their highlight is 8th grade, 10th grade and, and high school seniors. And we actually are at historic lows right now. Even even when you throw in, even when you throw in marijuana. So which is good. So we actually see, you know, are seeing a decrease in both even smoking, which is wonderful as well. Yeah, we're seeing an increase in things like vaping and and.

59:11 That stresses me out too, but I can't can't do much about that, unfortunately. I think. I think a lot of this stuff comes down to education and these kind of conversations. I agree 100%. That's one of the reasons why I do what I do is education. And I know it's maybe cliche to say, but you know, information is power and I really believe that. And, and there's also you have to take that information and apply it and apply it in your life to, to make. It that's the hard part. That's the hard part. Exactly. So those are the tools and the things that we need to be encouraging in young people. So they now they have the information, now how are we going to make it applicable in your life? How are we going to, how are we going to execute these? Yeah, right. Yeah.

59:51 So, so let's oh, sorry, the last thing before we get to the last thing before we get to Springfield teaching and all that fun stuff, because I'm excited to talk to you about that too. I mean, China's clearly behind defence in all crisis as far as, as far as we know, right? Is this this is, does the government consider, does DA look at this like an act of war? Is this like, is this soft war? Is it because? Again, like I forgot this. I thought the stat was that more people had died from fentanyl overdose than like all 25 years of the Middle East war. You know, like more the more troops have died in the Middle East, you know, for the last 25 years, maybe even since Vietnam.

1:00:34 I don't remember what the exact stat was. Is that what it was? Yeah, I know Vietnam is one of the ones I've seen for sure. And that's true. I mean, like I said, if you look at the 2023, a hundred and 7543 people died and 75,000 because of 1 drug fentanyl. And then like I said, 2024 data is not complete yet, but we think it's going to be about 8082 thousand. And again, if you dive deeper into those numbers, I guarantee it's going to be about 75% because of fentanyl. So fentanyl, the, the chemicals to make fentanyl come from China right now there, India, there's some European countries as well. But China by far, number one, absolutely controls the the chemical trade. Yeah. And they sell the majority of that to the cartels, right?

1:01:19 I mean, they'll sell it to anyone. You and I can go online right now and buy that stuff, but their number one customer is the cartels. Within the cartels, it's usually the Sinaloa Cartel or the CJNG cartel, Jalisco New Generation, and they'll take the chemicals to put them on the cargo ships. They get transported to to Mexico, right into the ports, which unfortunately the cartels control a lot of corruption. Sure, you know, just a lot of control. And then from there they'll get trucked or, or transported to various locations throughout Mexico. And this is, by the way, not only for fentanyl but for methamphetamine as well.

1:02:00 The drugs are mass produced and then they're smuggled into the United States. So yeah, do I consider this war? Absolutely. It Is it. Feels like it, right? It has to. Be it really does. And it's interesting if you look at Chinese history, China's history and China's cultural drugs. I actually talked about this when I talk about the opioid crisis and I kind of get people the historical context. You know, back in the 1700s, England was the first country that was really selling like raw opium to China and traded for porcelain, silk and tea. And it had a profound impact on China overnight. In fact, it's estimated that over the course of the next 100 years, one in four males, that's 25% of the male population had developed an addiction to opium. And then what was happening with with China as they were growing because they weren't a superpower back then, right? They were they were they were immigrating places like the United States, you know, especially on the on the, you know, California and the West Coast. And what were they bringing with them? They were bringing with their opium, you know, so wow to. Start in the 1700s.

1:03:08 Yeah. And then, you know, I don't know if you knew this, but I actually went to war twice over opium. 1839, Yeah, 1839 was it was called the First Opium War, and I'm sure there's another official name for it as well. Sure, it's called the First Opium War. And they, they literally went to war with England over opium and they went again. They weren't. Powering and they said you just can't sell us this anymore. That's what they were saying. Well, they internally within those, I think it was Ji the Jing dynasty said, hey, this is bad. This is this is hurting our people. Stop. And of course England's like no, no, no, no, no, no, this is this is a big, you know, like in today's economy, there's probably like a billion dollar business, right? Just be like telling Amazon you can't you can't ship anymore, right? This is this is a huge deal.

1:03:51 So two nations went to war with this and England, I'm sorry, China lost because they weren't a superpower. So they had to sign these very unfavorable treaties. And you know, and then Fast forward to 18551856 time period, they went to war a second time and this time it was against France and England. They teamed up against China and still China wasn't a superpower. And again, they lost and they had signed these unfavorable treaties. So to me, it's interesting that you have, I mean, you literally have, and this didn't stop until about 1910. So you have a couple 100 years of history within China of drugs just devastating this country. And then if you read about Chinese culture and and talk to people, it's fascinating because, I mean, now it's it's send as much as this poison to the West as you can to destroy it.

1:04:42 Yeah, and I, I absolutely think it is. It's a, it's a form of a warfare. And and I don't, you know, I don't think the DEA looks at it like that. I think that's pretty hard to do not right. I don't think so. I I. Mean how can you not those numbers? I mean it if, if, if, if. I mean you know if. I mean, I mean, officially you and me absolutely, like you said, the numbers make sense, right? But officially that's, that can't be a stance that you know, that, that our government's going to put out there, but they are working behind the scenes. I can, I can assure you that to to to further regulate this and and to stop the flow of these chemicals. I hope I, I, I certainly hope so. I certainly hope so crazy. And it's, you know, and it's so interesting because I, I, I, you always hear about how big picture China is. You always hear about how they're always willing to play the long game.

1:05:29 And that's really what enormous amount of their advantages, you know, like, you know, there's one president in that they feel like they can't work with. They'll just wait four years or eight years at most, you know. But, you know, GG Ping is not going anywhere for, you know, for a while and, you know, so, you know, so he could afford to wait it out. So I feel like it's so fascinating to see like this country got devastated, kept that long picture in mind, said, hey, we just, you know, this just happened to us. Let's do it. You know, this, this could be a great form of warfare. Yeah. This is that that's, that's crazy. It's really, really interesting. Great. So. Springfield, MO. Springfield, MO where you are now, right?

1:06:09 Yeah. So, well, after I left, so Texas was my first supervisor job and then I went to Quantico, Virginia next. OK, so Quantico, Virginia is we're actually housed on the Marine Corps base and you have the FBI Academy at the DEA Academy. So I was there for about four years and I was in charge of motions. What's that? Teaching. Yeah, teaching. I was, I was, I was, I was in management. So I ran AI, ran a couple training units, but I did teach as often as I could. I had the opportunity definitely to, to teach more and I took advantage of it and I loved it, absolutely loved it. I was in charge of most in service training. So once you graduated from our Academy and you got assigned to, let's say, South Florida and you needed additional training and whatever, you know, you would come back to Quantico for, you know, whether it was conspiracy training, whether it was leadership training, whether it was, you know, whatever it is. And my unit handled 95% of that at the Academy. And then I actually got to start the leadership and training development unit for DEA at our Academy. And.

1:07:15 Cool. Yeah, we were developing. Yeah, which was awesome. How'd that happen? Well, you know, it's funny, I I get there right? And I didn't, I was, I was replacing someone, I was replacing someone that actually promoted. So there was a vacancy. So I get in the spot. I'm like, all right, what's my job? And I look at this list of classes that we put on and it's pretty large list. And like I said, it's, it's most in service training with the exception of like firearms or, you know, medical or tactical. But if it's, if it has anything academic, it's probably going to be my unit. Well, on this list there's a bunch of leadership stuff. So I'm like, Oh my goodness, this is exactly what I want to do. And I'm like, I'm sure glad they didn't know that because they never put the right people in right job. They.

1:07:57 Serendipity. Accident, right? It was the position it was open. So I go Oh my goodness. And then I realized that why are, I mean, we have a, if you, if you all the, you know, if you look at the chemists and the analysts and the, you know, the support staff and you look at DEA as a whole, probably, you know, 8-9 thousand people. And our leadership program is supposed to support all of them. And I thought, why are we doing this in conjunction with all these other classes, very important other classes. So I made the argument that we need to remove those and have our own leadership and development training unit. And thankfully I had the ear of, of my management and they were all wonderful people. And they made a decision to, yes, we could do that. And then this is the kicker though. I had to run my own old team and I had to run the new team. And then there was another team in the building that I end up getting.

1:08:46 So I had three teams that I was running and they didn't change that until I left. When I left, they finally put supervisors over each team. So they gave you an enormous amount of work. What's that? So it's an enormous amount of work, you're saying? Yeah, but I loved every bit of it. I had amazing, amazing, amazing people who worked with me, who I got to work for, who I got to serve as their boss. And I loved it. I got to teach and train and that really, I've always had that interest. But that really just kind of ignited. How much more bureaucrat? Oh, sorry, please go ahead. No, no, please no, no. How much more bureaucratic is the management side than the agent side?

1:09:27 Like do things move a lot more slowly when you're in management because you got to get approvals and you got to go through all these channels or? Yeah, it, it certainly can depending on what we're doing. But you can get things to flow pretty good. So I mean, obviously you're, you're handling some of the scheduling, some of the, you know, I mean, even some things like supplies, right? You know, let's say your computer bus, you know, breaks down. I need to get you a new computer, right? I mean, so you're handling all the administrative tasks, but more importantly, you're, you're helping, hopefully you're mentoring and developing people. You know, let's say you're brand new and you don't, you don't have that experience and vision yet, right? And maybe you can utilize some of mine and I can help you get on that path, give you that directive, you know, to to that push. You know, this is what you're going to write about. Like you were saying earlier, right? I love that.

1:10:20 Sometimes depending on the, the, the direction of the investigation, things sometimes would slow down depending on how, you know, depending on what the what the investigator wanted to do. But for the most part, it wasn't AI mean the red tapes there, you know, the bureaucracies there. But it if, if you let that bother you, then you're never going to be effective. You just have to work with learn how to to manage it and deal with it and and you know, make it part of your workflow. Yeah, yeah, when I started, you know, when I was doing sales, my, both myself and my dad are terrible at the red tape stuff and bureaucratic stuff. Terrible, terrible, terrible at it, which is why we have a small business instead of working for a corporation or something like that, right. But you know, and, and, and my dad and I got an e-mail from, I forgot where it was either Columbia or Harvard or one of these universities looking for some medical equipment for the research.

1:11:15 And, and they said, OK, but we need you to onboard. And they sent me a pack of like documents to fill out. And my dad and I look at each other and we're like, we, my dad is like, I can't tell you. I can't tell you how many deals I've lost because because of how many times that I've needed to do this and I just can't get myself to do the paperwork. Can you try to deal with it? And oh wow. And I looked at it and I'm like, I don't know. And then I'm like, wait a minute, all this is asking for is my e-mail address, my phone number and my W9. You know my W9 like 5 different times. I was like, this is easy, I could do this. And then next thing I know I'm doing all these forms for all these different universities. I know exactly how to onboard no problem. So I guess like you know what you're saying, if you let that bog you down, it stops you.

1:11:58 But if you can figure out the way to navigate it, like like that famous incredible scene with the, with the insurance company where the guy goes, he's there. You're teaching them how to penetrate the bureaucracy. You're teaching the people how to, how to move their way through it. So yes, so the teaching the curriculum, what's so what's it? So is it a classroom setting? Is it, is it field work? Is it, is it, is it embodied? What's it like? It's, it's great. It's, it's, we have several classrooms at Quantico. We have a, you know, we have an Academy. We have a. Kind of test class, homework, slides, stuff like that. Well, for the in service training, not so much the test. A lot of, you know, PowerPoints handouts, you know, a lot of facilitated, especially for the leadership, a lot of facilitated discussion, which is what I prefer. I like, I love to talk.

1:12:48 I don't want to just, you know, like when I'm talking about fentanyl, I have to go up in front of the class and show a lot of slides and kind of just kind of lead the, you know, leave the class, right? But leadership is to me, if we're learning from each other, the different perspectives in the room. So it's a little of everything. If if you're training the new, new, new cadets, you know, new agents, you know, then obviously you have to test them on that knowledge and make sure that they that they're, you know, they're comprehending it and it can pass and go on to the next stage. But for for my units, you know, when we look at in service, you know, it's more just enhancing their learning or to be introducing new principals, you know. Yeah, but it was a lot of fun.

1:13:28 I can tell you. I I loved every second laws at Quantico. I really, really did. It was, it was first of all, I had some really good bosses. I was very thankful. All my all my bosses were really, really good guys. What was it like being back in Virginia for the first time in 20 years? That was actually fun too. I this traffic sucks, but thankfully I lived very close to Quantico, so my commute was 15 minutes today. Every so often I have to go to Washington, DC for a meeting at our headquarters there. And in, in DC, we're actually on the Virginia side, right across the street from the Pentagon. There's, if you look at the Pentagon City Mall where the Macy's is, right across the Macy's, you'll see two large black buildings that are really, really tall. And that's DEA headquarters.

1:14:15 And I enjoy going there because because sometimes I would see friends that, you know, that had worked with over the years and they would be stationed there, but I didn't enjoy driving there. Yes, I believe that. I believe that the. Traffic in Northern Virginia is horrific. And, and so I was so excited originally when I went back and I was like, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. And then before long I'm like, it's going to take me an hour to go 1010 miles. I have no interest leaving my house right now, right? Definitely. Gotcha. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I found that too, by the way, I even where I, where I grew up, you know, I mean, these places get so jam packed and you know, I went back and I'm like, you used to take me 10 minutes to go to the supermarket. Now it takes me half an hour.

1:14:59 It's crazy. But you know, we, I used to do a lot of deliveries, especially when I was single and I, I wanted to travel and get to see more towns and cities. So, you know, let's say I'd have 5 customers that bought ultrasound machines for me along the East Coast, right, in the Carolinas, in Virginia and Florida, right? Or, you know, whatever it was. And I would, so I'd load up a company van with a bunch of machines and, you know, drive down and stop in each place, maybe spend a day in each city. And we charge each customer whatever meant for a freight cost. But we like, you know, but if we get enough people, if you get enough customers, we'll load up our own van. I'll deliver it myself. Door to door service for you. And, and we always knew you got to get to DC, you got to, you got to be, you got to be at DC at 4:00 in the morning because otherwise you could spend, you could spend 5 hours in traffic sitting, you know, just just getting past that stretch, you know, it was horrendous.

1:15:56 You know, even when I go, I'll be there next week, you know, you have the HOV or the express lanes, what they call them now, the road, you know the ones in the middle and they do it based on. How many people you have in the car, right. Oh, that was. Busy the road is so you're the price fluctuates. So they, they try to guarantee you the speed limit. So in order to guarantee the speed limit, they have to raise the price to get more cars off the road. So there have been times when I've been on that stretch and it's, it's cost me $6070 to go. Yeah, just, but, but, but again, I'm driving the speed limit, you know, so I'm not sitting in and you look and I've taken pictures. I'm looking at the traffic and I'm thinking, Oh my goodness, these folks are sitting in traffic for two, 2 1/2, three hours to go 20 miles. It's ridiculous.

1:16:41 Yeah, you know, it's and people just won't pay the money. And I'm like, I'm going to find a way to pay the money. I was, I was almost certain after COVID that this would not be a during COVID, this would not be a thing anymore. Because I was like, people, once people realize that they don't have to put up with this, they're not going to anymore, you know? But I'm surprised. You're right. No, you're right. And and I think I think, well, COVID for sure slowed it down. That was really weird. If you ever gotten, you know, if you live in the DC area or I'm sure New York or any big area at the time, you know, and you're like, we're all the people. Like it was just an eerie feeling, right? And then a lot of people realize that, hey, they could remote work. They could, you know, work from home. And then and they could live anywhere and they could live anywhere, meaning you could, you could keep your job with Bank of America and not be in, not be in Manhattan every day. You could be, you could work for Bank of America and live in, you know, and live in Monticello, NY an hour and a half north and be like, as have you, you know, and live in a farm. And you could have the best life that you know in the in the world if you wanted.

1:17:42 Well, within the federal government, they made a decision over the last couple years that. Remote go back to yeah, what do you think about that? I have mixed feelings for the most part. I think it's silly, but I think there are people that do need to be in work. But ultimately I think for away from the policy, I actually like being in the office because I like having face to face contact. I like, you know, the relationship building and things like that. I think you lose some context when you're over the, the computers, but again, I think it's convenient. I think it's nice to be able to, to live wherever you want to live. And you know, and we have airports, right? We can, we can fly if we need to be in the same room. Sure.

1:18:23 I have some mixed feelings. I, I, if your motivation is what we have a late lot of lazy employees. If we let them, we let them stay at home, they're not going to do anything. Well, then to me that's a, that's a problem with management. You know, are you not tasking these people? Are you not? Interested. Are you not trusting your people to get the work done? And if they are getting the work done and they are good employees, then what's the harm of them sitting in front of their computer wearing pajamas? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's a lack of, and I've seen this not just in the federal government, but in a lot of industries where I work, I do a lot of leadership training. There's just a lack of There is no leadership, it's just management. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:19:03 I've noticed that too. Actually. It's funny that you say that. You put it like that and it's true because I feel like there's a lot of jobs that, you know, I lived in Manhattan for a little while and everyone there works for these companies and like these jobs are like, so what's your job? And they tried to explain it to me. I'm like, it doesn't sound like that needs to be like a full time position, position that you need to be, that you need to be doing all the time. You know, I'm like, like, well, I'll be honest, I don't like, I, I work, you know, for I, I, I actually only have like 4 hours of work a day. I have to be logged onto my computer and be available, but like, I only have a couple hours of work a day, you know, And so I, I, I, I, I hear, I don't, I don't know if that's management. That's the direction of the world. Again, with AI and stuff like that, that's the direction of the world is heading that a lot more we, we, you just kind of need people more for oversight than actual tasks and actual, you know, kind of work like that. But umm, I think that the, that, and, and this also will certainly have a direct correlation to, to drug abuse in the future.

1:20:05 People when people don't know what they're going to do with themselves. And, and you know, and you and let's say you are an adult and you're, or even a young adult if you're 24 years old and you're out of college and you're getting paid $150,000 a year and your job requires you to be working 3 hours a day. I mean, who's not going to drink a beer in the afternoon and who's not going to sit and smoke a jet in the afternoon unless you're extremely motivated to build something yourself and do your own thing, you know? I mean, the question of what humans are going to do with themselves is a legitimate question. Well, and then into further than that now when we don't have the human interaction, I mean, we, we know historically what, what that's, I mean, there was a, gosh, I'm going to talk about a study. I don't know all the names, but back in the early 70s there was a study, there was a psychologist and oh gosh, I forget his name now, but you can look this up. And you ever heard of the Rat Rat Park study? No.

1:20:59 OK, so he puts a bunch of rats together in this, You know, I don't know, thing that he makes right. And it's got the little wheels the rats can run on and, you know, and they can have sex. They can do whatever they want to do. I mean, it's called Rat Park. It's just in this rat Park, they have two bottles. One has I think it was cocaine and the other one has water. I think I heard of this OK. Cocaine, you heard of this one? It's it's interesting. They would do the cocaine and they would drink from it, but then it was just a little bit and but the water, they would drink all the time, right? But but they'd have all this fun interactivity and then they isolated now that now they had just one rat, same 2 bottles, but no other, no other rats around, none.

1:21:45 Literally the opposite. They would look at the water and they might drink it and then they'd immediately go to the cocaine and they just every single time. And he was talking about the social isolation. And to me, I I agree. You know, what are you gonna do with your time? But then to me, the social isolation of not being around people. Yeah. And I know we can get it online. I get it. But I. It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. I think study after study emphasizes that, you know? Absolutely. And we've already seen that with social media, right? And look, look how the people treat people on social media now. I mean, it's, it's so easy to say, oh, I don't like your politics or I don't like your, your stance on this. Well, in Europe, you know, you're an A hole or you're blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and we just weren't so nasty to each other. And that's because you would never say these things face to face, never but online.

1:22:29 And then the more that we encourage that, the more that we encourage a lack of face to face, a lack of social and relationship skills and and, and communication, the more I think we're going to see people turn to drugs and alcohol. Definitely. Behavior and that scares the, you know, way out of me, especially with young people. Yeah, it's so the school I teach at is an Orthodox Jewish school in in North and Beach and these kids. And one of the things that one of the aspects of the school is that the school very, very, very is very strict about no phones in school, no smartphones and no social media at home, even at home. And, and I remember I didn't want to teach high school because I thought they were too immature. I thought they were.

1:23:15 I wasn't able to, you know, I wasn't, I wouldn't be able to, to explain and have, you know, creative or deep or philosophical conversations. And these kids just don't get it. And these kids in particular, you know, there's so much face to face interaction. There's so much confidence from, you know, like when you're with your friends, you don't sit on your phone and go on Instagram or go on Twitter. You got to play basketball. You got, you got, you got to find something to do with your parent. You got to you got to drive your parents crazy. You got to make something in the kitchen. You know, you got, you got to do something. Yeah, it's crazy. And, and, and, and, and, and, and I walked away after a week of teaching, you know, of trying out. And I'm like, I love this. I, I, I, you know, I absolutely love it. And they all have flip phones and they, you know, they'll, and sometimes they'll get, you know, these, you know, smartphones, but with all these blocks on it.

1:24:06 And, you know, and it's just absolutely incredible how sophisticated and creative and confident, you know, relative to, you know, my own siblings, even that, you know, that I have a 14 year old brother, you know, that is, I mean, you know, and he and he got, he has a phone and my mom only gives him a thing two or three hours of screen time a day. But, you know, that's still a lot. You know, it's still, it's still makes a difference. Yeah, it's, it's, it's really fascinating. I hope that this becomes a trend. I, I really think, I hope and I think that we're going to look at this like this 2020 years or 15 year gap of social media and as like the Guinea pigs of society and be like, I can't believe we let our families do that.

1:24:47 I can't believe we let our kids do that. I. Hope you're right but and I'll throw on the AI that we were talking about earlier yeah, you know what what is that doing? It's it's people aren't thinking, they're not, they're not writing, they're not, you know, there's the decision making. I mean, they're letting, they're letting the computer do it for you. So no, I agree. I hope that we do look at this and say this is silly and, and you are seeing like you said, I mean, here's a great example of, you know, a school that's saying, hey, we got to restrict this, you know, yeah. For the mental health of our and for the development of our students. And I'd love to see more and more school districts and parents in general take. Yeah, it's becoming a little bit more of a conversation. Jonathan Haidt, I don't know if you heard heard about him. He made that those rounds.

1:25:32 Incredible, incredible. And in his book, The 8th Generation. Did you read the book? No, it's on my, it's on my queue. I have a million books queue, but I actually follow him on LinkedIn. I watch some of his videos all the time and brilliant. And what he's saying is makes sense and I wish I just wish we would catch on. You know, I, I've, I've heard parents really push back, you know, not to him, well, to what he's basically saying. But like when I have these conversations in my training, like our kids need phones and what, you know, what if I need to get a hold of them, You know, what did we do when we were young, right? We didn't have the phones. I mean, it's like they just, they lose sight of, of, of of reality and. That book, that book might be the most important book I think I've ever read him, one of the most important books I've ever read in my life.

1:26:19 Just because. Yeah, it's so because it's because the implications and just the way that he lays it out is so profound and so clear. And so it's so devastating, quite frankly. You know, and like, you're like, how can you even like you, you know, the like the stories of these 1112 year old girls with these, you know, with these food disorders and, you know, and, and, and, and, and depression and, and, you know, and anorexia, God forbid. And you're like, what is what is happening? You know, and, and unfortunately and, you know, fortunately, rather you have voices like him that make the rounds. And fortunately, it's what's so cool, I think is like, you know how the podcast, you know, he goes on Les Friedman, Joe Rogan and and diary of the CEO and he reaches 100 million people like that. And you're like, that's incredible. Like that's incredible.

1:27:07 You know, you can't do that on Fox News anymore. You can't do that at MSNBC or CNN anymore. You know, So, you know, I kind of hope that the conversation out there is going to be is really is, is, is turning, you know, I really hope so. What what? What is some passions of yours outside of Drug Enforcement of Drug Enforcement? I think my biggest one right now is travelling. I love love love love to travel. 6 states here in July coming up. Where you going? I just, I just, I don't know everything about it. I love where am I going? Well, kind of cheating here because when I go to DC, that's really three states, right? You get, well, 2 1/2 states or DC on the state, right, you get Virginia and Maryland. So that's kind of a but this month I have Nebraska, Maine, you know, Virginia, Maryland.

1:27:58 Beautiful. Yeah. I've not here. I've done, I've, I moved from New York to Seattle and I did that right. And I drove it. I drove there and back. I, well, you know what, the first half and the last half were both miserable, depending what you know where you're coming from. So New York to Washington once I Pat, once I got to Denver. So the first four, you know, the first day from New York to Chicago was beautiful because you got, you know, Pennsylvania, you got the hills, you got, you know, you got all the nature. Then you got the plain lands, you got like the flat, you got the just the flat, Illinois, Iowa, whatever. And even the first part of Colorado people don't associate is all like, you know, the eastern part of Colorado is all fields.

1:28:44 Yeah. And then you get, and then you get to the mountains and you get to like Denver area. And then West of there is just, it made me fall in love with the country in a way that I've really never that I've never experienced before, you know? And it was, it was incredible. I think the Pacific Northwest is some of the most beautiful natural scenery, I think, on the planet. Yeah. Yeah. Have you been there? I agree. It's yeah, absolutely. I have. And and it's a beautiful country, isn't it? It's it's it's. America is such an amazing, such an incredible place. It's I, I, I, I, I took it for granted for so many years until I had a family. And then once I, once I had, once I had kids, you know, I started getting emotional at the national anthem at like sports games, you know, like what's going on over here?

1:29:32 I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm tearing up and I'm crying. I'm like thinking about the hope for like, you know, and everything that this place represents and, and, and everything in it. And I'm like, I, I, I just, I, I love this place, you know, it's, it's, it's really amazing. I absolutely agree. I to this day, I get goosebumps hearing it. I mean, it means it's special, you know, and as much as I love traveling around the world, I, you know, always come back here and it just, it just feels good. What's your favorite country outside of the States? What was your favorite country visit? I'm. Well, I'm partial to Germany because my mother's German and I was actually born in Germany military base, but I was born in Germany and I speak a little bit of German. So I'm partial to to Germany.

1:30:15 But everywhere I go, I, I love Europe. I, I love the history in Europe. I love, I love when you look at a church and you're looking at it going, Oh my goodness, that's been there since 1400. Like, like if you were just walking around, like I'm like, like, it's just mind blowing, right? You know, And, but ultimately, I mean, I, you know, it, there's beautiful places in the United States from the, from the mountains to just the, the small towns. And it's just, it's just a gorgeous place to travel and very fortunate that I can. Yeah, you're, I, I, I was just in Barcelona and, and that enormous church there. I've never been.

1:30:59 I've never been speechless as a result of, you know, a building, but the church blew me away. I forgot what it's called. Do you know what I'm talking about? That giant that that, that enormous point of Barcelona. Doesn't surprise me. Barcelona's, you know, it doesn't surprise you. I'm Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I feel like Europe has that history. America has like that life and that spirit that like, you know, there's just like it's the, it's, it's the younger brother of the entire world. I feel like that that cool, enthusiastic younger brother that's just like figuring itself out, you know, in a beautiful way. I go hike. With some guys and we were in Arizona and we were at his.

1:31:40 We went to both Bryce and Zion and both beautiful and Norman. We first grow in it was four of us in the car, all adult males, right. And we're all I mean it was it was literally probably the same if it were 1520 years ago and we were all 13 year old females meeting Justin Bieber for the first time. Like we were all like, like, like it was. So it was just breathtaking. It you had no words. It just, it was absolutely incredible. And I love that. But but yeah. And then and then of course, then when you put it in perspective and you're like, you know, and you're in Barcelona or you're, you're somewhere else and you're like, gosh, this thing has been here for 500 years. You know, think, think of the things, the conversations, the people that have walked through here. I just, I don't know, I love, I love that deep thinking and you know, the impact these businesses have had. I mean, that is just incredible.

1:32:29 Yeah, I was just in Israel right before this, right before the whole thing with Iran popped off. I had a very close friend of mine that got married there and I went to, I went to that Western Wall and I was and I was there and I was like, this is a spot. And I was just thinking, I'm just sitting there and I'm like, this is a spot that people that, that millions and millions of people, you know, from every religion in the world, from everywhere, all over the world, just come and pray. And I'm like, there's so much significant like, like it's just a spot of prayer and love and hope. And I'm like, and you just soaking in you're like, this is just this is, it's so beautiful and it's, it's so profound.

1:33:10 And I think I, I, I think, I hope America will get something like that. I really do. I hope that we get some like, because I think that what we need to be grounded a little bit more is like something spiritual and something, you know, we have amazing national spirit. We have a beautiful sense of patriotism. America, Americans, you know, and like, it's always been the case. And but I do we have a location that like, is like the manifestation of all those hopes and dreams, you know, I mean, and I think that it would be a beautiful, beautiful, magnificent thing to like, that would be like a huge cultural thing for the country to have a physical manifestation of a place that people can like connect to. No, I agree, but I tell you I've been the first time I ever saw the Statue of Liberty.

1:33:58 Yes, maybe that's it. I didn't. I didn't cry, but it was pretty amazing. I mean, it felt, I felt that warm, you know, those goosebumps and thought. And this is think of all these folks who've come to this country following this amazing dream, right? Yeah. And what other country in the world has has just opened their arms to, you know, it's just I don't know. I thought that was but but you're right. I don't know that we ever will have that that place like you describe. You gotta build it. You gotta build it. Build it and they will come. That's why we have a small right here. That's right, Right, Right. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Brian, I really appreciate the time. Thank you so much for, for getting back to me so quickly, working with me so quickly, taking the time to record this. This is, this is so much fun.

1:34:45 And I, I, you're, you're a service and all that you've done and your teaching and your work on the ground really, really means the world to me and means the world, I'm sure to everyone that's going to listen to this. And, and I didn't get to talk to you about Eagle sticks, but maybe that'll be for another time. Thank you. This was. This is really, really delightful, Ryan. Thank you so much. Thanks for the time. I hope to be in touch. OK. Thank you so much. Have a great day, man. Happy 4th of July. You as well. All right, take care. Happy bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.