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

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Turning Heartbreak Into Purpose! Gregory Swan and Dr. Gary Latson"

We're Out of Time with Richard Taite – August 21, 2025

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Episode Overview

On this emotionally charged episode, host Richard Taite is joined by Gregory Swan (co-founder of Fentanyl Fathers) and Dr. Gary Latson (physician, advocate, and founder of Candles in the Wind Foundation). Both guests lost their sons to fentanyl overdoses. They discuss how their personal tragedies fueled a mission to combat drug deaths through advocacy, education in schools, and legislative action. The conversation covers the opioid and fentanyl crises, the impact on families, the importance of reaching young people early, overcoming stigma, and practical tools for prevention and recovery.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Turning Grief into Advocacy

• Both Gregory and Dr. Latson recount the heartbreak of losing their sons, Drew and Trevor, to fentanyl.
  • Gregory: “I was a mess for a long time. The work that we're doing is the pathway out of the grief.” [00:07]
  • Dr. Latson: “After my son passed, I had a really hard time of grief.” [00:20]
• Richard emphasizes the power of sharing these stories: “The bereaved parent is the linchpin to kids paying attention.” [06:44]
• They recall how meeting Richard's son was bittersweet—joy at connecting with children, grief at their own loss.
  • Dr. Latson: “Sometimes there's a twinge of, like, almost jealousy that other people still have their children... but I celebrate that you do still have yours... It’s so precious.” [03:17]

2. The Reality of Fentanyl’s Impact

Personal Losses

• Drew's Story: Clean for a year and a half, relapsed at a Miami rave, took what he thought was methadone (actually fentanyl). [13:04–13:56]
  • Gregory: “He relapsed at a rave in Miami. That’s right. Was given a Molly. And he called me, his brother, and his mother and said, I need to get back on track. I slipped up...” [13:04]
• Trevor’s Story: Started with cannabis, progressed rapidly to polysubstance use. Avoided opiates until his final relapse with cocaine laced with fentanyl. [10:48, 14:09]
  • Dr. Latson: “He was a thrillseeker... He never used opioids... but he died alone in his bathroom.” [10:04, 15:05]
  • Dr. Latson admits shame over sharing the cause of death: “For months, I didn’t even tell my co-workers that my son had died of a drug overdose, because of the stigma.” [15:18]

The Shift in Overdose Demographics

• Richard: “The kids that are dying today are the straight-A students that go to the rave on the weekend… Because they don’t have the fentanyl tolerance.” [13:01, 14:02]
• Gregory: “Nobody rolls their eyes at us in our high school assemblies. Stunning… when you talk about life and death, that gives you the license to really get their attention.” [33:12]

3. School and Community Outreach

The Fentanyl Fathers Model

• Launched to bring bereaved parents’ stories to schools; now reached over 200,000 students. [25:29, 42:56]
  • Gregory: “The difference that separates the men from the boys in this business is those who can get into schools and those who can’t.” [41:51]
  • Saw dramatic drops in Miami-Dade overdoses after comprehensive outreach: “Deaths went down by 350 year over year… We saw every high school and every middle school in Miami-Dade.” [55:07]

The Need to Begin Early

• Richard and Dr. Latson argue prevention should start before high school—ideally in kindergarten, tailored for every age group.
  • “High school’s too late … Every grade, starting with kindergarten, right at the beginning of each semester… It becomes conditioning.” [27:10–28:46]
  • Dr. Latson: “What really is necessary for prevention is for them to hit it emotionally… that’s where parents that have lost a kid can break the ice.” [30:16]

4. Overcoming Stigma and Changing Medical Practice

• Dr. Latson notes most doctors “don’t know anything about addiction,” and receives support from Gregory and Richard about the need for better medical education. [16:47–17:51]
• Gregory shares a story of being irresponsibly advised by his doctor to come off pain meds cold turkey, illustrating the medical community’s lack of expertise in addiction care. [19:51–20:53]

5. Legislative and Systemic Solutions

• Halt Fentanyl Act: Gregory was at its signing. Makes fentanyl-related substances permanently illegal (Schedule I), increasing penalties for dealing. [66:34–67:51]
  • Outcome: “Allows you to put guys who are in this game away for 10 years minimum.” [67:08]
• Advocacy for making Narcan widely available, with campaigns for free distribution in schools and homes. [87:09–90:27]

6. Support Networks: The Angel Army

• Collaboration with Jackie Siegel and the Victoria’s Voice Foundation to form the Angel Army, recruiting thousands of bereaved parents as advocates to cover every school in America. [59:23–64:08]
  • Gregory: “We want to aggregate at least 100,000 Angel Army. Like FedEx or UPS, have a logistical approach to this army going out and taking responsibility for a state and for a county and for districts to make sure every school sees a bereaved Parent Presenter.” [73:05]
• Plan for the “Angel Army Ascendancy”—a conference to train, connect, and mobilize bereaved parents nationwide. [92:03]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Love costs $5.” – Drew, Gregory’s son, as a child. [04:18]
• “There’s a million bereaved parents in the country. We want to aggregate at least 100,000 Angel Army.” – Gregory Swan [73:05]
• “It’s the emotion, not the facts and figures. They need to realize, your buddy’s going to die of this.” – Dr. Gary Latson [44:28]
• “We don’t do things over and over again until we get them right. We do them over and over again until we can’t get them wrong.” – Quoted by Richard Taite from Nick Saban [43:26]
• “Hold back those staggering toward the slaughter…If you claim it’s not your responsibility, God…knows you knew.” – Gregory, quoting Proverbs, on the moral imperative for action [76:18]
• “Listen, absolutely, for me, it’s okay. It’s something I could never get over. It is… the most unnatural thing in the world to bury your child.” – Richard Taite [65:02]

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Practical Advice and Resources

On Prevention and Conversation

• Start education EARLY—kindergarten is not too soon. Use age-appropriate stories and re-enforce annually. [28:13]
• For parents wanting to talk to their kids: “Sit down with your child and watch the 20-minute movie called Dead on Arrival at the Fentanyl Fathers website.” – Dr. Gary Latson [86:54]

On Narcan (Naloxone) Use

• “Narcan is specific for opioid overdoses… simply spray Narcan in one nostril and within 30 seconds or more, it can reverse the effect.” [87:22]
• “Any family with kids between 10 and 20 should have Narcan in the household”— recommended by American Academy of Pediatrics. [90:01]
• Free Narcan may be available via NarcanNow.us or local nonprofits. [88:25]

On Getting Help

• National helplines: 988 for crisis/emotional support. [93:58]
• Fentanyl Fathers: fentanylfathers.org | Angel Army: angelarmy.com
• Richard Taite’s organizations: carreraTreatment.com, onecallplacement.org

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Audience Q&A Highlights

Q: How to stop a child from self-medicating via Snapchat?
A: Acknowledge the ease of access; send resources and (free) books like Victoria’s Voice; educate early; remind of the dangers of unprescribed pills. [79:38–80:58]

Q: How to test a pill for fentanyl? A: Test strips exist but are not fully reliable. “If your child has an unprescribed pill… you can absolutely assume that it has fentanyl in it.” [83:10–83:53]

Q: How to have the conversation? A: Use emotion-triggering resources (like the Dead on Arrival film and Fentanyl Fathers’ assemblies), not just facts. “Start the conversation with a real story—it’s the only thing that works.” [86:21–86:54]

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Call to Action & Closing

• The guests emphasize that everyone is responsible for fighting this crisis—parents, teachers, politicians, communities.
• Bereaved parents can turn pain into purpose through action and advocacy.
• Schools and legislators must open doors, support evidence-based, emotionally impactful education, and prioritize the earliest possible intervention.
• If you’re struggling or know someone who is, reach out for help—resources and hope are available.

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Contact & More Information:

• Fentanyl Fathers
• Angel Army
• Carrera Treatment
• One Call Placement

Emergency: Call 988 for immediate support.

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“It really gives us purpose in our son's passing to be here and to advocate.” — Gregory Swan [00:07]

Transcript

[Richard Tate]

Gregory Swan and Dr. Gary Latson joined the we're out of Time podcast to share how the loss of their sons inspired their journey into advocacy.

[Gregory Swan]

It really gives us purpose in our son's passing to be here and to advocate. I was a mess for a long time. The work that we're doing is the pathway out of the grief. I lost drew on April 3, 2013.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

This is my son, Trevor. After my son passed, I had a really hard time of grief.

[Gregory Swan]

I said, Mr. President, the grieved parent is the linchpin to kids paying attention.

[Richard Tate]

The we're out of Time podcast team.

[Gregory Swan]

Extends heartfelt thanks for helping the show.

[Richard Tate]

Reach number two in Apple Podcasts mental health category and number 68 overall among top shows. Your support means more than words can express.

[Gregory Swan]

Thank you for listening to the we're.

[Richard Tate]

Out of Time podcast with Richard Tate. If you haven't already, please follow the podcast rate and review. And if you're getting value out of we're out of Time, share it with someone else. You know, if someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 888-831-1581. And if we can't help you, we referral to someone who can. Please, we're out of Time. Today we're on we're out of Time. For National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day, I'm joined by two fathers who turned their greatest loss into a mission to save lives. Better men than me, for sure. Greg Swan is the co founder of Fentanyl Fathers, a national nonprofit bringing powerful personal stories into schools to warn students about the evils of fentanyl. He's also been on the front lines in Washington and state capitals pushing for stronger laws and awareness campaigns. Thank you. Dr. Gary Ladson is a physician with over 40 years in medicine, including anesthesiology, pain management, and military service, and now leads the Candles in the Wind foundation and works with Fentanyl fathers dedicated to ending drug deaths through education, prevention, and family support. Both lost their sons. God, man. Both lost their sons tragically to fentanyl. Okay, Greg, let's start with your son, Drew. Tell us about him and what happened, please.

[Gregory Swan]

Thank you so much for caring as much as you do. We are. I'll tell you about Drew's story. To answer your question. It's just so comforting to know that there's somebody who has the empathy, the ability to care about this subject. And I met your beautiful son Dominic, who didn't lose, you know, a son.

[Richard Tate]

How did that feel for you guys? When you met my kid, I remember.

[Gregory Swan]

Meeting Drew right at the same age or having him right at the same age. I have dreams about him at that age, and I just instantly loved him.

[Richard Tate]

Did you feel a sense of loss? Because I felt the second my son was talking to you guys, I was like, oh, my God. It.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Sometimes there's a twinge of, like, almost jealousy that other people still have their children and. And we've missing one of ours, but I don't want to take that away from anybody. The. Everybody's children are beautiful, and I celebrate that you do still have yours. And it's like, you know, give them a hug. Spend. Spend the time you have with them, because it's so precious.

[Gregory Swan]

When. When Drew was that age and a little even younger, I would teach him, just like Dominic was a little young man, shake my hand, said, nice to meet you. I was kind of impressed with him. And I would tell. I would give Drew a dollar if he would shake a person's hand and say, how do you know my dad? To start a conversation. And these people were always astounded when that happened. So I pass out dollars. One day, I gave Drew a dollar just for nothing. And he said, what's this for? I said, just for love. He goes, love. Love costs $5.

[Richard Tate]

That's so good. That's so good.

[Gregory Swan]

But, no, it was great to meet him, and we're thrilled to be here. And it is, you know, I can go there just like anybody else and be, you know, cry my eyes out about Drew. The work that we're doing is the pathway out to keep my head above water of the grief. The grief is. Is bad. But I. I lost Drew on April 3, 2013. He was 24 years old. I got a call. It was 12:30 at night from my son Jack, Drew's brother. And it. The phone rang twice, and my wife said, you better pick that up. That's bad news. 12:30 at night, I woke up. I was in a stupor. And he kind of blurts out, daddy sitting down. He's sitting down. And I was in a wandering state of consciousness waking up. I said, no, I'm sleeping. What's going on? He goes, I need you to be sitting down right now. So I sat up in bed. I'm like. And I started to realize something bad was coming. And I said, say it, Jack. And he said, drew's dead. And when he said that, those words marked a before and after period in my life for sure. I was. I was happy and fairly maybe naive how much I took Life for granted. Even though I've had some challenges, I was doing good. I was a real happy person. And when I lost him, I mean, I, My reaction was very similar. Like DEA agents and other people will say when they show up at the house and tell a parent they lost their kid, they let out not a scream, but a sound. They call it a sound, and they say the sound never changes. It's the same sound.

[Richard Tate]

What is it?

[Gregory Swan]

It's like a guttural reaction from ages past, animalistic of loss. It's like, you're from the wolves. And I, I got up out of bed and I was screaming, no, no. And I told, you know, I thought at that point I had a relationship with God. I told him where he could go, and it wasn't to heaven. And I flipped him off and I said, you and I are breaking up because you just took what I really cared about, so we're done. And then I, I went and I went and sought out Jack. A lot of. I talked to schools, and I might share that occasionally, and people come up.

[Richard Tate]

To me, did you make up with God?

[Gregory Swan]

And I'm like, yeah, we made up. I mean, the only way back out of the grief, I had to go to someone who, who could help me out of that. I was a mess for a long, long time. I wrote, I read all sorts of books about the afterlife, but I really had. I really, you know, parents are paid to love their kids. But I really liked Drew. I really did. He was so, like, I just gave you an example. He was so funny, and he, you know, he always called me his hero. I poured my mother, whether she meant it or not, poured a lot into me in terms of how great life was and how there's always a positive angle to everything. God is working on me and all this. And I poured that into Drew. I gave him what she gave me. And as a result, you know, every. Nobody wants to get it wrong on their first kid. He kept telling me his whole life till the day he died, dad, you're my hero.

[Richard Tate]

And is that the part that you remember most? Like what? What's the part I remember that's still so vivid for you about your son?

[Gregory Swan]

I, I, I believe. Maybe it's denial, but I believe he cared so much about me he wouldn do this to me. I believe his soul is moved on and he's waiting for me on the other side. That's the most powerful thing. I, I don't think of him in the past tense at all. And I just. Something as simple as Taking the garbage out it, where I live, I take the garbage down to the basement. There's a collage of him there. And I always look forward to taking the garbage out because there's. I talk to him there in, in, in this little collage and, and just get, get re. Pumped up and, and to go back. But I was, I was a mess for a long time and it was through advocating that I finally found a pathway back. There's a story behind that, but I don't want to take up more, more of your time, but let's turn it over to you.

[Richard Tate]

Let's get to the doctor. Sure. On me.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

This is my son Trevor. He was a wonderful kid. Bright, intelligent, funny, also mischievous, you know, you know, always doing practical jokes, sneaking around, doing, doing crazy things. And then around age 11 or 12, his, he changed. Somebody had introduced into cannabis and he liked it. Pretty soon he liked cannabis more than he liked anything else. And I, you know, say anything he wanted to do, if it didn't involve cannabis, he didn't want to do it. So he didn't have time with me.

[Richard Tate]

Do you know why that is?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Because the cannabis gives them something that they seem to can't get any other way.

[Richard Tate]

Was he depressed at that time?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

No, he was quite happy and you know it was, it was for kicks and because it was the cool thing to do and all that. Now he became depressed and had problems later, but when he started he was, I think it was just a mischievous, funny, thrill seeking kind of thing. He was an adrenaline junkie. Yeah, he was a thrill seeker.

[Richard Tate]

Right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And then that progressed to other things very quickly. By the time he was 14 he was into ecstasy and LSD and psilocybin and other stuff and the experiential things, the thrills and all that and then. But he would go on and off. He was brilliant. He. Even after being in a therapeutic boarding school for a year, he. I put him in a charter school where he was able to complete his entire senior year of college in three months and took the SAT and blew the top off of it. Got an old University of Texas. He was 37 when he passed.

[Richard Tate]

And how did he pass?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

He had been on probation for cannabis and psilocybin for four years and so had been more or less abstinent from hard drugs. Got was his probation was coming to an end. He took what he thought was his last drug test. So he decided to go. He was living in Puerto Rico at the time, decided to go to the casinos and party. Got some cocaine and with cocaine. Yeah, Cocaine was. Stimulants were probably the most recurrent problem for him.

[Richard Tate]

Now, let me ask you a question real quick. Your son was dabbling in drugs.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah. Polysubstance.

[Richard Tate]

Right. Was yours?

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah. Yeah. He was clean, though. He was clean for, like, a year and a half. Did a lot of good things during that year and a half.

[Richard Tate]

How did he pass away?

[Gregory Swan]

He took an unprescribed pill from a roommate, which we originally thought was methadone. And who's laced with fentanyl. Well, in 2013. I'm actually having a meeting with the medical examiner tomorrow on his. Because the only 3% of cases were fentanyl induced back in 2013. And they. He had what is called a therapeutic lower amount. What was it called? Within the range.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Within the therapeutic range.

[Gregory Swan]

Within the therapeutic range. So fentanyl. So methadone didn't kill him. So they suspect it was fentanyl.

[Richard Tate]

Because let me tell you how it's happening. Okay. The kids today are. The ones that are using fentanyl really aren't dying as much.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. Because they've got the tolerance.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

And they know how to use it. Right. People think fentanyl is a bad thing, but as you know, as an anesthesiologist, it's. It's a fantastic drug if you use the right way because of the. Because of the short life. Right.

[Gregory Swan]

That's why I brought this packet. I know you know about the packet, but 2mg can be. 2.2 can be fatal if you're on if unexposed to it. And this is 2,000 milligrams.

[Richard Tate]

Right. Well, the kids that are dying today are the straight A students.

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah.

[Richard Tate]

That go to the rave on the weekend.

[Gregory Swan]

That's what happened to Drew.

[Richard Tate]

He's right.

[Gregory Swan]

He relapsed at a rave in Miami. That's right. Was given a Molly. And he called me, his brother, and his mother and said, I need to get back on track. I slipped up. We're like, wow, you relapsed? Because we. We were real serious about his recovery.

[Richard Tate]

Sure.

[Gregory Swan]

And I remember the day he died, my wife came in and. And said something in my office, like, something really bad's going on right now. And she had this premonition about Drew. And I got home, and as I'm driving home, my son Jack called me, goes, I got some bad news for you. Drew's relapsed. I'm like. And as I got out of the car and closed the door, I looked at the handle and thought to myself, at Least he's still alive. He wasn't. We found out later that day, but that it got him. But he relapsed at a rave in Miami on a Mali. And we think he was seeking methadone to.

[Richard Tate]

To detox.

[Gregory Swan]

To. Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Right. So the kids that are dying today are the straight A students.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Because they don't have the fentanyl, they don't have the tolerance.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

And they don't know how to use it.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah. My son was a professional and he'd used cocaine intermittently throughout his life, but he never used opioids. His sister had been involved with a heroin addict at one time. Yeah. And gave him a really bad taste for. For opiates. So he studiously avoided opiates.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah, he was. That's.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

But he. Cocaine with fentanyl.

[Richard Tate]

He was a specialist. Yeah, right. Yeah, he liked cocaine. Yeah. Okay. Just like me, by the way. I didn't like opioids at all. I like to be awake for my high. Right, okay. But the reason you do it is to keep your heart in your chest to calm you down so that you can enjoy your cocaine run. Okay. What happened to him is he wasn't used to that and essentially what he did was a speedball. Yeah.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

He didn't. I don't think he knew that there was fentanyl in that cocaine.

[Richard Tate]

That's right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And he died alone in his bathroom. That's exactly the night. So it's just. Was an accident, but it was tragic.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

After my son passed, I had a really hard time of grief, but I was still working, so I had to go back to work and I didn't. For months. I didn't even tell my co workers that my son had died of a drug overdose because of the stigma.

[Richard Tate]

So you felt shame over it.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Why did you feel the shame?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

I shouldn't have.

[Gregory Swan]

No.

[Richard Tate]

But don't judge it.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Why, why did you feel the shame, the stigma?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

People feel that people that die of drug. Drug problems are sort of self induced and that maybe their parents didn't do a good job.

[Richard Tate]

Okay, well then you can tell those people, whenever you speak to them that Richard Tate says, go yourself.

[Gregory Swan]

Thank you, Richard Tate. Thank you for that.

[Richard Tate]

No problem.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

But eventually, you know, in my grief and struggling with it, I started doing research and I started realizing, oh my God, this was 2022 and really people weren't talking about fentanyl, but I started finding people like, like Song for Charlie and Fentanyl fathers and follow them and on LinkedIn and I'm going I can't sit back and do nothing. I've got to do something. And so I decided I'm going to live my grief out loud. I, you know, said, I'm going to tell everybody what happened. I'm going to start a nonprofit. I'm going to publicize this. I'm going to start educating doctors, which, you know, is sorely needed. And so that made that my mission.

[Richard Tate]

Well, that's a great thing that you. That you just pointed out, because doctors don't know anything about addiction.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

I'd give. I give CME continuing medical education lectures on addiction.

[Richard Tate]

And it's outrageous.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It's amazing how clueless people are.

[Richard Tate]

It's amazing. And the public doesn't know this. Right. They think, oh, the doctor knows. But the doctor, what do you get a week at most in medical school on addiction medicine?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And you're so busy working that we're not circulating among the teenagers and stuff like that. We don't know what's going on in the drug scene and all that. I grew up in the drug scene, so I sort of understood it. And I struggled with my son's recovery for 25 years. So I was aware of the drug scene. I kind of kept my fingers on it. But other Doctors, particularly in 2022, didn't even realize that people were dying of fentanyl. It hadn't really been put out there.

[Richard Tate]

It. When I left Cliffside at. I sold my last treatment center in 2018. Yeah. And it was not even a thing then. Well, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. It wasn't bigger than anything else.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah. And.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah. It was right at the bubble.

[Richard Tate]

That's right.

[Gregory Swan]

Then started going right when I left.

[Richard Tate]

And then the second I left, the world went insane.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Right. 1, 20, 22. And. And then, you know, so now, you know, doctors are more aware because of the news and everything else, but they don't really understand that this is the most. This is the thing that young people are most likely to die of.

[Richard Tate]

Well, no, no, the thing most likely to die from are the doctors. And let me tell you why. Okay. Because if you put a patient on opioids for longer than five to seven days, you don't have it. It's got you.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. And then the kids are looking. Yeah. All right. And you can't do the doctor shopping anymore because all these systems talk to each other. I could have gotten away. I got away with it for three years.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

So did Rush Limbaugh.

[Richard Tate]

Rush Limbaugh?

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah. He's doctor Shopped Is he.

[Richard Tate]

Is he passed?

[Gregory Swan]

Yes, but he was, he was, he was addicted.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Doxycontin. Severely addicted.

[Richard Tate]

Me too.

[Gregory Swan]

That was Drew's. That was what got Drew and was doctor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had a sports injury. That's right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

But I can tell you, to illustrate and validate your point about doctors not knowing much, I have a, I think a very relevant quick story about that. I was in a head on car accident. Broke my pelvis in 2017. So I had to be put on pain meds. Really hurts to break your inner dudeness. It's ridiculous. And so I was on a lot of Percocet a day. Fortunately, even though I'm in recovery, that was not my drug of choice. I liked the stimulants.

[Richard Tate]

So you liked cocaine?

[Gregory Swan]

Well, I like Adderall. Anything that would keep me stimulated.

[Richard Tate]

Did you ever use with your son?

[Gregory Swan]

No.

[Richard Tate]

Okay.

[Gregory Swan]

No way. So anyway, what happened is I was on a ton of these pain meds. It was like seven Percocet a day. And so I went to my doctor, I said, I can walk now, my pelvis is healing. Can we get off these things? And he's like, oh yeah, just go cold turkey. I won't say his name because I like the guy, but he said, I went cold turkey. And by 3 o' clock in the morning, I felt like I was being electrocuted. And I literally understood as an hour would go by and just one second went by on the clock and I had to wait till 8 in the morning to see this guy again, grab him and say, that was the most irresponsible thing you ever did. I. Give me the drugs and we're gonna, and I'm pulling your medical card. We're gonna do it my way and I'm gonna taper off. And I. When I walked away from Percocet, I was down to a. Just a dot on my tongue, like from 1 16th to 120, 132 to nothing. And I never noticed it. I said, it's called tapering. It was all legit, you know. And he goes, fine, we'll do it that way. I'm fine with that. I'm like, who told you how turkey works?

[Richard Tate]

How ridiculous is that? And dangerous.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

There's a, there's a great TED talk of a guy that similar story had been on, had car accident, had gotten, you know, hooked on Dilaudid and Percocet. And his doctor tried to taper him in two weeks. And it's like he was describing how the agony that he Went through withdrawal. He went through it because he didn't. He didn't know any better. But he said it was the most miserable experience of his life.

[Richard Tate]

Do you know what's funny? Do you know what's funny? We do that all the time, but it depends on the amount that they've been using and the duration that they've been using for. Right. So I just had probably my favorite client of all time. Okay. Here. And he was on opioids for 20 years my age. Okay. 20 years. And he went ahead and it. And we had the conversation that we always have. Okay, do you want this really comfortable or do you want to do this a little quicker? What do you want? Right? And this guy was very well off. And so he said, no, I don't mind how long I have to be here. I just want to not suffer. And it took us, he. 90 days to detox this guy for 20 years. 90 days. And then he sits down with me because I go to say goodbye, and he looks at me and he says, hey, man, can we talk maybe. I don't know if I should leave. And I said, babe, if you don't know if you should leave, then you shouldn't leave. That's the red flag. I said, you do what you want, but why not? You just detoxed. Why not go through an entire month and you'll get three years? Because that's what it's like at my. At my place, right?

[Gregory Swan]

Okay.

[Richard Tate]

At carrera, you do 30 days. That's like getting three years of therapy. The kid goes ahead and does it. And I check in on him every month. He's almost got a year or so.

[Gregory Swan]

That's awesome.

[Richard Tate]

But I check in on him every month because I just love, love this guy. And he's doing great. That's great. Great relationship with his wife, mending his relationship with his kids. Great relationship with his old man.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. I mean, that's it. I mean, doing really, really well. So it. It. You gotta. It's different for everybody. Most of these places will put you in. Yeah, right. And the same detox protocol for everybody. And that's wrong.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Well, some try to. To, you know, particularly if you get put in jail or prison, they want to detox you in 72 hours. You know, they basically withdraw you. They give you some medicines to try to make the detox a little bit easier.

[Gregory Swan]

Like.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Like dexmedetomy or something like clonidine, something like that, to. To take away some of the misery. But they expect. They basically just let withdrawal happen at its you know, fastest pace.

[Richard Tate]

It's worse than that. That's worse than even that. One of my best friends from childhood was on, like, 4 or 500 milligrams a day of Oxycontin, so you know how bad that is. Wow. Right? I mean, I was the same way. And so these guys were on it. Michael and his other friend. Michael survived the detox in jail, and his friend didn't.

[Gregory Swan]

Didn't survive the detox.

[Richard Tate]

Didn't survive the detox in jail.

[Gregory Swan]

When I was going through withdrawal, I understood right away why people rob drugstores for sure, why they would order and try to believe the lie that it's really the real drug when you're ordering it online, whether it's Xanax, oxycontin, Percocet, Adderall. None of that is true. It's laced with fentanyl. But to believe it because you're so desperate. And I remember when Drew graduated from college, I was with him, and he pointed out the apartment he was living at. He goes, you see an apartment up there, Dad? I go, yeah, he's that bedroom. I've suffered more hell than you ever want to know that I've gone through. That's right. That's where I would detox.

[Richard Tate]

That's right. It's the worst detox you can have that and benzos.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Absolutely.

[Richard Tate]

Greg, I want you to tell me about Fentanyl Fathers. Okay. Your mission, how many students you've reached so far and the work you're doing.

[Gregory Swan]

Thanks for asking about it. That's. I'm from Detroit. And so what we do when we launch a car is Detroit. Yes.

[Richard Tate]

Okay, go on.

[Gregory Swan]

And what we do is, you know, you don't launch a car to the southeast Michigan Ford dealers. You launch it for the country. And so that means everybody. You have to. You have a target audience to. To get a brand out. To me, it was very obvious. The most sweet spot to. To aggregate toward kids who are dropping of this was the high school age. To get them to. To herd these cats all in the same room was the high school age. That was it. Yes. Middle school is definitely a place that's not too early to start with kids. Some would argue even grade school college is where they started dropping. But the quick genesis of Fennel Fathers was the very first month Drew died. I was on a radio show with a friend who was in the business talking about. Didn't even know what he died of. Hadn't even gotten the toxicology back yet, and just reminiscing about Drew's Two hours of that, and I got a little relief from that. I remember getting ready, going to that thing, thinking, this is the most important, important day in my life. I'm talking about it five years later. You know, my wife would hear me in the bathtub just crying in the morning, playing Michael Jackson's Gone Too Soon. I was a mess. I. I really. It was. I was so debilitated. I was very. I had a good business at the time, and a lot of people around me kept me going, but I could barely keep going. It.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It.

[Gregory Swan]

You lose. It's despair and hopelessness combined. And it's that bullet that takes out the kid, takes out both parents right at the same time.

[Richard Tate]

And I tell you not to interrupt, but can I tell you what my feelings are on this?

[Gregory Swan]

Sure.

[Richard Tate]

High school's too late.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

Okay.

[Richard Tate]

Way too late.

[Gregory Swan]

Okay.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Elementary school.

[Richard Tate]

Even. Even better than that. Even better than that. This is what's needed. Every grade, starting with kindergarten, right at the beginning of each semester. So it's kindergarten one through 12. That's 13 years right at the beginning of every semester. So that's 26 times these kids have to see a video and then have a conversation about it. So think of it this way. Each grade is a different. Is a different kind of cartoon, right? So that it's age appropriate. So I'm not saying that this is going to happen, but something like this. So in kindergarten, my kids liked Caillou. Now, okay, do you know what? Caillou is? Okay.

[Gregory Swan]

Popular with kindergarteners, but that's what.

[Richard Tate]

So it's this little cartoon with this little boy, and he's Canadian and he's super sweet, just like Canadians are. And it's just this sweet little cartoon for young kids. And then you get older, and then you have the next kind of thing that they're in. And then finally you get to high school and you have the south park version.

[Gregory Swan]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

Of it. Right. So if you do something like that, okay. It becomes conditioning.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

I can prove it to you. When I was a kid, every morning in school, we stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Do you know what my age group doesn't do? They don't say, I hate America.

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah.

[Richard Tate]

They don't. They don't. Death to America.

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah.

[Richard Tate]

We don't do that.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. We were conditioned when we were younger. I can prove it again. We can go the opposite way. Islamic terrorists teach their children before they can speak, okay. To kill Westerners, Jews, everybody. Okay? And then they do. I can prove it again for the last 20 years. Okay. Or more. Qatar has been sending a ton of money to our elite universities to establish groups, hate groups. Now, every kid under 30. Okay. Is got this I hate our country thing going on. Now, if we can do this from young age, from a young age, then this is what needs to happen so that they're conditioned right from a very early age. And you have to have the conversation early and often with your children. Early and often. I have it all the time.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

What I was going to say was that the. The description that you have of a, you know, a yearly or semester, you know, informational thing. Yeah, that's great for giving them the information and the knowledge. But what really is necessary for prevention is for them to hit it emotionally.

[Richard Tate]

That's correct.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And that's where parents that have lost a kid can break the ice. When we talk to a high field assembly and we follow the movie Dead on Arrival, which you've probably seen. And when that movie goes off, we put up a picture of our kid and we say, this is my kid. And he was just as smart as any of y'. All. He was just as cool as any of y'.

[Richard Tate]

All.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

He navigated the drug scene for 20 years. He thought he was too smart. It would never get him, but it got him. So there's none of you in this audience that's so smart that this can't kill you.

[Richard Tate]

And you're a thousand percent correct.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And that emotional connection, for sure. And that's what we say is the secret sauce. But that's why parents have the impact.

[Richard Tate]

But it's got to be all of it, guys. Yeah, I'm not talking. I'm not talking about instead of.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

I'm talking about in addition to.

[Gregory Swan]

I think. I think you proved it. You said, I'll prove it. And you did prove it. Of course, I'm of the same generation where. What is up with these people who don't love America?

[Richard Tate]

What the heck?

[Gregory Swan]

It's so anti my every thinking. And this anti Semitism. I mean, I come from a place where they have this Holocaust museum in Farmington Hills, and they're like, so. So we never forget. I'm like, man, I gotta give it to my Jewish neighbors. They're gonna make sure we never forget. I'm thinking, that'll never return. I am stunned that it's at anti Semitism. I'm stunned out loud. And so. And so.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

And so I'm like, wtf? So. But in terms of this conditioning, you're right. But here's. Here's The. Here's the difference. Like, I actually, I was very, very privileged to be able to have this eye to eye conversation with the President when he was there, when we were there July 16th. And I said, the, the bereaved parents are the secret sauce. But here's the thing. And he goes, no, you're absolutely right. He goes, the. We love our law enforcement, but if kids are getting lectured to by law enforcement, it's a cliche they often can't afford to pay attention to. So are they going to pay any more attention in school? And there's these anti drug talks in school and there's, there's discussion whether or not the jury's out whether dare ever worked. But the advantage of fentanyl, the upside of fentanyl is that it's deadly. So we're not selling Boy Scouts in church as an option to drugs to kids which they might roll their eyes at. And by the way, nobody rolls their eyes at us in our high school summer. Stunning. No, I'm telling you, it's amazing. It's amazing.

[Richard Tate]

No, no, it's not amazing because. Because people are, they're not evil. I mean, these are kids that are looking at fathers that lost their.

[Gregory Swan]

They really are amazing kids. And, and, but the thing is, when you're talking about life and death, you realize. They realize you're not here to lecture me on a healthier lifestyle. It's not Ward Cleaver. It's like they're doing me a favor. It's a heads up. And when you talk about life and death, that gives you the license to really get their attention.

[Richard Tate]

You know what else I love? Guys? You know what else is a great idea? When a therapist finishes their education, they have three years where they have to obtain their hours. It's about three years and then they can go on and do this. Here's the thing, though. I've spoken at a number of psychological colleges.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Okay. I did one last week.

[Richard Tate]

There it is. And I can tell you therapists, kids who are going to therapy school, correct me if I'm wrong, because you were just there. Yeah, Very altruistic. Yes. The salt of the earth. You don't get into that profession unless your soul is good.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

You know, my daughter's one.

[Richard Tate]

That's right. So you know, okay. Assault of the earth. Now, right now you have what's called preceptors or whatever the hell they're called. And they get paid these supervisors, it's called supervision. And they sign off on your hours and you pay them. Okay? Well, aside from the fact that that's predatory and horrible. Yeah, okay, Right. That's horrible. Because these people have nothing. Okay. This was my idea. Wouldn't it be great if the president signed an executive order?

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah, I'm all about that.

[Richard Tate]

That says, okay, if you're going into counseling for drugs or the homeless issue, it's signed off automatically. Okay. There's no nonsense. Let me tell you something. If I went to Pacifica, let's say okay or Pacific, whatever it's called, where I spoke the last time. If I went there, I can tell you I could walk right into the administrator's office and say, hey, give me everybody that wants to go do this thing with us, okay? We're going to sign off on all their. It gets signed off automatically. Okay. Listen to what we could do. We could kill two birds with one stone. I'm very much. My dream is to help the military and the veterans.

[Gregory Swan]

Beautiful.

[Richard Tate]

That's my dream.

[Gregory Swan]

Served in the military. Right here.

[Richard Tate]

There it is. And I've been treating the military and veterans for 17 years for free. I've always had three guys in my place at all times, as I do now. We just got our contract to treat veterans in military. Took us two years. Don't worry. We don't know how to bill for it yet, but it doesn't matter. They've been here for free all the time. So we'll figure it out. Yeah, because, you know, it's the government, it's different. Yeah, but think about that for a second. You go, you walk in these encampments and you find all these homeless people. And a lot of them are veterans because of the trauma. And you find these people and you literally, like golden retrievers.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

You take them and you and you. And you put them in a place. Now then you can think about, oh, well, there's all this government property. Well, why can't we do something? Think kabuts mixed with habitat from humanity. Right. And then you teach them how to fish. Yeah, right. And if they can't guess what we do, we. When they come to the grounds, these are the people that give them the orientation and show them around. Right. Maybe they can't do that. Maybe they just get in the car and they go back to their old encampment. Right. With the therapist. And I say, hey, this is better. I've been here and I've been there. Come with me. Yeah, right. I mean, these are simple things that can get done in every little city in every little town. Right?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

That you can do that, make a difference. Today.

[Gregory Swan]

Who are you going to have do them, though?

[Richard Tate]

Ah, that's great. So the president just went ahead and allocated $400 million to go to west to the. The VA campus right here on Wilshire and San Vicente, which is the campus in the country.

[Gregory Swan]

Fantastic.

[Richard Tate]

Okay, so he did that for homeless vets and for substance use disorder treatment. And he's so aligned. Like, I'm so aligned with him because I was there before. He did this six months earlier, and I was walking with my buddy who heads the veterans here for the county of Los Angeles, and I'm like, how many people are in that building? Oh, that's a vacant building. How many you got in that building? Oh, that's a vacant building. You could have put a thousand veterans in all the vacant buildings they had there. And I just started crying.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

I said, what is this?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

And the president, like, is like, yeah, I'm done with this. I'm done with it. Yeah, like that.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah. He moves fast. He makes decisions. He did something. You said you. Right before fentanyl became blew up as an issue in 2018, you exited your last place. I had an event like that involving $6 billion, which came from the President directly. I kind of wandered through the desert of grief for a while, and then I talked my wife into running for Congress to bring a spotlight to me.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Really?

[Gregory Swan]

Yes. To bring spotlight.

[Richard Tate]

Is she a congressman?

[Gregory Swan]

No, she. She was disqualified at the. At the last minute from Dirty Pool. But she. We got something very significant done. Her dad was very famous in Detroit. His name was Bill Bond. The movie anchorman was based on his life. Ridiculous guy. Anyway, Christine ran for Congress, and we got a lot of free media because she had a famous dad. So we got called into D.C. and we met with Paul Ryan's team at the end of this day of vetting. And I told my wife, I'm like, this is. The one that counts is Paul Ryan. So we walked in there and we had all.

[Richard Tate]

When he is the.

[Gregory Swan]

The speaker of the house, 2018. They had the whole thing lined up. And we walked in and we were very candid. And we're like, look, you got a problem. They're like, what's our problem? We said, well, John McCain did this to the American Health Care act six months ago. You have 35,000 dead Americans on your hands. We think that's your fault. They're like, who do you think you are? What do you mean, our fault? Like, well, whose fault is the Democrats? They don't have the House. They don't have the Congress. They don't have the Senate, they don't have the White House. Whose fault is it? It's yours because the American healthcare went down. You hung a donut on doing anything for the opioid epidemic. You think that's cool with us? We're bereaved parents. They agreed with us almost violently. I got a call from the guy who held the spot before, his name's Kerry Bendivoglio. He goes, swan, what'd you do over there in D.C. i'm like, I thought we were gonna be removed under security, but we pushed the envelope. He goes, every congressman has to know about the opioid epidemic because in the State of the Union address this week, he's going to pitch it and he was only going to talk about military, but they talked him into pitching it for two, two minutes. The opioid epidemic. I go, that's great, I guess we did our job. He goes, no, you don't understand. It's going to get budget because you did that. So it got $6 billion. If you go to the White House archive Melania Trump's pictures there, it says ending the opioid epidemic 2018. Well, it didn't work out. Deaths went down, by the way, a little bit. Ads were out there ubiquitously. You know, the angle was the sibling and the parent lecturing the using kid in the family to get off the opioids. I don't know who was put in charge of that. It wasn't someone like and with experience. So they, it was a optimally executed, but that money was spent and also put a lot of heat on the opioid epidemic. So 2019, fentanyl explodes. And it was exploding and it was approaching a hundred thousand deaths. And I thought, I'm not doing anything, you know, to, to help solve this. And when Carrie Lake lost her election, I thought she was going to seal the border down in Arizona. She lost the governor's race. I thought I got to get in the game and do something. And I talked to other like minded parents on a zoom call, like can we do anything? Are we just victims? And that's how Fentol fathers started. We're like, we're going to go get into schools. And the difference that what separates the men from the boys in this business is those who can get into schools and those who can't. And we were failed for a long time getting into schools until we crack the code. Now we're in and we've done 200,000 students and it's, we've, we've had data from every single one, we take a survey. We know their before and after, lift their awareness. And there's 26,727 schools in the country. That's the job that we got to get into those.

[Richard Tate]

But we got to do both.

[Gregory Swan]

We have to do. We have. I agree with you on the gr.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It's always all of the.

[Richard Tate]

It's. It's. We got big lives. There's social media. These kids have the attention span of a gnat.

[Gregory Swan]

No kidding.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yep.

[Richard Tate]

Okay.

[Gregory Swan]

No kidding.

[Richard Tate]

That's why I'm gonna take this from Anthony Robbins. Repetition is the mother of skill.

[Gregory Swan]

Okay.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. We here, coach Nick Saban. You guys know who he is, right? Oh, yeah, right.

[Gregory Swan]

Last guy, he went down to Michigan in his last game.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah. Okay. Not happy about that, by the way. Okay. Roll Tide. Now, listen, here's. Here's the thing, okay? This guy said the greatest thing ever. We don't do things over and over again until we get them right. We do them over and over and over again until we can't get them wrong. This is the same thing. This is. This is.

[Gregory Swan]

I like that.

[Richard Tate]

Reps. We do it over and over and over again until we can't get it wrong. This is simple. Listen, can we just get back to common sense here?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

That's all this is. Right. Okay. Yeah.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It's like in teaching, they say, you know, first you tell them what you're going to tell them, and then you tell them, and then you tell them what you told them, and then you tell them what you told them again.

[Richard Tate]

Right, right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Until they finally get it.

[Richard Tate]

That's right. And it's got to. It's got to be all the time, early and often.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And it's not the facts and figures. I mean, kids can learn that. It's the number one killer of people, and it's the. Yeah, you know, they can learn all the facts and figures, but it's the emotion.

[Gregory Swan]

If they don't take it in and.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Realize that, you know, their buddy's going to die of this. You know, I look at them and I say, there's a hundred kids in this room. The chances are at least one or two of you is going to die of fentanyl in the next 10 years if y' all don't do something. It's up to you. You have got to reach out to your peers and make them stop. It's up to you.

[Richard Tate]

It has to be visceral. You're correct. And if you don't. And you guys were a thousand percent right, it's got to be emotional. But look, man, everybody learns differently. Yeah. Okay, so think of it like this. Here's the person. This person learns it here. This person learns it here. Some people need it. And everywhere. Yes, okay, I'm slow. I need it everywhere. Yeah. Okay. But when I get it, it's clear. And then I'm like, okay, this is simple. All right, let's get on with this. Dr. Latson, through fentanyl Fathers and your own foundation, Candles in the in the Wind Foundation. What does your advocacy and your education look like day to day?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It's been quite a few, quite a bit of time researching and learning and following other nonprofits to get a pulse of what's going on. Greg gave me an amazing opportunity. I had been trying for two years to get permission to go to high schools and talk to kids, and I came across Greg and reach out to him, and he had an opening and he sent me down to Miami and lo and behold, he gave me some training and established a format. I got to speak to over a thousand kids in one week. It was the most incredible experience I can imagine.

[Richard Tate]

Do you guys have LA Unified School District yet?

[Gregory Swan]

No, I've heard mixed reviews on getting in there, but we'll get in there. Yeah, we have, we have some really good advocates here in LA that are.

[Richard Tate]

Well, I have, I, When I knew you guys were coming and she was telling me about this, I called a girlfriend of mine who either works now there or used to be one of the head people there, and we're speaking at 4 o'. Clock.

[Gregory Swan]

Trust me, I'm going to tackle you. Yeah, on that.

[Richard Tate]

Oh, don't worry about it. I, I, yeah, I'm like, be anybody.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah, that's beautiful. Anybody who's got a connection like that, that, I mean, that's how it's done.

[Richard Tate]

No, no, it's how it's done. The problem is so few people want to take time out of their day to do anything for anybody, which is crazy to me.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Well, I do. I do two or three things. I do speaking with the kids when Greg can line me up for that. I give continuing medical education to doctors and any other group that will listen to me. And I also, through my nonprofit, support getting people into treatment. I have a friend that's a peer support specialist that's recovering on his own. He circulates among the homeless community. And when he finds somebody that's ready to consider treatment. I live in rural New Mexico. The nearest treatment center, the nearest Detox center is 2 1/2 hours away. So I reimbursed him for the capability of taking people to treatment.

[Richard Tate]

Oh, so you pay for the transportation?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

The transportation, that's great. It's a very, very difficult set of people to work with sometimes.

[Richard Tate]

You know, we have a non profit and we've got this other thing that when people call and we can't place them either at the high end center or the in network affordable center that we have like it's like $205,500 for 30 days of treatment with HMOs, all that stuff. So it's great. Right. But we can't treat everybody. We don't do like government stuff. We don't do the state, you know, like the Obamacare stuff. Right. We don't do that. But we have a whole department where we find stuff for them. Because I didn't want anybody to ever feel like, oh, because they can't come to my place, I don't care. That's like insanity to have.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

One of the things that I emphasize is that it needs to be shared decision making. You know, some people benefit from residential treatment. Some people are not willing, maybe they're not quite as, you know, at the end stage. Maybe they're still, still have a job, still have a family. They don't want to be away from their family, give up their job. And so they need to be offered other things like medication assisted treatment or intensive outpatient. There needs to be a menu and we need to discuss with people all the different options. That's right. So that we're not forcing them into one mold or another. It shouldn't be residential treatment or nothing.

[Richard Tate]

Well, I don't mind forcing anybody into anything.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Coerced care is definitely a strong thing. I mean my son probation probably extended my son's life many years.

[Richard Tate]

Listen, there's only two types of people that come to treatment, only two, okay. People that want to get well and people that want to get the heat off. Yeah. Okay, so coercion, think about it. Coercion is the second one to get the heat off. Well, why is it coercion? Because your wife is going to leave you, Right. Or your boss is going to fire you or you're going to end up in jail. Right. Or whatever it is. That's coercion. Now most people say, well, he's got to do it for himself, okay? Nothing has killed more people than that, okay? And the reason is, is because, and I can prove it.

[Gregory Swan]

That may be ignorance.

[Richard Tate]

Well, that is ignorance.

[Gregory Swan]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

And so let's. Do you know how, how I can Prove it to you. Okay. That it's that that's killed more people than anything. Because if those are the only two people that come into treatment, then why do 50% of the people coming in to get the heat off stay sober?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

Right. Well, there you go. You just right again.

[Richard Tate]

I'm. I've got. Hey, guys, I'm here all night.

[Gregory Swan]

Doctor, listen, Dr. Gary came up with something, I think that's interesting to you. He talked about the stats because he served 90 of anesthesiology's fentanyl and.

[Richard Tate]

Well, then do it because it's a good. It's an effective drug.

[Gregory Swan]

Now just real quick, do you have on top of your mind. I want to put you on the spot. What percentage of people do you think are born like addicts or predisposed to addiction? Would you say 10%?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

10.

[Gregory Swan]

5 to 10.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah. That track here, this is how I look at it.

[Gregory Swan]

Okay.

[Richard Tate]

10% have a problem. They're problem drinkers or users.

[Gregory Swan]

Okay.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah. But only half those. About 5% rise to the level of where it's got them. They don't have it.

[Gregory Swan]

That's interesting. Okay.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

An illustration from administering fentanyl to tens of thousands of patients over my career. If you take 10 people and you're talking to them before their surgery, or maybe they're of pain, you give them a bit of fentanyl. I'm talking 50 micrograms, tiny amounts. Six or eight of them, seven out of those 10 will go, yeah, that feels good. You know, it helps my pain and everything. Two or three of them will get violently nauseated, never want to they feel it again. And one or two of them will go, wow, what was that? Craft more.

[Richard Tate]

Right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

You know, and if you talk to.

[Richard Tate]

Them while you're doing it, they get violently angry because you just ruined their high.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

So it's about the same as the.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Definitely. There's some people are wired to have a euphoric response to opiates that's different than the general. Most of the general population, you know, most people that get prescribed Vicodin or Norco or Percocet.

[Richard Tate]

Can I tell you why that is hooked?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

But a few do and it's because of. It's a. It's a predisposition. They respond so pleasurable.

[Richard Tate]

It's not just a predisposition. Let me tell you what it really is. Opioids are called painkillers for a reason. But they work better on emotional pain than physical pain.

[Gregory Swan]

Interesting.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. Wow. As you know, four Advil and two extra strength Tylenol are prescription strength medication. Okay. That's right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. All right. So why do you need the other stuff? Yeah. Okay. But it works better on emotional pain. Yeah, yeah, much better.

[Gregory Swan]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

And I can prove it. When a guy's going through a depression, right. Where his head's just chewing on him, I'm a piece of garbage. I like all that. Right. And then you give them that pill and they go. And the noise quiets, and you're not chewing on yourself anymore. Hey, man. Okay. You're doing that until the wheels fall off.

[Gregory Swan]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

Because you are suffering and now you're not. Yeah, okay.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah. You're in the addict's head, man.

[Richard Tate]

That's for sure. That's because I'm an addict.

[Gregory Swan]

That's good.

[Richard Tate]

All right. Greg.

[Gregory Swan]

Yes, sir.

[Richard Tate]

Why do you think hearing from bereaved parents has such a stronger impact on students than hearing from law enforcement or teachers? We've touched on this a little. Just give it to me.

[Gregory Swan]

That is teeing me up, because that's the linchpin of what we're doing. And this is where I said, after we. We were at the White House and the Halt Fentanyl act was signed and we got the privilege of meeting the President, I. I said, what am I going to say to this guy? I'm going to have one second in front of him. I said, Mr. President, the bereaved parent is the linchpin to kids paying attention. I'll give you an example. I was sitting before a school. It was a thousand kids in the audience. And as they typically do, the principal wants to put on a good impression for us. We're in Miami Dade. And a quick stat on Miami Dade. Deaths went down by 350 year over year. Because we'd seen every high school and every middle school in Miami Dade. It went down, what, 350? According to the medical examiner, the coroner.

[Richard Tate]

350 less deaths, adolescent deaths in Florida.

[Gregory Swan]

Or in Miami Dade.

[Richard Tate]

Really?

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah. Went down because we were comprehensive. Saw every single high school and middle school there. That's fantastic. It was great. And when we started this campaign, guys.

[Richard Tate]

Do it every year at the same high schools. Okay, thank you.

[Gregory Swan]

Because you have the juniors and seniors coming out.

[Richard Tate]

It's not just that. It's. They forget and it's like out of sight, out of mind.

[Gregory Swan]

No, you're right. So one of these. We had a thousand kids in this audience, and the principal gets up and there's an old Cheech and Chong tape. I don't know if you remember it, where the lady Saying, class, class, please shut up. And it's this parent voice with we're. They're used to hearing that. Like Charlie Brown's teacher. I told, I told the principal, I go, hey, you don't have to yell these guys or beg them to pay attention to me. I have a little technique that makes them just go dead silent. She goes, I need that technique. I go, you can't have that technique because you'd have to lose your kid to get that technique. But just give me the mic and just introduce us. And I got it. All I say is the simplest thing. Hey, guys, like, I'm Ward Cleaver. Like, I'm so clueless, I don't even know they have social media. And they're like, who is this yahoo from wherever? Hey, guys, I'm here on a sad mission. And I point to the screen where we're about to start. I lost my kid to this dead silence. Put their cell phones down, they lock in. And there's one thing that kids are really, really good at, and it's recognizing authenticity because they're so played all the time. Like, go ahead, freak show, let's hear what you got. And then we have a riveting 45 minute, very disciplined communication set for them with movies and PSAs and stats and all that, and a commitment not to do it at the end. And we measure it, but we're there to prevent them from ever starting. Don't try, don't die. It's our, it's our message. And they're very, very moved by it. And they're crystal clear. They'll. They're more likely to go near and drink gasoline than they would go near an unprescribed pill. After we're done with them, they're. They're good. They're like, I'm gonna go out of this world some way. I ain't going out that way. And one one things we'll tell them is take your precious little body, you little Einsteins, and toss it off the side of a mountain. You know what that's called? Base jumping. You'll die 1 in 5,000 times if you have wings on. You. Do this 8 and 10 times, you're gone. And you're taking out your parents, too. And these kids don't even have enough grip of their own mortality. The number one reason for not doing it or not trying it and getting the memo is they don't want to do this to the mother. They don't want their parents to come in and find their feet cold in the morning and collapse. And then they're.

[Richard Tate]

They're young enough. The second they're at 13. Okay. Sixth graders, they don't care.

[Gregory Swan]

Sixth and sixth, is that right?

[Richard Tate]

Well, sure, because now you get to the point where it's about socialization and fitting in and, you know, when you're in elementary school, you don't have that when you're in elementary school. Okay, yeah.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Parents are still good. Parents are still your friends once you hit adolescence.

[Richard Tate]

That's.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Parents are the enemy, almost.

[Richard Tate]

That's right.

[Gregory Swan]

You know, I noticed you kissed Dominic, which was beautiful. And I kissed my son Drew, until he just figured it out that I couldn't kiss him anymore.

[Richard Tate]

My son hasn't figured that out.

[Gregory Swan]

Don't let him. I wasn't. You know, I just wanted to kiss him and right up until he was, you know, a grown up. But Drew helped me start writing a book called 1001 Great Comebacks to Peer Pressure. And we wrote that book, we finished it with some kids from SAFE students advocating fentanyl education. And it's available for free at the bottom of our website. I'm not pushing our particular website, but it's fentanylfathers.org at the bottom is a free book. Now, you had said you were given this free book by Jackie Siegel, which is how her daughter was thinking.

[Richard Tate]

I was given it by David Siegel, the man.

[Gregory Swan]

Your brother. Your brother. So David. David is. Is one of my heroes. And Jackie's really picked up the mantle. But I. She was. She spoke also in front of the President. She said, unless she got it wrong, her sister died on the same day. Yes, David died.

[Richard Tate]

I think it's the same day.

[Gregory Swan]

And. And her sister had overdosed on a line of cocaine and was laced with fentanyl. So now she's out of the box. Fentanyl champion. So we combined forces and created something called Angel Army. And we are. She's going. We're going to.

[Richard Tate]

That was my. That was. That's what I wanted to. That's when I wanted to bring up.

[Gregory Swan]

That's how to scale the.

[Richard Tate]

The. To scale it. Because remember these. These. These therapists, these brand new therapists. And you can say, oh, well, they're not seasoned. Yeah, you know what? They're not seasoned. But you want to know what else they're not?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

That's what gives them jaded.

[Gregory Swan]

They're not.

[Richard Tate]

They're not desensitized. The process of helping another human being.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Yes, but I, I interrupted you. Tell me what Angel Army.

[Gregory Swan]

No, so it was great. So it was Been. It's been great to get to know the seagulls. They. They wanted to do the same thing. Their daughter Victoria didn't necessarily die of fentanyl. She had an overdose. I think the. The final cause was methadone, but I don't even know if they were testing in 2015.

[Richard Tate]

They're. They're opioids.

[Gregory Swan]

It didn't matter. And you know what else? Well, you hear her daughter. Her sister died of fentanyl. So just this year, 2025. And then she lost David, and she had. And she had lost another family member, too. And I remember we. We did the. The White House that night. That night we had dinner with, believe it or not, Cash Patel. The next day, we were doing fox and friends. 30 million viewers.

[Richard Tate]

Cash.

[Gregory Swan]

But he's a phenomenal.

[Richard Tate]

He's phenomenal.

[Gregory Swan]

He's a great guy. Very normal. I told him about the. This. There's something called. There's something out of St. Louis called contaminated a movie. And it talked about in China, they're selling fentanyl precursors to Western customers. And he hadn't seen the movie. I'm like, run, don't walk to see it, because you need to see that this is celebrated and supported and underwritten by the Chinese government and sent to.

[Richard Tate]

Mexico, where you have a guy in a hazmat suit. No kidding. With an oar and a big vat. And that is the level of science.

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yes. That's it. Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Right. And then they take it and they put it in the pill molds.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah, right.

[Richard Tate]

And they're like a chocolate chip cookie.

[Gregory Swan]

Right, Exactly.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Right.

[Gregory Swan]

Some of the.

[Richard Tate]

It's like sometimes you get a. A pill with too many. Too much fentanyl, too many chocolate chips, and sometimes you get it with none. Guess what you do when you get it with none?

[Gregory Swan]

You die.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

You want more, you take another one.

[Gregory Swan]

Right.

[Richard Tate]

And then you die.

[Gregory Swan]

Right, right, right. And then National Geographic has something called a story about that. The. The precursors coming in. But anyway, Jackie and Fentanyl and the Victoria Voice foundation, we've been working with them. They. They want to use this as their speaker organization to get out. And we. We said, look, let's get every single bereaved parent that we can. There's a million of them just since 2019 on fentanyl issue. There's a million.

[Richard Tate]

Wait a minute. Do you know what I do? You know, there's something called Alexandra's Law. Do you. Yeah. You know, you're with that. And you know Matthew, right?

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm having Dinner with him tonight.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. So you tell him you came and.

[Gregory Swan]

He says hi to you. Oh, says tell. Tell him I said, tell Rich I said hello. I got a text from him.

[Richard Tate]

You tell him I said hello. Yeah. So one of the reasons I did this was because of Matt's daughter. Yeah, Alex.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

And it just destroyed me. Yeah. So I started this thing because that hit me. And my buddy Nathan Hockman introduced me to Matt.

[Gregory Swan]

Wow, that's great. You know, there's. There's another law called Melanie's Law, and she died. She was 15 years old. She died in a Hollywood high school on property. They. San Diego got together and they mandated fentanyl awareness. The first one in the country. Mandated fentanyl awareness education in the school schools. You got to warn these kids. That's been my heart forever. And I. I followed them doing that. And then Melanie's law ended up on Gavin Newson's desk. He signed it, and so it mandates fentanyl awareness education, but they're not compliant. The California schools are not compliant. So we have some parent couples that are going into schools and reminding them that you are obligated by law to train on this. We have a DEA approved program, the fentanyl fathers program.

[Richard Tate]

Anybody getting federal funds for anything, okay? For anything. I don't care if it's to the schools or whatever. If there's federal funds being sent to California and California doesn't go ahead and do what they're supposed to be doing in this realm, okay? Just don't give me any goddamn money. Yeah, no money, you get none. Okay? That's what I love about this guy. Yeah, that's what I love about him.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah, for sure.

[Richard Tate]

He's not. He's not listening to the noise. He's not being told. Told around, and he's not being told. I can't do this. He's like, yeah, okay, cool. I'm the president. You're not. Go do it. Yeah, I love that. Yep. Love it.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Oh, yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

And so we're. And so we're just basically bent. Resolved to scale. And the way to scale is give these brief parents who definitely want to tell their story. Not all of them are public speakers, but they had. They have their five minute story down. It may suck the life out of them that day, but it gives them perfect purpose in their pain and it gets them out of bed. And at the end of the day, as a brief parent, the ultimate thing I think we could give them is to say, had your kid not died, 100 kids would have died. Because you weren't there telling them about your kid.

[Richard Tate]

Geo bothers me more than anything in the world. You guys took your pain okay and made certain that other parents didn't feel the way you feel.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

I don't. I never want another parent to feel. Ever.

[Gregory Swan]

Ever.

[Richard Tate]

It's the worst. Listen, absolutely, for me, it's okay. It's something I could never get over. It is the. It is.

[Gregory Swan]

You're a lover, your daughter, the way you talked. And I met Dominic. No, you couldn't.

[Richard Tate]

No, it's. It's the worst thing that can ever happen to a parent. It's the most unnatural thing in the world to bury your child. I just can't even discuss it. And I've got a podcast on this where I'm continually re injuring myself all the time. Yeah. And it's torture.

[Gregory Swan]

Thank God for guys like you because we're not going to get it done. Just scaling with brief parents. We need people champions like you. That's why I was so excited to meet you. And I knew you were friends with David Siegel and so was the President was friends with them and. And talked about that.

[Richard Tate]

David was a hero. He marched up the steps to Congress and said, this is what you're doing.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. And he's responsible for having the Narcan?

[Gregory Swan]

Yes, he is. Naloxone awareness day is June 6, and that's a tough day to get a lot of attention because it was formerly known as D Day, which is. It's still celebrated, but. Yeah, it was a ten year anniversary, Jackie. We were in town not long ago celebrating that with them. And they've got juice. They had both Florida senators there, three Congress people there.

[Richard Tate]

Of course they've got juice. They're serious people.

[Gregory Swan]

Yes, they are.

[Richard Tate]

All right, I call Donald Trump the fentanyl president. Okay. He's done way more than any other president around drugs ever. He's mentioned fentanyl more times in his first 100 days than the last three presidents combined. Yep. Okay.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It's refreshing.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah. And. And even though fentanyl wasn't an issue, you know, down the line, still opioids. Fentanyl opioids interchangeable. Okay. Greg, you were at the HALT act signing recently and met with the President. Let's tell everyone what this act is about. The HALT Fentanyl act made all fentanyl related substances permanently illegal by putting them in Schedule 1, the strictest drug category. What does that mean?

[Gregory Swan]

Well, fennel was raised and the precursors were raised to a level where marijuana is going the opposite direction. Going down to schedule three, maybe. And this is a big issue now with the DEA and all that. President said this doesn't seem like much at the service. It goes. But this is one of the most important pieces of legislation I'm ever going to sign. It allows you to put guys who are in this game away for 10 years minimum, where justice is served to the parents, where you're more likely to get into a new business if they die. No, no, no, no. If you have a hundred. If you have 100 grams on you, I believe. I think it was milligrams.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Any dealing, it doesn't have to result in death. Now, there's a mandatory minimum.

[Gregory Swan]

He's a mandatory minimum, 10 years. And he does have a lot of empathy. He's talked to parents. He's like anybody. He's. He hasn't lost a kid, and he's. And he's really hammers his kids, you know, no drinking, drugs or smoking every time they leave the house. And his kids are good kids, you know, President Trump.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah, well, kids are older now.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

But he doesn't have to tell them not to do drugs anymore.

[Gregory Swan]

But he was very, very on top of that. And he really. I've always. I personally have always liked him, but the. He said. He talked to a parent. Where he really won me over as a champion was he said, I talked to a bereaved mom, and she said, it gets worse, not better.

[Richard Tate]

It does.

[Gregory Swan]

Worse, not better. I'm like, thank you for saying that.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Howdy.

[Gregory Swan]

She's right.

[Richard Tate]

She's right. Right? It does get worse.

[Gregory Swan]

It is. It's bad.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Well, and you. As you grow through your grief and talk to other parents, you realize the magnitude of the problem and how many families are affected by this. You know, it doesn't. It's not just the loss of one life. It's the. The destruction of many more. I mean, how many marriages break up because of the grief that the parents.

[Richard Tate]

Are you kidding?

[Gregory Swan]

How many? All of them. Yeah, all of them.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

How many siblings end up, you know, with depression and PTSD and everything? The. The ripple effect of this problem is just. It's. It's incalculable.

[Richard Tate]

It's destroying us from the inside.

[Gregory Swan]

The. The other thing that President Trump did is yesterday he just announced that he's really going after the cartels in their terrorist status. And you remember isis? Does that ring a bell?

[Richard Tate]

Yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

Where are they?

[Richard Tate]

They're gone.

[Gregory Swan]

They're gone. Why are they gone? Because he made them go away. And I was. I was on a podcast. This is Like I think the third one I've ever done. This is a real privilege to be here. Thank you. Is Martha McCollum. She goes, what do you think the card cartels are going to go away quietly? 14 billion dollar industry. I said, I hate it when anybody dies. But I can tell you this, there will be blood, and there is going to be blood because it's going to be you. It's now a tour between us and the cartels. And guess who's going to win that one. You just look at. If I were in the cartel business, I'd be looking for another job.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

I tell my peer support guys that circulate community. I said, you better be telling your, your buddies that are addicts now, you better say, you know, what are you going to do when there's no fentanyl anymore? Because it's going to dry up. It will never be completely open.

[Richard Tate]

Well, then they're going to find something else like pink or pain. 2C. Right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Well, we kind of said, you know, if you, if you could pass out buprenorphine, you know, if buprenorphine was as easy to get Suboxone, if Suboxone was as easy to get as fentanyl.

[Richard Tate]

Right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

You. We'd save a hundred thousand, we'd say 20,000 lives a year at least. Because Suboxone doesn't kill people.

[Richard Tate]

Can I tell you what I like? Can I tell you what I like about salt the most? Sure. The way we've been getting jerked around is through the ingredients. Yeah. In these drugs. So you get, you change one little thing and then it's no longer against.

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah. No. Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Right. Yeah. That's over now.

[Gregory Swan]

That's it. If you switch the precursors even a little bit chemically, it won't help you. No, that says the Hall Fentanyl act is.

[Richard Tate]

That is. And, and, and I swear I was thinking about that last year and I'm like, this doesn't sound right. This is horrible. A lot of these problems, people say, well, they're complicated. Okay? They're not. You make them complicated. I'm not saying this in a way that's full of ego. Okay. I know for certain, okay, that if I had a blank check for less than a billion dollars, I could clean up the entire city of Los Angeles for certain. And I could do it in less than two years. Now that would be my full time job. But I'm not a CEO anymore. I'm the chairman, so I got all the time in the world. Yeah.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Just, just this morning I was walking along the Santa Monica strip, you know, over to the beach. And there were at least 10 people slumped over, obviously you know, the result of addiction. And then were they slumped over like this? Some of them were the Matt's Inch kind of the fentanyl slump or the Xylazine slump. And then there were others just, you know, sacked out.

[Gregory Swan]

Some girl. You said it was somebody's daughter.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Some, some girl. Girl was unconscious on the beach and, you know, I could tell she was breathing and she twitched her foot once in a while, so I knew I didn't need to run over and give her Narcan. But, you know, it's just tragic. It's everywhere, you know, around here.

[Gregory Swan]

And wouldn't that girl's mom love a phone call knowing that her daughter's still alive? But yeah, she doesn't know where she is, I'm sure.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Not like, you gotta go look.

[Gregory Swan]

A lot of them, man.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah, a lot of them. I've had calls with parents. They don't care. They're done.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Well, that.

[Richard Tate]

And, and then when this happens, okay, then they're on it.

[Gregory Swan]

There's a million bereaved parents in the country. We want to aggregate at least 100,000 Angel Army. We want to, like FedEx or UPS, have a logistical non sexy approach to this army going out and taking responsibility for a state and for a county and for districts to make sure every school sees a bereaved Parent Presenter. There's 26,727 schools in the country. How many? 26,727 high schools.

[Richard Tate]

Is that high schools? Is that public or private or.

[Gregory Swan]

That's both. That's both. We want to hit them, yes. We want to hit the others, but this is our starting point and we want to go in there with parents and talk to them. We know that it's doable. We know that we have the resources to do it. It's got to be implemented and executed at the state and then the, the county and the district and the high school level and it's completely doable.

[Richard Tate]

So can I make a suggestion? Yeah, please. Okay. Because you guys are, you guys are right there on the J curve. You're right there.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

About to blow up, right?

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

So it can still be modified.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah. Yep.

[Richard Tate]

Modify it to start in the elementary schools.

[Gregory Swan]

Okay, you got it. We're going to go in and do the elementary schools in Miami now. This year you have to. We're doing it. And I get, I applaud them for, for saying that. I would argue, like one thing. You've mentioned is that it's. If. If it's a personal story, it's a tragedy, but if it's a hundred thousand, it's just a statistic. But this is killing more people than Vietnam 9, 11, childhood cancer, global plane crashes, drunk driving, all combined. But I just want to say this in terms of the reach. Go ahead. You were going to say.

[Richard Tate]

Well, I was going to say the best part about you guys, and I was saying it earlier, and naturally, I forgot what I was going to say. But the best thing about you guys is that you guys turn this pain into making certain that the parents. That other parents don't go through this immeasurable pain. But the thing that disappoints me the most is when parents don't. I've got. One of the reasons I came back. So there was a bunch of reasons, but one of the reasons I started this was because one of the clients. One client I had passed away from fentanyl, and he had seven years sober, but he got into a car accident, and the doctor put him on these medications.

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah.

[Richard Tate]

And now he's looking. And he took one pill, and he was slumped over in the car in less than a minute. Wow. So. And the parents blame me. They blame me. And the reason I know that is because I wasn't invited to the funeral. And I told them I wanted to go. Now, these people called me for everything whenever they had an issue with the kids. And I'd get on the phone, I'd say, you want me to come get you, or you want to do it this way? And they say, no, no, Rich, we're fine. We'll do it that way. This is the one time they didn't call me and they told everybody it was a heart attack.

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, yeah, that's classic.

[Richard Tate]

Because they're. Because they felt shame. They were embarrassed.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

And that made me insane.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Gregory Swan]

Well, I. We. We don't play nice in the sandbox. We. We would leverage our way into schools. But if someone wants to be complicit in the ignorance of kids, they're our enemy. And we don't. We don't let them stand in our way. Now, I would argue that everyone is responsible for this. And I'll give you my take on that. It comes from the book of Proverbs. Solomon wrote this. Proverbs, chapter 24, verse 11 and 12. He said, hold back those staggering toward the slaughter. Stop those going towards certain death. If you claim it's not your responsibility, God, who knows all hearts, knows yours. And he knows you knew. It's a real scripture. It's a real. Good luck explaining that on Judgment Day if you say it's not my job. This is our number one responsibility. You know what's killing people. You have us on your podcast. We know it's killing people. We're trying to scale this. The president knows. He's signing laws, and he's behind us, us on this. We got to get the army, the angel army parents together and go in and. Because with the. The brief parent is the linchpin to this tell these kids. And these kids lock in. They lock in, but start earlier.

[Richard Tate]

Yep.

[Gregory Swan]

I agree with you. I agree.

[Richard Tate]

Because.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And I like your idea of the. The cartoon or social media for the young year.

[Richard Tate]

That's right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And then at some point, we get a bereaved parent in front of them. It may not be appropriate to tell a story of a death to a fifth grader.

[Richard Tate]

Why not? Well, no, no, no, no.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

This is not.

[Richard Tate]

Listen in. Not instead of. In addition to. Okay, yeah, okay.

[Gregory Swan]

So this is a great. This is a great point. And there's a lot of curriculum out there. I will definitely take your advice and go. Go younger. But in terms of executing, if you're going to str. If you're going to prioritize, we want to hit these high schools first, and then we want to hit the middle schools and the grade schools, because the high schools is right before they really start dropping. Once they get into college, they don't have mom and dad there to lie to them, to say doordashes at the door and their drugs arrive.

[Richard Tate]

I know, but I did a thousand.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Middle school students the week that I went down to Miami.

[Richard Tate]

Better.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And it Better. It was amazing to see 6th and 7th graders listen up and. And you'd tell them, you'd ask how many of you have a family member or someone you love that's been affected by this?

[Gregory Swan]

I was like 40 in every audience.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah. The little hand. You know, sometimes it's their parents that have died.

[Gregory Swan]

They lost their parents, they lost a sibling, they lost a cousin. It's crushing this country. This is our number one problem, for sure.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It's not unusual for one or two to be brought to tears. And. And while that's. We don't want to make people. We don't. We don't set out to make people sad. But if it elicits that emotion, it tells us we're getting through, that we're. We're making an impact. That's all right.

[Richard Tate]

You guys are magnificent. All right. We're Gonna go to one quick. A couple questions from the audience. Okay? Okay. Tyler from Phoenix is asking. My son has mental health struggles and I'm worried he might self medicate. I know he's on Snapchat. How can I stop this before it's too late?

[Gregory Swan]

Very dangerous on Snapchat because he can order up drugs and they can be delivered right to the house. And for. For a price. That's a real problem. I'd love to send him the free book of Victoria's Voice. We give it to every student in every assembly who wants this book, and we give that out. That's a real benefit from Jackie Siegel. And explains the mental health that they go through. 50% of kids are struggling from mental health, as you know. But we know that they spend three hours a day scrolling through their phones.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Three hours.

[Richard Tate]

Who told you three hours?

[Gregory Swan]

Cnn.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah, they're wrong.

[Gregory Swan]

They're wrong. So three hours. But if I had.

[Richard Tate]

If there were three hours, we wouldn't have a problem.

[Gregory Swan]

One thing I learned in, you know, in recovery is the serenity prayer. Grant me serenity over things I cannot change. Well, you're scrolling through three hours a day of three things you can't change. That's going to cause stress and anxiety. You know, we talk about the greatest generation. These guys were. Came from poverty, went into World War II. How'd they turn out so good? And these kids have a problem scrolling. But that's. They have these. You know what I'm talking about? They have these mental best was.

[Richard Tate]

The best was Covid. The best was Covid, where everybody just lost their minds, okay? And it's like, dude, you're not asked to fight a war. You're asked to sit on the couch. Just shut up. Jesus.

[Gregory Swan]

You have the authority to say that. But they do have. But it doesn't matter. They do have this stress and anxiety. What do they do? Well, that is your lane, doctor. That is your lane, Rich. Our lane is one way that you doesn't work. And that is anything that's unprescribed is going to kill you. You need to have a chance to get into therapy. You need to have a chance to have. Whether it's a pastor or a therapist or, you know, alternate all the good things with sports and all the other things you can do. One thing that will not work is Adderall, Xanax, Percocet, oxycontin ordered up. And by the way, it's in the marijuana supply.

[Richard Tate]

The best thing. It is the best thing. Well, not when you get it from A dispenser.

[Gregory Swan]

That's right. It's the only safe way. But also keep in mind, in California, 80% of the dispensaries are getting it from cartels. I don't know if you knew that, but the DEA confirmed that for me last week.

[Richard Tate]

I didn't know that. Well, if that's true, then that's a bad deal.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

One point I always make to my audiences. I say the most dangerous thing on the planet is white powder. For sure. Anytime you get a white powder, you have have no idea what's in it and how potent it is. You might snort one line and get high. The next line, you die. Sure.

[Gregory Swan]

Look, Madonna went down in Our Town, and she's in denial that she took any drugs, but she was revived by Narcan. That means she had opioids. And my theory is that she probably took a line of cocaine that was. Was laced.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Tate]

And the problem with that is they have these test strips, and these kids think if they do the test strips, they're safe, and they're not. Because one part of the pill is. Is this way, and the other part is different and same with the powder. So it's. It's.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And the harm reduction potent. It is. It just. Well, it doesn't tell you how much fentanyl is in. It just says it's fentanyl or it's not right. And they go, oh, it's okay. It's got fentanyl in it. Well, that's what I paid for. But they don't know how much is in each pill.

[Richard Tate]

It's. It's ridiculous. All right, let's move to the next one. Sarah from Los Angeles is asking, if I find a pill in my child's room, is there any way to tell if it has fentanyl without sending it to the lab?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yes, you can use a test strip, but it's not that reliable. Well, the other thing is, if it's positive, you can confront your kid and say, this could have killed you. If it's negative, it's not certain because you can have negative results from that test strip, and it still may have fear.

[Gregory Swan]

Well, the other thing is, the DEA this year is saying it's just 5 in 10 pills are laced with fentanyl. Deadly fentanyl. Last year.

[Richard Tate]

That's not true.

[Gregory Swan]

Seven and ten, it was. Last year was seven and ten and went up to eight and ten. And you can assume at that point that if your child has an unprescribed pill, if you didn't get it, mom it's got fentanyl in it. You can absolutely assume that.

[Richard Tate]

Yes.

[Gregory Swan]

It's like playing Russian roulette with four of the five chambers loaded.

[Richard Tate]

It's not in if it's when.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Well, one of the things I explained to him is that, you know, pills that are sold on the street, you know, to each other, think about how difficult it is to get a prescription, a truly pharmaceutically manufactured pill on the street. Right. On the street. It's not where it, it costs the cartel pennies to produce the fentanyl pills.

[Richard Tate]

Do you know how much it costs for a pressed perk on the street? I just found out 20 bucks. Two bucks.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah, it's. It's. It's less than that.

[Richard Tate]

It's.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It's a hundred dollars for fentanyl for 50. 100 bucks for 50. Yeah. 2 bucks.

[Gregory Swan]

That's crazy.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

In Phoenix, you can do that cheaper if you, if you buy it in bulk.

[Richard Tate]

So you're not a mathematician, you're a doctor. Right. Got it. That. I saw that your wheels turn like that.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

And I'm like, oh, he'll figure it out.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably as little as 50 cents in some places. I'm sure.

[Gregory Swan]

We have a video on the, on the front of our Fennel Follies, that organization site, which shows Russian roulette. And it's a gun being loaded. Some schools don't let us show it.

[Richard Tate]

You can't.

[Gregory Swan]

It's a gun being loaded with Adderall pills. And it's talking about. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And you know, why. Why would there be Fentanyl and Adderall? Well, it's because a kid, a college kid can carry a pocket full of Adderall. And if it says, oh, it's just that Adderall used for studying, but the dealer knows that he can sell that. He can. He can. Some, Some of the kids know they're getting Fentanyl disguised as Adderall. Some just think they're getting Adderall and it's with. Mixed with Fentanyl because it gives them a high selling.

[Gregory Swan]

The selling pills are going to go away for 10 years and they're just another punk in their school at the end of the chain of the drug supply, which starts in China, goes to the cartels, goes to the distribution, and finally ends up in a local area. And some guys like getting it from his distributor. And there's. There's five chains of command, but the last guy to sell it gets nailed because guess what, children, Snapchat is. Does keep Their records. And they, if something, someone dies, they will go back and find out you sold it to them. It doesn't disappear, Einstein.

[Richard Tate]

If you, if you sell drugs to children, you should go away forever. All right, here. Here we go. Marianne from Seattle is asking. I want to talk to my kids about Fentanyl. I'm afraid if I push too hard, they'll shut down. How do I start the conversation the right way?

[Gregory Swan]

Well, you're a hero to want to, you know, educate your kids. And I would recommend to watch one of our presentations right on the front of our homepage. Join AngelArmy.com Become an advocate that way. There's a way that kids in schools can talk. It's called Students Advocating Fentanyl Education. Safe for short. Have high schoolers talk to them about it. But an illustrative movie on the front page of fentanyl fathers.org you show them that they will be in tears, but they'll be crystal clear. I think that's an easy way to do it.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Sit down with your child and watch the 20 minute movie called Dead on Arrival at the Fentanyl Fathers website. It will make an impact on you and your child, and it can be a starting point for that conversation.

[Richard Tate]

Good. I'm going to watch that with my children tonight.

[Gregory Swan]

Fantastic.

[Richard Tate]

All right, before we wrap, I want to show something that can save a life. How to use Narcan. And we are going to let the doctor do this.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Absolutely. So Narcan is a specific antagonist to opioid medications like fentanyl or heroin or Percocet. Anytime someone has been overdosed with an opioid, what kills them is respiratory depression. It basically turns off the drive to breathe. So if a person is not breathing because of opioids, you can simply spray Narcan in one nostril and within 30 seconds or more or a little longer, it can begin to reverse that effect and get them to resume breathing. Now you can assist breathing.

[Gregory Swan]

Why would we demonstrate?

[Richard Tate]

That's why it's here.

[Gregory Swan]

Okay. So you shove it up the nose. I could. Because you don't have to have cpr. We tell people this because a general person can do this. You have to have access to this, know where it is, carrying your purse in your glove box. You shove it up the nose all the way and you unload it like this. Ready?

[Richard Tate]

Yep.

[Gregory Swan]

The reason we do that in public is because it's not illegal. Drug is sold at the over the counter. Sure, it's $45, but most places make it free. We're making it available free. It's something called Narcan. Now dot us anywhere there's free Narcan, it's going to be listed there.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

You can get it in the mail from. And overdose as well.

[Richard Tate]

And when it's 20, we found them for 22 bucks.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah, it should be free. Do you see a kid paying 20 bucks? It should be free from any government. Let's just.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

We hand them out like candy.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. And you can. But let's, but let's. Let me just tell you about it. Okay?

[Gregory Swan]

Okay.

[Richard Tate]

All right. The president went ahead and took $400 million from there. I think it was the whole thing, I don't remember from the Narcan. Free Narcan and put it into.

[Gregory Swan]

The.

[Richard Tate]

Veterans substance use and whatever.

[Gregory Swan]

Oh, right.

[Richard Tate]

People had a huge problem with that.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

And the reason I didn't was simple. Two reasons. Number one, it's 22 bucks. Okay. If you're going to be using drugs and you know what you're using, or even if you don't know what you're using, you know now because you'd have to be under a rock.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. For the 22 bucks.

[Gregory Swan]

Right.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Well. And there's a variety of other non profits in states and counties that give it out for free. In New Mexico, the health department distributes it. So it's available in multiple.

[Gregory Swan]

In Florida we do with the South Florida Opioid Alliance. In Michigan, we do with the alliance coalitions they have. They get it for free. There's a streamline for that.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

The American Society of Pediatrics recommends that any parent, any family that has kids between 10 and 20 should have Narcan in the household. And it should be in a central location where everyone knows where it is. I agree. Because it could be a sibling saving their. Their, their brother or sister.

[Gregory Swan]

Yeah. Four to seven minutes to it before brain damage. You gotta get.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

It's a Lazarus have it where everybody knows where it is and they know.

[Gregory Swan]

How I wish the guy was with Drew had it because Drew was exhibiting signs of an overdose. He said, drew, you sure you're okay? He goes, no, no, I'm good. I just need to go sleep this off. And he went into the house and laid down and died. And he died because he stopped breathing. You turn blue and you die.

[Richard Tate]

That's right.

[Gregory Swan]

Because. Because the stem in the back. Can I tell you what?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Never use alone and carry Narcan.

[Richard Tate]

Well, using loan.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

That's.

[Richard Tate]

That's what they're doing. They're using a loan. So the two things that I've got A problem with, with this is two things. Number one, everybody uses a loan.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. And number two, when you're not using a loan. Okay. They leave you there.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

If you are in the presence of somebody that is overdosed and maybe there's drugs in the house or whatever, but you call 911 to help rescue whoever's overdose anybody in contact with that will not be criminally charged because you're in the service of trying to save some.

[Gregory Swan]

Hammer that to kids. Because that's very important. Because they will. They'll dump them off into a field.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

There are.

[Gregory Swan]

And they'll die.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

There are cases where somebody's overdosing in the backseat of the car and the kids are so scared that they. Did they.

[Gregory Swan]

They let them parking where they die in a field?

[Richard Tate]

Yes.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah. Because they're scared to call 91 1. It's impossible for someone else that hasn't experienced that similar loss to truly understand what you're going through. And when they put us together in those groups, it is very therapeutic. I mean, I'm going through it now and it's very helpful. And it's free to any. Not almost free to anyone.

[Gregory Swan]

And by the way, we're going to have something called the angel army ascendancy in Orlando in January where all. We have 400 bereaved parents getting together. We hope to have the group trained there who sings this song calling all Angels. And we'll train them, empower them, encourage them to go out and hit these schools. If they need help, we'll set them up with a companioning and we'll have one fun day like a Disney day. But that's coming up. And we think that Jackie is going to help comp a lot of the people who can't go there to stay at the Westgate Resort.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Yeah. Do they own that resort?

[Gregory Swan]

Yes.

[Richard Tate]

Well, then I think she can handle that.

[Gregory Swan]

She. She says. She said as much.

[Richard Tate]

Yeah, she's. She's. She means what she says and she says what she means.

[Gregory Swan]

Right on.

[Richard Tate]

Okay. Greg?

[Gregory Swan]

Yes, sir.

[Richard Tate]

Dr. Gary, thank you guys so much for coming today.

[Gregory Swan]

Would that all people be like you and have the empathy for the dying in this country? Our number one problem. Thank you for caring, doing your responsibility, taking responsibility. Thank you.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Thank you for helping us and for having the. Like I said, I tried to dabble in recovery treatment and I realized that emotionally I didn't have that knack. And so I have great respect for people that can help people through recovery because it's a very, very important part of this puzzle. We can't completely prevent. Prevention's important, but there's what, 20 million people that are currently dependent on opioids in this country.

[Richard Tate]

Thank you guys for coming, okay? I really appreciate it. I know how hard this is and I'm sorry, deeply sorry for your loss.

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Okay?

[Richard Tate]

How can people reach you?

[Gregory Swan]

Thank you so much. Thanks for your empathy. It really gives us purpose in our son's passing to be here and to advocate. The way to reach us is fentanylfathers.org or angelarmy.com and to book us, hit up our guy mike fentanylfathers dot org if you are feeling down, anxious, depressed or suicidal, any of those on that spectrum, call 988-and-WHO will talk you off the ledge there, fella. You'll be fine. Just live another day.

[Richard Tate]

And if you or a loved one has a problem, reach out to carreratreatment.com or one call placement.org all right, thank you very much. See you next Tuesday. Many people worry about tomorrow? What about today?

[Gregory Swan]

Things we can't afford so all we do is borrow? Who said to live this way?

[Richard Tate]

Oh, have a little faith?

[Gregory Swan]

In things you cannot explain?

[Richard Tate]

They don't need?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

Goodbye, my cherished friend? May you ever grow in our heart? You gave us joy and lived your life?

[Gregory Swan]

But now we're torn apart?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

You called out for humanity and whispered about your pain? Now you long to heaven and the.

[Gregory Swan]

Stars bell out your name?

[Dr. Gary Latson]

And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the world? Never knowing how to go? When the pain blew in? We couldn't understand the choices that you made? Your candle blew out long before.

[Richard Tate]

Our love for you.