In recent years, drug cartels have built a vast and lucrative business selling fake prescription drugs laced with fentanyl—which drives addiction faster than any other synthetic narcotic, says Michael Brown, who was a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for over three decades.
The majority of people dying from fentanyl-related overdoses now are taking what they think is a fairly innocuous prescription drug like Xanax, and they have no idea that it’s been laced with fentanyl, he says.
The DEA says seven out of ten pills seized by the organization contain a deadly dose of fentanyl.
“You take that wrong pill for the first time, and your life is over,” Mr. Brown says.
Now he’s global director for counter-narcotics technology at Rigaku Analytical Devices, which produces equipment that can identify narcotic substances.
“In the 60s and 70s, drug dealers were concerned about killing their clients, because they didn’t want to kill their clients. But the client base today is so vast and diverse that they can lose 100,000 and still make hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr. Brown says.
Watch the clip:
In this episode, he breaks down this new drug cartel business model, how the supply chain works, the role of Chinese money-laundering proxies, and what he believes it would take to turn the situation around.
🔴 WATCH the full episode (53 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0203MichaelBrown
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Michael Brown, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Michael Brown: Thank you.
Mr. Jekielek: We’re going to talk about the fentanyl crisis in the United States that is affecting so many people. Please give us a sense of the big picture of where we’re at.
Mr. Brown: That’s such a broad topic because there are so many individuals and so many different paradigms being affected by Mexican cartel fentanyl. I'll start with a new paradigm—fentanyl pills that are designed to look like Oxycontin, Adderall, Percocet, and Valium. The cartel sat back and they looked at America’s addiction to prescription drugs, because there’s a lot of people in America who will never transition to illegal narcotics, like meth, heroin, or cocaine, but they will take prescription drugs.
They said, “If we can infiltrate the prescription drug market with fake pills and put fentanyl in them, we can force that transition from prescription drugs to fentanyl.” Again, they were very successful in creating that new paradigm. A large majority of the overdose deaths we see now are people who thought they were taking an Oxycontin or a Vicodin, but it was a fentanyl pill with more than two milligrams of fentanyl, and it killed them within 30 seconds.
The cartels realized they were onto something, so then they started putting fentanyl into the cocaine supply. We’re now seeing it in the marijuana supply. They understand that fentanyl is so powerful and that the individual who was already addicted will transition to fentanyl. In some states such as Massachusetts, drug users are only seeking out fentanyl now because it’s so strong. It has really changed a number of drug-user paradigms, bringing in people who were, generally speaking, not predisposed to using illicit narcotics.
Mr. Jekielek: For those of us that are not familiar with the cartel strategy of getting people addicted to drugs, please explain this graduation from heroin or cocaine or to fentanyl. How does that actually work? They always seem to be pushing in that particular direction, with fentanyl at the top of the chain.
Mr. Brown: The distribution of narcotics involves heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and now fentanyl. Each one of those drugs in and of itself is highly addictive, but fentanyl right now is the most addictive synthetic narcotic out there being sold. In terms of addictive qualities, we’re talking about its potency. Fentanyl is 10 times stronger than heroin, and 100 times stronger than morphine.
As a drug trafficker, I want to sell a product that will bring my customers back as frequently as possible, and that means I want to sell them the most potent substance I have. Right now, the cartels have figured out that fentanyl is king of the game. The more fentanyl they can distribute, the more addiction they can create with it, and that means more profit for the cartels.
Unfortunately, most people who die from an overdose-related fentanyl death are taking what they think is a Xanax for the first or second time, but it’s got two milligrams of fentanyl in it and they die. You hear the stories all the time about parents going into their kid’s room, and the kid is slumped over in bed. They find what they think is an Adderall under the pillow, but it turns out to be a pill with two milligrams of fentanyl in it.
The DEA [U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration] has said that now 7 out of 10 pills have a lethal dose of fentanyl in them. When you think about the millions of fentanyl pills which are distributed, a blue pill and red pill selection. You take that wrong pill for the first time and your life is over.
When I was growing up, kids smoked marijuana and they drank some beer. You woke up the next day and had a headache. Now, if you make that mistake, you could lose your life.
Mr. Jekielek: Did I hear you correctly that 7 out of 10 pills are lethal?
Mr. Brown: According to DEA statistics, now 7 out of 10 pills have at least two milligrams of fentanyl in them. When you think about the cooks in Mexico who are preparing these pills, they’re not using formulas and special equipment. It’s a pinch of this, a pinch of that, then mix it up and push it out. The cartels know this. But they also know if they lose 100,000 people, they’re still going to gain 300,000 new customers. Going back to a business model, it’s a cost-benefit analysis
Mr. Jekielek: That actually yields growth?
Mr. Brown: That yields sales because they know more people are going to use the narcotic than die. Then they look at the law enforcement response. They don’t see anything happening in China, and they don’t see anything significant happening in Mexico, so there is really no deterrent. Unfortunately, in the ‘60s and ’70s, drug dealers were concerned about killing their clients. But the client base today is so vast and diverse that they can lose 100,000 and still make hundreds of millions of dollars.
In Mexico, in the last 7 to 10 years, over 30,000 people have been killed in specific cartel violence. When the cartel looks at someone taking a pill and dying, that’s just part of doing business. They’re also willing to go out and directly kill 15 to 20 people a day in order to maintain their business model.
Mr. Jekielek: You said that 7 out of 10 are dying, but some have become acclimatized to the drug already and maybe can take the two milligrams. Please explain again how all this works.
Mr. Brown: There are a couple of things that affect that. When you look at 200 people a day dying across the country, those are the 200 people that got those seven pills that have two milligrams of fentanyl in it. When you look at the pill distribution itself, the cartels are cutting the pills with mannitol, xylazine, benzodiazepine, and other substances which break down the toxicity of the pill. A lot of individuals are surviving. They’re not dying, but they’re falling into a deeper web of addiction until they get that one bad pill.
People are also using Narcan now. People are overdosing, going into cardiac arrest, and their friends are Narcan-ing them back, so they’re not dying. If Narcan was not on the scene right now, you would see 10 out of 10 people dying. People understand that fentanyl can kill you, and people don’t use it alone anymore. All these factors are coming into play which are extending the life of individuals who would actually be dead if they didn’t have this outside assistance.
Mr. Jekielek: Please tell us about this harm reduction model and how it plays into this whole dynamic.
Mr. Brown: When you talk about harm reduction, that’s a big field. Harm reduction means policies and procedures that reduce the harm caused by narcotic use. One of the big examples is the needle exchange program, which was done 20 years ago in order to reduce the spread of bloodborne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.
But in the process, it provided clean needles, which allowed individuals to sustain their drug use. It reduced one harm, but increased another harm, which is long-term drug use. What we’re seeing now is what I call progressive harm reduction policies.
I'll give you an example. In Colorado in 2020, they initiated Bill 110, which decriminalized the personal use of narcotics, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and originally fentanyl, but then they took that back. It basically legitimized drug use. In the last three years, it’s been a complete disaster.
They’ve had to call back that bill because they saw increased fentanyl usage, increased overdose fatalities, and increased drug distribution in their city. That harm reduction program was unsuccessful, but even then, Oregon is trying to enact a harm reduction program that mimics Colorado’s.
New York has a harm reduction program where you can actually go into safe site injection locations and use dangerous narcotics. If you overdose, there’s a staff member there ready to bring you back, and they consider that a success. Of course, we want to save lives. But are we saving lives in order to let them die at another time, or should we be more aggressive in getting people to abstain from drug use through policy and treatment programs?
Mr. Jekielek: People that are in these open-air, drug market scenarios have low life expectancy, because it’s just a matter of time before someone overdoses or gets hurt by other people that are there. Everybody that has made it out said they needed an intervention where someone said, “If you don’t stop this, you’re going to die. I’m going to help you, but you have to stop.” Something like that happened, and hence they credit that for them being alive, not these so-called harm reduction policies.
Mr. Brown: I have a podcast called, “The Opioid Matrix,” and I recently had on a guest who was addicted to narcotics and until she went to jail, and that became the defining moment in her life. She said, “If I hadn’t gone to jail I would be dead right now, because I was going to commit suicide using narcotics. I went in to steal some stuff, buy drugs, and commit suicide. But I got arrested and went to jail. In jail, I was born again.”
She became a Christian and now she’s out of prison. She has been clean for a number of years, and she’s running a drug rehabilitation program. She said to me, “Mike, our secrets can kill us,” meaning she had this whole life of trauma that she never talked about. She didn’t have anyone to talk to. Because of that trauma, she got into drug addiction and almost lost her life.
But for a lot of the individuals that I talk to who have come out of severe drug addiction, it came to a moment of self-realization when they said, “This is not what I want for my life.” Of course, we understand a lot of people don’t have that self-determination, and we have to be there to support them. But we cannot support them by saying, “We accept your dangerous drug use. We’re going to enable your dangerous drug use, and if you stay alive and come through it, then maybe you'll get clean.”
Mr. Jekielek: The 12-step program is an effective program, but a pillar of that program is that you never touch the stuff.
Mr. Brown: That is the staple of the 12-step program. You have to stop drinking completely. I’ve never heard of an Alcoholics Anonymous program where they say, “It’s okay, come on into the bar. We‘ll give you a drink, and then we’ll drive you home.” That’s not going to work. If you talk to any alcoholic, they will tell you if they take that drink, they’re going to fall back into that web of addiction. Why do we treat those who are addicted to narcotics any differently than we treat those who are addicted to alcohol?
Mr. Jekielek: Please outline the fentanyl supply chain for us, all the way from the precursors to these fake prescription pills.
Mr. Brown: Let’s imagine you are a precursor chemical broker in Mexico and you work for the Sinaloa Cartel. You can get on your phone app, go through your contact list, and reach out to one of several chemical brokers in China and say, “Look, I need four pounds of some precursors for fentanyl.”
They will then go to a chemical supplier, purchase those chemicals, and then send them to you air cargo or express parcel with an international courier. You get a tracking number and you can track your package. If your package doesn’t arrive, they will send you another package.
Let’s imagine the broker then coordinates some fentanyl precursors to be sent from a company in China to the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. That package will come to an individual’s house and they'll take that to the cartel. The cartel will then take those precursors to one of the clandestine laboratories where it will then be produced into fentanyl powder or pressed into pills.
Mr. Jekielek: Are the precursors legal to import or not?
Mr. Brown: That’s where we get into very complex conversation because a lot of the essential precursors are restricted even in Mexico. The cartels have hired chemists and created secondary routes where they can use what are called dual-purpose chemicals. For example, there’s a precursor chemical that’s used to make an anti-Parkinson’s medicine. That same precursor is an intermediate that can be used to make the precursors required to make fentanyl. The cartels have been able to sidestep the restricted chemicals and then go to unrestricted chemicals in order to make the precursors necessary to make fentanyl.
I saw this with methamphetamine when I was working in Myanmar, my last overseas post. The cartels in Myanmar had figured out a way to make ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and other essential precursors from non-regulated precursors. For example, xylazine is a Schedule II controlled substance that is used as a veterinarian sedative.
How do you regulate something which is already regulated, but then someone decides to use it for an illegal purpose? You can go into any hardware store, pick up a substance that’s legal, and if you know how to use it for an illegal process, then you can use it. Now, we’re into a very complicated process of managing things that really can’t be regulated.
Mr. Jekielek: Okay, so they’ve gotten their chemicals somehow. Let’s continue with how the supply chain works.
Mr. Brown: Once we produce the fentanyl in a laboratory, we'll then take it to a special shop housing vehicles that have hidden traps. A trap is simply a hidden compartment that’s built into the vehicle where fentanyl can be hidden and smuggled across the border. With a lot of CBP [U.S. Customs & Border Protection] seizures, they are searching vehicles and finding millions of pills hidden in wheel wells, dashboards, and engine blocks. Those cars are generally going to the United States where they are then taken apart and the drugs are taken out.
We know that 95 percent, if not more, of the fentanyl pills being smuggled into the country are in vehicles and commercial cargo. We also see backpackers coming across the border as part of the gotaways bringing them in. But most of the pills are coming directly through the border crossings because it’s bulk shipment. In order to make money, the cartels have to move millions of pills at one time, distribute them, and have those profits come back to Mexico.
Mr. Jekielek: What are the ways that people consume fentanyl in the first place? What should people be careful of here?
Mr. Brown: If you’re a cartel, you’re looking at what prescription drugs people are using the most. Are they using Percocet? Are they using Xanax? Are they using Adderall? They identify the top 10 prescription drugs being used in the United States by teenagers all the way to those on cancer medication. Then they say, “Okay, let’s press out fentanyl pills that look like these top 10 pills and distribute them into the market.”
Let’s say you’re a substance abuser and you’re using fentanyl. You can smoke it, you can inject it, and you can mix it with other narcotics. For example, the cartels mixed it in with heroin. Most people use heroin by injecting it. You can also smoke it, but the injection gets it into your system the fastest. But crack cocaine gets it into your brain much faster by smoking it than by injecting it. The type of drug you are using determines the ingestion methodology.
Mr. Jekielek: Are these pills with two milligram of fentanyl also ingested in all these different ways? Most people don’t know how all of this works.
Mr. Brown: A deadly dose of fentanyl is two milligrams or more. In a regular-sized pill, it will be combined with mannitol and maybe a binding agent. Then they will put in that two milligrams of fentanyl, mix it up, and press it into a pill.
Mr. Jekielek: And you’re popping that.
Mr. Brown: With somebody who thinks it’s an Adderall, they’re taking a pill with two milligrams of fentanyl that will most likely kill them within 30 seconds.
Mr. Jekielek: How do they find these pills? How are the pills getting into the normal drug supply chain, or are these just on the street?
Mr. Brown: There is already an illicit prescription drug supply chain. There are dealers out there selling legitimate Oxycontin, legitimate Adderall, and legitimate Xanax. The supply chain is already there and the method of distribution is already there. Now, they’re just simply putting in new substances into that existing supply chain which are then being distributed.
If you’re going to buy a non-prescribed Percocet from your local dealer, he may not even know he’s selling you a Percocet that contains fentanyl. The dealers in Mexico mixing it are not necessarily telling their customer base or redistributors, “Hey, these pills contain fentanyl.” We also have the domestic drug trafficking groups who are buying fentanyl from the cartels and then mixing in some of these substances and making their own pills for distribution.
Mr. Jekielek: The new paradigm is putting fentanyl into these fake pills. The more traditional way is adulterating other drugs with fentanyl. You could also sell it straight up-
Mr. Brown: Just pure fentanyl.
Mr. Jekielek: Right. Are there other paradigms here, or these are the main two?
Mr. Brown: Those are the main three. You have your long-term substance user, you have your prescription drug user, and then you have your occasional recreational drug user. A number of individuals who use cocaine recreationally have died because it contained fentanyl. One of the more notable cases was some years ago when the West Point graduates at a spring break party in Miami bought some cocaine containing fentanyl. They were all hospitalized, but managed to survive.
The cartels now see a larger market. They see those individuals who use cocaine recreationally, maybe a businessman or a housewife takes a hit of cocaine once or twice a month, maybe even once a year, but now it could have fentanyl in it. The cartels look at that much larger market and say, “Maybe we can replicate with cocaine what we did with heroin.” It’s not to that point yet, but we are certainly seeing an experimental level of drug alteration with fentanyl going into cocaine and marijuana.
Mr. Jekielek: Please tell us about your background, and how you’ve come to know so much about fentanyl and the whole landscape of the drug industry.
Mr. Brown: I started with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 1989, and retired approximately two years ago. I went to the U.S. Army Ranger School for about three to four years to qualify for a South American Addiction Program. Then I spent about 20 to 25 years working overseas in drug production countries, primarily the Middle East and Southeast Asia. I spent my last two years at DEA headquarters working as part of the transnational task force on organized crime targeting precursor chemicals and larger drug trafficking organizations.
Now I’m the director of Counter-Narcotics Technology for Rigaku Analytical Devices. It’s a company that produces a device that uses Raman spectroscopy and a laser to identify unknown substances. For example, if a police officer was to stop a vehicle and they had a number of plastic baggies containing an unknown powder, by using that device, they could quickly identify that substance with a presumptive analysis.
Mr. Jekielek: Fentanyl has changed the equation around how you can even identify it, because you could be dead just by touching it.
Mr. Brown: Absolutely. For law enforcement, every drug situation now is a hazmat situation. If you do find a baggie or a package with an unknown substance, you don’t want to open it up, because it could be fentanyl or another substance that could prove harmful to the officer. Using this advanced Raman technology, you can scan that package and identify it without having to open it up.
Mr. Jekielek: You did this work on precursors, and we know that communist China is the source of a lot of the fentanyl precursors. Please tell us about that.
Mr. Brown: To understand this, we need to go back 20 to 30 years. We were following the precursors from China to Colombia and Peru for the production of cocaine and heroin. Mexico now is the predominant cartel on the block. You have your top five to six cartels in Mexico producing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and now fentanyl. Some of those drugs are semi-synthetics. But fentanyl and methamphetamine are synthetics, which means they require precursor chemicals in order to produce them.
Mr. Jekielek: Our view here at the Epoch Times is that communist China has been engaged in asymmetrical warfare techniques against the United States for decades, and drug warfare is one of them. Some people have described it as a reverse opium war. How does the communist regime work with the cartels to get the fentanyl into America?
Mr. Brown: There’s no direct evidence that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is directly working with the cartels, but certainly we know that the PRC is aware of the cartel’s relationship with Chinese chemical producers and Chinese brokers. We have a DEA office in Beijing that works closely with the PRC.
It’s more a concept of willful blindness. They are understanding the situation and simply allowing it to happen, saying, “We’re doing what we can, but really the drug problem is a U.S. problem. It’s an addiction problem. It’s a demand problem. The United States needs to deal with their own problem before they blame China.” That has generally been the party line that I’ve heard over the years from China concerning the precursor chemical supply chain.
Mr. Jekielek: Given what we have seen over the past few decades, I am deeply skeptical that the communist regime is going to be helping America in this respect.
Mr. Brown: In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. worked very closely with China in getting fentanyl and its analogs regulated in order to stop those chemical companies from shipping it to the United States. That was a success, but then China simply continued to work with the Mexican cartels. The Chinese companies in China said, “We‘ll just ship it to the cartels and then they’ll do whatever they want with it.”
That was the transition that no one saw coming. China said, “We did our part. We stopped it from coming to the United States, but our relationship with Mexico has nothing to do with the United States. What Mexico does with those chemicals is their own responsibility. You cannot hold us responsible for that.” That was the PRC’s way of saying, “It’s not our problem. We are simply selling legitimate chemicals to a legitimate country. Go talk to Mexico. It’s their problem.”
Mr. Jekielek: Recently, the DEA has actually taken a number of Chinese nationals to task around fentanyl enforcement. I’m sure you’re familiar with the case, but can you give me a sense of what happened?
Mr. Brown: Yes. The DEA, working with a task force, did an undercover operation targeting eight Chinese companies and 13 Chinese individuals who were involved in an undercover operation to send fentanyl and/or its precursors to the United States. That case was so successful that they got an indictment on the 13 individuals, and they indicted the eight companies.
In my opinion, the true metric of China assisting the United States is if they will initiate their own investigation based on the indictments that DEA has provided them. Believe me, if the DEA got an indictment, I guarantee you that case is 100 percent solid, and those individuals in China are responsible for what the indictment says they did.
Mr. Jekielek: We talked about the cartel business model of transitioning people who are addicted to a lower-strength opiate to something that is higher strength. Have there been ways in the past which you’ve been involved with that have successfully tackled this issue? We seem to be unable to deal with it today.
Mr. Brown: I have spent 20 to 25 years working overseas in several different countries and conducted numerous bilateral investigations which resulted in very successful operations, arrest of targets, and seizure of narcotics. But the success of those operations depended 100 percent on the bilateral relationship we have with those countries.
For example, the DEA has two offices in Colombia, and we worked very well with the Colombian national government, the military, and their counter-drug units. It was so successful that we were able to take down the Medellin Cartel run by Pablo Escobar and later the Cali Cartel. That relationship was critical in taking those cartels down, so we’ve been here before. Again, when we talk about fentanyl, we’re talking about Mexican cartel fentanyl, not medical use fentanyl, because sometimes there’s a confusion there.
Degrading the ability of the cartels to acquire the precursor chemicals to make the fentanyl and ship it across the border will require a very strong bilateral relationship with the Mexican government and with the Chinese government. The fentanyl problem has now surpassed the ability of U.S. law enforcement to effectively degrade it at its center of gravity, Mexico, or degrade it in China, where the chemicals originate.
Mr. Jekielek: You don’t think we can tackle this unless we have a good relationship with either the Chinese regime or Mexico?
Mr. Brown: We need both, because one is the source of the chemicals, the other is the source of drug production and shipment into the United States. We really need a trilateral relationship, with each country working together with the United States.
Mr. Jekielek: What do we do if we can’t achieve that? That’s a tall order.
Mr. Brown: We continue to do what we’re doing. We have investigations, we make drug seizures, and we have harm reduction policies. But we cannot only focus on addiction and treatment. We must first focus on the amount of narcotics coming into this country at record levels. We are basically drowning right now in narcotic addiction.
Mr. Jekielek: We have this extreme border situation, which allows for movement of drugs across the border. With fentanyl, such small amounts are incredibly potent and you can easily evade detection with the de minimis customs rule. Can’t we tackle those types of things? Wouldn’t tackling the border and tackling the de minimis rule have an impact?
Mr. Brown: When we talk about cartel-critical capabilities and vulnerabilities, there are five. The first is the ability to procure precursor chemicals from China. The second is the ability to ship those chemicals to Mexico via maritime, air cargo, or express parcel. The third critical capability is the ability to produce the precursors into a refined product. The fourth is the ability to smuggle it across the border. The fifth is the ability to get the money from distribution back to Mexico.
Unless you can degrade two of those critical capabilities, you’re not going to be able to break that supply chain. Right now, in the current system that we have, the most critical vulnerability that we have access to is the open border checkpoints. That is where we need to concentrate our efforts in order to stop the cross-border smuggling, because we know that 95 percent of all narcotics coming across the border from Mexico into the United States are concealed in vehicles or in cargo.
Mr. Jekielek: Let’s say that the first one is dealt with, what would be the second one? We are seeing record numbers of people coming through the border at the moment. That means border security is completely consumed with these people, not with the drug smuggling that is happening.
Mr. Brown: There’s that old saying, “I can only do what is in my control.” As law enforcement, the first three of those critical capabilities in other countries are outside of my control. However, with drugs crossing the border, U.S. customs has control of that. We also have control of going after the money laundering aspect.
Cartels are in business to make money. We’re talking about hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars being generated in the United States from narcotic sales, which Chinese money laundering organizations move through businesses to China and then into Mexico. My plan would be; one, strengthen the border capability and two; initiate massive money laundering investigations to all Chinese proxies that are working in conjunction with the cartels in the United States.
Mr. Jekielek: We have covered both the Chinese drug component and the Chinese money laundering component on the show before. Various different players are involved in these two very distinct areas. Please explain to us how this money laundering works.
Mr. Brown: One of the most usable applications is what they call mirror transfers. Let’s say I’m the Sinaloa Cartel. I have $100,000 that I want to repatriate back to Mexican accounts. I'll take that $100,000 and give it to my Chinese counterpart. He will then take that money and break it down and give it to Chinese businesses in the United States, like laundromats, restaurants, and other industries.
Those companies will then put that money into their Chinese accounts in Beijing or China. They will then wire that money back to the accounts in Mexico. The cartels go into the bank, take it out, and it’s completely clean.
We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars being laundered through a remittance or mirror process through Chinese-based companies in the United States to accounts in China, and then from Chinese accounts back to Mexico. If you were able to shut down that money train and deter Chinese money launderers or anyone involved in money laundering that assists the cartels, they would back away because they’re risking their businesses, they’re risking their livelihood, and they need to make a profit.
Take that away and that will discourage a lot of Chinese money launderers or money launderers in general from assisting the cartels. In that way we can isolate the cartels, because if their money’s stacked up in the United States, it’s very difficult to smuggle bulk cash back into Mexico now.
Mr. Jekielek: One of the policy solutions that has been posited has its own set of problems, which is to designate these cartels as terrorist organizations. There’s a strong case to be made for that, which allows for certain types of military activity against those cartels. How do you view that?
Mr. Brown: Again, we’ve been here before. As far as treating cartels as narcoterrorist organizations, we’ve done that before, I mentioned Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel.
Mr. Jekielek: But it requires a bilateral relationship.
Mr. Brown: It’s key that you have a bilateral relationship. Without having had the cooperation of the Colombian government, Pablo Escobar would possibly still be active today.
Mr. Jekielek: Recently, the Mexican defense secretary was indicted here for aiding the cartels. He was eventually released, but not much happened subsequently.
Mr. Brown: Right. You’re talking about General Cienfuegos. The DEA initiated an investigation on him and identified that he was assisting some of the cartels in smuggling narcotics across the border. They got an indictment and then did a lure operation to get him from Mexico to the United States. They arrested him in Los Angeles, and they were going to prosecute him for assisting and aiding cartel activity.
Of course, the Mexican government demanded his immediate release and said that the investigation was a sham, and that if he wasn’t released, there would be serious diplomatic consequences affecting the DEA country office in Mexico City and possibly U.S. embassy operations in general. Of course, this current administration released Cienfuegos, and he went back to Mexico. The Mexican president said, “We'll do our own investigation.” Later, he stated that the DEA investigation was fraudulent, and that the general had done nothing wrong. That was the end of their investigation.
Obviously, General Cienfuegos was operating at the highest levels of the Mexican government, and he was involved in working with cartels. Is that an indictment against the Mexican government? I don’t know, but certainly, he was in a position of extreme authority when he was caught and the DEA provided the evidence.
The Mexican government simply chose to ignore that evidence. Some months ago, the president of Mexico said, “There are no precursor chemicals in Mexico. There is no fentanyl production in Mexico.” He blamed the United States, saying that parents aren’t raising their kids properly, and that’s why kids are dying from drug addiction.
Mr. Jekielek: We’ve talked a lot about fentanyl. I get the sense that drug dealers are trying to progress people to fentanyl because it’s so addictive. Basically, people are on it until the end. Please give us a picture of illicit drug use in America.
Mr. Brown: There are a variety of substance users. Some like heroin, some like crack cocaine, some like cocaine, some like methamphetamine, some just like marijuana, LSD, and psilocybin. Drug use culture is very diverse, and cartels and drug dealers know that. Imagine going into a market with all the various items that you can select. Drug dealers will tend to push the substance which is selling the best.
If you go back to the ‘80s and ’90s when crack cocaine hit the market, crack cocaine was a phenomenal sales success because it addicted people quickly. When the addiction wore off, they wanted to buy more. If a drug dealer can sell you a substance that’s going to get you high fast, then come down fast, you’re going to come right back for what they call the re-up. They will make more money the faster you come down.
With fentanyl, the intoxication or the addiction is very quick, and it can last for maybe 30 minutes to an hour. If you put xylazine in it, the drug trafficker can stretch that high out to maybe two or three hours or more. Then when the individual comes down, there’s no recovery time. That individual is coming right back for the re-up, and that’s going to make the drug dealer more money.
They don’t want to sell you something that’s going to keep you high for five or six hours, then you’re going to go home and come back two weeks later. They are not going to make any money that way. Mexican cartel fentanyl revolutionized the drug game, because it got people addicted quickly. It’s very potent, and when you come down, you just want it more.
Then we get into the physical effects on the body. When you talk about heroin, when you talk about cocaine, and when you talk about methamphetamine, they are all very addictive, but not as strong as fentanyl. Fentanyl is one of the strongest narcotics out there, until you go to carfentanyl, which is 10 times more powerful than fentanyl. That would be the next level.
In terms of the drug market, Mexican cartels realize they are selling more fentanyl now than heroin. They’re actually cutting back on the production of heroin and replacing it with fentanyl production for a number of economic reasons. It’s just a better drug to sell. It’s cheaper to make, you can produce more of it, and more people will use it. Again, going back to the cartel business model, the distribution and production of fentanyl is a huge success for them.
Mr. Jekielek: That is still astonishing, given the amount of death it causes. Fentanyl is primarily responsible for the increase in drug-related deaths. Nonetheless, people still keep going back to it.
Mr. Brown: That’s the addiction factor. People used to joke sarcastically that with heroin addiction it would take you 20 years to die. With fentanyl, it only takes that first time, and in 30 seconds you could be dead. But again, from the perspective of the cartels, they just look at drug users as profit. They represent dollar signs.
There’s no humanity involved in drug trafficking. You’re talking about individuals who are some of the most dangerous and least sympathetic people in the world—drug traffickers. That’s when we get back to the term narcoterrorism. Is what’s happening really an aspect of terrorism? Entire communities are being destroyed through the distribution of narcotics.
Then we have the gang-level violence like in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, where we’re seeing entire communities of young men killed over drug trafficking. Then we can talk about the families of individuals who are using narcotics, the devastation that that causes these families and the community. Not only is the drug user suffering, but the entire community is suffering.
Mr. Jekielek: How does addiction work? Is it as simple as a physical dependency, or is there more to it? I’ve heard various explanations. What is your view?
Mr. Brown: When I worked in Detroit for a number of years, I was on a crack task force, and I talked to a lot of individuals who were using crack cocaine. The way they explained it is the first time they tried crack cocaine was the last time they tried anything else. They said crack cocaine was so powerful that the dopamine basically rewired the brain system. It’s all about what causes the body to produce dopamine, which are your pleasure receptors.
Crack cocaine basically rewired those dopamine receptors to produce more dopamine very, very rapidly, which creates the addiction. The body then becomes adjusted to this new stimulant and says, “Wow, that was really good. I want that.” Then the user basically loses control and he has to feed that addiction. That’s why crack cocaine distribution was so successful for almost 20 years.
Even now, we’re seeing a resurgence of crack usage in cities like New York, Chicago, and out on the West Coast. We’re repeating the mistakes of the past, we’re falling back into the same web of addiction that we’ve been trying to get out of for at least as long as I’ve been on the job—32 years. We seem to be losing that battle though, especially with fentanyl.
Mr. Jekielek: I’ve spoken with a number of people who view addiction more like a social disease. The people who are prone to becoming addicted are people who don’t have very good social connections. They don’t have ways to get out of it if they get pulled in through one of these fake drugs. Portugal has decriminalized a lot of drugs and has programs that foster community for those people that are vulnerable. This is often described as a success story. How do you view this?
Mr. Brown: First, you have to look at the difference between Portugal and the United States. The United States is a diverse country with many ethnic groups. A lot of groups are here, including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. Portugal is primarily a homogeneous culture. When we look at the diversity in America, African-American communities and Hispanic communities have a much higher drug addiction rate, arrest rate, and also a low economic status. There’s a number of factors in poor communities in the United States that lead to drug addiction.
Portugal does not have these same issues. They do not have pockets of African-American and Hispanics and other minority groups who are at the lower end of the social spectrum. That’s one distinct difference.
The second difference is that in Portugal you don’t have the same gang and drug culture. It’s completely different. You don’t see organized crime groups killing and causing a lot of violence in Portugal. It’s a different mentality.
The third issue is that Portugal has said, “If you get caught using narcotics, you don’t go to jail. But if you don’t go to rehab, you can lose your driver’s license, your passport, and your ability to work.”
Most people say, “Okay, I‘ll go to rehab, but I’ll continue to use narcotics.” But what that hasn’t done is reduce the amount of cocaine being distributed in Portugal. Europe has seen dramatic increases in the distribution of cocaine because of these liberal policies. If you’re the Sinaloa Cartel, you’re sitting back and loving decriminalization, because it’s not stopping the amount of cocaine coming into your country.
It may be managing addiction, but it’s not ending addiction. If you look at the rates of people who actually have gone through detox and stopped using cocaine, you will actually find that a lot of people are now just long-term drug users.
Mr. Jekielek: I’m very concerned that these drugs can be made out of precursors that might be legitimate through a multi-stage process. It almost feels like it’s impossible to disrupt that supply chain. Do you see any way through that?
Mr. Brown: We had an opportunity many years ago to go after the supply chain. Earlier I mentioned there were precursor chemicals coming from China to Colombia to produce cocaine. One of the primary precursors is acidic anhydride, often referred to as AA. It has to be shipped maritime in containers because it comes in 55-gallon drums. Hundreds of metric tons of acidic anhydride have been shipped from China to Colombia for the last 40 years to produce cocaine.
U.S. law enforcement or international law enforcement never really focused on disrupting that supply chain. They always focused on the tail end, going after the heads of the cartels, and going after the transportation networks in the United States. They never focused on the center of gravity, which are the chemicals. That was allowed to metastasize to what it is now.
With the invention of the internet and online chemical formulas, many individuals have taken it upon themselves now to simply teach themselves how to make their own narcotics. For example, in the 1990s, we saw bath salts. You went into a smoke shop and it would say “Potpourri, not for human use,” but everybody knew you could go in there and you could smoke it or you could inject it, and you would get a high.
It would take the DEA about 12 to 18 months to regulate that particular substance. But the traffickers knew that within 18 months they could create a new bath salt just by changing the molecule structure. Just one molecule changed, and it’s a new substance.
Now, with artificial intelligence [AI] coming in, if I’m a chemist, I can go in with a good AI program and I make a restructured fentanyl formula that is completely legal. It will take law enforcement 18 months to regulate that. By that time, I have another six formulas ready to go. We can now see how the internet has revolutionized drug trafficking. It has made it much more difficult to investigate and to degrade.
Mr. Jekielek: This whole picture is a very grim one.
Mr. Brown: Sure. Again, I'll reflect back on my experience in Detroit. When crack cocaine came out, every street crew and every gang wanted to sell crack cocaine. It was the fastest way to make the most money. Detroit is a small city and the drug trafficking was condensed in certain areas.
In those areas, you could have five or six different groups all struggling to increase their territory for distribution sales, so we saw an increase in violence. When I was working there, they had homicides rates that exceeded 400 homicides a year, if not higher. It was one of the highest death rates in the country related to drug trafficking or gang activity.
Even in Mexico, you can see the fight between the Sinaloa Cartel or the Zetas or the Templars, because they’re all fighting for control of the plazas. The plazas are the territory between Mexico and the United States. Whoever controls those entry points controls the kingdom. I call it the Game of Thrones between cartels. The cartels have been fighting and killing each other for the last three decades.
In the last 15 to 20 years, more than 30 or 40,000 people have been killed as a result of cartel violence, and that has spilled over into America. We’re now seeing MS-13 killing people around the country, and you have your Crips, Bloods, and Latin Kings. You also have other groups who are fighting each other for expansion of territory to increase drug distribution, which makes more money.
Mr. Jekielek: This is a very grim picture. As an ordinary person living a normal life, how do you avoid getting sucked into this whole world?
Mr. Brown: That’s a complicated question. You have to learn how to manage your stress. Today, when I was looking on the internet, I saw there’s a new drug out that helps people manage their weight without exercising. Everyone says, “It’s all the rage.” I thought, “This is America’s problem.” We take a pill for everything. We have forgotten the basics of self-management; managing our stress, managing our outcomes, and relying on our own abilities to deal with those issues.
Granted, some people may not have the mental capacity or the economic ability to do that. I understand that, but we are so quick as a culture to turn towards medicating ourselves out of our problems. Then we get addicted to prescription drugs, which creates a window for the cartels to move in with their fake prescription drugs. Now, we have this 100,000 overdose rate creating 100,000 deaths a year.
As parents, we have to talk to our kids. The individual I had on my talk show, “The Opioid Matrix,” said, “You’ve got to talk to your kids. You have to get them to open up so you can see where they’re at.”
A lot of parents are saying, “Hey, I’m doing that, but I still missed this.” Unfortunately, that’s going to happen. But as parents and as family we have to be more involved in the day-to-day lives of our circle, so that we can see those signs, get in quickly, and try to help people. In harm reduction programs they say, “We want to meet you where you’re at,” which I totally agree with.
Mr. Jekielek: As you said, we need to seek out a non-medical intervention as an alternative, and not necessarily seek out a medication solution for everything.
Mr. Brown: Yes. In the stats that I saw recently, 25 million Americans were on some type of prescription drug. When I look back to the time of my father and my grandfather, there were no prescription drugs, it was just hard work. You study, you work hard, and you succeed. That was the message that was passed down to me by my father.
Certainly, they had stress. There were difficult situations, but as you said, it was all non-medical alternatives. Medicine had not evolved to this point where you can go to your doctor and get a prescription for pretty much anything that ails you. That can lead to addiction, and you can become dependent on that prescription drug.
For example, Valium is overly prescribed, and also ketamine to some extent. Matthew Perry passed away recently, and his autopsy indicated that he had some ketamine in his system, which was very unfortunate. There are a lot of prescription drugs out there that people are addicted to. Again, that creates a window of opportunity for the drug traffickers to slip something in.
Mr. Jekielek: A final thought as we finish up?
Mr. Brown: America has to realize the opioid crisis, or what I call the fentanyl crisis, is not going to resolve itself. It’s going to take a serious bilateral effort with China and Mexico to at least degrade two or three of those critical capabilities I mentioned earlier. If China and Mexico are unwilling to cooperate, then the question for the administration is, “Do we simply tolerate another 100,000 overdose deaths by the end of the year, or do we look at the cartels as narcoterrorist organizations such as we did with Medellin Cartel or the FARC in Colombia, and take more aggressive action?” That is the decision the administration and the American people have to make.
Mr. Jekielek: Michael Brown, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Brown: Thank you for the opportunity.
Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Michael Brown and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.
🔴 WATCH the full episode (53 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0203MichaelBrown
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