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Fentanyl - TPR's In Focus - March 3, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from the Rosa Parks Museum on Troy University's Montgomery campus,
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  located on the spot of Mrs. Parks' historic 1955 arrest, and featuring
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  exhibits that chronicle the history of the Montgomery bus boycott.
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  More information at Troy.edu slash Rosa Parks.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus, and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson.
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  The fentanyl crisis and synthetic opioids are killing Americans.
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  Today we talk with Jake Braun, former White House Deputy National Cyber Director
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  and author of the book, Fentanyl, Fighting the Mass Poisoning of America and the Cartel Behind It.
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  Jake has a master's degree from Troy University.
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  Jake Braun, it is terrific to welcome you back to Troy University because you're an alum.
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  Thank you for joining us from Illinois.
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  Oh, thanks so much for having me, Carolyn. This is really exciting to be back and talk to you.
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  Jake, what is your connection with Troy University as an alum?
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  So I graduated, I think in 2005, with an international relations degree,
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  master's in international relations.
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  And you went on to work at the White House as Deputy National Cyber Director.
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  What are you doing these days?
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  Today I run a center on cyber policy at the University of Chicago,
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  and I run a consulting company that does work in the national security space in Washington, D.C.
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  Jake, your book is Fentanyl, Fighting the Mass Poisoning of America and the Cartel Behind It.
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  I take it you had a front row seat to what was going on with drug trafficking while you were at the White House.
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  Fill us in.
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  Yes. When I was there, I actually started at Homeland Security before I moved up to the White House.
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  And in early 23, the numbers came in from how many people had been killed in 2022 by fentanyl.
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  And it had hit 100,000 deaths.
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  You know, just hitting that number, I think, was just this grim milestone that made people pay even more attention to it than we had before.
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  And so we set up a government-wide operation to go after it.
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  And, of course, like fentanyl had been an issue for a while back to the Obama administration, Obama and Trump before that,
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  and Biden before that had certainly had operations related to it, cases here and there.
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  But this was the first time the entire government pulled together a strategy to use every lever of power we had against the epidemic.
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  And what we came to realize was the main cartel behind the fentanyl epidemic, the Sinaloa cartel based in northwestern Mexico.
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  I want you to read a passage from your book, Fentanyl.
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  It gives us an idea of the scope of the problem.
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  Can you share that?
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  Sure. Yet Sinaloa's fentanyl kills more than 100 times as many Americans as Al Qaeda and ISIS have combined.
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  To say that another way, it kills 25 times as many Americans annually as all Islamic terror attacks since 9-11 combined.
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  In your book, you refer to the fentanyl epidemic as a mass poisoning.
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  Is that what's going on today with drugs overall, illegal drugs?
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  No, just fentanyl. That's why fentanyl is just so much different than other drug epidemics.
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  Even if you go back to the Oxycontin epidemic in the early 2000s or the crack cocaine epidemic in the 80s, people knew what they were taking.
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  Now, you may say that in the case of Oxycontin, people addicted to it didn't know how addictive it was
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  because the medical industry wasn't telling them how dangerous those drugs were, but they still knew that they were taking it.
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  Fentanyl is very different. Almost no one is trying to do fentanyl.
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  In fact, a whole cottage industry has sprouted up of people trying to ensure that fentanyl isn't in their drugs.
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  You know, you think of the movies back from the 70s and 80s where there's like a kilo of powder
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  and some criminal takes out a key and like snorts a little bit of the powder to make sure it's pure.
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  Well, nowadays, it's the opposite of that.
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  There's whole kits and so on you can get to test your drugs to make sure there's not fentanyl in it,
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  as opposed to trying to make sure that there is fentanyl in it.
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  At concerts, like Lollapalooza has a stand where kids can bring up their whatever drugs they have to have it tested to make sure fentanyl is not in their drugs.
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  And so the people who are dying are people who don't know they're taking fentanyl.
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  And of course, the most terrifying aspect of this is fake prescription pills.
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  In many cases, people don't know they're fake because maybe they're getting it online or from a friend,
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  which, while still not legal, is not the same as trying to buy heroin at a nightclub or something like that.
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  And so there's these terrible stories of kids who think they're taking an Adderall from a friend to study for finals
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  and never wake up in the morning because that Adderall, unbeknownst to them, was illicit and had fentanyl in it.
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  And that's what's so terrifying about fentanyl is that we can't just tell everybody don't take fentanyl because almost nobody's trying to take fentanyl.
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  You talk about ad campaigns in the book and maybe the messaging needs to be changed.
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  How do you see that?
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  So it's exactly along these lines.
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  The ad campaigns that have largely been put out to date have been around this message of don't take fentanyl.
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  Well, that doesn't really work if everybody's already avoiding fentanyl.
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  Even the vast majority of most drug users are doing everything they can to avoid fentanyl.
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  The other problem is that it's really kind of micro-targeting young people.
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  But in many cases, it's parents, grandparents, educators, teachers, nurses, medical professionals.
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  All these people need to be aware of this epidemic and telling young people or any potential drug users,
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  hey, look, it doesn't matter if your best friend gave you this Adderall or Tramadol or Xanax or something like that.
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  If it didn't come from a prescription bottle that your pharmacist or your parents handed you, you have to assume that pill has fentanyl in it.
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  As we've been saying to kids forever, you shouldn't take drugs.
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  But in this case, it doesn't matter if your friend or dealer or somebody swears up and down that the cocaine that you bought or whatever doesn't have anything in it.
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  No one really has any idea until they take it.
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  So that's why these ad campaigns need to be changed to really educate the whole population that there's a mass poisoning going on,
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  not a traditional drug epidemic, and to be far broader targeted than just at youth.
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  You work in cybersecurity. What is the link between cybersecurity and fentanyl?
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  That's a great question. I was really kind of surprised early on as we were talking to a lot of folks who've been working against the cartels and fentanyl for a while.
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  We were like, well, how can we use cyber against these folks like we did against some other transnational groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS and so on?
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  And they were like, well, you know, these folks, they purposely don't keep records of what they're doing because they think that'll be used as evidence against them down the road.
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  But no modern organization can conduct business without access to the Internet.
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  And so they do have data they store.
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  They have the same problem that anybody who deals with employing young people does today,
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  which is that all the thugs who work for them are constantly posting everything they do online.
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  That can be mined for data about what's going on.
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  They have communications. Of course, they have iPhones and other types of cell phones and so on.
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  Their money is housed in banks, illicit or illicit.
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  They love to buy Western cars and clothes and real estate.
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  And much of the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl are bought on the dark web or via illicit ads from Chinese chemical companies online.
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  And so all those things can be hacked and used to get more information about how to go after the cartel or take down certain members or intercept the deliveries before they get where they're going.
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  And we came back after a while and said the U.S. Coast Guard actually has all the authorities it needs to go after these guys in cyberspace.
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  They also are a military and a law enforcement organization.
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  And so I hope to see the administration start making progress on this of actually using Coast Guard personnel and assets to go after the cartel in cyberspace because it would put some of our best cyber warriors in the game.
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  And I think the Coast Guard's up for the fight and wants to be tasked to go after these guys in cyberspace.
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  Well, Jake, I think what we need to do is pick up with your conversation in a part two and get us up to date on the Sinaloa and other drug cartels.
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  Can we do that?
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  I would love to. Anything for my alma mater.
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  Your book is Fentanyl Fighting the Mass Poisoning of America and the Cartel Behind It.
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  I look forward to finding out more about the cartels.
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  Thank you so much for joining us today.
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  Thank you, Carolyn. I really appreciate your time.
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  That was Jake Braun, former White House Deputy National Cyber Director and author of the book Fentanyl Fighting the Mass Poisoning of America and the Cartel Behind It.
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  The Centers for Disease Control has a spring break toolkit with resources available to parents and teens, available at the website, CDC.gov slash overdose prevention.
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  Meanwhile, thanks for joining us for In Focus, which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
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  I'm Carolyn Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported Troy Public Radio.