Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in U.S. history—and yet most media won’t even say its name.
In this episode of Stay in the Gray Podcast, Ryan breaks down how fentanyl claimed over 112,000 lives in 2023 alone—becoming the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.
This isn’t just a drug crisis. It’s a human one.
From counterfeit pills to border failures to lives lost in silence—this is what real destruction looks like.
🎙 Topics in this episode:
– How fentanyl enters the U.S. and who’s enabling it
– Why border security is a public health issue
– What Narcan is—and how it saves lives
– The lie behind the word “junkie”
– Stories that show this crisis is already in your neighborhood
👉 Share this with someone who needs to hear it.
🔥 Hit Follow for more episodes that don’t shy away from hard truths.
Chapters:
00:00 - The Fentanyl Crisis: A Deadly Overview
00:47 - A National Issue: Beyond Politics
02:17 - Understanding Fentanyl: The Basics
04:55 - The Supply Chain: From China to the US
10:13 - The Human Toll: Real-Life Stories
11:35 - Solutions and Actions: What Can Be Done?
13:39 - Final Thoughts: A Call to Action
00:00:00
The DEA seized over 60 million fentanyl laced pills last year
00:00:04
and nearly 8000 lbs of fentanyl powder.
00:00:08
That is over 380 million lethal doses.
00:00:11
That's more than enough to kill the entire United States twice.
00:00:15
A 19 year old freshman stressed during finals popped what she
00:00:20
thought was a Xanax from a friend.
00:00:22
She never woke up. One pill trying to ease the
00:00:26
stress and ease her anxiety and she's gone.
00:00:29
About South Lake Tahoe, four people died, 4 people died
00:00:34
during a Super Bowl party. They shared a few lines of what
00:00:36
they thought was cocaine. A lot of people who aren't
00:00:39
addicts, like I said, fentanyl is a chemical weapon to a point.
00:00:43
It's not a drug. It shouldn't be a mistake.
00:00:46
It's a weapon. It's killing people.
00:00:47
Hey guys, it is May the 8th 2025 and I'm going to talk about
00:00:53
something today that's that gets us away from the division in the
00:00:57
country. I know you're asking yourself,
00:00:59
well, why would you do something like that?
00:01:01
Because you have so much to say about all these wonderful things
00:01:05
that divide us. Well, sadly, this topic is not a
00:01:09
good one, but I do believe that we can all come together and
00:01:12
agree that it's something we need to handle.
00:01:14
I'm going to hit something that's a little bit hard to talk
00:01:18
about, but people don't seem to be either wanting to talk about
00:01:22
it or they're pretending it doesn't exist for the wrong
00:01:25
reasons. And that is fentanyl in this
00:01:28
country. If fentanyl doesn't care if you
00:01:35
vote red or blue, or if you think RFK Junior sucks, or if
00:01:41
you hate Elon Musk, or if you love Elon Musk or our president,
00:01:45
it is not a partisan issue. It's an equal opportunity
00:01:49
assassin right now. It kills across party lines.
00:01:54
Imagine that. A bipartisan killer.
00:01:56
A 100% approval rating finally behind heart disease in mass
00:02:01
shootings. So while we screaming each other
00:02:03
over gas prices, plastic straws and possible TikTok bans,
00:02:08
fentanyl is quietly racking up a higher body count than any war,
00:02:13
virus or school shoot it. It's not slowing down either.
00:02:16
That's the problem. So I want to break down what it
00:02:18
is, how it's getting here, why it's killing so many people and
00:02:22
how it's pretending. It's how US pretending it's
00:02:25
someone else's problem is exactly why we're here in the
00:02:28
1st place. So let's roll.
00:02:29
We'll start with some numbers. I like to do that, add a little
00:02:32
credibility to what I'm saying. 112 overdose deaths in 2023,
00:02:43
according to the CDC, 70%. 70% of those deadly overdoses.
00:02:49
Were fentanyl related. That's a big number, and it's
00:02:51
now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 45.
00:02:57
It's the leading cause of death for people 18 to 45 years old.
00:03:01
The leading cause? Not heart disease, not traffic
00:03:06
accidents, not cancer. This is no longer a drug crisis,
00:03:10
but more like a public health collapse.
00:03:12
I feel like part of the problem is that we're comforting
00:03:15
ourselves to believing that this is just an addiction problem.
00:03:18
These are just addicts and they're being addicts and, you
00:03:22
know, like the homeless issue or like other drug issues.
00:03:25
And it's just not, it's veterans, it's college students,
00:03:31
executives, 1 bad pill and you're now a statistic.
00:03:35
So fentanyl. And I did, I looked some of this
00:03:37
up. You hear about it, you hear
00:03:39
about the opioid issues. I talked about it a little bit
00:03:47
in the state of Maine when I lived there.
00:03:50
But I really wanted to know more about what this was.
00:03:53
And it's a synthetic opioid and it was originally developed for
00:03:57
pain management and cancer patients.
00:03:59
It is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and around 30 to
00:04:05
50 times more potent than heroin.
00:04:07
Here's the kicker. Just two milligrams, I'm talking
00:04:11
about two little grains of salt, can be lethal.
00:04:15
That's a huge issue. And what makes it worse is the
00:04:17
most people don't even know that they're taking it.
00:04:19
That's the problem. It's cut into fake pills,
00:04:22
counterfeit Xanax, Adderall, oxycodone, and then they're
00:04:26
laced into cocaine and heroin as well.
00:04:29
Not that those things are great, but definitely not the high that
00:04:32
you were looking for. So you might think you're
00:04:33
getting a party drug or or having a nice little line of
00:04:36
coke and that's not the case. You end up in a in a body bag.
00:04:40
According to the DEA, 42% of pills tested.
00:04:46
Again, I'm not a mathematician, but 42% is close enough to half
00:04:51
of the pills tested had potentially lethal dose of
00:04:54
fentanyl, 42%. So we're going to talk about the
00:04:58
supply. And this is where I get a little
00:05:01
fired up and you should too. This isn't homemade.
00:05:05
It's not in backyard meth labs in the middle of nowhere.
00:05:09
It is supplied. I want to get this right so I
00:05:12
don't mess it up. The precursor chemicals are
00:05:15
supplied by China. Yes, our friends in China.
00:05:20
Multiple before you question that, multiple U.S. government
00:05:23
agencies, DEA, Homeland Security, and the State
00:05:26
Department have publicly documented that most of these
00:05:29
precursor chemicals do come from China.
00:05:32
This isn't just some sort of conspiracy theory against the
00:05:35
Chinese. Those chemicals then go to
00:05:37
Mexico where they're purchased from China and are pressed into
00:05:42
pills by the cartel. And of course they come in
00:05:44
through our southern border mostly.
00:05:47
So I researched more into this because I wanted to know how
00:05:51
involved the Chinese government was.
00:05:52
Are they aware of this, and if so, what the fuck is their
00:05:56
problem? China has taken some public
00:05:59
actions. They've banned all forms of
00:06:02
fentanyl and its analogues in 2019 after pressure from the US,
00:06:06
participating in limited cooperation with the DEA on some
00:06:10
of the trafficking cases. But the truth is this, they've
00:06:13
cracked down on fentanyl shipments.
00:06:15
China's enforcement on the precursor exports remains very,
00:06:18
very weak. And the US accuses, of course,
00:06:21
accuses them of willful negligence is the term used.
00:06:25
The companies continue to sell the chemicals under aliases and
00:06:29
the Chinese government has very little incentive to aggressively
00:06:32
police the trade, especially since it mainly harms Americans
00:06:37
and serves as a geopolitical leverage if you will.
00:06:40
The DEA seized over 60 million fentanyl laced pills last year
00:06:44
and nearly 8000 lbs of fentanyl powder.
00:06:48
That is over 380 million lethal doses.
00:06:51
That's more than enough to kill the entire United States twice.
00:06:56
What I don't understand is how people are still arguing about
00:07:00
how important border security is.
00:07:02
I realized that it becomes an immigration issue and I realized
00:07:05
that it becomes a we need to have due process for illegal
00:07:09
immigrants. OK, that is another conversation
00:07:11
and I'm willing to have it. In fact, I'm sure I will as I've
00:07:14
already had it in the past and will continue to do so.
00:07:17
But the closing the border down is this is the number one way
00:07:21
that this stuff comes in and it's already in pill form and it
00:07:24
spreads. How are we supposed to monitor
00:07:26
this? Someone goes to a party, some
00:07:29
kid, some high school kid goes to a party and they think
00:07:30
they're, you know, doing something.
00:07:33
Obviously you don't want them doing drugs to begin with, but
00:07:35
let's be real, kids are kids, adults are adults, and every
00:07:40
party might have anybody in any and everybody doing these
00:07:43
things, storing cocaine, heroin, things like that, and all of a
00:07:47
sudden you don't know what you're taking.
00:07:49
So explain to me how open borders and national security
00:07:51
can coexist when fentanyl's slipping through.
00:07:54
You don't have to wear a red MAGA hat to admit that letting
00:07:58
cartels waltz in with chemical weapons, which is essentially
00:08:02
what they are, it's not good policy.
00:08:04
Can't we come together and say that?
00:08:06
Do you have to be on the right side, wanting secure borders to
00:08:11
believe this? Can we not come together as much
00:08:14
as you dislike Donald Trump, can you come in here and say, you
00:08:17
know what, I'm on board. We can finally agree.
00:08:20
Closed borders, good. Open borders bad.
00:08:22
When it comes to this wide distribution of fentanyl.
00:08:26
Just try, goodness gracious people.
00:08:28
But this is where it does get a little bit divisive.
00:08:30
So do we crack down harder on the addiction?
00:08:34
So the people, the addicts, the drug users, if you will, Or do
00:08:39
we treat the addiction more like a disease?
00:08:41
And the answer is yes to both. There's nothing wrong with doing
00:08:45
both. Now, here's what Narcan.
00:08:48
Narcan. I'm going to say Narcan is, and
00:08:51
rightfully so. A shocking number of people
00:08:53
don't really know. I didn't.
00:08:55
I looked it up. So Narcan or nail naloxone.
00:08:59
Naloxone is a medication that reverses opioid overdoses.
00:09:03
It works by blocking the opioid open.
00:09:06
We try that again. It blocks the opioid receptors
00:09:12
in the brain, essentially rebooting your respiratory
00:09:14
system if you've stopped breathing.
00:09:16
That seems to be key. And it's a nasal spray.
00:09:19
It's easy to use and it works in seconds.
00:09:21
It can literally bring somebody back from the dead if used in
00:09:25
time. So as of March 2023, Narcan is
00:09:28
available over the counter, but it's access is very uneven
00:09:32
because of lower income communities.
00:09:35
Sure, it's not cheap. Some cities are setting up safe
00:09:38
consumption sites. They're handing out fentanyl
00:09:41
test strips and training civilians on overdose response.
00:09:45
Others are pushing for longer sentences and stricter Border
00:09:51
Patrol like I just mentioned, and aggressive DEA operations.
00:09:55
Again, it's not one or the other.
00:09:57
We can do all of these things. So the smart move, again, treat
00:10:01
the addiction as a health issue and the trafficking is a
00:10:04
national threat. It doesn't seem very difficult
00:10:07
yet I don't see all of these things happening.
00:10:09
It's not getting better. I'll repeat that.
00:10:12
It's getting worse. So we'll step out of the data
00:10:14
for a second into the real world so I can put things in
00:10:17
perspective for you. Just imagine Carter Macintosh,
00:10:21
28 year old investment banker in New York.
00:10:23
He wasn't addicted. He died after using cocaine
00:10:27
laced with fentanyl at a party. Probably went to a party, a
00:10:29
business party and said hey, let's have a little fun, do a
00:10:33
line or two. Family found him in his
00:10:35
apartment dressed for work the next morning.
00:10:37
Dead at UCLA in college, a 19 year old freshman stressed
00:10:42
during finals, hopped what she thought was a Xanax from a
00:10:46
friend. She never woke up. 1 pill trying
00:10:50
to ease the stress and ease her anxiety and she's gone about
00:10:54
South Lake Tahoe. Four people died. 4 people died
00:10:58
during a Super Bowl party. They shared a few lines of what
00:11:01
they thought was cocaine. It was laced with fentanyl, of
00:11:04
course. And nobody, not a single one of
00:11:07
them made it alive. These aren't cautionary tales
00:11:10
from some after school special. I'm, I'm not trying to, to give
00:11:13
you these, but these are people people knew these people.
00:11:16
These are the same people that you know, people you love.
00:11:20
One mistake, some people would argue, let's not snore cocaine.
00:11:24
I don't disagree, but what I'm saying is that the result of a
00:11:27
line of cocaine should not be deaf.
00:11:29
And it was one mistake, no second chance.
00:11:32
This is the part we don't just scream into the void, we
00:11:36
actually take some steps, flood the streets with Narcan.
00:11:40
Again, if I'm saying it wrong, I apologize.
00:11:42
The same when we did hand sanitizer in 2020.
00:11:45
Treated the same, if not more important, legalize and
00:11:49
distribute fentanyl test strips in every state.
00:11:52
Crack down on the online drug sales.
00:11:55
Teens are buying this stuff. It ends up being, you know, fake
00:11:59
Xanax and fake uppers and Downers and all of the above and
00:12:03
they buy it on Snapchat and Instagram and all over the
00:12:06
place. We got to stop that, that you
00:12:09
got to think that we can have regulations to monitor and
00:12:13
prevent this from happening. And then we really need to fund
00:12:15
real rehab programs for those who are addicted to these types
00:12:18
of drugs, not just those one month detox that charge 40 grand
00:12:24
and they boot you out with a granola bar and say good luck.
00:12:27
And then, you know, of course, like I said, and I'm very
00:12:30
adamant about secure the border, real enforcement, not hashtag
00:12:36
secure the border or let's bitch about it to each other.
00:12:39
Let the team do the work and let's get it done.
00:12:43
We have a great team down there and and let them do their job.
00:12:46
Lastly, we need to hold China accountable for this chemical
00:12:51
pipeline that they run. This isn't a cartel issue only.
00:12:55
It's foreign policy that has a body count.
00:12:57
People get worked up over these tariffs that we've been putting
00:13:01
on China. And so far as to some of the
00:13:04
leadership that opposes the administration right now siding
00:13:10
with China, putting Chinese flags in their profile pictures,
00:13:14
are you kidding me? This isn't just about sticking
00:13:17
it to Donald Trump and the tariffs that I still believe
00:13:21
will work and you don't know otherwise.
00:13:24
We'll see. But the point is, is that China
00:13:26
is not a friend to the United States.
00:13:28
Whether you want to talk about COVID all you want and whether
00:13:30
you want to talk about this, this is not OK for China to be
00:13:34
doing. And we're just kind of not
00:13:35
talking about it. We need to hold China
00:13:37
accountable and there are ways to do that.
00:13:39
In closing, again, this was just a kind of slap you hard with
00:13:43
this. Be aware from somebody who who
00:13:45
admittedly didn't know a lot about it and did kind of turn
00:13:48
turn a blind eye to it. It's just drugs.
00:13:50
Well, it's not just drugs. There's a lot, a lot to it and
00:13:54
it's killing people, a lot of people who aren't addicts.
00:13:57
Like I said, fentanyl is a chemical weapon to a point.
00:14:01
It's not a drug. It shouldn't be a mistake.
00:14:03
It's a weapon. It's killing people.
00:14:04
China's producing it. Mexico is finishing it off and
00:14:08
pouring it in through the border.
00:14:09
Hopefully that's stopping a little bit now that the border
00:14:12
has been secured. But it it's killing people
00:14:15
across every race, every income level, every political view.
00:14:19
I might disagree with a lot of lefties or I might have an issue
00:14:23
right now with certain cultures in the way they're raising their
00:14:25
children. I guess what?
00:14:27
We're all one team when it comes to this and I hope you agree
00:14:31
with that. If this was a virus we'd be on
00:14:33
defcon one. But because it's drug related we
00:14:36
shrug and just blame the users and we move on.
00:14:39
He shouldn't have snorted Coke. It's too bad.
00:14:42
And I don't know if I agree with all that to a point.
00:14:45
So this is the part where you either stay numb to it or you
00:14:47
get loud and say, hey, you know, fuck China, strengthen our
00:14:51
borders. Let's get this reversal
00:14:54
medication and nose spray and the strips and all that.
00:14:58
Let's have it ready. Tell your kids as they get older
00:15:01
you're not just taking something that someone thinks might be
00:15:03
cool or something that's going to give you a quick high.
00:15:07
You never know enough of it's out there.
00:15:08
This isn't a one in a million thing.
00:15:10
You heard the percentages that I gave you.
00:15:12
So that's all is usual. If this made you uncomfortable,
00:15:16
good, because that's what I'm doing.
00:15:18
I'm trying to bring these things to your your attention in kind
00:15:21
of an uncomfortable way. Some of it's sarcastic.
00:15:24
Sadly, that's what gets us to react and respond.
00:15:27
If I just gave you the statistics and said we need to
00:15:30
watch this and be careful, it might not have the same impact.
00:15:34
And I say that fitting full well that I respond the same way.
00:15:38
But that's what I'm trying to do.
00:15:39
Carry the Narcan, carry the strips.
00:15:41
If you see it, know where they are.
00:15:44
Talk to your kids. Again, I said it.
00:15:46
Talk to look at your friends a little bit longer when you see
00:15:49
them. Just, you know, live in the
00:15:51
moment. I mean, this, this stuff's kind
00:15:52
of taking everybody and people aren't realizing it.
00:15:54
It's not just policy failure, unfortunately.
00:15:58
Yeah. It's a death toll that we're
00:15:59
just kind of learning to live with.
00:16:01
And and I have a problem with that because we shouldn't be
00:16:04
learning to live with anything. So I'll end it here.
00:16:08
Until next time, stay informed. Stay pissed because that's how
00:16:13
we get things done. I feel sadly is to be pissed.
00:16:17
Keep asking questions, please stay laughing and stay in the
00:16:20
grip. Love you guys.