Rick Perry (12:27)
Well, and it should. It should. Because this truly. I mean, this is not what I came into the world for. This is not what I came to politics for. This is what, you know, I got led to this through that relationship with Marcus and in turn, Morgan Luttrell. And seeing those two boys, literally, particularly Marcus, on the doorstep of committing suicide. When he came to live with us at the Governor's Mansion in 2007, we had met the year before, just by the grace of God. And I told him, I said, if you're ever through Austin, come by and see me. Knowing that the chances of that would be pretty slim. He knocked on that guard door in May of 07 and said, the governor said, if I was ever through here, come by and see him. They called. I let him in for dinner. And my wife, who's a nurse, she recognized this young man who was really troubled, addicted to opioids, masking it with alcohol, really sick. And for the next two and a half years, he lived with us at the governor's residence. Wow. And that started this long journey literally with him and trying to find ways to heal him. We sent him to a host of different places. Carrick Brain center in Dallas. We sent him to what's called now Axios Athletes performance in those days, but a great rehab facility down in the panhandle of Florida. And they helped him conquer or helped him manage the opioid addiction, I will suggest to you, until he was treated with ibogaine, which did clean that completely away from him some years later. But the point is, he really struggled, and he has become like our son. As a matter of fact, I talked to him this morning. He said, be sure and tell Joe howdy for me. He just thinks the world of you as well. I talked to his brother the day before. They understand how powerful this compound is from the standpoint of treating post traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury addictions. I mean, this. And as I became convinced, one of the things that I will say that I've been. I've been open to change, just like criminal justice reform in the early 2000s, I was kind of like, lock their ass up, throw the key under the jail. You know, you break the law in the state of Texas, here's how we treat you. And I had a district judge in Fort Worth, John Crusoe, a Democrat district judge who I knew and had been friends with. He said, governor, we got a program here that Allows these individuals who have broken the law, you know, they maybe, you know, got caught with an illegal substance or what have you. And rather than sending them to jail, sending them to the penitentiary where they become professional criminals, we give them a second chance. We put them in a rehab program, we put them in a treatment center, we put them in a boot camp, you know, give them these options rather than sending them to prison where they're going to become professional criminals and the recidivism rate is going to continue on. You know, I'm kind of like, nope, I'm tough on crime. That's what us Republicans do. But it really got me thinking. I mean, I am curious minded about concepts and ideas. So that brought me to having conversations. And, you know, long story short, that single conversation led to Texas leading the nation with criminal justice reform. Texas Public Policy foundation that now Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins was operating in the mid to late 2000s. They came on board, saw this, supported it, we passed it through a very Republican, very conservative legislature, and Texas led the nation in criminal justice reform, saved us billions of dollars. We stopped building prisons, we stopped sending people to prison where they were becoming professional criminals. So that template, if you will, was what we took to Donald Trump in 2018. And he was just like me initially. I'm tough on crime, but he was open, he was curious. Brooke Rollins, interestingly, had come up and was his domestic policy advisor at that time, and she made the pitch and he was open. And that conversation led to him being open to federal criminal justice reform. And today there are people who, I mean, you may have different ideas about President Trump and what have you. I know that's the case, but on this issue of criminal justice reform, this man was curious, he was open minded, and he's made a real difference in people's lives following the Texas model. The reason I share that with you as a example, that's where I was on these compounds, these drugs, these psychedelics. I grew up in the 60s. Timothy O' Leary Using LSD, marijuana, any of that kind of stuff. I mean, it was anathema to me. Absolutely and totally. I don't want to have anything to do with this is crazy stuff. You get in trouble, they'll throw you in jail, you'll jump off of buildings. I mean, you. Every story that you can imagine that people. And then think about from the 60s forward, how, you know, I went into the Air Force, they, you know, we took drug test at least monthly. So the idea of being involved with a drug was just totally and absolutely not on My radar screen. These are bad things. And we're reinforced in the 80s with Mrs. Reagan. Just say no to drugs. Here's your brain on drugs. I mean, we have been browbeat as a Society for 60 years. And when you add to it what Nixon did, President Nixon did in the late 60s, early 70s with his war on drugs. He hated hippies, he hated blacks, and one of the ways you could go after them was to go make these compounds. Schedule one, which he did, Schedule one says there is no medical purpose for it and it is highly addictive. Ibogaine fits neither of those. Ibogaine is not an addictive compound by any sense of the imagination.
