← Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
70% of U.S. Drugs Are Laced with Fentanyl: Former DEA Agent Reveals Shocking Reality #144
01:12:03
Loading summary
Transcript153 lines
- [00:00]
Jeff Duden
Is fentanyl the biggest drug threat that we have in this country?
- [00:04]
Brian Townsend
It is 100% the biggest threat we have in this country. It's now estimated that fentanyl is in about 70% of our drug supply. Let's put this in. 28 years of active law enforcement, never seen a drug more impactful when we were young. And if you did make a decision to try drugs, you weren't in the risk of dying. And now we have young people who are trying drugs and who are dying from first time drug use. We've never had a drug like that in our drug supply ever.
- [00:32]
Jeff Duden
Welcome everybody. This is Jeff Dudent. We are on the home front and today we have Brian Townsend. Welcome Brian.
- [00:38]
Brian Townsend
Thank you, thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.
- [00:41]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, I'm excited about today. Personally, I am incredibly interested in young people and things that impact their lives. So you spent 28 years in law enforcement, 23 with the DEA. You rose through the ranks. You served the DEA training academy at Quantico managing their leadership and development unit Training unit. You have a company now that's a consulting business called Eagle Six Training. And you have a nonprofit called Only2MG, which is only 2 milligrams of fentanyl is enough to kill you. And you could kill about 500 people with the contents of one sugar packet. So incredibly excited to have you on here today. And I'm going to open with a kind of a hard question and here's what it is. If you could wave a magic wand and implement or impact just one thing to reduce drug poisonings that result in deaths, what would that be? In home service sales, consistency and insight are your key to scaling your business. Enter Rilla voice, your virtual ride along that gives you full visibility into sales conversations that can boost close rates by 40%. Managers are eight times more time efficient while average ticket sales increase by 17%. It's time to harness technology for real results. Ready to see Rila in action? Visit rilla.com that's r I l l a.com or click the link below to get your special homefront brands offer today. And that is not an easy question.
- [02:20]
Brian Townsend
It's not. I would, I would reduce the demand because that's the problem is we have such a demand. I, I would, I would just kill the, the, the taste for drugs. I would just reduce the demand. I mean we, we, the United states is what, 4% of the world's population of what, 8 billion people, yet most of the drugs come here. You reduce the demand, you're going to.
- [02:45]
Jeff Duden
Make a huge difference you know, that's really incredible. And it's a little counterintuitive because you hear so much today about sobriety. You hear, especially on social media, people that are choosing not to drink alcohol. But instead of doing alcohol, they might do some psychosylvans, they might do some mushrooms, or they might do some marijuana, you know, because of the dangers, really. Alcohol, it's just a poison. You're just poisoning yourself every day. But the trade off is this, you get a marijuana cigarette laced with fentanyl and it will kill you. And so. And you know. Correct. Is this a statistic that maybe 20 years ago there was about a billion dollars worth of drug traffic coming in from the cartels 20 or 25 years ago, and today coming into the United states, it's around $14 billion. A massive, massive industry. Fentanyl being produced in China primarily. It's very complicated to produce fentanyl. It's not something that you can cook up in a kitchen. It's a, it's a more of a, there's more requirements to manufacture it. But then most of it comes in the United States through the southern border. Fair.
- [03:59]
Brian Townsend
Fair. Yeah. I don't know the exact number, but definitely multi billion dollar industry. And this is why they're willing to do anything to get the drugs over the border and, and into the, into the, into our communities. It, this is certainly a problem that has gotten worse over the last 10, 15, 20 years, for sure.
- [04:21]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. Well, so I'm interested to know, you know, in your career with the dea, let's go back a little, a little bit about why you chose to join the dea, how it's changed over the years and talk a little bit about what your role was there, some of the things you got to do. Yeah.
- [04:45]
Brian Townsend
When I was younger, when I was in high school, I made a decision that I wanted to go into law enforcement, specifically drug enforcement. I didn't know what that path would look like. The Internet, things like that really didn't exist when I was in high school, not at least to the extent that they are now. But I, I had an interest in that and, and, and started my career as a police officer in Joplin, Missouri. And that was really a stepping stone. I think you don't have to have that background to go into the DEA, but it certainly did help and started my DEA career. And, and for the next 23 years, I was in four different offices and, you know, each with, with different responsibilities and, and, and, and, you know, went through the rose, through the ranks, and, and ultimately my last Two years I was the resident agent in charge. So I was in charge of the Springfield, Missouri DEA office in the 25 or so counties in southwest Missouri that, that we covered. Great career. I saw a lot of changes from day one to, to the, to the last day. Certainly a lot of changes with technology and, and you know, the, the demand for drugs have always been there, but unfortunately, you know, drugs like fentanyl have taken over. And these are drugs that, you know, cost these, these transnational criminal organizations, the cartels, pennies to manufacture and they're very good at smuggling, you know, whether it's fentanyl or whether it's cocaine or heroin or whatever into the United States because of, like you said, that the billion dollar industry.
- [06:24]
Jeff Duden
Did you, did you join the DEA because there was a personal experience that you had around drugs that caused you to look at that as a career?
- [06:33]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, I saw drugs early on in my life. Thankfully. I had a, a good family structure and this wasn't for my mom and dad, but, and I didn't, you know, didn't grow up in a drug laden environment, but I certainly did see him at a younger age and I saw the impact that they have and I didn't like it at all. And I made a decision that I wanted to be part of some type of solution to wipe that stuff out of our communities. But again, I didn't know what that looked like. You know, I, and I was young, you know, I had, I had a lot of things I think I wanted to do when I was younger and, but that was certainly something near and dear to my heart because I saw the impact that it was having in my own community. And again, I didn't know the, the path, I didn't know how I was going to get there. But ultimately it was just law enforcement, you know, and so being a police officer wasn't something I initially intended to do. But it happened and I'm glad it did. It was a great department and it really was. And again, it's not a prerequisite, but it certainly helped me. I think it made me more successful in my DEA career having that background. But pieces just fell together. I was very fortunate. Just continued to make good choices in my life and just had that carrot in front of me and knew that if I worked hard and continued to make these good choices that I'd be successful and accomplish the goals that I set out to accomplish.
- [08:10]
Jeff Duden
We're sitting here in 2025. Over the last five years, law enforcement's come under attack at certain times. Probably you Know, based on, based on the numbers, you know, 25 million encounters a year or something like that. Don't hold me to Those, you know, 67% of all statistics are made up. But, you know, but I mean, like, you know, there's, there's always, you know, when you're a high intensity situation, there's always opportunities for mistakes to be made. There's always going to be people making decisions that maybe other people wouldn't have made in the moment. But it's a very high stress and uncertain environment. How have you seen now coming into 24 and 25? I've certainly seen things kind of swing back the other way with more support for law enforcement. Is that your experience right now or what's the general sentiment in law enforcement? Because many people retired and just said, you know, I'm out here 25 years, I'm risking my life every day. And things like traffic stops, I'm walking into places where at any point in time there's risk for me. And you know, you know, the compensation is the compensation, the pension's the pension, the lifestyle is the lifestyle. But man, the underappreciation, it hurt and it still does.
- [09:39]
Brian Townsend
I, I've seen, like you said, the pendulum certainly has shifted a little bit. You know, we're seeing the recruitment numbers slightly go up, but we definitely, I mean, law enforcement still continuing to, to take hits from the perception that, you know, this is a profession with a lot of corruption and a lot of wrongdoing. And the reality of it, it's just not, that's just not accurate. The statistics, you know, they don't, they don't, they don't show that. And like you said, how many contacts do we have on a daily basis? And you just don't hear about the positive contacts, you hear about the negative. And the negative do happen. And that's obviously something that we're worried about and something that needs to be, you know, addressed. And, and, and I think it is more so in law enforcement than a lot of other industries for that matter. But, you know, I have seen a slow turnaround in the last year or two. It's still, like I said, it's still, it's still hard. I mean, most of the law enforcement agencies that we work with are understaffed and they are struggling. The recruitment, although it has increased over the last year or so, they're still down. When I became a police officer in 1994, we probably had six or seven hundred people for the one position that I got. And, and those were hard to get.
- [11:01]
Jeff Duden
They were, they were great jobs and they were very hard to get.
- [11:04]
Brian Townsend
And every six months those numbers reset. You could have zero positions. But we were testing just in case, you know, and every six months they were retesting, retesting. And then slowly, actually the last couple years, I mean, they're calling people up and, and they're, they're giving people opportunities who we wouldn't have even looked at 5, 10, 15 years ago. You know, we're looking at criminal histories differently, we're looking at drug use differently. And this is disturbing because, you know, there have been some, some very disturbing incidents in law enforcement that have, you know, been played in the media every day. Right. And now we're, we're, we've recruited a whole bunch of people who don't meet the standards that we had, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. What do you think's going to happen? I think we're going to see more, you know, 5:00 incidents on the, on the, on the news, on the 5:00 news. Unfortunately. I hope I'm wrong, but I, but I certainly concerned about that. I think that's a huge concern of law enforcement because we have decreased our standards so much and I, I applaud the agencies who have not. And I've met several who haven't who've said, hey, you know, we know that going to be down people, but that's okay because we're going to keep the same standards that we've, that, that we believe maintains the integrity and the, and the, and the professionalism that, that we want at our department. So kudos to them. But unfortunately there are a lot of departments that are like, nope, we just need people and.
- [12:33]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, well, look, the greatest thing we can give our, in our case, our franchisees, our employees, our customers and our, our children is our standards.
- [12:43]
Brian Townsend
Absolutely.
- [12:44]
Jeff Duden
And you know, we, we have to hold ourselves accountable. General Tony Tata is one of our board members and he's been on the podcast twice and we're about 60% in the armed forces of the volunteers that we need. We're, we're under recruited. We, we have positions open. It's a great opportunity for people to see the world, to get education, to get training, to get money, to get money for school. And they have been lowering their standards just, and if you think about it, you know, is it, it's the physical fitness standards, okay, well it's a different military now and you can fight a war sitting stateside, driving a drone and there's people that, you know, want to do that, and maybe they don't need to meet the physical performance standards. But by and large, whether it's the Secret Service or you know, these are, there are elite organizations that have changed their standards and it has absolutely impacted their performance, their decision making. So you know, anytime you get away from maintaining high standards and holding yourself accountable to hit those standards, there's going to be an impact. And I, I would only, I would only hope that, you know, the people that are, that are out on the streets protecting us every day are, are, you know, exceptionally well trained, exceptionally well led except, you know, properly rested and you know, continually getting updated with their, with their skills, their capabilities, their trainings and, and educated. You know, every profession, medical profession, like the, the amount of ongoing training that doctors need to have today with all of the new medicines and the drugs and the treatments and the techniques, I mean it's, it's weeks and weeks every year for them just to stay current. And there's a, there's a, there must be a similarity with law enforcement.
- [14:47]
Brian Townsend
There is and I see a problem with that as well is because a lot, so many agencies are hurting for resources, hurting for, for physical bodies. Right, right. They don't have enough people in the seats. Training is a, is a big part of law enforcement. It always has been in every state. Most states at least have requirements. You know, I, I, I, in Missouri, you know, the officers have to have I think 26 hours a year to maintain their, their law enforcement certification in all states. Most states have something similar to that. Problem is, is when you're hurting for, for people, how do you send them to training? And I hear that from chiefs and sheriffs all the time now. I disagree with that, with that, that belief. I think you think it's important, I think it's more important to send them to training because you're asking them to do more with less. So let's give them the tools, let's give them the resources, let's remove the barriers and make them more successful. Problem is a lot of training companies and a lot of people are going online and I'm not 100% opposed to online training, but we're removing a lot of the quality from the training and a lot of the networking and a lot of things that we can get from in person training and, and just being in the same room with other people. And we're moving more to a check the box system throughout the state says we need X amount of hours. Okay. But their officers are going to go online and they're going to get It. And you know, I, I've seen, I've seen people do it from, from not just law enforcement, other industries. When they have that required check the box training. They, they hit play, they go to lunch, they come back and boom, it's done. I mean, what are they really, truly getting out of it? And again, I know that's not 100%. I know there's, but I don't think that's as rare as we think. And that's a scary thing. I think along with lowering the standards and seeing more trouble getting people in seats and getting in the training, I think again, the pendulum has shifted from, for public support. But when we start seeing these, you know, these, these, these news reports of officers doing silly things or inappropriate things, what's going to happen to the, you know, we can have a shift back to the other way again.
- [16:54]
Jeff Duden
And it's, well, it's, it's numbers look. So in our business right now, you know, across our six brands, we have an active candidate pipeline of around 350 candidates at any one time. And let's just say that, you know, we have a deal requirement of, you know, we want to hit a certain number of placements in each brand to kind of hit our numbers. Well, if, if, if we had a candidate pipeline of 60 people, not 350 people, and we still needed to hit our numbers, we're going to be much less. You know, you, you would think that it would force us to make more exceptions and to overlook some things or to say, oh, I hope this person has capitalized well enough versus being able to kind of pick the cream of the crop and to have people that are vying for these positions. So I, I understand that. So your company, Eagle six Training, tell us what you are doing in terms of, to, to help with this training and leadership gap.
- [17:59]
Brian Townsend
So when I retired from the DEA, I opened up Eagle 6 training as a training consulting business. The idea was to, and it still is, to talk to all businesses, organizations. My background, obviously in law enforcement has opened a lot of doors in that industry on, you know, in that lane. So. But, you know, but leadership and consulting is really the same regardless of who you're talking to and helping people be their best. Right? That's right. So that's what we do is, is we work with people, we work with groups, organizations. Um, I have three basic principles that I, they're very basic. I, I believe that if you don't understand these three basic principles, then you're not going to be successful. And if you want to dive deep into some type of leadership strategy or, or theory. And, and they're that leadership's intentional, leadership's impactful and leadership starts with yourself. And if you can't understand those basics and, and, and agree to them, then you're never going to be as efficient than as you, as you can be. So we, we do, we do a lot of training and with those three principles as kind of our guiding, kind of our guiding light really. But we also will tap into other things and, and obviously if the client wants something specific, you know, we've done a lot of resiliency training and you know, more specific to, to what the, what the ask is.
- [19:31]
Jeff Duden
Got it. Is your training always delivered in person?
- [19:38]
Brian Townsend
It is, yeah. We don't do anything online. Again, not to, you know, I know there's, there's a time and place sometimes for online training, but we absolutely do everything in person. I love to travel, so I will come to you or my team will come to you and everything we do 100% is, is in person around your.
- [20:00]
Jeff Duden
Schedule and, and this training helps them meet their annual requirements.
- [20:05]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, if it's, if it's for law enforcement or, or some sector that needs some type of continuing education credits, then we will absolutely work to make our, our training certif certified or, or you know, whatever your state's requirements are. And some states, they call it post. It really just depends on what state you are and that's law enforcement specific. But we always will make our training count towards your hours if your department needs that.
- [20:36]
Jeff Duden
Got it, got it. Can you give me an example of a class maybe? Is it, you know, is it, is it kind of advanced tactics or you know, is it, is it, I mean is it, is it handgun training advanced tactics during engagements or is it more protocols around stops or what, what's the, what's the syllabus look like? What are you working on?
- [21:03]
Brian Townsend
Well, the leadership is more just the basics, you know, and a lot of facilitated discussions. We, we love talking to our classes and getting, figuring out what they struggle with and let's talk about those as a group. If we do get into some of the law enforcement, let's say you mentioned like tactics and things like that, you know, it really depends on what they're looking for. I mean I'm lucky enough where I've done a lot of different things in my 28 years, but, but certainly haven't done everything and don't propose to be an expert and everything, but I do have access to a lot of people in Law enforcement and the military that have done some pretty amazing thing. So if there's a. It really depends on what the want is. You know, what does, what does the customer want? We are slowly expanding. We just purchased a couple of what we call virtual ranges, smokeless ranges. So hopefully in 2025, you're going to see more of that from Eagle Six Training. We call it Eagle Six Training Virtual Range. And what is a virtual range? So it's, it's a, it's a gun range without ammo.
- [22:09]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [22:10]
Brian Townsend
It's a screen. No. Well, it actually does use some type of technology like that. It's almost like an airsoft gun. So you have. The weapon itself is a real Glock or real ar, but so when you, when you pull the, the trigger, the recoil is from. It's almost like from like the CO2 like guns.
- [22:31]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [22:31]
Brian Townsend
I just have a laser that hits the screen. We have a projector. So we have scenarios that are, that are some. If it's for law enforcement, we have some that are law enforcement specific. And then we're designing some for civilians to give people an idea of what law enforcement goes through, that, those, those decisions that are being made, you know, immediate split decisions, you know, and, but that's what we're looking at in 2025 as part of our expansion.
- [22:59]
Jeff Duden
How does somebody fail that, that exercise?
- [23:03]
Brian Townsend
Maybe miss everything? It's fun. You know, we, we, we, we. We're looking at doing some networking events where, you know, let's say you have a conference and you have a, you know, maybe the first night is cornhole or something like that. Well, how one bring us in and, and we'll have some friendly shooting competitions. You can shoot zombies, you can shoot targets.
- [23:23]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [23:24]
Brian Townsend
You know, and, and, and that's the idea is to something different and not just for law enforcement, but everyone likes to shoot. And this is a safe environment. These, these guns won't hurt anyone because there's no ammo. It's all smokeless.
- [23:36]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. Well, great work you're doing there. I'd like to shift gears over to fentanyl.
- [23:46]
Brian Townsend
Yeah.
- [23:46]
Jeff Duden
Is fentanyl the biggest drug threat that we have in this country?
- [23:50]
Brian Townsend
It is 100% the biggest threat we have in this country. It's now estimated that fentanyl is in about 70% of our drug supply. You know, it came through our drugs through heroin, and it took over heroin. And if you can find heroin in the United States, well, you know, good luck. But if you do find it, all the heroin seized by law enforcement in 2023, of course, 2024 stats aren't available yet. About 72% of it contained fentanyl. And then it got into our pills and then it got into our cocaine, then it got into our methamphetamine. That's an alarming statistic. You know, 70% of our drug supply is, is contaminated with fentanyl. I've never seen a drug, let's put this way, in 28 years of active law enforcement, never seen a drug more impactful. You know, when we were, when we were young and if, if you did make the decision to, to try, try drugs, you weren't in the risk of, of dying. And now we have young people who are trying drugs and who are dying from first time drug use. We've never had a drug like that in our drug supply ever.
- [24:53]
Jeff Duden
What's the business case for the people producing and distributing the fentanyl?
- [24:57]
Brian Townsend
It's big money. You know, the two main organizations manufacturing and smuggling this into the United States are the Sinaloa Cartel, CDS and then the cjng, the Jalisco New Generation. Those two organizations are making billions of dollars selling this poison, bringing this poisoning and selling it in the United States. So this is, this is all about money for them. There is no, you know, trying to help people or anything like this is completely just greed.
- [25:28]
Jeff Duden
But isn't killing your customers bad for business?
- [25:31]
Brian Townsend
It is. Right. And that's a question I get quite a bit, in fact, every time I speak I always get that question.
- [25:37]
Jeff Duden
I mean, I'd like to, but sometimes, but it would be frowned upon.
- [25:44]
Brian Townsend
It would. So for drug traffickers, I mean, obviously if you're a local drug dealer and you have a good customer and he or she is dead. Well, yeah, it's not because you're sad that they're dead, but because you're sad that there's no more steady income from that regular customer. But from a higher level, they're looking at it as more money than client mortality. And as long as they can bring more money in, then people die. They don't care about the record number of deaths.
- [26:13]
Jeff Duden
Okay, but using the fentanyl in, you know, upgrading your normal run of the mill cocaine. Yeah, you know, okay, you get your normal run of the mill cocaine. Now they put fentanyl in it. Is it because they can, they can stretch the cocaine and they can get, they can get, they can get an outcome or a result that if they mix it right, it's not going to kill you. But then what happens is, is they just, they over mix it and Somebody gets more than they were supposed to get and then it kills them. But if it doesn't kill them, it creates more profitability and the desired effect for the user.
- [26:55]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can get more of the drug when you put a cut into it. But the reason that fentanyl is specifically used as a cut is because of its addictive nature. It's very, very addictive.
- [27:05]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [27:06]
Brian Townsend
So that is the big reason why we see it in drugs like, well, came in, like I said, through heroin, but now with methamphetamine and cocaine. In fact, you know, law enforcement, 40, almost 41 of the cocaine seized by law enforcement in 2023 had fentanyl in it. And yeah, it does expand it, but they've been doing that for years. Why are they, why did they turn to specifically fentanyl? It's because it's highly addictive nature. There is no quality control when they put this together. So yeah, ideally it's just a little bit make it more addictive, make you come back as repeat customer. And if we kill a few people, then that's just the cost of doing business. And at least in their eyes.
- [27:45]
Jeff Duden
Right, okay. That's something that I didn't understand was, you know what, you know, people aren't obviously saying, I want fentanyl. No. And so they're not, they're not asking for it, but it's just, it's just more of an addictive nature. So you're so you're, you know, middle aged business guy that, you know, has, you know, the occasional drug use with a group of people or whatever it is, is a holdover from when they were young. They go to the same supplier, it's the same person that they've always bought it from for the last 20 years. They deem it to be safe, but you have no idea when somewhere up the chart chain fentanyl has been introduced into the supply chain.
- [28:31]
Brian Townsend
That is correct. And that.
- [28:33]
Jeff Duden
And then they die.
- [28:34]
Brian Townsend
I mean, there are people that are seeking fentanyl, but that's typically when they realize they've gotten it and they like it now they want it more and more and more. Okay. But I would say, I would argue that the majority of people that are dying are dying unwittingly or unknowingly. They're dying because they thought they were getting cocaine, they thought they were getting Percocet, they thought they were getting Xanax, you know, whatever they were ordering.
- [28:55]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [28:56]
Brian Townsend
And unbeknownst to them, fentanyl was put into that drug to make it More addictive to make sure they come back as a repeat customer. And unfortunately, once that 2 milligrams goes into the system, it's enough to kill the average human being.
- [29:11]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. So you can drive across the border, Southern California, you can go to any pharmacy there. You could pick up generic prescriptions by the. Of everything from Cialis to Viagra to Ambien to Xanax to all of these things. They'll load up your shopping cart. You know, you drive back across the border and you distribute this stuff. But this time it's lace. It's. It's Fentanyl's been used inside of that pill. And some high school kid says, hey, you got another Xanax for this weekend? And he takes a Xanax and. And they die.
- [29:47]
Brian Townsend
Yeah. So we tell people, especially young people, if it's not from a real doctor or from real pharmacy.
- [29:53]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [29:53]
Brian Townsend
Well, then assume that it has some type of filler in it. Assume that it has fentanyl or meth or some type of garbage that can. That can hurt you. Interesting. You say the pharmacies on the other side of the border, because those are, you know, a lot of older people go to the, to, you know, Tijuana, you know, Mattamoris, Reynosa, all these, these border towns, a lot along our border, because medicine is, you know, health care and medications expensive in the US These aren't pharmacies that they're buying them from, you know, on the other side of the border. And we have found a lot of fentanyl in drugs that are purchased from those locations. In fact, I believe newspaper in Los Angeles or somewhere out there had. Had gone down there and just randomly purchased opioids from. From different, you know, pharmacies, quote, unquote.
- [30:49]
Jeff Duden
Right, right. Storefronts.
- [30:50]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, these storefronts. And they came back for testing and they were. I mean, I think the first time I did it was like 30 or 40% of these drugs actually had fentanyl in them.
- [30:59]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [30:59]
Brian Townsend
That prompted some other media folks to, to. To go along the entire border and just go across and, and buy random drugs and, and it was really alarming how many, how many of these, these supposedly legitimate pills were completely counterfeit and had drugs like fentanyl in them.
- [31:20]
Jeff Duden
What year did fentanyl start appearing in pills like that from that source, do you know?
- [31:26]
Brian Townsend
From. You mean from the pharma? Just in general. In general, really. In the early 2010s, so about 2012, 2013 is when we really started to see it pretty much across the United States. You know, it was isolated here and there, but, you know, by 2012, 2013, you couldn't not find it in every state.
- [31:47]
Jeff Duden
So people could have been prescribed by a physician or a psychologist anti anxiety medication or something like that. The prescription ran out, they went across the border to get it, and all of a sudden developed a problem with it. And they could have found at that point that they were more addicted. And it could have been because there was fentanyl in those pills.
- [32:08]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, that's the whole purpose of fentanyl is to bring you back as a repeat customer.
- [32:14]
Jeff Duden
Got it, got it. Is it, is it true that fentanyl is largely produced in China?
- [32:21]
Brian Townsend
Yeah. So either the chemicals are sent from China or that's produced. So prior to 2019, the majority of fentanyl was produced in China and India, probably number two in the world.
- [32:32]
Jeff Duden
Really?
- [32:33]
Brian Townsend
Yeah. And then during, I believe it was the G8 summit, when President Trump was talking to President Zhi and said, hey, we've got to figure this out. So he turned around and looked at his chemical companies and kind of winked at them and said, hey, no more sending the actual finished product. But you can send the chemicals to wherever you want. In fact, they incentivized a lot of these companies, actually rewarded them for selling more of this. This is, this is interesting. China, but. So the number one customer for these chemicals are the cartels. The majority of this stuff actually goes into Mexico where it's produced, like I said, by the Sinaloa and by the cjng. We have seen an increase in some of these chemicals being shipped to places like Canada. Canada has some very progressive drug laws and starting to really kind of bite them on the butt a little bit. And seen an increase in the number of really, really super labs up there as well. But the majority of the labs, though, are in Mexico. The drugs are, are transported on cargo ships right into the different ports in Mexico, just like they do for methamphetamine. From there, they're trucked to different locations, they're manufactured, and then they're smuggled, just like all other drugs are into the United States for, for unfortunate, unfortunately for consumption, but very rare anymore to have a manufactured fentanyl product from China.
- [33:57]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [33:58]
Brian Townsend
Majority of it's, it's, it's chemicals. And if you're a chemical company, it's a win win for you, right? I mean, if you wanted to order a, I don't know, a pie from me and I. Now I can't send you the pie, but I Can send you the ingredients to make the pie. Right. For me.
- [34:11]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [34:12]
Brian Townsend
It's a little more work for you, but I don't care because I made my money. Right?
- [34:15]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. The law doesn't get broken until it's combined into the fun final product.
- [34:19]
Brian Townsend
Exactly.
- [34:19]
Jeff Duden
Is it, is fentanyl an opioid?
- [34:21]
Brian Townsend
It is. It's a synthetic opioid. So that means it's completely man made.
- [34:25]
Jeff Duden
You know, it's not plant based at all.
- [34:27]
Brian Townsend
No, no, no. Poppy plant. And that's how you know for heroin, morphine.
- [34:32]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And, and then the majority of it, as far as we understand it comes in through the southern border.
- [34:40]
Brian Townsend
It does. The vast majority. I mean, does it come through other, other routes? Absolutely. I mean we still a lot of maritime seizures. You know, we get seizures from Canada as well. But the vast majority of it comes through the southwest border, which is still a mess. I was down there seven years.
- [34:58]
Jeff Duden
So we, we have an issue of a hotly debated issue of illegal immigration right now. Yeah, but is this a completely separate issue because there are tunnels that they found between like Juarez and El Paso. There's other, you know, there's car, you know, there's all kinds of ways that it's coming across the border. Is that conflated with illegal immigration or is it a completely separate thing? Meaning if we make changes to illegal immigration to mitigate or abate that with the new administration, is that going to impact at all the fentanyl coming into the country? In home service sales, performance is everything. Meet Rilla voice your virtual ride along. Just like elite athletes thrive on feedback, your team can too. Rilla captures every conversation, delivering real time insights that drive action. Success isn't left to chance. It's measurable and repeatable. Ready to take your team to new heights? Visit rilla.com that's r I l l a.com or click the link below to get your special homefront brands Rilla offer today.
- [36:10]
Brian Townsend
It will. Now, they are two separate issues. I mean most of the people that come over the border aren't, you know, they're not, they're not carrying fentanyl. I mean it's just it. But it is a problem that they're coming over the border. And the problem is, is our resources are strained because of that. Okay, so instead of, instead of I'm border patrol and I want to focus on fentanyl or guns or anything, any type of criminal activity, I can't because the, the problem with illegal immigration into the US has been such a, you know, it's it's, it's, it's exploded over the last four or five years. So now the few resources, and they're just like every other law enforcement agency. They're not, they're hurting for people. They really are. You know, and, and so now I have fewer people tasked with a lot more work, and a lot of that work is, is being focused at the illegals. So, yeah, even though it's two separate things, it's, it's the resources. You know, if you're, you're a manager and you got to put, you got to task people, you want to take care of the problem. Right. And if the problem is, is you have. We went from 2, 300,000 people a year coming over the border to 1.5 to 2 million people a year. So what time do we have to go after fentanyl? And we do these things. I'm not saying we don't, you know, we ignore them, but it really strains our resources. So if we can solve one and it will really help us solve the other, if that makes sense. Cause they are two separate things, but they bleed together so much.
- [37:40]
Jeff Duden
What's your perception of agency interplay? I mean, as a outsider, I'm looking at the dea, the FBI, the CIA, the nsa, the Department of Homeland Security, the dhs. You've got the cbp, which is the Border patrol.
- [37:57]
Brian Townsend
Yeah.
- [37:58]
Jeff Duden
And you got the atf, and then you have all these state task forces and, you know, you've got. Everybody has different requirements or different objectives. The perception is, you know, you. I used to think that this was all one team. I don't think it is. You laugh. It's probably not all one team. What are some, you know, what's, what's just your, you know, how could you educate somebody like me to say, you know, these are the, these are the types of things from an agency perspective that get in the way of us being effective and having a unified front to help stem the tide of the fentanyl.
- [38:36]
Brian Townsend
You know, I, I do laugh, but I think, I think overall the agencies play pretty well together. I really do. I think, I think it comes down to some individual conflicts. I mean, I think about my career, I, you know, I, I really proud that, that I was able to establish really good relationships and, and, and utilize those to be more efficient and to help DEA and to help those agencies be more efficient. But, you know, sometimes you run into people that don't like to play well with others, and that's just the reality of, sometimes it's even internal, you know, I've had folks at DEA who just. It's mine, mine, mine. They don't want to play well, you know, and. Right. And that's.
- [39:15]
Jeff Duden
They need leadership training.
- [39:17]
Brian Townsend
I was going to say that's a failure of leadership when that happens. You know, I can think of a couple examples where I saw that where no one was held accountable for trying to keep everything and not share it. But for the most part, I really do see a lot of cooperation between the agencies. And that's a good thing. You know, we all have our different, you know, DEA's title 21. You know, we're going to go after the drug laws.
- [39:42]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [39:43]
Brian Townsend
You know, the FBI has probably 150 different laws they go after, if not more. But we all work pretty well, I'd say, together. I think. I think the perception is we don't and we do. There are some exceptions, obviously.
- [39:59]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [40:00]
Brian Townsend
And that's important. We need to. Deconfliction is important, not just for the safety of it, but why reinvent the wheel if you have allocated resources and you've gone so far on your investigation, you know, why would I not want to share and make you more successful? Because at the end of the day, it's not about the accolades. It's about putting bad people in jail and stopping criminal activity and holding people accountable. That's what it should be.
- [40:32]
Jeff Duden
So in the pursuit of a question that you'll refuse to answer, which one of these agencies needs to go away and be absorbed by somebody else?
- [40:41]
Brian Townsend
Oh, that's a.
- [40:43]
Jeff Duden
You don't even have to go there.
- [40:45]
Brian Townsend
Yeah. You know, I have some opinions, but I'll probably oughta. How to keep them. You know the problem, these agencies, they become so political, especially over the last put. Do the right thing, you know, do the right thing. I don't care who you work for, whether it's law enforcement or whether you work for, you know, McDonald's, just do the right thing in life. It's not hard. It's not hard to be a good human being. Do the right.
- [41:11]
Jeff Duden
Look, it's every, Every company gentrifies and I see it all the time. It happens so fast. Right. So you've got. You're building an organization. It had this mission, it had this purpose, it had this direction. Now you're employing people and everybody's got their projects that they've spent lots of money on. And maybe it's not the best project anymore, but nobody wants to kill it for sunk cost. You got people protecting salaries, pensions and jobs and opportunities. Opportunities. And all of a sudden you get all of this bureaucracy inside of an agency, and now you've got 10 agencies trying to work together, all under the law enforcement protection umbrella. And I can only imagine that, you know, if you, if you looked across all of these agencies and you said, hey, you know, we could reorganize these, there was, it would almost be an undoable task. But I, there's gotta be some efficiencies across all of this stuff. I imagine the information shared from, As a citizen, I would assume that all the information's available, but I don't believe that's probably the case. I think it probably gets siloed not for nefarious reasons, but just because security and this is our information and you let the other people know when they need to know it. But, you know, with, with AI, with computing, with all of this stuff, I mean, everything is, is getting disintermediated and reorganized very quickly. And I'm just wondering if, you know, not only these agencies, but other government agencies are going to allow themselves to be open to those types of changes.
- [42:45]
Brian Townsend
I hope that we see positive change. You know, the other problem is the politics involved as well. Not just, I mean, that's, you know, for the longest time, you know, agencies did the right thing for the right reasons. Right. But now it's, again, I'm trying to tread in that line there, but I mean, and I saw it from both parties. I mean, I saw it on, when I worked on the border, you know, for almost seven years. You know, we worked a lot with, with border patrol and the different assets down there. You know, I, I, they would take these statistics and they would just, they would, they would manipulate them the way that they needed to feed them to the public. You know, you would, you would see the, them reduce resources, you know, literally take people out of sectors so you have fewer people working these areas. So the seizures would go down not because there was less traffic or less criminal activity, but because you had physically less amount of people doing the work.
- [43:43]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [43:43]
Brian Townsend
And then they would go to the media and they would say, we don't have a problem because look at our metrics. That's right, it's wrong. Right. And then I see it the other way as well, where you would increase manpower and the arrests, the seizures, things would go up. You're being more effective and you're being more effective. But then they would go to the media and they would play it as a, you know, they wouldn't tell you that they put 50% more resources in those areas.
- [44:09]
Jeff Duden
This department's failing because the increase of the traffic. But it's the root cause of it was they're doing a better job.
- [44:18]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of that came down to politics. And, you know, individuals who were making or allowing decisions to be made, or they were making them themselves for their own, you know, their own gain or, you know, they're playing the, the political game and it's just national security, criminal justice, law enforcement in general. It needs to integrity and the standards matter. And, and, you know, people lose faith. I mean, look at, look at the FBI, and I'm not trying to. And be careful here, but look at the FBI over the last five or six years. It's a political organization at the higher part of it. You know, you look at the, with Clinton and the dossiers. I mean, it's just so many things have happened that. So then your normal person out there, who doesn't. What do they see? They see this, this, this pawn of the Department of Justice.
- [45:12]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [45:12]
Brian Townsend
Hacking its, you know, whoever they're against at the moment.
- [45:17]
Jeff Duden
And that's a, there's a decrease in cycle time between the time when a conspiracy hits the Internet and the time that it is proven to be absolutely true.
- [45:28]
Brian Townsend
Isn't that scary? You know, for the longest time, you get these thoughts. You're like, oh, that's silly. That's. That sounds like a conspiracy. And then you're like, oh, that came true. And that came true and.
- [45:37]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [45:38]
Brian Townsend
And you almost hate to say that because then it, you kind of feel like there's something wrong. But unfortunately it is ridiculous and that's what the politics have done to us.
- [45:46]
Jeff Duden
And I'm still holding out for the moon landing, but we'll see. There's. There's a file somewhere.
- [45:54]
Brian Townsend
There you go.
- [45:58]
Jeff Duden
Oh, good stuff. All right. Well, I appreciate your comments on that. Great perspective. And I think as a, as a citizen, like, I always had just this, you know, we, you know, growing up, and I'm 56 right now, so, you know, I grew up a time where patriotic pledge of allegiance, this is the way it is. You know, and it's hard coded into me and that there's a group of people that are leading this country that are always going to do what's in the best interest of the country, regardless. And even if things get a little hinky, that there's a group of people that are squirreled away somewhere in the Pentagon or somewhere else that are actually the cooler heads that are actually running everything and the politicians are just doing what they're doing over the top. Of it, but I don't believe that's the case anymore. I think there's been a erosion of our values and you don't need violence to overturn a society. A society just needs to become indifferent to the values with which created it and it will eat itself from within. And, you know, social media is an accelerator to that. But I mean, I don't, you know, I, I am more vigilant about my information and I'm not so gullible with, you know, things that I see. And I, and I do seek alternative places to get information. Even talking to people, people like you, you know, and I think people like you are much more open today to, to being honest. I think we've, I think it, we're duty bounds to tell the truth and. Because truth is where change happens. And so I really appreciate the conversation.
- [47:41]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, absolutely. You know, information's power. You know, even when I, when I do drug prevention or drug education, you know, I, especially when I talk to young people, I say that all the time, information's power. It's, you know, you, you're going to make your decisions. You know, I'm not, I'm not going to be there. Your, your parents, your role models, not everyone's going to be with you all the time for these, these hard decisions in life, whether it's drug use or, you know, whether it's just doing the right thing. But the more information that we have, the better equipped we are to make these decisions and understand the consequences, whether they're good or bad. You know, that's information's power. I really, really, truly believe that. And you made a good comment about the erosion. I, I have seen that quite a bit in a lot of organizations where it's so political and it's so, you know, it's just, it's just different than it used to be. I still believe, though, that there are a lot of good people out there who want to do the right thing and who can go to bed at night realizing that they did everything they can to, you know, to, to look at themselves in the mirror.
- [48:47]
Jeff Duden
Right. Brian, we started our conversation and you had said if you could do one thing, it would be to reduce demand for drugs in this country. How would you accomplish that? And what does that mean?
- [49:00]
Brian Townsend
Well, it's, it's talking to people. It's, it's, it's knowledge is power. I mean, that's, that, that's really, that was, that's pretty much my answer is, is giving people the information to make informed decisions, especially young people. You know, people. People don't realize how deadly fentanyl is and how it's changed our drug supply. So that's, that's one thing is, certainly is getting the information out there. We need to have additional conversations on why are we using drugs? Why is the demand so high? You know, mental illness, depression. I mean, what are we doing in this country to solve those problems? And the answer is very little. We really are. I mean, look at suicide, for example. We have more resources available today than we ever have, but yet our numbers are still climbing. Why is that? You know, it's same thing with drugs. I mean, we know a lot about drugs, but why, why when we only have, what, 4% of the world's population, do we consume the majority of drugs? It doesn't make any sense. So we need to go after the root causes. I think that's a big part of it. And then, you know, I have to say we have to continue the enforcement as well. I spent 30 years of my life doing that, and I think that's important. I think we have to go over, go after the biggest and baddest organization, organizations out there bringing, you know, this poison in our communities. You know, I know dea, the emphasis is to go after the Sinalo and the cjng. And I hope that continues. I hope we were more strategic in our planning and our operation to, to, to. To hurt their operations and not make this a billion dollar business. So really a holistic approach, you know, to. And do what we can do to reduce demand.
- [50:48]
Jeff Duden
Let's talk a little bit about Narcan. I'm part of a. Well, I see it back there. Absolutely. It's not going to do any good in your office. You got to get that on the streets, right? Yeah, but, but I appreciate that. So I'm part of something called the Genius Network, and it's run by somebody named Joe Polish. And Joe Polish has genius recovery because he was an addict, multiple types of addict, and he's in recovery. And by the way, I find so many successful people are in recovery. It's amazing how many high potential people.
- [51:25]
Brian Townsend
Yep.
- [51:25]
Jeff Duden
Were destroying their lives with drugs and alcohol. And then all of a sudden, they were so thankful to find recovery that they just become laser beams and superpowers and whatever it is they choose to do. And the more that I escalate my career, the more people are open about their recovery and sobriety. So Joe has a project going on right now to get nasal spray, Narcan kits distributed through drugstores, Walgreens, cvs, all of these things. And I was at our last meeting, they did a demonstration of how to use a nasal spray, Narcan device, whatever dosage, and they shot it up into the air, they breathed it. It will not hurt anybody. It is absolutely harmless. And basically what it does is that it attaches itself. Narcan attaches itself to the receptors and it displaces the opioid from that receptor that allows you to restore normal function. So it's a very, very simple chemical reaction. It happens extraordinarily quickly in two to three minutes. The problem is you don't have all kinds of time. When somebody. And if somebody is at a party and you think they're passed out and they're turning blue or they're doing whatever, it would do no harm at all to give them this Narcan. Because what happens a lot of times is people think they're just drunk, they're just passed out, and then let them sleep it off. And then you go back three hours later and they're dead. So what can you share about Narcan? I mean, Narcan should be in every glove box of every new car. It should be like an EpiPen, even though maybe more broadly distributed. What are the efforts around Narcan and what can you share with people as to, you know, how they should be thinking about, about this in everyday, middle class, Main street, usa America? Should everybody have Narcan in their home?
- [53:48]
Brian Townsend
Yes. Think of it as a fire extinguisher for your home. Every business I work with, every building I walk through, I leave Narcan. And I think it's an important drug, if you will, that we need to do that. We need to treat it like, like you said, an EpiPen or a fire extinguisher. And by the way, Narcan is not the only product out there. OPV is another good product that's being tested quite a bit in the United States and looks like it's very successful. It's another same principle where they're going after the opioids on the receptor. Just for those of you people don't understand that, think of it like King of the Hill. You know, when our receptors, opioids attach themselves to the receptors and they block pain. That's, that's why opioids are so successful and that's why we use them for, for pain management or surgery and things like that. Well, the Narcan goes up there and knocks the opioid off the receptor, and it blocks it from doing what it's supposed to Do. So, yeah, fire extinguishers. I do a lot of work with some college kids, Greek organizations, different organizations on campus. I always leave Narcan or whatever, whatever I have behind. After 2023, it became over the counter. Not over the counter. You could buy it anywhere, right? You can, you can go to cvs, you can go to Walgreens. Eventually you're gonna be able to go to, you know, 711 or, or whatever your, your convenience stores are and buy it there. If you haven't seen it already, expect to pay about 45, $50 for a box. However, I would. I always tell people, don't buy it. Go to your health department department. Health departments get this stuff in cases and they'll give it to you. A lot of times, actually, when I speak to folks, I always bring Narcan or something with me, and that's why I have some in the back behind me. That's what I have currently here in Missouri. But a lot of times I'll contact the health department in the county that I'm going to and I'll go over there and pick up a couple boxes the day before or the morning of my presentation. And they're more than willing and more always happy to do that. So that's, it's, it's, it's something that's easily obtainable and something that we need to have on hand. Like you said, there's no harm if someone does get into this, say a young person gets into it and, and, and sprays themselves. You know, they might give themselves a headache, but they're not going to kill themselves. And that's. And so there's no harm in it at all. I, I'm a huge proponent of it. I think it's important. I'm not a big proponent of things like needles and things like that, but when it comes to Narcan, I 100 support it. And I'd love to see more and more people treat it, like I said, like an EpiPen or a fire extinguisher or something that they just have.
- [56:42]
Jeff Duden
What's the shelf life?
- [56:44]
Brian Townsend
So there. It's usually a couple years. They have a, they do have an expiration date on them, but let me tell you, use it. If that's all you have, use it. Usually some of my expired stuff is. I'll show, I'll demonstrate how to use it because it's expired, so I don't, you know, it's okay. So just. People see the, the ease of using it. But, but it does have an expiration date. It also is susceptible to heat and cold. The stuff can freeze and refreeze. And, and there's, there's questions on whether or not it diminishes the efficiency of the product if it does get too hot or get too cold. But end of the day, if that's all you have, use it. You know, you're certainly not going to not use it just because it's been, you know, record, record cold or record hot. But if you're someone who has it, and I do recommend everyone, you know obtaining it, try to, you know, every couple years, try to recycle it and make sure that you always have a fresh box on hand. Every box there contains two two milligram doses.
- [57:48]
Jeff Duden
So 100,000 drug poisoning deaths every year in this country. Every two years. From 1968 to 2000, there was about 200 and 200,010 total. So for that 32 year period, every two years we, we eclipse that. We do play for. Go ahead, go ahead.
- [58:12]
Brian Townsend
No, you're right. And I think that's a, and that's a statistic I use quite a bit when I talk to people because, you know, the government calls them drug overdoses, I call them drug poisonings. And like you said, From 1968 to the year 2000, we lost a little over 200,000 people. We now lose 100,000 people every year. So yeah, every two years we're losing that. There's been a big push in the media over the last, I don't know, six months because our numbers are reducing and yeah, they are reducing. That's a wonderful thing when we see a reduction of people dying from drugs. But there's still over a hundred thousand people a year.
- [58:41]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, that's a Michigan, Ohio State football stadium full of people.
- [58:45]
Brian Townsend
It is. And that, and that's, that's ridiculous. And you know, when we were in high school, you know, you and I around the same age, I mean, we lost 3,4000 people a year. And not to minimize that, still a lot of people, but we're at 100,000 people every year. So. Yeah. Am I excited that it's not 110 this year? Yeah, I'm excited, but it's still 100,000 plus people a year. There's a lot more work we need to do for sure.
- [59:09]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, there have been other successful drug campaigns that have reduced usage of certain drugs. I think the oxycodone is much more controlled now. But that's an over the counter drug versus this, which is just in all of the illegal drugs. Where would you like to see this by 20, 20, 30, and, and what are the couple of things that could maybe help us reduce that number by half.
- [59:42]
Brian Townsend
Go after the demand. I'd like to see more work with young people, you know, getting them up to date on, on what this drug is, how powerful it is, how easy it kills people. I'd like to see more parents involved. And that's a, that's the hardest thing that we've seen is just getting more parental involvement. But. So if they're not going to do it, we need someone to do it. We need people to come into the schools. I'll be in a couple schools this week talking to different kids. I'm happy for the time to be able to do that. And just knowledge is power, right? It empowers people to make more informed decisions. And that's what we need is we need, we need the information out there. I'd like to see an increase in that. I'd like. I know some of the states are now looking at requiring schools and communities to provide this type of training and used to have conflicting thoughts on that. You know, I used to think this is, you know, you go to school to learn to read and write, but we got to learn, we got to teach some basic schools what basic skills while they're there. And I don't have a problem talking about basic drug information. We're not going in saying, just say no to drugs. We're going in and telling them, hey, this is what these drugs are doing, right? Look, look around. I mean, I, when I first started going into schools and I would ask kids, do you know someone who's been impacted by drugs? Very few hands would raise. Now if I go in and say, hey, do you know someone who's, who's died or has been impacted by drugs? You know, very few hands don't raise.
- [61:08]
Jeff Duden
Now, I personally know people, yeah, 100%.
- [61:11]
Brian Townsend
And that's, that's what we've seen. We've seen this turnaround. So we have to have this conversation. And I'm still surprised by the number of kids who have no idea what fentanyl is or how deadly it is in such small doses.
- [61:27]
Jeff Duden
The Mexican government and the cartels, who's more powerful?
- [61:33]
Brian Townsend
The cartels, 100%. The corruption in, in Mexico is, is out of hand. It needs to, it needs to. It needs to be addressed. And, and, and the. Until it's addressed, the cartels will always be the most powerful. You know, we've seen an increase in the amount of seizures, especially over the last couple Months. A lot of people contribute that to, you know, to President Trump's talk about tariffs and some of the things that he wants to do. But, you know, Claudia Shimbaum's the president down there that I was. I'm still hopeful that she's going to be aggressive to go after these, especially the main two, two cartels down there. But the problem is, well, she was handpicked by the last president, amlo, and he was, you know, he wasn't very aggressive. He had a hugs, not, not bullets policy of dressing, addressing these folks. And, you know, he kept on saying they're a sovereign nation, and absolutely, they're a sovereign nation. Mexico has to make their own decisions, just like the rest of the nations out there. But, but there's more work that they can do, and a lot of it's internal, not just going after and arresting these organizations, but the, the corruption is, is widespread and it makes their job and our job very difficult. You know, I, I look at DEA and the level of cooperation we've gotten in Mexico over the last five, six years. I mean, it's, yeah, it's, it's significantly different than it was when I started my career. And that usually plays into, you know, who's, who's the president, what are the politics there? But, you know, I remember one time we couldn't get provisional arrest warrants. So if I had a target that was in Mexico and I needed him, you know, extradited into the United States for federal prosecution, you know, you get a pop, a paw, a provisional arrest warrant. There was a time when that was. No, not at all. You weren't. If they were in Mexico, you were done your investigation. That was it. You know, they'd sit on a wanted poster for the rest of their lives. And, and then that, you know, then we saw things like that increase, you know, and that's just one example. But, you know, back to your original question, corruption is a problem. I mean, look at the ports. I mean, this, they control the ports, you know, and that's where all these, these chemicals, drugs come into. And then from there they just get pushed out. And, and they've got.
- [63:55]
Jeff Duden
It's. We're not going to be able to impact the supply unless the government of Mexico invites United States States in to actually take an active role. So, for example, let's just say that President Trump put excessive tariffs on China and they tied it to these base chemicals that were being shipped into the Mexican ports and said, okay, we're going to, you know, we will ease the tariffs when you stem these types of. Because by the way, you know, $14 billion in the scheme of China and the United States isn't that much money. So they could, they could impact China many times that through tariffs and other things. But the reality of it is they'll just name it something else and keep shipping it. So unless you have people on the ground in the ports which are controlled by the cartels, you're not going to be able to effectively change the flow of that, you know, so, and then you've got the manufacturers down there, which if we are not able to go there and to disrupt the manufacturing process of it. So the entire supply chain is really wrapped up in the sovereignty of that country. And we can only sit here and do the best we can to keep it from coming in on our side of the fence. But it really seems to be untenable the fact that that country is allowing that amount of contraband to be trafficked through, through those channels and it's killing a hundred thousand people a year in this country. And not to, not, not to even talk about the crime, the homelessness, all of the other, you know, non life impacts, the economic impacts to society on our health care system. I mean, just think about the impact, I mean the, the, the end of the chain is that 100,000 people are dying. That means that there's millions and tens of millions of people impacted or affected in one way or another and then the stress it puts on our economics. So it would seem that there's not a bigger problem that we're facing in this country that we should be able to address. But it's not clear and it's not easy.
- [66:08]
Brian Townsend
No, it's not easy. And we've had a lot of success in Mexico and we are working with, you know, their government and their law enforcement. It's just changed quite a bit. I mean, I remember. Well, to give you an example, just in the last couple years, even the way when we address organizations or criminals, you know, we had these vetted teams throughout the country and now everything has to be funneled through a certain channel and then it gets disseminated and we can't trust that. So the people that are cooperating, and there are a lot of people cooperating Mexico really doing it at their own risk, you know, because they, they want to clean up their country, they want to clean up the corruption, they want to, you know, do better. And we are having success down there, but it's not, it's not at the level it needs to be. And because of that, it that trickles into the United States and it. And like you said, it amplifies all the other issues that are, that are caused because of the drugs as well. But, you know, we, we need to do more down there. I'm hoping, I'm hoping this president, I'm hoping all presidents and all politicians for that matter, can figure out how to do that. You know, Mexico, they're. We're their number one trade partner. You know, we replaced China. People don't know that. You know, what, a year or two ago, money speaks, right? I mean, the border itself is important. You know, in the 80s, we had a DEA agent, Kiki Camarano, that was killed, brutally killed. The Red Ribbon Campaign, you probably heard of it, right? Every October, originally. There wasn't a lot of cooperation. And I, you know, I wasn't a DEA at the time. I was young and. But, but I do know that there wasn't a lot of cooperation initially in that investigation. And the politicians think was. Ronald Reagan at the time was like, all right, we'll just close the border. You know, we'll slow commerce down. Well, you know, then all of a sudden we got cooperation, right? I mean, from both sides, because, you know, we have businesses in the United States that do. That, do commerce south of the border, and they're going to call their congressmen and senators and say, this, this can't happen. And then, of course, on the other side, it's the same thing. They're going to call their, their politicians and say, hey, do it. Do whatever they ask. You know, give them, give them what they want, because this is, this is bad. So I don't know. I'm hopeful that, you know, whether it's Trump or whoever can, can. Can leverage some of those things to, to increase the amount of cooperation that we have with Mexico.
- [68:43]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, I never thought we would wax, you know, positively and missing the days of meth houses.
- [68:51]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, we've seen a slight increase in those over, over the last year. Not. Nothing. Yeah, nothing where I think it's going to make the media, but we certainly have, you know, now, just, just so you know, 17 of all methamphetamine seized by law enforcement last year had fentanyl in it. So we're seeing an increase in meth as well.
- [69:09]
Jeff Duden
Hey, well. Made in America.
- [69:13]
Brian Townsend
Yeah, I remember when I, I started my law enforcement career. I mean, it was. Oh, my goodness. I mean, the amount of. We called them, you know, One Pot One. One Pot labs, the mom and Pop labs, the Anderson Ammonia, Sahydra. I. We had a trafficker that that would pee. He would urinate in a strainer because he thought there was still meth in his urine. And he could, every time he made, was making meth, he would do that as part of the process because he thought he was giving back to the process. I mean.
- [69:49]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, he's a giver.
- [69:52]
Brian Townsend
That's right.
- [69:55]
Jeff Duden
Awesome. Well, hey Brian, this has been incredible. I've got one final question for you, but before that I'm going to ask you to let people know where they can get in touch with you. But before that, is there anything we missed that you think is important for people to hear about this topic?
- [70:12]
Brian Townsend
I think we covered it all. You know, if, if you have family of kids have this conversation, you know, we, we lose a person in this country every five or six minutes. Drugs. And if you look at the overall numbers, about, overall numbers, about two thirds of those of those poisonings are because of fentanyl. And like I said, After 30 years in law enforcement, I've never seen a drug more impactful. It's changed drug experimentation, casual drug use. It has changed the drug landscape. And this is on all of us to have these conversations. Take them home, take them to work, take them to church, take them to the Rotary Club, you know, whoever will listen to you have these conversations, educate yourself and, and, and help people make more informed decisions.
- [71:01]
Jeff Duden
It's never been more important for families to act like families.
- [71:04]
Brian Townsend
Absolutely.
- [71:05]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. So my, where can people get in touch with you?
- [71:10]
Brian Townsend
So I have a website at eagle6training. The six is just the number. So www.eagle e a g l e and then the number six and then training t R-A-I-N-I-N dash.com that's my leadership training consulting business. And then I also have a non profit called only 2mg. So again www.only and then the 2 is just the number apparently. I like that. And then M G which stands for milligrams.com only2mg.com and that's my nonprofit. Right now I'm the only instructor but we are working on scaling that. We have several retired DEA agents and other law enforcement personnel who are interested in doing drug education across the United States. So hopefully in 2025 you'll see, you'll see more of that. I was in 20 states last year with 54 presentations, almost 100 overall. And we hope to, to increase that, increase that traffic. So if you're interested in, in learning more about fentanyl, that's, that's the website for sure. You want to go to. We do most of these for free. So don't let your budget or money get in the way of this important conversation. If you want us to come out and talk about fentanyl and drugs, please get a hold of me and let's make that happen.
- [72:37]
Jeff Duden
You're doing important work, brother. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [72:45]
Brian Townsend
Care. Care about people.
- [72:51]
Jeff Duden
We'll end it on that. Perfectly said. Brian Townsend, I've really enjoyed our conversation today. Thanks for being on.
- [72:58]
Brian Townsend
I appreciate you. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you.
- [73:00]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, it's been great. Brian Townsend here with Jeff Duden. We have been on the home front. Thanks for listening. Thanks again to today's sponsor, Rilla Voice. Are you in the home services industry or leading a sales team? Rilla Voice is your virtual ride along, capturing every conversation and turning insights into actions. Visit rila.com that's r I l l a.com or click the link below to get your special homefront brands offer today.