The fentanyl crisis and why everyone should be paying attention | Anthony Hipolito

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
My guest this week is Anthony Hipolito. Anthony is a deputy with over 24 years of experience in law enforcement. He retired in the summer of 2021 and was kind of about to sort of move on with the next phase of his life when something drew him back into public service, and that something was the growing concern over the amount of accidental overdoses, poisonings effectively, on account of illicit fentanyl use.
My wife and I heard Anthony speak at a local school meeting a few weeks ago, and we were really moved by the talk. In fact, it's a really powerful talk, and we'll link to the entire talk in the show notes here. By the way, the show notes for this podcast will not be behind a paywall, so this one really is a public service announcement in many ways, and therefore, everyone will have access to the show notes.
But as soon as we saw the talk, I realized that I wanted to do something to help amplify his message in any way that I could, and there was no better way to do that. I could think of them to have him on the podcast. So this podcast is not that long, relative to most of our podcasts. We start the discussion, of course, by explaining what's going on here, what the semantics are. I mean, what is fentanyl? How is it making its way into drugs that are not fentanyl? I think there was a day when I just sort of assumed that people who were dying of fentanyl overdoses, they wanted fentanyl, but they were taking too much. Turned out that's not really the case. What's really happening is that fentanyl is being used as a feedstock to produce other drugs because it is both so much cheaper, and secondly, produces a better high. And therefore, if you're trying to make sleeping pills or benzos or anything, unfortunately, from Percocet pain pills, which also produce a high, of course, to Adderall and things of that nature, they're putting fentanyl into these things, and to be blunt, they're just getting the dose wrong. They're getting it wrong by an enormous amount. And effectively, what's happening is kids are accidentally taking something that they don't know what they're taking. So we kind of go through the ins and outs of all of that stuff. I realize, and I say as much in the podcast, that I'm not really speaking through this channel to the kids that are probably most at risk. Kids that are unfortunately as low as middle school, but certainly high school and college. Probably not a lot of people in that demographic listening, but who is listening are people like myself, people who are parents. If you have kids, I think you really want to listen to this. The other thing I'd say is, if you ever yourself use illicit drugs, I know a lot of people that recreationally do use illicit drugs. I think you want to listen to this as well. I don't think most people appreciate the prevalence with which fentanyl is making its way into other drugs such as cocaine. And again, the intention isn't actually to kill the cocaine user. The intention is, as we'll discuss, to produce a superior product. If you're used to listening to the podcast on audio, this might be one where you tune in to the video as well, because we include in this a couple of videos that are quite powerful. You can certainly listen to them in audio and go to the show notes after where we'll link to those videos separately. But if you're on the fence about whether or not you want to listen to this one or watch it, this might be one to watch. We close the discussion really with what can you do? What can you do as a parent? What can you do as far as talking to your kids, monitoring social media, having Narcan around, knowing how to use it, all those sorts of things. I think the final thing I'll say is that, and I didn't say this when we were on mic because I didn't think of it until after, but after we finished the interview, I got talking to Anthony and I was like, just again, kind of thanking him for all the work he was doing and how relentless it is. I mean, he's basically like a one-man show traveling all over Texas, but now also being asked to go and speak in New York and being asked to speak in other places, asked simply, how is this being funded? And I realized that it's only being funded out of the Hayes County Sheriff Office Community Outreach Program.