Name: MPW Summit 2023: Battling Fentanyl And The Drug Cartels
Uploaded: 2023-10-12
Duration: 18 min 18 s
Description: Anne Milgram, Administrator, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Interviewer: Maria Aspan, FORTUNE

Anne Milgram, Administrator, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Interviewer: Maria Aspan, FORTUNE

MPW Summit 2023: Battling Fentanyl And The Drug Cartels

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The United States is experiencing a crisis with deadly results. According to the CDC, more than 10,000 people in the US died of drug overdoses last year. And nearly 70% of those deaths involved fentaNYL and other synthetic opioids. Just last month, a horrific situation, a child died and three were hurt at a daycare center in New York City after exposure to fentaNYL. Our next guess is fentaNYL is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered and no community is immune from its dangers. Anne Milgram is head of the US drug enforcement administration. She leads nearly 10,000 people in the DEA S3, 134 offices around the world as they work to combat the illegal drug trade in the United States and joins Fortune, senior writer and NPW Coa Maria Aspen to talk about leading the agency, the role of international cartels. What's fueling and what's fueling the so called fourth wave of the devastating opioid crisis. Please welcome them to the stage. Let's go into the other stage for a minute and thank you so much for being here to discuss this important and really overwhelming topic at least I find when considering the statistics and the stories like the horrific Bronx daycare story. Um I believe in 2010, there were 40,000 drug deaths of drug overdoses in the US. And last year, there were more than 100,000, almost 70% which came from fentaNYL. How in your role, how do you wrap your head around the size of the crisis and identify priorities to respond? It. It's a great question and thank you so much for having me. It was such a privilege to sit yesterday and listen to so many of you talking about your work. I find it, I find it truly inspiring. The information I often use is that in 2019, there were 71,000 US deaths. In 2022 we just experienced 110,757 American lives lost those numbers. Don't include the people who have been given the antidote, naloxone Narcan and have survived. And so we talk about this as it is the deadliest drug threat we've ever seen. It is also totally different than any other drug threat the United States has ever known. This is all chemicals. It is literally chemicals that come from China that are going to two criminal organizations in Mexico that are mass producing fentaNYL and then it's coming into the US and killing Americans and it's being hidden in other drugs, it's being hidden in pills that look like they're real oxyCODONE or real Percocets. And in fact, it's fentaNYL and just the amount of fentaNYL enough to fit on the tip of a pencil can kill someone. And so it is devastating communities from coast to coast and everywhere in between and many people are dying that don't know they're taking it. They think they're taking a real Percocet. They think they're taking a real oxyCODONE or Adderall that they bought on social media or they think they're taking cocaine or heroin or methamphetamine that's all laced with fentaNYL because it is so highly addictive. If people become addictive, they buy more and the cartels make more money. You have really identified the cartels and also China as responsible for this crisis. And you've said in the past that the governments, there haven't taken enough action or cooperated enough. And I believe just last week, the Biden administration took action against Chinese entities and individuals. How do you? Well, a couple of questions, our relationship with China is super tense as, as you know, at a time when the Biden administration is trying to navigate that relationship, how do you think about what actions DEA and justice are taking, how that plays into the greater geopolitical situation? It's such an important question and I would say just going back a little bit to priority question, our top priority is to save lives, to stop people from dying. It is not a war on drugs. It is a fight to save lives. And our top operational priority is to defeat these two networks. Again, it starts in China with chemical companies that are making these chemicals that cost pennies to make a dose of fentaNYL is then sold for 10 to $30 in the US. They are then being mass produced in Mexico by two criminal organizations. I was reflecting yesterday, one of the incredible angel investors was saying she likes to invest in people who lose sleep at night. Thinking about how to build companies, I lose sleep at night, thinking about how to destroy and take down multinational global billion dollar criminal networks that operate like diversified corporations in the world, right? And, and that are essentially peddling death and making a lot of money for it. So this is a largely international supply chain issue that ends in the US. When I came into DEA, I felt very strongly. We had to transform the way we were working. We could not just go after the top individuals. So DEA did successful investigations into El Chapo. He's now in a US prison for the rest of his life. His sons, the chaos came up and took over his organization. So we are now working across the globe on entire criminal networks starting with the chemicals in China. So we just announced cases we've brought for the first time against Chinese chemical companies that are mass producing these chemicals that can be used to make fentaNYL. We did a series of cases, a huge case against the chaos. El Chapo's sons and their entire criminal network. From the precursor chemical suppliers in China to the manufacturers in Mexico, to the security apparatus in Mexico, to the people who bring it into the US. We did a series of cases about the traffickers in the US that are responsible for those sales on social media and in our communities. And so what we're trying to do is really work across the supply chain as a whole of government. And so the state department has formed an international coalition against fentaNYL, for example. But we work with any country that will work with us right now, we will work with. We also, again, my commitment is to save lives. We'll take action wherever we need to take it. You came in in 2021 unanimous confirmation by the Senate. But at that point, the DEA had been criticized for responding slowly to the fentaNYL crisis. How are you catching up? So we've had to transform ourselves and I would say a couple of points which is first the entire space of drug trafficking. FentaNYL is unlike any other substance we've ever seen. My own view is we will never go back to just plant based drugs like cocaine, chemicals are cheap. They're easy to make synthetic or man made drugs from and they allow so much profit that no one is ever going to turn back. We had to turn and they've transformed. The cartels have transformed with chemicals using social media to recruit people who will take the drugs into the US, to sell to young people who think they're buying a Percocet. So we had to transform ourselves and we've done it in a couple of ways. One is by going across the entire supply chain. Two is by building a strategic layer over everything we do. We have 334 offices around the globe. We had our data and our information in 334 separate places. So what we've done is form these two counter threat teams. Three now one devoted to Sinaloa, one devoted to Helio, the two main threats that we face the two cartels and now one devoted to illicit finance because we're tracking billions of dollars across the globe on regular basis. So we are now pulling together all the information we have, we're analyzing, who are the members of the cartels, who are the people we're mapping and we're targeting and that's what's letting us do the first cases against the Chinese chemical companies do the entire Chito's network. And there's a lot more work to come in the coming months that you'll see, you know, you mentioned that the cartels operate like for profit, multinational corporations, but it has to be said that legitimate for profit, multinational corporations have also been held accountable for their role in creating the opioid crisis in the first place. What are you and the DEA doing to continue um taking action on that front? It's a great, it's a great question and a great point as the, the quick recap is that the opioid epidemic really did start with the overprescribing of legitimate prescription medicine, oxyCODONE. Um Purdue Pharmaceuticals has now been convicted of fraud. Um And, and you know, a number of actions have taken, what happened is that when the supply of legitimate oxyCODONE, when everyone realized what was happening in the United States. And this is many years ago, that supply was pulled back. Many people who had substance use disorder went turned to heroin, which the Mexican cartels pushed into the United States from there. We've transferred into fentaNYL into fentaNYL, which is cheaper, it's deadlier and it is much more addictive. And I would stop here and say the question, people ask me the most and you may be about to ask me this, but it's just why would the cartels kill their customers and thinking about it's so different than the original opioid epidemic where people were seeking pain medicine. What we see happening now is that the cartels want to make money and they make money by selling more fentaNYL is 50 times more addictive than heroin. So that's why they put it in cocaine. That's why they put it in these fake pills. It's far more addictive than oxy. And so anyone who takes it if they survive may come back and buy again and again. And it's the price of doing business for the cartels because think about our modern world, more than 200 million Americans are on social media and the cartels are on Snapchat. They're on Facebook, they're on Tik Tok, they're on Instagram. And so if one of someone dies, they believe there's always somebody behind them to buy the next pill. I want to open it up to questions in a minute. But I also want to ask you're a prosecutor, former state attorney General enforcement is in your agency's name. The narrative about treatment in response to drug addiction has really changed since the DEA was formed 50 years ago. How do you think about harm reduction versus prosecuting and victims? I think it's a great question. Our work right now is at the intersection of national security, public safety and public health. As I said earlier, this to me is a fight to save lives. We have to do everything we can to save lives. And that means treatment, it means prevention. It really means awareness. So being here with all of you who are in, in your communities, in your jobs, having the opportunity to talk to you about how dangerous this threat is when we spread the word. And we spend a lot of time with families who have lost loved ones. We believe we save lives. And so we are committing, we are committed to making sorry we're committed to making uh making treatment accessible to any American who wants it. And I think it's, it's a core part of who we are at DEA helping those who are harmed and targeting going after the people causing the harm. Are there questions in the audience? We have one in the back. Uh Kate Wooley from IBM. Uh we've had a lot of conversations over the last couple of days and technology and A I has come up in all of them. Are you using technology and A I in the fight? And, but are the cartels using it faster or how are they using it? So that's an amazing question. The cartels have harnessed technology. So they have people who are in charge of social media, for example, they are incredibly sophisticated at this. We have to be more sophisticated, we have to be proactive, we have to be able to be ahead of it. We are now and I was reflecting on this yesterday. We are now at a point where we have pulled our data together where we can start thinking about what are the sophisticated analytics that we could use? We've pulled together our financial data across the globe from our 334 offices. And within one week, we found a major money launderer for one of the cartels tracking at billions of dollars over three Cryptocurrency exchanges. So I really welcome the opportunity to learn from you and to think about how we should be thinking about our next 50 years. I believe if government doesn't innovate, if we don't figure out how to use the tools of the modern world, we will not be able to proactively counteract these threats and save lives. So we love to learn more from all of you about, you know, how to think about this. Uh We have another question here. Hi, Julie Howard. Um, I have deep, deep respect for the work that you do. It's just Yeoman's work. Is this A US issue? And if so why? Because it feels like all we talk about is that all in the US? That's an incredible question right now. It is a primarily North American issue. Part of it is starting with the opioid epidemic with the pills that moved to heroin that then moved to fentaNYL. So some of it is that in the US, we had the opioid epidemic that came from the over prescribing of oxyCODONE here. As many of you may know the US is one of only two countries that also allows direct to consumer marketing of pharmaceutical drugs. Um And so we are unique in, in certain is what I would say is I was just with 138 countries that we brought together across the globe. And our message is that fentaNYL is either there or it is coming because it is the cheapest product to make and the most highly addictive. And so it has been, these two cartels are operating in more than 50 countries around the world. FentaNYL has been seized in many other countries. And the cartels have the piping globally to be able to push fentaNYL into countries. And so the one thing I would say that one of my core messages to them is you have to start testing for it in the US for a long time. We were testing for heroin because that's what we expected to see. And heroin all of a sudden started going down and we realized we have an incredible lab if we test for every substance fentaNYL was in so many of them. So our message around the world is you're just testing for cocaine or you're just testing for heroin, you may find it. But fentaNYL is hidden in those substances and that's the treachery of this drug threat, which is that the cartels, it's so tiny, they can hide it in other things to drive addiction. And so many people are dying and they don't even know they're taking fentaNYL. So we've been sounding the alarm for other countries. We have incredible partnerships around the world, but we've also offered send us anything you want. We'll test it, call us, we'll send our experts over to train you because we don't want it to happen to anyone else. I'll ask a corollary question which is, who are the victims of this wave of the opioid crisis? You know, the opioid crisis was initially thought of as primarily affecting white rural Americans. And that sort of played into some of the racial disparities we see in health care. What is, what, who is this affecting, this is affecting everyone, this is affecting everyone. We started a little over a year ago, a wall at our headquarters in Arlington, Virginia that we said to the families who lost loved ones, brothers, sisters, parents, Children. If you want to send us a photograph of your loved one, we'll put it on our wall. We thought we'd get about 100 photographs. Today. We have more than 5000. And when you look at those photographs, you see America, you see black, white brown, you see the youngest on our wall. Seven months old, forever. Seven months riot Mitchell, the oldest James cox forever. 70 years old. You see people in uniform, you see kids at soccer games, you see families. It is impacting everyone. And this is also why I think it's so important to talk about it because no community in the United States is immune from this. And it is anyone who has a smart smartphone, anyone who has a cell phone, whether it's Snapchat or tiktok or Facebook or Instagram within three clicks, someone can get a fake pill that looks exactly like a a real pill and people are dying. And so it's really important for I think all of us to understand that this is 100 and 10,757 Americans and we are making progress, but we have a long way to go. This is not the first heavy important systemic problem you have worked on in your career. You've worked on human trafficking, civil rights gun tracing. Um But you also made time to be the legal advisor for Law and Order SVU. How did that happen? I did, I, I sometimes joke, it was my best law job because it, it's legal ish. And you know, at the end of the day, drama, drama always wins over over the law. I was sitting, I was teaching at NYU law school at the time and a man called Warren Light. He's an amazing individual. He was the showrunner on SVU called and said, will you come in and just talk to us about your work. I'd done human trafficking. I'd done prosecutions. I'd also overseen the Camden New Jersey Police Department. Um and taking it off the list of the most dangerous cities in America. So he was really interested in all these different things. And I went in and they said, would you ever consult with us? And I thought what an incredible job. So I got to work with them and they've covered so many important issues including human trafficking and sex crimes, obviously. But a lot of Americans still learn about the law and the criminal justice system from Law and Order and TV shows. So I felt like it was a, it was both incredibly fun and a great way to contribute. So, you know, that show has been on for a really long time is that the retire, the Post Biden administration retirement plan? I'm, I'm so focused right now on, on doing the work. I can't even think about it, but I do still watch it. I do still watch it. Well, um and thank you so much for making the time to be with us today.