0:00

Hello there, Dr. Death listeners. It's Saruti

0:02

here, one half of Weekly True Crime

0:04

podcast, Red Handed. Now if you don't

0:06

know about Red Handed, let me tell you a little bit about us.

0:09

Every week on our show, we get stuck into

0:11

the most talked about cases from around the world.

0:14

For example, we've covered the Christchurch massacre,

0:16

the Lucy Letby case here in the UK,

0:18

the Murdoch family murders, and the

0:21

curious case of Natalia Grace.

0:23

Last year, we also started a second

0:25

weekly show because, you know, there's just so much time in the

0:27

day, and that one we called Short Hand.

0:30

They're 20 minute episodes that give us

0:32

an excuse to talk about anything

0:34

and everything we find interesting,

0:36

because it's our show and we can do whatever we like. So

0:38

whatever the case, whether we're talking about

0:40

a serial killer on the loose or a

0:43

man who wants to have sex with dolphins,

0:45

the aim at Red Handed is always to try and understand

0:48

what pushes people to the extremes of

0:50

human behaviour.

0:51

Like, can someone give consent to be cannibalised?

0:54

Or what drives a child to kill? What's

0:56

the psychology of a terrorist? So

0:59

if that sounds interesting and you're keen to give us a try

1:01

but unsure maybe of where to start, we've

1:04

got you covered. We think that you'll

1:06

just love episode 243, where

1:09

we dive into the story of the Sackler family.

1:12

These infamous scumbags are responsible for

1:14

over half a million American

1:16

deaths and unbelievably still

1:18

free to this day.

1:20

Now we're about to play you a clip from this very episode,

1:22

but remember you can enjoy Red Handed

1:25

on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts

1:27

anytime you like.

1:38

On the 25th of February 2011, Sharon Joer

1:40

phoned her 23 year old son the

1:42

night before he

1:45

was due to fly out

1:46

to Florida to visit her. When

1:48

he didn't answer the first time, the second

1:50

time or the time after that, Cheryl

1:53

felt like something was off. So she

1:55

phoned her eldest son, a police

1:58

officer, to carry out a wellness check. on

2:00

his brother. Shortly after,

2:02

he phoned Cheryl back and said,

2:05

Mum, Corey's dead. Ten

2:07

years later, in 2021, Cheryl

2:09

and her husband drove to meet their middle

2:11

son, Sean, and discovered his

2:14

lifeless body in his bedroom. In 2015,

2:17

Jeanette Adams discovered her six-foot-five

2:20

husband, who'd been described as a

2:22

pioneering physician,

2:24

lying on the floor of his bedroom,

2:26

dead and foaming at the mouth.

2:29

In 2016, Sean Blake, a 27-year-old former member of

2:31

the Navy

2:34

and son of a Canadian doctor,

2:36

was discovered, brain dead, lying

2:38

in the bathroom.

2:39

All of these people's lives were cut short by

2:42

the same killer. And usually on Red Handed,

2:44

we would find ourselves gasping a killer who'd callously

2:46

murdered maybe tens of people. But

2:49

what if we told you that there's a family

2:51

out there, still free to this day,

2:54

whose actions have been responsible

2:56

for over half a million American

2:58

deaths? Not over the last few centuries,

3:01

but in the last 22 years? Well,

3:05

they do exist. And they're out there.

3:07

And they call the Sackler family.

3:09

Their greed, their lies, and their vile

3:12

actions unleashed a plague

3:15

on North America. And apart

3:17

from the 500,000 people who've died

3:19

in the US from opioid overdoses over

3:21

the last 22 years,

3:23

millions more have developed life-changing

3:26

addictions to opioids, to the point

3:28

that every 25 minutes

3:31

in the United States, a baby

3:33

is born with opioid withdrawal.

3:35

This is staggering. Oh my god,

3:37

I don't even know how to wrap

3:40

my head around that statistic.

3:43

It's too much. It's too big for

3:45

me to have to comprehend.

3:46

And the CDC estimates that

3:48

the abuse of prescription opioids costs

3:51

the United States, somewhere in the

3:53

arena, of 78.5 billion with

3:55

a B dollars a year. The

4:00

issue has been referred to as the opioid

4:02

crisis. But as

4:05

a bit of a misnomer,

4:06

as the HBO documentary Crime of the Century

4:08

points out,

4:09

a crisis is generally defined as

4:11

a catastrophe that occurs suddenly

4:14

with little or no warning. But

4:16

when we're talking about the opioid crisis, that

4:19

couldn't be found from the trace. It

4:21

didn't happen overnight, nor was it a freak

4:23

incident. It was the result of an

4:25

intentional and carefully

4:28

executed plan

4:29

carried out by Tedoo Farmer,

4:31

whose sole purpose was to make as

4:34

much money as possible with a complete

4:36

disregard

4:37

for the lives they destroyed in the process.

4:40

Would you like to know a fun fact? Is it

4:42

actually fun or is it about the opioid crisis?

4:45

I don't know, you decide.

4:46

So obviously in my past life I used to produce

4:49

conferences and one of the

4:51

areas that I worked in was life sciences. So

4:53

I used to speak to a lot of C-level people

4:55

at life sciences, businesses, organizations,

4:59

from Big Pharma all the way down to Tiny Biotech

5:01

to get them to basically come speak at my events.

5:04

And I have had Purdue Pharma

5:06

speak

5:06

at multiple events in the past

5:09

for me. To me, she felt better. I didn't pay him. That

5:11

does make me feel better.

5:12

It's tough because

5:14

obviously, you know, Big Pharma

5:17

does bad things like that's not a hot

5:20

take for sure.

5:21

But also without the huge amounts of

5:23

money that they make and that they invest in medical research,

5:26

we wouldn't have got things like the vaccination so quickly.

5:28

It's hard. It's very complicated, but a lot of them can

5:31

act very, very unethically. As

5:33

we're about to find out in the next hour of this

5:35

show.

5:36

Also would you like to know another fun fact? So

5:38

one of my other friends, one of my other colleagues who

5:40

used to work with me who also used to produce life sciences

5:43

events, had Theranos speak

5:45

for him. Yooo! I

5:48

know! Speaking of Disney Plus, the dropout

5:50

is extremely good. I need to watch it. I

5:52

need to watch it.

5:53

I'm currently still battling my way through fucking

5:55

Married at First Sight Australia.

5:58

I have on good authority.

5:59

where I went for dinner was my best friend last night and she was

6:02

like, where are you up to? And I explained to her and

6:04

she was like, what the fuck have

6:06

you been doing? She's like, it's the

6:08

best season of Mariner First Light Australia ever.

6:10

Anyway, I'm not going to go off on that. Let's talk about it on Under the Duvet.

6:13

Okay, back to this.

6:15

So let's get to grips with this

6:17

opioid crisis. But

6:18

before we can do that, we

6:20

have to do my favorite thing, which is

6:23

the history of heroin, red-handed style,

6:26

welcome to the red-handed rundown on

6:28

opioids, in general, on mass.

6:31

Opiates in all forms, be it prescription,

6:33

painkillers, heroin, morphine, blah, blah, blah,

6:35

blah, blah, they all trace their

6:37

origins back to the same plant,

6:40

the opium poppy. It's extracted

6:43

from the milky sap of the flower

6:45

and human beings have been cultivating this plant

6:47

for millennia with the earliest known reference

6:50

to the cultivation of the poppy and

6:52

also opium use coming from ancient

6:54

Mesopotamia. So that's 3400

6:57

BC. Long old time.

6:59

That is a long old time. That's

7:01

a very long old time. Pre the big JC.

7:03

Yeah. It's almost five and a half thousand

7:05

years ago. People were loving the smack, loving

7:08

it. Just fucking sucking on those poppies

7:11

for that tasty, tasty milk. I mean, I don't know if that's

7:13

how it works. I presume you do something with the sap.

7:15

Yes. Because it's black, isn't it? I mean,

7:17

it's think it depends, but yeah, like black tie heroin

7:19

is a thing. So I think you have to put it on

7:22

the phone or something. I don't know. Cold

7:24

brew heroin.

7:26

Well, Surruti knows all about heroin. Huh?

7:28

Why do I know? Oh, what?

7:30

What? Because I once went on a

7:33

date with

7:33

somebody who told me he took heroin.

7:35

Oh, nevermind.

7:37

No. When you were making a joke

7:39

about when you're in the Philippines.

7:42

Oh yes. Of course. How could I fucking

7:44

forget? Made a joke about being in the Philippines

7:47

where I was just innocently smoking another

7:50

illegal plant that we'll

7:52

call the devil's lettuce. People

7:54

just had a made a joke that I was taking heroin

7:56

and people believed her. And then people were on

7:59

Instagram and be like. Oh my god, Sruity takes

8:01

heroin. I'm the least likely

8:03

person

8:03

in the world to take heroin. And also,

8:06

your dad stalks all of our social media

8:08

so much and it brings me so much joy that he definitely

8:10

will have seen that. And he will have known that

8:13

I didn't because

8:14

I can't even, and this is true,

8:17

I can't even stomach, like,

8:19

co-codamol. I can't stomach

8:21

it. My stomach has a very

8:24

angry reaction to painkillers of almost

8:27

every description, but especially when

8:29

there is any form of opioid involved. Can't

8:32

handle it. Do

8:33

you know who could handle it? I was gonna say

8:35

you. The people in the

8:37

story. The ancient Sumerians, yeah. And

8:39

they're the people who lived in Mesopotamia,

8:41

which is now Iraq, Q8, around

8:44

there. The ancient Sumerians refer to the

8:46

poppy as hugil, which

8:48

means the joy plant. Soon

8:50

enough, opium used spread across the ancient

8:53

world. The ancient Egyptians were at it as

8:55

well and because they were very good at industry, they did

8:57

it on a massive, massive scale.

8:59

That's what happens when you have thousands and thousands of slaves.

9:01

So the Egyptians are, of course, very

9:04

close to Europe. So when they had heroin, it

9:06

was only a matter of time before the Europeans

9:08

got their hands on it as well.

9:10

I was listening to a podcast,

9:13

one of our favorites, Hannah Conflicted,

9:15

where they were talking about how much,

9:17

obviously now Egypt, you very much think of it as

9:19

part of the Middle East and that's

9:22

the culture, that's the vibe, but how back then,

9:24

it was very, very Mediterranean

9:27

and it's very, very connected

9:30

massively with Europe. So absolutely,

9:32

if they were growing poppies,

9:33

everyone was on the smack. Oh yeah, they were just blowing

9:36

them over on paper aeroplanes.

9:37

Hey, Europe, have some of our lovely heroin.

9:39

Just in a rolled up carpet on a silk blue

9:42

sheet. If you don't know what that joke's in reference

9:44

to, you haven't listened to enough red handed

9:46

or enough of my shame.

9:48

It's not shameful. I'm very proud. No, she's

9:50

not even remotely ashamed when she was, what,

9:53

in year three? Oh,

9:55

that's

9:55

so much worse. She wrote a play about

9:57

Cleopatra, in which she...

9:59

Oh, this is Cleopatra, and she made

10:02

everyone else in her class wave

10:03

blue sheets around and pretend to be the

10:05

Nile. I was on a boat.

10:08

Had to get it across. I thought,

10:10

look,

10:11

I was just a very precocious child. I

10:13

just love how not even are

10:16

you casting yourself as Cleopatra.

10:18

No one else is even allowed to be a person. They

10:21

have to be inanimate options. Heat

10:23

waver. Sea maker.

10:25

Anyway,

10:26

speaking of sea makers, next

10:29

up, Homer, the Odyssey, queen

10:31

of the segway, battling

10:34

me for my crown.

10:35

The Odyssey, which I have read, not joking, 15 times,

10:39

because that's when you go to posh school

10:41

and you have to choose between doing Latin or if

10:43

you're shit at Latin, you have to do classics. I've

10:45

done classics since I was 13, and

10:48

all there is to do is The Odyssey. So

10:50

I've read it all. Yes, I can confirm

10:53

as a scholar of

10:53

The Odyssey

10:55

that heroin is in there. Awesome.

10:57

And actually a whole series of poems

10:58

about heroin in The Odyssey, which are

11:01

boring, just like the rest of it.

11:03

So similarly to today, back in

11:07

ancient Greek, ancient Egyptian, ancient European,

11:09

ancient Mesopotamian times, heroin

11:11

does all the same things that it does now, which

11:13

is take away your pain, relax with you,

11:16

it can stop children from crying, and people

11:19

really, really love it.

11:21

It just don't think it would work for me.

11:23

I had an operation and they sent me home with

11:26

some

11:27

codeine, and I took it for one

11:29

night, and I was so violently

11:31

ill, I threw the entire rest of the pack down

11:33

the toilet, and I was like, get away from me.

11:35

Yeah, maybe not for you.

11:37

When I had the surgery, they obviously pumped me for the

11:39

morphine.

11:40

And when I woke up, just immediately spent

11:42

the next 12

11:42

hours throwing up.

11:43

I think the key thing to remember with stuff like this

11:46

is that, you know, in train spotting

11:48

where Ewan

11:49

McGregor is like, of course

11:51

it's amazing, otherwise we wouldn't do it. I

11:54

think it's very easy to... I'm

11:56

not, you're not doing this, but like, I think in general, people are like,

11:58

well, how stupid to get a dick out of here. it's

12:00

a prescription drug

12:00

and I think

12:02

it's a Louis Theroux documentary where

12:04

he's talking to this guy, it's on the opioid

12:06

crisis, and he's talking to this guy who used

12:09

to be a dentist or something I think,

12:10

and then he's just living in a tent on the side

12:13

of the road having lost all of his money.

12:15

And he says to Louis Theroux, he's like, this

12:17

stuff kills rock stars, obviously

12:19

it's going to kill people like me.

12:21

Absolutely, I think it's just, and

12:23

I'm no expert on this, but different drugs must

12:26

work with different people's body chemistry

12:28

in different ways. So to this people, something

12:31

must be that pleasurable for

12:33

you to get that addicted. You wouldn't

12:35

get addicted to something if it wasn't great,

12:38

obviously.

12:39

Like how some people smoke weed and then feel

12:41

sick and hate it and like really

12:42

don't have a good response to it. Yeah, no, it's not my

12:44

vibe.

12:45

Exactly. Whereas for me,

12:47

maybe it's my vibe.

12:48

But yeah, heroin, I mean, heroin,

12:50

no thanks, but even co-codamol. No,

12:53

thank you.

12:54

So let's get back to our red-handed

12:56

rundown of the opium.

12:58

Alexander the Great introduced opium

13:00

to India,

13:01

where it's still grown today and harvested

13:03

by hand on a huge scale.

13:06

Shortly after this, around 600 AD, Arab traders

13:10

brought opium to East Asia along

13:12

the Silk Road

13:13

as the addictive properties of the drug became

13:15

more and more apparent. Catholic priests

13:18

during the holy Inquisition

13:20

referred to the plant as the stuff of

13:22

the devil.

13:23

But stuff of the devil or not, opium

13:25

was valuable

13:26

and the trade continued to thrive.

13:29

By the 1500s, during the Protestant

13:31

Reformation that was sweeping across Europe,

13:33

opium was crushed into little black pills

13:35

known then as stones

13:38

of immortality and they

13:40

were marketed as a painkiller.

13:42

Ding ding ding. By the start of the 19th

13:45

century, the British and the Chinese

13:47

Qing Dynasty were in the midst of

13:49

a bitter trade war. And we

13:51

say the British, we mean the East India Trading Company,

13:54

because at this period in history, the East India

13:56

Trading Company was running whole countries. This

13:59

is the thing. Like,

13:59

when people talk about Britain colonizing

14:02

countries, yes and no, it

14:04

wasn't

14:05

actually really England or Britain, it

14:07

was the city of London and the East India Trading

14:09

Company. Yes. They were the ones who were doing it

14:11

all. Because they had more soldiers

14:13

than the king,

14:14

so they could do whatever they wanted.

14:16

Correctly. And there's

14:18

a lot of problems of their own, but a new problem

14:20

that we need to discuss is that although British merchants,

14:23

the East India Trading Company, were making a lot of money

14:25

training Chinese goods like tea, silk, porcelain,

14:28

the Chinese refused to buy any British

14:31

products in return, which is where

14:33

the phrase all the tea in China

14:34

comes from. Ah.

14:36

So what this meant is that an enormous

14:39

amount of silver was leaving Britain, but

14:41

not much was coming back.

14:43

Oh, there you go. Trade deficit with China. Sounds

14:46

like we might have history of reaching ourselves

14:48

very soon.

14:49

And it was because of this chronic

14:51

trade imbalance that the East India

14:53

Trading Company and other British merchants,

14:56

maybe even the king,

14:57

got involved at some stage, but they were

14:59

quite often working against each other. They

15:01

started to import monumental quantities

15:04

of Indian opium into China,

15:07

for which they demanded payment in

15:10

silver.

15:11

By 1840, opium addiction devastated

15:13

the Chinese population with millions

15:16

addicted to the drug.

15:18

So China, you won't trade with us. Here's

15:21

a little taster of something that everyone

15:23

in your country is going to become violently addicted

15:25

to. Oh, you want it all now? Oh,

15:28

that'll be loads and loads and loads of silver.

15:30

You want to drink the milk? Yes, absolutely.