Dr. Phil on the Counterfeit Pill Problem

We have epidemics in this country right now that people aren't paying enough attention to. Well, the fentanyl epidemic. That one scares the shit out of me. Man. That one scares the shit out of me. It really does because people are accidentally dying of overdoses. It used to be if you died of an overdose, it's because you did a dangerous drug. You took a very risky chance to do something that you probably knew you shouldn't be doing. Whether it's heroin or meth or something like that. But now people are doing things they think are fairly innocuous. And it's laced with fentanyl and they're dying. Well, just across the border, just south of San Diego in October of 21, they busted a drug lab that was turning out 70 million counterfeit pills a month. One lab. 70 million counterfeit pills a month. Now, we don't know that they were all going to come to America, but we know a shitload of them were going to come to America. And the DEA's estimate is that 40 percent of them are laced with lethal levels of fentanyl. 40 percent. 40 percent are laced with lethal doses of fentanyl. Poisoning. Fentanyl poisoning is the number one cause of death for people 18 to 49 in this country. And think about that. What these kids need to understand, and I want people to understand this, and I don't care if you stop listening to Joe and I talk right now and go call your kid, or go call your grandkids or your friends' kids. First off, all these pills you're buying on Snapchat, 100 percent of them are counterfeit. They're buying pills on Snapchat? Oh, they're buying... How does that work? You can buy a pill on Snapchat, and I'll show you here. Let me pull this up. I know Jamie can't beat me to this. If you do, I'm going to really be impressed. He's got it. No, he doesn't either. Bullshit. Snapchat drug dealers. How illegal drugs are being dangled to kids on Snapchat, Instagram, and other platforms. Scroll down. I'll see him if he's going to react. No, I'm not reacting. I'm looking, because I've got something... Okay, here we go. See these Xanax bars here? Yeah. Maybe I can send this to Jamie. Here are the emojis that they use to advertise it with, and then here is the menu. So, who is this Cartel's that are putting these things up on Snapchat, and then you order them on the Internet? Here's the deal. Fentanyl is synthetic, and it's all being generated in China. So, if you want to be a conspiracy theorist, this will get your conspiracy juices flowing. Are you AirDrop Open over there? Yes. Jamie's Airbook Pro? Yes. Okay. I just sent you four pictures, and they're gone, so now you have them. Okay, it's all being generated or synthesized in China, and then China is sending it to the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Cartel is then turning it into these pills, and then these pills are coming into America. And the DEA estimates that they are intercepting about 10%, and what they are intercepting is enough to kill every American. Jesus Christ. The fentanyl is enough to kill every American. So, here's the menu. Every American. LA County Delivery. It's like... You want to make it so that little... there it goes. So, LA County Delivery, nationwide shipping, low cost, low stress, highest highs, Dr. Don Guarantee, Mr. Don 248. So, look at all the stuff that they have here. Perks, GMO, OG, gas, and edibles. What does that mean? That's probably weed. Gas? Really? THC, crumble, snow, Adderall, 20 milligram scrips, 2.5 milligram hulks. What are those? What's a hulk? That's a type of pill off the top of my head. I wouldn't know, but I'm not... Yeah, it's a good idea. Pharma-Pram bottles, Ambien, 10 milligram scrips, Hydros, 10 milligram... What is a Hydro? A Hydrocodone, maybe? I don't know. I think. Jesus Christ. Yeah, now go to the... go to the emojis that I sent you. It's one of the images I sent. And this is how they communicate. Percocet oxycodone. So, they have these different emojis in combination. Yeah. I mean different things. What is that little emoji next to those two pills that means Zammax? It looks like a truck. What does that mean? Delivery? Yeah. I think that means they'll deliver that to your house. This is like Postmates. Wow. You order this and they'll deliver this to your house in less than an hour. And I've had different sets of parents on whose... These are kids that... and we do pretty good background checks on these. I'm talking about... The title of the show we did was One Pill Kills because these were not kids that were drug addicts. They weren't doing heroin and that sort of thing. And we checked because, like one of the girls, we got her credit card information. We saw she ordered one pill. We went back like months. Ordered one pill. And she wanted to get some sleep before finals. And we found three quarters of the pill in her top dresser drawer. Her parents found it and the police came. She broke it in half and then broke it in half again. So, she took a quarter of one pill and they found her dead in the morning. Because it had so much fentanyl in it that it just killed her. And this isn't an overdose. This is poisoning. Do you think this is purposeful? Well, the reason they put it in there and put this one up... The reason they put it in there is because it's so highly addictive. But they're not smart. Or they don't care if they're killing a certain percentage of their customers. But here's the deal. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin, 100 times stronger than morphine. So, if you bite into this, you're dead when you hit the ground. And so, she took a quarter of it. Boom. Gone. And their estimate is that 40% of these pills that they're getting have lethal doses of fentanyl in them. The ones that don't have enough in it that you are addicted like that. So, they come back for more and more and more and more. And now, there are conspiracy theorists, including a former DEA guy, that believes that China is manufacturing this stuff, synthesizing this stuff, sending it to the Sinaloa cartel, who's flooding it into America, and they're just trying to poison or drug Americans. It's just another attack. He believes it's a terrorist attack. And it's interesting. He has a demo that he does. He just takes a little packet of sweetener and dumps it in his hand. And he says, that much fentanyl is enough to kill 500 people. It's just staggering. And we've got to get this message out to the kids. Don't do it. Those pills look exactly like the pills that you get at the pharmacy. And what they're doing now, Joe, is they're putting them in these pastel colors. I think I sent you some of those, Jamie, in the pastel colors. They're making them look like these candies that the kids get. And kids are going to see these things around and pick them up and think they're like sweet tarts or whatever and bite into them. If I was a parent, I would go to the store and buy every kind of candy I could find. And as soon as my kids came home from trick-or-treating, I would take their pumpkin and dump it into the trash and then fill it back up with candy I knew was good and hand it back to them. I wouldn't let them take a single piece of candy from trick-or-treating because you don't know what's in there. That was always the fear, right, when we were kids? Is that someone's going to sneak in a razor blade? We thought there'd be a razor blade in an apple or something. I saw this going around, but I heard a lot of people push them back a couple days after this was made major headlines. As you were saying, no. Who's the expert? I don't know. There was a lot of hubbub about this viral picture because this went out. The DEA was talking about it. But then I read there was no evidence that this was real. That's what I read. Well, let's scroll down and see what they say in terms of looks like candy. DEA administrator Alan or Ann Milgram told CBS News, in fact, some of the drug traffickers have nicknamed it sweet tarts, skittles. The DEA alert didn't mention Halloween, but fears about rainbow fentanyl and the holiday went viral. DEA warning meets skepticism from drug experts. Drug policy experts contacted by NPR agree there's no new fentanyl threat this Halloween. Many are also skeptical of the DEA's original warning. They don't believe that Mexican drug cartels and street dealers have launched any new campaign targeting children. I don't see any evidence that the DEA has produced that supports that conjecture. I don't think they're targeting children. I think the fact that they are making these things in pastel colors make children vulnerable to picking these things up. You want to argue over the word targeting? If a child picks up something that, you know, I said that young girl that I was talking about took three quarters of a pill, or one quarter of a pill. And three quarters of it was left in her drawer. If she has a younger sister or something that sees that, picks it up and it looks like candy and eats it, she's gone. Right. Yeah, it's the way it looks. I'm not saying they're targeting. No, I'm not saying it's targeting. Yeah. I don't care if you use the word targeting or not. It's dangerous. And I'm just saying I'm... You know, my grandkids, they won't be getting any candy out of that. And it's not that anywhere they're going is going to be giving out fentanyl to kids. It's just they don't know where it's coming from. Yeah, you're not getting it from a store. And that makes it dangerous. And my point is, if you're in school and you're studying for finals and you're not a drug addict, and you think, well, one pill's not going to hurt, that's no longer true. You maybe think, I'll get some Adderall, get me through my finals. That could be a fatal decision. It won't be an overdose. It'll be a poisoning. It's very dangerous. And if you're getting it from someone other than a pharmacy, there's a high possibility. Well, the DEA's belief is that all of the pills that you're getting on social media are counterfeit. And that as much as 40% of them have fatal doses of fentanyl, lethal doses of fentanyl, because they're so unsophisticated in their mix. So it's not a matter of poisoning as much as it's a matter of they don't give a fuck. And they're just, I mean, they're not like accredited labs. These people are just mixing shit up. They're making stuff up in a bathtub. They're making it up in a, you know, mixing it up, and then they're putting it in a pill press and letting it dry and shipping it over here. Today on CNN, they said they arrested some CNN or Fox, one of the two, they arrested some 14 year olds coming across the border and they had a couple of thousand pills on them. And who knows where it came from? Who knows what else is in it?