Extra: Addressing The Supply and Demand For Fentanyl
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Learn more at phrma.org slash IPWorksWonders. This is the Fox News Rundown Extra. I'm Grinnell Scott. Over the last few years, Americans in far too high a number have gotten access to, gotten hooked on, and in many cases died from fentanyl. For people age 18 to 45, statistics tell us fentanyl is the number one killer in the United States.

Some argue that there is not a great deal of consistency in how this scourge is being dealt with on the federal level. A new hard-hitting documentary, Fentanyl, Death Incorporated, delves into this. I recently spoke to the film's producer, Discovery Institute's senior fellow, Dr. Robert G. Marbutt Jr., and its narrator, actor, and activist, Billy Baldwin.

The two discussed the fentanyl crisis and how Congress and the country must address both demand for the deadly drug and those who are supplying it.

We made some edits for time and thought you might want to hear the whole conversation. Thank you for listening. And if you haven't already, please go to foxnewsrundown.com to follow our daily weekday rundown podcast. Now here's Dr. Robert G. Marbutt Jr. and actor Billy Baldwin on the Fox News Rundown Extra. ♪

And let's just start out with something pretty general. And Fentanyl Death Incorporated, this is an important documentary. First of all, Billy, tell me what got you involved in this? You are no stranger to taking up big, big time causes. What got you involved here?

I was offered a film called No Address that was a scripted feature set in the world of homelessness with Ty Pennington and Xander Berkeley and Beverly D'Angelo and Ashanti. That film came out last week. We spun off a documentary on homelessness called Americans with No Address. While working on that, I became very good friends with Dr. Marbutt.

who was Trump's homelessness czar. We thought we had very little in common and very little to talk about. It turns out when every topic we talked about campaign finance reform, the second amendment, homelessness, mental health, we realized that we have, you know, there's a lot of common ground. Dr. Marbut produced this documentary called FDI, Fentanyl Death Incorporated, um,

And I did the voiceover for it. I've been helping him to promote it. And I've, you know, I knew a little bit. I knew a significant amount about homelessness and mental health. I knew less about fentanyl because there's a new wave of this since started after the Purdue pharma crisis. And it got much, much worse in 2019. And the numbers are staggering. So we'll get into that with Marvitt.

Well, I think people do not understand how deadly fentanyl is. One grain equivalent of fentanyl of rice will kill 15 people.

And more people have died from fentanyl in the last five years than all the American men and women who have died in America wars starting for the last hundred years. So if you add up World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Gulf War II, Global War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and a handful of smaller other actions, add all the deaths up in the sad times.

Sad high number. Fentanyl has actually killed more in the last five years than a hundred years of war of American men and service women. We have 4% of the world's population. We consume 38% of the world's fentanyl and we have 65% of the global deaths from fentanyl with only 4% of the population.

That brings me to origins because China is where a lot of this comes from. And it comes in to the United States through places like Mexico and Canada. China is defending themselves basically saying, you know what, we make it. You don't have to take it. But there's the demand that seems to be prevalent in this country for fentanyl.

Is that the biggest problem here? Because it doesn't seem that there might be such a big problem if there weren't so many Americans willing to take it with the numbers that you just gave me. Well, I think to solve this fentanyl crisis, we've never seen something so deadly in American history. Just full stop period is killing more people 18 to 45 than any other cause. Cancer, heart attack, stroke, car crashes, anything you can imagine.

And I think we've gotten ourselves so deep in a hole now with the fentanyl crisis. If we don't do all of the above right, I mean, we got to stop China in the precursors. We got to stop the cartels in Mexico. We got to stop the biker gangs in Canada. We also have to recriminalize and prosecute high volume drug use.

distributors in America. We can't go back and say what was happening a lot in California and Washington State and Oregon is saying we're not going to prosecute high-end crime, whether it's volume or potency. I don't think we should just do that with the people distributing too. I think the people that are using, we should criminalize it in a way where it's not a misdemeanor, it's a felony, and then you give judges the option to either incarcerate them or give them the choice like they used to do in the old days. You're either going to the army or you're going to jail.

And a lot of people got rehabilitated by going into the army. I think they should give the people the choice to go to jail or to go to rehab. And if this requires comprehensive 360 care, it's going to be mental health care, addiction care, job training, job placement. His facility in San Antonio, Haven for Hope, Dr. Marbert's facility, Haven for Hope in San Antonio has 2,500 people every night.

And some of the programs in Fort Smith and there's a partnership with the Christian Mission and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. When they're doing this comprehensive wraparound care, they're experiencing a 70 to 80 percent success rate out of the system, back on your feet, totally self-sufficient, totally independent. A lot of people will say no.

Who's going to pay for that? We're paying more right now to not do enough. When they call night, when one guy in Spokane got called six times for overdosing in one day. Okay. We were there watching people overdose, watching people dying in Spokane, Seattle, Sacramento, San Francisco, all across the country. And people are going to say, well, who's going to pay for that right now? You call nine one one. You get, uh, you get an, you get a four, you get a rig with four firemen, two sheriff, two cops, uh,

and paramedics in an ambulance, and then you get non-profit. Taxpayers are paying. Emergency room, we're paying. They get admitted to the hospital, we're paying. They go into the court system, we're paying. They're incarcerated, we're paying. Department of Commerce, Department of Tourism, small business industry, quality of life, property values plummeting. You're paying way more now to not do enough. If you're saying, who's going to pay for this? It requires long-term...

comprehensive wraparound care that some 72-hour hold or 28-day AA program ain't going to do it. These people need to be in longer-term care to get them back on their feet. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, from self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. And if it's not in your industry yet, it's coming.

Thank you.

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That's oracle.com slash C-A-I-N. Well, you talked about agencies and what they can do and what can possibly be done. Federally, we don't – I guess we haven't seen a whole bunch done as far as regulation. And I'm not sure that's the best word, but –

We haven't seen a whole lot done. And given our current politics, there's not a lot of talking going on amongst both sides. We've got both sides in silos and not a whole lot of talking going on. Is that a big problem in trying to get something done on the federal level? One of the biggest problems that we've had is that there wasn't the political will there. And right now we have –

Democrats not talking to Republicans, and it's so bad Republicans aren't talking to other Republicans. And we didn't have the political will, but because it's been compounded and exacerbated by COVID and by fentanyl over the last few years, this is an issue of a national health crisis. And it's a compassion issue that now all of a sudden the people that were saying,

The compassionate side is like, we got to do something to help these people. And the other people that were like, who's going to pay for this are now realizing it's going to be cheaper to address this in a comprehensive 360 way. So we have everybody's attention. We have people that are willing to come to the table and to talk about

This is an easy one to get bipartisan support on. This absolutely should not be a left-right Republican-Democrat issue. In six months, the last six months, more people have died in fentanyl than the entire 15 years of the Vietnam War. Think about that number. We're at a rate that this is just out of control, and we should all be working together. And we've got to have the left, we've got to have the right if we're going to get this solved.

Narcan is something that I believe the states, all the states allow people to get. And normally when you think of Narcan, it's not the person who's on the fentanyl that wants it. It's usually somebody close to them.

that wants it for them because they know what the possibilities are that could end that. And we all have seen the viral pictures and videos of a person getting hit by Narcan. They come out and they're mad. They're mad at the person. Forget. Why did you do that? And people are more scared about the recovery and the withdrawals.

than they are of getting the treatment and getting off of fentanyl. That's how powerful fentanyl has become. And it is the most addictive drug ever known in mankind. And it's also the most lethal simultaneously. Yeah, the people, you know, the high is really good.

High is insanely good. And with other things like xylosine, it lasts longer, which is a horse tranquilizer. It lasts longer. But when we were in Seattle, the original Starbucks was here. The Wharf was here. The Nike store was over here. People all over the sidewalk in the fentanyl full, laying down in urine. One guy flatlined. They gave him Narcan. 21-year-old guy.

They gave him Narcan. He came back. He vomited and he turned around to the fire department and said, get your hands off me. I refuse your care. He was doing that not just because the high was so good and because he was upset that the Narcan had done something to his high. The prospect of not being high and getting held and going into detox is so psychologically and physically painful that he'd rather risk dying on fentanyl than to be detoxing.

So that's why I've done conservatorships on people. And the guidelines are, are you a threat to somebody or others? Or are you a harm to, are you a threat to yourself or others? Or are you harm to yourself or others? Well, clearly this guy was a threat to himself and others. And clearly he had harmed himself because he had flatlined and the Narcan saved his life. 21 year old kid, he would have been dead. He may be dead by now.

I think don't leave it with the judges and the lawyers in the robes in the courtroom. The people that are on the front lines in the trenches every day doing the work, the fire department, the paramedics, the sheriff, the police, the nonprofits.

who know they've responded to this guy. Again, one guy was six times in one day. They're responding to people several times a month. You know, grab them, take them off the street. Don't put them in a 72 hour hold, put them in a 10 day hold, get them the proper medication to withdraw suboxone or whatever.

and then let them make a decision from a more sober perspective if they want to go back to the street and if they want to get high again. But if you can get them to a point where they're more clear-headed and we say, we'll give you the help, we'll get you back on your feet, and the state will provide for that to get you back on your feet. His organization is saving at a 70% to 80%. What is it at? 70% to 80%?

About 72. 72%. I mean, come on. I'm in Santa Barbara. I see people that are so ill on the street that you could tell they're not. The 30% that you're not getting to are the people that...

are going to need a lifetime of care because they're just never going to be able to get out of the system and to be back on their feet. People that are bent over, they're not bent over because of the fentanyl, they're bent over because, you know, 20 years living on the streets. In the United States, the last 15, 20 years, we've made it so easy to get high and so hard to get treatment. We've got to flip that on the head. We've got to make it easy to get treatment and hard to get high. Let me ask you this because...

Vice President Vance this week was at the border, and he addressed this in some form when he said, you know, fentanyl is the scourge that's coming in. And as you have mentioned, from not just the southern border, but the northern border, we talk about super labs up there. And I'm not sure not many people know what super labs are. But with cartels being

designated as state sponsors of terror by the United States. One thing that allows is the military to go in and stop this. Is it time for that? I think it's getting really close and the ideal way to do it is the way we dealt with Colombia and Escobar 20 years ago where we did joint operations. That by far is the most successful approach and so we ultimately got to get to that if we can.

But there may be a point in time that if we can't get an agreement on a joint operation, we have to defend our country. I hope we don't get there. And Mexico has done more in the last 35 days than they've probably done in the last 35 months. Wow. They have brought in more people. They brought almost 30 people. Trump has their attention. Trump has their attention. I mean.

Maybe we do a joint military situation and use lots of drones so you don't have a lot of boots. These people are well armed and they're lethal. And the government there is completely paid off. Many of them are completely paid off by Sinaloa and the other cartels. So.

So, you know, if we're doing the work that we're doing in the Middle East in bunkers 500 feet under the ground in Hancock Airport up at Syracuse, if they're playing video games and watching their monitors and they're surveilling somebody in the Middle East and they get good intel on...

where this person's going to be, you know, if you, if that's one of the ways, like the way we deal with international terror, they are a terrorist organization. I feel very strongly that we have to start addressing this from the demand side. We got into the situation with the Purdue, let me say the last name is Sacklove. Yes. The Sacklove lawsuits and the Purdue lawsuits. We had a bunch of people that were getting script after script after script when that changed and the doctors were afraid to go to jail if they wrote those scripts and those scripts stopped being written. Um,

then everyone went to fentanyl. Sometimes they think they're taking fentanyl. There's not even fentanyl in the fentanyl. There's chemicals that you use to clean an oil derrick mixed with chemicals you use to clean a swimming pool mixed with xylosine, which is a horse tranquilizer. And they're ingesting that. And like you said, we're losing more every year than died in Vietnam in 15 years. So I think that...

Anyway, go ahead. I lost my train of thought. Well, you've – and correct me if I'm wrong. You've been to Capitol Hill. You've sat with lawmakers. A lot of people don't know. He worked on Capitol Hill for two years before he became an actor. Yeah. I mean you've sat across from lawmakers and said, look, these things are important. What would you tell them right now if you had a chance to go up to Capitol Hill and say, here is – I'm going to show you this documentary. Here's what we need to do.

I would say it's a slam dunk. It's an easy bipartisan issue. I've done this before. I tell everybody when you go to the Hill, you have to be bilingual. When you talk to one side of the aisle, you have to speak one language. When you talk to the other side of the aisle, you have to speak another language. Is that a big problem? No, no. It was easy once I learned that. When I went to the Democrats to get increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, I talked about the importance of us having a position on the federal level. Germans were spending $50 per taxpayer and America was spending 30 cents.

So I was just trying to get a little increase. The NEA went from $175 million to $99 million. I was trying to get a $10 million bump. When I talked to the Democrats, which I didn't really have to do, but I was expressing they wanted cover. They wanted me to provide cover for them. And I said...

And, you know, the talking points were this is why it's important for you to for us to disseminate art in second tier cities and in rural areas and in suburbs rather than the urban hubs. And here's the benefit. Here's why it's important to reflect. Sometimes the art can be controversial. Sometimes it can be offensive. But relatively speaking, on a percentage basis, that's very small. I would go to a Republican. I would have a totally different conversation. I would talk to Orrin Hatch.

or Denny Hastert, I would say every dollar you spend in a grant triggers two and a half to four dollars of economic activity. You and I go to the play. I pick you up. We burn gas. We pay to park the car. We go to dinner before the show. Then there's sets being billed, paint, lumber being purchased, hair, makeup, wardrobe. Every dollar you spend in production, it's like Reagan's

It's like Reagan's trickle-down economics, but it's for real. So you spend $25,000 in an NEA grant, it generates a quarter of a million dollars in economic activity once that plague gets on its feet. And when I was speaking that language to Orrin Hatch, he would turn to his chief of staff and say, are these numbers right? Are they accurate? He was like, yeah, they are. He's like, okay, I'll vote for $10 million.

So that's what I'm doing with the people that the compassionate side of like, we'll call course, correct. We'll do what you need to do. We'll do what you want to do. You know more about this than we do. And then on the right, who's saying, how the heck are we ever going to fund this? I say what I just said before, it's costing you more now not to, if you, you're going to save money now. And in the long run, if you do what, what they're doing right now in five different markets with a very high rate of success.

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It's very fast-paced, one hour, and it's amazing. We have foreign intelligence officers. We have medical experts who are fentanyl expertise. We have scientists. We have family members who've lost people in their family. We have a lot of law enforcement.

And it is the most comprehensive documentary on fentanyl. It covers every aspect. And it also provides history. We need to understand how we got here. And it really doesn't even start with Purdue Pharma. It goes all the way back to the opium wars in China, Opium War I, Opium War II.

And a lot of people don't know how, like even Hong Kong was taken by the British in order to ensure organic opioids continue to go into China and they were being farmed out of India. And if you don't understand that history, you won't understand how we got here. So you'll get a lot of information. It's very entertaining. And what's incredible is when we do screenings for it, you can see when, you know, do they watch the whole thing? Do they come in and out three or four times?

It's incredible how many people watch it in one sitting. They get stuck in that first, just get hooked in that first two or three minutes and watch the whole thing. And as far as this is going out in theaters, we'll see it in places like Nashville and Little Rock and places like that. So I've seen, and Billy, your involvement with this, I mean, obviously anybody who's listening to this knows you're very passionate about what needs to be done about this.

Yeah, this is really, really jaw-dropping. When you realize the impact that this drug has had on America, not just since 2013, 2014 with Purdue, just since the numbers escalated very rapidly in 2019, when you realize the impact that this has had on the country just in five years, you're going to realize that

You're elected officials. The left hand better start talking to the right hand fast and we better start doing something about this from the demand with China, with the borders and with the demand, with the demand side to not just the supply side and knowing that there is demand.

really effective programs in the country. So there is hope they're doing great work, but if we could replicate what they're doing in Austin, San Antonio, Baltimore, Pinellas County, Fort Smith, if we can replicate what they're doing there, county by county, state by state, we can eradicate this mental health issue and this homelessness issue and this fentanyl issue, you know, make a huge dent in this five to 10 years and possibly eradicate it 10 to 15 years. Everybody's been saying we're going to end homelessness as we know it.

in the next decade. They've been saying that for four or five decades, but if you do what Marvin and others are doing in these, especially these programs in San Antonio and at Johns Hopkins, we can really, I mean, if they're having a 70% success rate there, why can't they have it across the country? And the last thing I have for you, if for no other reason, I mean, if you've, you've seen the effects that fentanyl can have on any individual, uh,

If for no other reason, there are a lot of people who are going to say, you know what, when you think of – I've done enough stories about rainbow fentanyl and how it looks like candy and every Halloween it comes up when you get the possibility that kids could be exposed to this. And Dr. Marba, I'm sure you have thoughts on that. And we even cover that in the documentary about the colored candy-looking fentanyl.

And I think what – this is important from a public policy point of view, but it's most important from a family point of view. Your family should watch this. If you're a parent, if you have siblings, you want everybody to watch it. And it's not just a young thing anymore. The fact that it's killing – it's the number one killer, 18 to 45, in America. It's the fastest-growing killer of children 0 to 4, which is just –

mind-boggling when you think about that. And very importantly, it's not poor people only. It's not minorities only. The woman that founded YouTube lost her son, a freshman at Berkeley last year. This is happening to upper white, upper middle class and affluent white communities are getting everybody. My kids grew up in Santa Barbara, which is high, their high school is 63% ethnicity. So it had a lot of socioeconomic and ethnic diversity. But they had three,

three or four kids that overdosed and died of fentanyl and all of them were white in Santa Barbara. So it's a real scourge right now. It's a documentary you need to see, Fentanyl Death Incorporated. Dr. Robert Marbutt Jr. is a producer of the documentary. Billy Baldwin's voice is the one you'll hear taking you through it.

We enjoyed having this conversation with you. Thank you for being with us on the Fox News Rundown. Yeah, go to FDImovie.com to check out all the information where you'll be able to see it, where you can get tickets, where you can see it streaming. FDImovie.com. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you very much.

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