The Biological Hijacking by Opioids

On our first episode of this season, Tracey shares the story of her son Mac who lost his life to the opioids. Despite years of creating laws and regulations, we haven't been able to stop the destruction. Biology is partly to blame. I’m joined by Lee Baugh, Associate Professor at the University of South Dakota and neuroscientist and researcher Jamie Bushman (also from the University of South Dakota) to explore the biology of addiction and how opioids hijack our biology and better understand why we still fail to control these drugs.

Chapters

• 0:00 Biology of Opioids Interview
• 27:41 Moving Forward

Transcript

Biology of Opioids Interview

Aaron: [00:00:00] Welcome to Regulations rx, the podcast that uncovers the intricate world of healthcare regulations. Have you ever wondered why Americans spend more in healthcare than any country but don't achieve better health outcomes or why new drugs come with such a hefty price tag? These aren't simple questions, and their answers are deeply rooted in history and the regulations join us as we explore the stories behind the regulations, how they work, and how they shape our healthcare system.

For better or worse.

, You are about to hear the civil rights lawyer, Samuel Mc Morris, argue you Supreme Court case stemming from a Los Angeles traffic stop for a headlight in 1960 in which Lawrence Robinson was arrested for being a drug addict. Police didn't arrest him because they witnessed him using a drug, but because he had confessed to past drug use, the law used to arrest him, referred to as a bluegrass law, , treated those addicted to narcotics as criminals because of the fact that they were addicted, the law didn't see addiction as a biological or medical condition.

SCOTUS: In that under 0.2, this is a, is a wholly involuntary status. [00:01:00] Now the respondent assures the court that every addict intends to become an addict. However, I think it is clear that an addict no more intended to become that. Then does an alcoholic intend to become an alcoholic because he may have liked to drink socially or because a person intended to acquire Aneal disease because he may have voluntarily committed some other act contrary to our, to the laws of a sexual marel.

The point I'm getting at is any statute which punishes a status as distinguished from an act or a mission is unconstitutional.

 The court cited with Robinson in a six to two vote in delivering the majority opinion. Mr. Justice Stewart wrote this statute, therefore, is not one which punishes a person for the use of narcotics for their purchase, sale or possession, or for antisocial or disorderly behavior resulting from their administration.

It is not a law which even purports to provide a required medical treatment. Rather, we deal with [00:02:00] the statute, which makes the status of a narcotic addiction, a criminal offense for which the offender may be prosecuted at any time before he reforms.

On this episode, we are joined by Tracy Siegel, who lost her son to opioids. We are also joined by neuroscientists from the University of South Dakota, professor Lee Bao and researcher Jamie Bushman to start this episode. We will dive into definitions.

Here is Dr. Bao to.

Lee Baugh: The term narcotic is simply used to describe a drug that is intended to treat pain. So these can be things like morphine and codeine, but can also be drugs that aren't actually derived from opiates. , So now opiates are more commonly referred to as opioids rather than , narcotics.

 And, the important distinction there is these all act upon opioid receptors within the brain, hence its name. 

The term narcotic is focusing on sort of a broad category of, illicit drugs essentially. So narcotics are viewed as drugs that are illegal, whereas the DEA today is largely mainly focused on using [00:03:00] the term, again, more consistent with the usage as it being pertaining to drugs that are used to, Be prescribed in conditions of pain relief. So the DEA takes more of an approach of, it's a, uh, either legal or illegal substance that is intended to treat pain, whereas legal definitions are oftentimes a little more ancient in terminology. And there it's just primarily referring to illicit drugs.

 Morphine is definitely a powerful pain relieving medication and its primary mechanism of action is by binding to specific receptors in the brain and spinal cord. So the central nervous system as well as the peripheral nervous system in areas called, or receptors that are called mu opioid receptors.

Aaron: As someone uses an opioid, the body adapts. Their brain is flooded with the molecule that effectively binds a receptor and tells the brain to begin feeling a certain way, which in the case of opioids, can be a very good feeling. As more and more opioids flood the brain, the brain becomes [00:04:00] desensitized.

Lee Baugh: A lack of, um, appropriate communication between these other networks that have now also adapted to these much higher levels of So you can think of it sort of as slowly turning up the volume on your stereo day after day after day. And of course, you're hearing adapts to that over time, and now suddenly you are, turning the volume back down to one and trying to have a normal conversation or something.

So morphine, because of that, can cause a lot of other effects. Such as a slowing down of breathing, reducing of coughing, um, that can sometimes be beneficial in a medicinal sense, but some of its other off target effects because of its powerful effects on the central nervous system.

 It also can become quite addictive and should only be used in very specific circumstances.

Lee Baugh: Tracy witnessed the effects of opioid addiction firsthand. Okay.

Tracey Siegel: He was just , the kid that everybody wants. He was really smart and top of his class. [00:05:00] He, um, was a strong athlete. He had a great sense of humor. He loved making people laugh. , Most of all, he was just very kind very considerate. , I was always proud because other parents, he told me what good manners he had and, and how critical kid he was.

And family was always from the get go, family was very important to him. He had three, younger siblings, um, a brother and two sisters, and he just always wanted to nurture and take care of him. Even in the height of his addiction, family was still very important. Not that he didn't always behave that way, but in his quiet moments, I understood how much we meant to him.

As an adult when he was clean, he was again just the perfect son. He was interested in philosophy and travel, and would just [00:06:00] have wonderful talks.

Aaron: Like Tracy, I'm also a parent and I'm very proud of my children. The part of her story that scares me is the question, how does a young kid wander into such dangerous territory? I.

Tracey Siegel: I had Lyme disease and I had to go away for 22 months to have people take care of me. So I left him for 22 months. He was probably 12. When I came back from those 22 months because I hadn't been informed of that, he was in any trouble. He had gotten in trouble, um, having marijuana in his backpack.

It wasn't legal then. And so he was already in the juvenile system when I came back I wasn't sure when the opiate started. I've heard recently that. In middle school, he was at a friend's house and they went up in the mother's dresser drawer and got some oxycodone. I know that he took one then I've since found out that there [00:07:00] was a, another oxycodone incident at school where he I don't know why.

They said it was oxycodone, but he was like jumping out the first floor window in the middle of class. It was, um, I would guess around that time around beginning of high school,

Aaron: opioids are effective pain relievers. Drugs like oxycodone and fentanyl were game changers for those suffering, particularly in end stage cancer. This also meant these drugs made it from pharmaceutical companies into patients' medicine cabinets, which now put opioids in the reach of many others not being monitored by physicians.

Tracy Mack likely jumped from the window because he was experiencing the effect of an opioid. Here's Dr. B again.

Lee Baugh: Morphine is definitely a powerful pain relieving medication and its primary mechanism of action is by binding to specific receptors in the brain and spinal cord. So the central nervous system as well as the peripheral nervous system in areas , or receptors that are called [00:08:00] mu opioid receptors.

 So they're normally activated by. Naturally occurring chemicals in our body. So they're known as endogenous and those chemicals are endorphins. So you've probably heard the , term an endorphin rush. So those are the receptors that the opioids are actually targeting.

So when morphine binds to these receptors, it mimics the effects of endorphins enhancing pain relief, as well as mood elevating effects.

Aaron: With the endorphins and mood elevating effects, it could explain why a middle schooler might jump out of a window. Another thing to remember is a middle schooler is a lot lighter than an adult. If the pills mac out were originally prescribed for an adult, the dosage would be much more higher and much more potent to someone the size of the middle schooler, I.

Tracey Siegel: He stopped hanging out with the friends that he'd had all his life that he'd grown up with and his new friends, he just didn't bring around the house very much.

He was getting moody. It was hard to tell, you know, because [00:09:00] teenagers are moody. But I did know that there was an underlying problem, and I'm guessing the oxycodone started about that time.

And one day I came home to find police, stationed outside my door, the door of the house, and I went upstairs. Mac had come in to take a shower. He wasn't living there at the time, and. I got him out of the shower and he came out and he had tried to sell to an undercover cop and they're interviewing him and talking to him, and he went into my daughter's room the policeman went in after him and looked, and he had stashed a, needle under her bed.

And that was, the shock of my life, I just couldn't believe it had gotten to that point.

Aaron: Not everyone ends up addicted. There are many complex factors at play, so if someone is on an opioid for pain and then weans off successfully, it doesn't mean that their experience will [00:10:00] translate to everyone else.

Jamie Bushman: People's, uh, genetic predisposition, their social and family support systems, um, those sorts of things . People's anxiety levels, preexisting conditions with, you know, depression, all of those things can play a role on their likelihood to develop and every individual's different.

And if you're working closely with a physician, they would help you taper. especially if you, if you do have to have a longer term exposure, then you would be tapering under the a physician's care to keep from experience in the withdrawal symptoms.

Lee Baugh: And to make things even more complicated, you can start throwing in individuals, psychological states as well, which plays a huge role.

So one individual's personality may be more pushing towards, thrill seeking behavior, risky behavior, and those clearly are related to, an individual's. Physiological makeup.

One [00:11:00] individual may never touch, something like a, an opioid out of. Fear that, you know, they're gonna go down that pathway. Another individual may think, I wonder what it's gonna be like. I'm really looking forward to trying this. And that's a much more complicated, uh, sort of cognitive process than even the physiological stuff that we've been talking about, which of course is overly complicated. 

Tracey Siegel: He would nod out a lot. I just didn't know what the symptoms were of opioids.

 I had help to be honest. His father was had his own issues he wasn't. There Mac in that way. But the juvenile court system, he had a case manager who just really took to him and we became friends over the course of her time with him. I would, some people in the court would say, not my child. Not my child. Well, I knew that. Yeah, that is my child. So. I followed along with the [00:12:00] court, I would tell them when I found him smoking pot. 'cause at the time it was marijuana was all that I knew about. , He went to a juvenile detention center at one point, but they also sent him to a wonderful rehab which worked for a while.

But that was my support system. Once he turned 18, it was drug court and the director of drug court also took a special liking to Matt. They liked to debate, they couldn't meet on each other's levels and um, as she said, it was the first time probably. In working with, with her that he wasn't the smartest person in the room.

She was wicked smart and I think he respected her because of that. And drug court happens when you are obviously an addict, but you've broken the law and they give you drug court as a substitution for jail. [00:13:00] So not everybody enters willingly. but the drug court was. Great. He had a knowledgeable and caring team and incredibly insightful judges except for one who became a problem.

 So that was my support system right there. Of course, I had friends, but as far as getting in the trenches, I was working with juvenile justice system and then drug court.

Mac was on Suboxone, which is very successful for a lot of addicts, and he was on Suboxone for three years after he graduated drug court. And, and he did. To back up drug court. Not many people, it's grueling and not many people committed to it, to the end.

 And he was one of the few graduates. And, after that we had three just wonderful years of sobriety. He was just doing so well and we spend a lot of time [00:14:00] together as a family. He had a steady girlfriend who was very supportive and life was just good, but he was still in drug court and he had a minor misdemeanor.

I don't remember what it was even, and the drug court decided it wasn't relevant because of how well he had been doing. Everybody in drug court gave him great re reviews, but this particular judge looked at Mac and he just saw a junkie. He, um, was not an understanding judge like the other ones that we had worked with.

 And he put. In jail against everybody's recommendations. And the problem with that is own Suboxone and in jail, they don't allow you to take Suboxone. You have to come off cold Turkey and coming off Suboxone. Cold Turkey is not much different than coming off heroin, cold Turkey. And not only does it mess with your [00:15:00] body, but it messes with your.

Mind, your brain, your, , anxiety levels, depression. that was a harrowing experience, having him come off so abruptly. But once he got out, he got back on the Suboxone and life was good for a while. A problem that I see in some na rooms, 12 step rooms, they. Looked down on medication assisted treatment. And so they shame you for taking that, for taking the Suboxone and Mac had three solid years under his belt. He was doing great and he decided he wanted to wean off Suboxone and that. Was when things turned ugly. Within a year, he was in full blown addiction.

Lee Baugh: The way my brain reacts may be different than the way someone else's brain reacts. But, in general the opioid [00:16:00] receptors themselves are going to, certainly play a role in all of the things that we've been talking about.

Jamie Bushman: Yeah. The release of norepinephrine is inhibited by binding the mu receptors, and that's one of the things that leads to the feeling of relaxation, drowsiness, sleepiness, those sorts of things.

That's actually one of the issues with, people coming off of the drug is when you suppress the release of norepinephrine for long enough, the body reacts by just creating more of it. And then when you take the drug away, now you have too much being made. And that is what leads to some of the the sickness feelings that people talk about when they're detoxing from a drug is they get that jittery, the heart palpitations that anxiety, and then they know that by taking more of the drug, they can reduce that.

So they're. It triggers a cycle where they're seeking the drug, not necessarily even to get high anymore or to feel good anymore, but just not to feel sick. 

Lee Baugh: You get used to having this drug on board, [00:17:00] and when that's then removed, your body has to take some time to adjust. But of course, we all know that there's a large social component to drug use and drug seeking and a lot of environmental. A lot of memory, um, that goes into it. And that's another really big part of this addiction cycle.

So it's not uncommon to have, um, individuals that are suffering from uh, addictions to drugs of abuse, to reports. That, you know, if they go into a certain room, they have a really hard time not, uh, engaging in that drug use or if they hang out with certain people, if they experience certain emotions.

 It's a very complicated relationship. Our brain's very good at making connections between things.

Jamie Bushman: And the, the memory involvement can also have a negative effect as well. So oftentimes people you hear of like, you know, chasing the dragon, people have that memory of how good they felt that first time they took a drug. And then with decreased sensitivity over time when you use the [00:18:00] drug, you don't get that same.

Response that you did that first time, but you have a memory of it so you remember how good it felt. So you keep looking to try to recreate that memory. Which can pose a major problem when you start taking higher and higher doses.

When people do try to abstain from taking drugs they remember how much they took the last time. So if they do go back to it and try to start back into that same level, it is just too much for the body to take. 

Tracey Siegel: The last three years of his life were horrendous. He was 26 he was good looking and people would compare him to Brad Pitt. , He always took extra time to look good. You know, he wore nice clothes, he spent extra time making his curly hair just right.

 Those things mattered to him. And, um, the last couple years of his life, Matt just looked and dressed like a homeless person. And if I hadn't seen it happening before my eyes. Time had gone by [00:19:00] without seeing him. I dunno that I would've recognized him on the street. If I saw him, I would've just thought, that's a sad soul.

But he was not my son anymore. He didn't look at all like my son.

He was in a rehab and they tested him and they tested him in for Fentanyl. And it came positive. It was positive. Toward the end, he became a habitual overdoser. They had, um, Narcan in the house for, just for that. And so they would Narcan each other. And at that point, when I realized, I went to the police station and they informed me that the house he was living in, that there were a lot of calls for overdoses.

 At that point. I put together an an intervention. Used an expensive intervention professional. And, um, it worked for a little while. He came into the house. We had [00:20:00] his brother and sisters here, and his stepmom and an aunt. And, um, we just told him how much we loved him and how sad we were that he wasn't living up to his potential.

I don't think I worded it that way, but, he did go to, into a rehab at that point, and um, he didn't last there more than three weeks in the last year of his life. I lost count, but it was between five and seven times that Matt attempted to get sober, whether it was a rehab or a detox facility or a sober living house.

He kept trying and he kept failing and it was like. Opiates had hijacked his brain. He would try and he would get out and he just couldn't stop. 

Lee Baugh: And, , when you, stimulate these systems externally through something like an opiate, it provides a much more powerful response. So it [00:21:00] actually takes the body a little while to get used to, uh, working without.

Those, opiates on board if you become accustomed to using them. So then it becomes more difficult for the body to find things that it normally derives pleasure from in those cases. So, uh, that system, that relationship between an area of the brain known as the ventral tegmental area, which is responsible for dopamine release into an area called the nucleus accumbens, which really forms a.

Good portion of this reward system is less and less active by endogenous substances and requires more and more levels of the external drugs to get that same level of dopamine release. So you really do find things less appealing, less rewarding than you would after being on these drugs for a fair amount of time.

Aaron: To understand the full extent of the opioid crisis, here are the statistics from the CDC. In 2023, approximately 125 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed to patients in the United [00:22:00] States. Nearly 8.6 million Americans, 12 years or older reported misusing prescription opioids. 5 million Americans 12 years of age and older reported a prescription use disorder.

And between 2019 and 2023, nearly 308,000 people died from overdoses involving opioids in the United States.

Lee Baugh: The study of addictive substances and drug abuse is under the purview of the National Institutes of Health, the US has taken the approach that this is, a condition that's similar to a disease and should be treated as such. It's not the case that individuals.

That are for one reason or another, now addicted to some substance, are, um, suffering from some immoral nature or, um, it's just poor decision making or, you know, this is their fault. Oftentimes this is a result of doing what you were told. You know, you. Prescribed this medication. You took the medication as prescribed, but for one reason or another, you have [00:23:00] now, um, gotten into a position where you're, relying on that, uh, drug to maintain some level of normalcy.

So it really is important to separate the stigma from a addiction, uh, and realize that in many cases these aren't individuals that set out to be in this situation. They were doing what they were told to do. 

Tracey Siegel: And so the last, I'd say eight to 12 weeks before he died, I was expecting the phone call every day, every night that he had overdosed and died. And, um, so part of me, as much as it could be, part of me, was prepared for that phone call.

 It would ring a lot of times in the middle of the night and it would be back in some type of crisis, and I would have to, or chose to jump up and try to go help him or talk him through it. So yeah, by the time I was afraid [00:24:00] about the overdose I was especially concerned if it was a later night call.

 And I got the call, it was 10 0 7 at night, and, the doctor said that they had found him in a ditch, overdosed. And, um, again, my son was so proud and he died in a ditch just the epitome of. The opposite of who he was growing up during his clean time. Fortunately, the they said that there was no brain activity, but they were working on it.

And fortunately the hospital was about two minutes from my house. So I got there and he did not look good. He was on life support and I still had hope. But as the hours just kept ticking by, the hope became less and less. And the hospital team was very good in [00:25:00] feeding me the bad news piecemeal.

They didn't come out and say at the very beginning, he's not gonna make it. Instead they. They showed us the test and, and worked through it, and then about, I guess it was later the next day that I really realized there was no brain function. They had tested him and um, they gave me examples by pinching his toes and scratching him that there was no response at all.

The night of the overdose, I was with him alone for about 45 minutes, but I called his dad and his aunt and his siblings, and we were all around him just in disbelief.

He was a donor and I remembered that because I went with him to get his license and he checked donor and we talked about it a little bit. They kept him alive for three more days in order to get the organs in the shape they needed to be in. And he was able to save [00:26:00] three people. Two with kidney and one with liver.

So that's a wonderful feeling, a wonderful thing to know that there are three people out there who are alive because of his sacrifice.

Someone asked me the other day how I had seen Max's life going when he was a kid before the addiction set in, and, um, I thought about it. He loved debating and he had a very strong sense of justice. He, um. Wanted things to be fair for everyone and, and it meant a lot to him. So I had assumed that he would get a scholarship to a law school and that he would become a lawyer and in his elder years become a judge.

I know he would've loved to do that. But instead, you know, he spent the second half of his life in jails and institutions, homeless [00:27:00] shelters, various rehabs, sober living quarters, and at one point he was living out of his car. He just tried everything he could to beat it, and it just didn't work. And it was hell for me.

I mean, it was hell for him, but. Trying to keep healthy boundaries was very hard. I couldn't allow him to live in the house while he was actively using especially because he had a younger sister. And, um, so seeing him suffer that way was

there just no words.

Aaron: Just like Tracy said, there are no words and opioids are only one class of narcotics and.

Jamie Bushman: My research actually is more in the stimulants. So with the different classes of drugs going back to how the DEA classes, [00:28:00] drugs, um, narcotics are typically the opioids things used to treat pain, fentanyl, heroin, morphine, Vicodin, those sorts of things.

 stimulants fall under its own category with, more like the amphetamines, cocaine, those sorts of things. And that's where my background is. , So I started doing work with looking at stress induced drug relapse, primarily with the stimulants. , a lot of the systems that are involved in the the development of addiction are similar between the different classes because they all eventually end up targeting the dopamine system, the reward system in our brain, which is a natural system.

It's, uh, targeted by natural rewards like food and sex. And then with the drugs, it acts on it in a much higher sense. So it, stimulates it more so than the natural rewards do, which is why things like drugs are [00:29:00] found to be so pleasurable.

Tracey Siegel: It's the most horrific thing that any family can go through having a loved one with addiction or mental health issues because you see them struggle, you know, they hurt, they have, they're full of self-loathing and there's nothing you can do.

You can't, it's that disease where their brain tells 'em that they don't have the disease that they have. And, um, I think I said earlier, it's just like his brain is hijacked that mom can't reach that anymore, like the opiates have taken over and it's a miserable existence for the addict and for those who love him for her.

Aaron: As I listened to Tracy share her story, I wanted to hear her advice for other parents in the same fight for their children's lives.

Tracey Siegel: I think it would be to love them [00:30:00] and understand that the addiction is not it's not who they are. For example, Mac, in his addiction, he would get a combative with me and say nasty things to hurt me. Mostly about what a nightmare of a mom I was. But I stayed strong through that and I was able, most of the time to understand that was the addiction and the very painful part of him that was saying those words.

 Don't take things personally, which is hard. Don't feed into the addiction. They become very good at pulling at your heart strings and they know what to say and, um, sometimes they use guilt. For example, my son mentioned the 22 months that I was away and not there to protect him.

But. I didn't fold as far as letting him live at home, which again, was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. [00:31:00] For me, Al-Anon was a saving grace. It's not for everybody. And they say to go to at least three meetings before you make up your mind if it, it's a good fit or not, because a little.

Not good meetings sometimes, and um, you just don't wanna judge it. You wanna give it at least three tries. And it was a wonderful community of people who support one another. We were all in the same boat, whether it was your husband, your child, your father your mother. We all understood each other and the principles of 12 Step worked for me.

Aaron: We know our regulations aren't working. Our legal system is failing thousands of people. How do we move forward? It can't be parents only. We also need our regulators, lawmakers and healthcare working together to undo the hijacking that has occurred from the opioids. Here is Tracy's thoughts.

Tracey Siegel: I would think stop using jail and prison as [00:32:00] a solution to an addict's problem. They get in there and they become institutionalized. Matt spent a lot of his adulthood in and out of jail. And one time we were at Chick-fil-A and the employee, put his girlfriend, shake down on the counter, and somebody else picked it up and started walking away.

 And Mac almost got in a physical altercation with that, because in jail you don't just walk up to somebody's table and take the salt and pepper, you know, that's. For a physical altercation, and he was so upset. He came back to the table, he was shaking, and it just hurt me to the court because he hated that part of himself.

He hated a lot of parts of himself, the addiction, but he hated that he had become institutionalized and that that was his first response. And he worked on it and it, [00:33:00] he got better. It got better because he really tried. I don't know the answer.

 Yeah. With mental health issues especially, and it's hard though because I would say, you know, instead of jail, put them in a in a rehab facility. But the bottom line is if they're not ready, it's not gonna work.

Aaron: Back in 1962, the Supreme Court sided with Lawrence Robinson. In reading the court's decision, Mr. Justice Stewart spoke California said that a person can be continuously guilty of this offense, , whether or not he has ever used or possessed any narcotics within the state, and whether or not he has been guilty of any antisocial behavior

 . It is unlikely that any state at this moment in history would attempt to make a criminal offense for a person to be mentally ill or a leper or afflicted with a venereal disease. A state might determine that the general health and welfare required

that the victims of these and other human afflictions be dealt with by compulsory treatment [00:34:00] involving quarantine, confinement, or sequestration. But in the light of contemporary human knowledge, a law which made a criminal offense of such a disease would doubtless be universally thought to be an affliction of cruel and unusual punishment in the violation of the eighth and 14th amendments.

Tracey Siegel: They did arrest the kid who gave max of fentanyl or heroin laced with fentanyl. And unfortunately it gave me no solace because he was just another kid. He was one of Mac's peers. He'd grown up around here. He was quiet, spoken just kind of a chill dude. And he and Mac were talking about getting an apartment together, but that's who he got the fentanyl from.

This young man had, you know, a family history of very of heroin addiction. So he kind of grew up around it. It gave me no satisfaction to see him [00:35:00] put into prison. Not at all, because he is kind of meek and I was just afraid for his life. Of course, if it had been the head of a cartel. That would've given me great satisfaction, but the fact that it was just another addict trying to support his habit it's just sad.

Aaron: Lawrence Robinson was born on October 10th, 1934 and passed away August 5th, 1961. He passed away before he could hear the outcome of Supreme Court case, his cause of death, a narcotics overdose. The law and jail term proves to do nothing more than incarcerate Lawrence, between those drug use episodes, the time and jail did not save him.

Chief William Parker of the Los Angeles Police Department , lamented to the press after the Supreme Court decision. He said this decision will eliminate 27% of the narcotics arrests affected by the Los Angeles Police Department and will seriously hamper the efforts of law enforcement in combating the illicit narcotics traffic.

His solution [00:36:00] was to put more people in jail. There is an old saying Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Regulations rx. Be sure to check out our other podcast on prescription podcast.com. If you're interested in entering the field of regulatory science, consider Mount Mar University in Yankton, South Dakota. I have helped develop their forward-Thinking master's program designed to equip the next generation of professionals to tackle the challenges of healthcare product regulations, and it's a hundred percent online for the working professional.

Thanks for listening. Provides general information for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical or legal advice. Please consult with qualified professionals for any specific medical or legal concerns you may have.