Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys. And in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss some recent developments and the efforts to get companies involved in fueling the opioid crisis to pay up and face some level of account of accountability for the role they played in the crisis.
And later on, we're going to react to some recent research that suggests that people of all ages and from many places in the world are having less sex, full stop.
Joining me today is a man who does his best to not believe in things he doesn't understand.
Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to show the people why superstate superstition ain't the way?
[00:01:02] Speaker B: No.
Let them be superstitious.
Yeah. So sometimes it's better than reality. Why would I want.
Why would I want to stop anyone?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah, there we go.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Just speculating and having conspiracy theories all day.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Come on.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: That's all good.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: All right. Now we're recording this on February 28, 2022.
And after seeing the recent $26 billion with a B billion dollar opioid crisis settlement involving Johnson and Johnson and three major distributors that was just finalized here at the end of this month, February 2022, we want to take a look at the opioid addiction crisis that's just been ongoing at this point for decade plus, you know, decades essentially, and has devastated or at least detrimentally affected so many lives.
Now, this $26 billion settlement, to be clear, is distinct from the settlement negotiations involving Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin.
And in that six billion dollar number, that's been. It's up to that now as far as what's been floated around, you know, for their role and, you know, pushing that their particular drug.
But we're seeing a lot of money be talked about basically from a lot of different places.
And while I want to say this is a human story, first because of the huge toll it's taken on individuals, families and communities, we want to start with the numbers today because these kind of numbers really make two things inescapable. One is that there's a huge amount of harm being done. If people are agreeing to pay that much money voluntarily, then, you know, like that, that's. There's something there.
And two, there was a lot of money that was made relating to that harm that was done and whether that's directly or indirectly. And so that's just looking at that. It's something we want to peel back and take a look at. So, Tunde, what is your general reaction to seeing these huge settlements being negotiated with the backdrop of the ongoing opioid addiction crisis?
[00:03:04] Speaker B: It's like many things, my initial reaction was not of shock because this has been a ongoing kind of story in our. In our country for a few years. I think most people are aware that there's been an opioid crisis in the United States, or epidemic, maybe I should say, and of an epidemic of misuse, to be very specific, of opioids. And that, you know, people don't find these things in their backyard by digging up in the ground. Right. It's not like these things come out.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Of the nostril growing like that.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're like, clearly some pharmaceutical company must manufacture it, distribute it, and obviously, you know, it's prescribed to people. So in that sense, I wasn't surprised. I wasn't surprised to see the price tag of the settlement. I guess.
I mean, nothing surprises me.
It. In terms of this. It kind of reminded me, like things that we've seen in the past, these big lawsuits, like the tobacco settlements, for example, but in a much different way.
I'm surprised. I feel like it's another one of these examples where it's a shiny object for everyone to feel good, that something was done. And I think it is important, the symbolism of this kind of lawsuit, that it does matter. The money will.
It looks like it will go to fund state programs to help people beat addiction, things like that. So all that's very important. I think it should have, hopefully, a positive effect on our society over the coming years. But I started thinking about, okay, nothing happens in a vacuum like this. These companies weren't sitting there. Johnson and Johnson, for example, wasn't sitting there sending its own sales reps into poor communities in West Virginia. And those direct employees of Johnson and Johnson are over there selling 80 million pills to a community that might have had 100,000 people in it in a year.
I feel like there's an infrastructure, an ecosystem, if I can use that word of distribution. And so I'm looking at, what about the doctors that prescribed all this stuff? There must have been thousands of doctors over the last 20 years that got this stuff out.
What about the distributors, all those different folks down the chain?
And even. What about the legislators that allowed this to.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: And regulators.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Legislators and regulators that allowed this to kind of take place in the first place 20 years ago who thought it was a good idea to allow pharmaceutical companies to take doctors on golf trips so they sell more Opioids, you know, so those are all the little things that stuck out to me.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that. That actually I would go in a different or in a similar direction. The scale, you know, when you're talking all these billions of dollars, that to me reveals it's a systemic problem when something happens all these different places, like you said, the infrastructure that it requires to make all this happen in all of these different places so seamlessly, so to speak, means there's an infrastructure supporting it. And right now we're at the source basically of the infrastructure where the inputs are coming in as far as the actual pills, at least from that aspect of the opioid crisis. Because the opioid crisis is viewed when people use that term. We're talking about the prescription drugs, but also I've seen the term also refer to just heroin use and other things, the meth type of stuff where just in general, whether it's real or synthetic type of opiates. Opioids. Opioids, opioids.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Excuse me.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: And so the scale of the problem though, from the kind of official, not the street part is huge, you know, because Johnson and Johnson and these distributors aren't paying for the street problem necessarily. Now the misuse, like you said, prescribed people are prescribing all this stuff where they know they can't be using it all. Like it's getting into the black market that way. So you have all that as well. But the scale of a problem when you have a systemic problem like that, basically the way the pharmaceutical industry operates seems to be ripe for something like this to happen. Like all of the skids were all greased for something like this to happen.
And then you get a product that gets people addicted like that. And then it just hits like crazy. If it wasn't set up to be able to get all of this to people so easily and under the radar, so to speak, it couldn't happen like that, you know. So from my standpoint, I look at it like that.
And this is the kind of thing why, like even now, I was not a person to telling people that I thought that the COVID vaccines were something that from when I'm looking at the issue, it's like, okay, this looks like something that's pretty this solid. It doesn't look like it's a con. But when people were saying we should be skeptical of the drug companies and vaccine makers, this is why I agreed with that. I was like, yeah, let's look very closely at what they're saying and what they're doing. Because we cannot assume that they have all of our interests, that they have our interests. They're putting them first. They definitely are out here trying to make money. But in that instance, it lined up that them making money appeared to be lining up with our interest. So it was like, okay, we look like we're in a good place, but that's, that, that's part of the reason why, like we cannot take people's word on these things. And I look at the people that you know, like, oh, regulation, when we need no regulation. Like that's crazy. This shows you why that's crazy. Like, no, people who argue that there shouldn't be any regulation are as extreme on one side as the people who say that there should be no free enterprise on the other side. And it's like, no, of course we need regulation because where else would you get an intervention on here that would stop something like this from growing and becoming a decades long thing? But regulation because this thing, like I said, the system was all in place to allow it to happen and to bloom and to roll out just and make so much money and be everywhere.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think you allude to something we talked about probably three weeks ago on a show where we were talking about capitalism, that famous line. I like to say that capitalism's the best system until someone figures out something better. And you kind of added there that capitalism with the guardrails.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: And you had given an example of how we capitalism has evolved in recent centuries. Like, you know, that it used to be acceptable to have slavery, you know, to, to keep human beings in bondage as part of the capitalist structure. And then that becomes your goal from.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: A capitalist standpoint is to lower your labor costs. That's a great way to do it. Like that, that's, that's innovative, so to speak. You know, that'll keep your labor costs very low and a controlled workforce.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And by the end of the 20th century, sorry, by the end of the 19th century, let's say the whole world generally agreed that that was unacceptable. And then the next phase in the early 20th century was things like child labor. And you know, then, you know, let's not have little kids going into coal mines, let's have them go to school, you know. So capitalism has continued to be refined in a more humane way over generations. And I think that this is another.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Let me just add this, the point being that it will find the path of least resistance. And then when we find those that are overly harm, harmful to society, we got to put guardrails up to stop people from then exploiting those things.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah, because here's the thing.
Look, we know that there are some sociopaths and people that don't care about other people. But I'd assume I'm going to assume the majority of people, let's say in Johnson and Johnson, don't wake up every day going to work trying to hurt someone else. But like you're saying, the profit motive, the arm's length that most people have with other ends of their business. So someone working in the J and J home office in New Jersey is just not there on the ground seeing the effects of the opioid epidemic in that neighborhood in West Virginia or Ohio or wherever the problem was on the ground.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Let me illustrate that for you. For example, like there's nobody at Johnson Johnson that's involved in the design of the pills, the manufacture of the pill, the distribution of the pill, and then putting it in people's mouth. So every person at every step has, as long as these other people do their job, then this thing won't be abused. And, and so nobody basically is saying is like, oh, it's all on this person or all on this group of people like everybody else is almost implicitly saying, well, yeah, if the doctors just don't over prescribe, we're fine. Or yeah, if this doesn't happen or if the regulators just do it, like all of that. And so, yeah, you don't have to have some villain stroking a cat in order for something bad to happen.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: Is he wearing a pinky ring?
[00:11:09] Speaker A: And don't they all putting his pinky in the air?
[00:11:13] Speaker B: I'm just asking because now you just gave me a nice visual while I'm trying to have a show of a dude petting a cat.
But no, and so, and that's kind of. My point is saying that this is another example where it comes down to. Because this is different than, let's say, tobacco. Right. The generally, without going through that whole thing, the tobacco lawsuits were effective because it was able to be proven that the tobacco companies understood that their product was harmful when on the surface they were advertising.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: It wasn't for a long time.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: For a long time.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: For a really long time.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: In the end of the day.
Yeah, I would even say that is a little bit less sinister than what we've kind of seen here because they weren't pretending that cigarettes were a healthcare product. Right. To make someone's life better. I mean, they're just like, look. And I think common sense says, I mean, you can look at someone smoking a Cigarette. Okay. If I'm breathing in, inhaling smoke, it's probably not that good for me long term. Whereas I think the, the issue here is it's the healthcare sector and that's where the guardrails need to be strong because we need, it's kind of like food. You want to be able to trust when a doctor gives you a pill that you're putting in your body that is going to do what it's supposed to do and not get you into an addiction or something that could lead to a negative outcome long term in your life. And I think that's where this one is a little just different. Like the idea of those guardrails. That's why I thought of that.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you. It's more offensive in a sense because it's like, well, hold on. If you're in the healthcare segment, we would like to think, and again, this is maybe where like we, we all need to be a little more skeptical, but not inherently or knee jerk skeptical, but just more skeptical. Like let me look and see really how everyone's interests are aligned here. Because yeah, like you would think if you're going to your doctor, the doctor who knows you, like, you're not just, you know, typing in something online, you're going to your doctor, the doctor's trying to, you know, you go to your doctor when something else is wrong and the doctor makes you feel better and so forth. And so there's a level of trust that's involved here that is implicit in, in a lot of this and that, which makes it feel more sinister. Even if no one person in particular or no one segment at the, in the, the whole, the whole thing would be the sole person to blame, so to speak. Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: And so, yeah, so I wanted to.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Ask you, you know, like also like these settlements and the lawsuits that, that led to them, you know, like the thousands of lawsuits around the country, you know, that are in some way related to this. You know, a lot of, they're really about holding someone accountable for playing a role in something that caused so much harm. It's not like when they do these settlements, part of it they admit no, no guilt, you know, something like that. But it's like, yeah, we'll stroke you this check.
And so do you think too much focus and this goes into kind of what we were saying here is being put on the manufacturers and distributors here and not enough on, you know, maybe the community and, or environmental factors that may be of contributing to this as well, which is not. Somebody can't stroke a check, you know, to. To make that right, so to speak.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's.
I think it's like other things, right? Like. Like it's an admission that there was a problem when they. When they stroke these checks. And I get it from a legal angle, they get to, you know, save face by saying they're not admitting wrongdoing and all that, but clearly the joke I have in my head is Prince Andrew with that chick from the Jeffrey Epstein thing, right?
[00:14:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Like, apparently he just had a settlement, but he's going to say, I didn't do anything. Okay, thanks. I get it.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: That's actually part of the financial transaction.
I'll give you a million. Well, no, no, no. I'll give you 2 million if I get to say I didn't do it.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
So clearly you did it then, right?
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
So all part of the consideration.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: It's kind of the same thing. So that's why. I mean, I just don't look at it anyway. I just know that's the kind of how the system works. But again, I looked at it like, out of the 26 billion, I don't know where this difference goes, but I read specifically that 19.5 billion is paid out over the next 18 years annually, which is 1.08 billion per year for 19 years or 18 years. Sorry. And so I was just thinking about it. So then I said, okay, what's a billion divided by 50 states? Just not assuming that, you know, they may give some states more than others, states that had more issues and all that. But without that knowledge, I just figured, let's divide it by 50 states. And it's funny how money, when you cut it down like that, it doesn't sound like a lot. It's $21 million.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: And so I just thought, like, okay, we're in Florida here. This is a big statement.
And I'm like, 21 million for the whole year for all these people affected in this state from opioid credit, that's not a lot of money, really. You know, when you talk about you got to put programs together, you got to h people to work those programs, you're probably going to do like they did with tobacco, put some commercials out there for hotlines and, you know, drug rehab centers and all that, I mean, that money's going to go like that, you know. And so again, and that's what got me then thinking, okay, well, how much did these companies really make? And I think I was texting you when I was looking it up the four Companies, only four, not including every other healthcare company that may have had an involvement in this. I looked at their 2021 numbers and combined it was Johnson and Johnson, McKesson, Cardinal Health and that, that last one that had a long name that I can't remember. Oh, AmerisourceBergen. So I got all four there. 708.47 billion in 2021 revenue.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: So the lawsuit represents 3.7% of the total one year revenue for these companies.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Yeah, to be fair that they don't just sell, you know, like the, the, the opioid products. So, but it's still, it's still their, their money, you know, like it's. Your point is well made that it's a, it's a small amount relative of how much money they actually deal.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Well, what I was going to say is that I've heard from people that are former corporate executives that I've been around that a lot of times these big companies will just put all that in. They'll factor that into their projections early on and they'll just say, you know what, yeah, this will cost us a few billion, but by the time this gets settled in the courts, we'll have made a trillion dollars. So it doesn't matter. And that's what I'm saying, that the 26 represents 3.7% of one of last year's profit. That's it. That means if they make combined another 700 billion this year that's clean, they won't have the fines associated with, with that. And so I just found it interesting that in contrast, the tobacco settlements of the 90s totaled around 246 billion.
And I mean, I don't, I don't, I didn't do the numbers, but I'm sure adjusted for inflation over 25 years, I mean, yeah, that number's probably double right now. So it's just interesting and, and you know, so I just, I just find that all kind of fascinating that it's like we have to acknowledge that our society is another example of we look the other way at a lot of these things and we, and unfortunately.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: We.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Normally talk about these things in the lens of race in this country. Like this group is being overlooked because of how they look or whatever.
Unfortunately, this is an example of true socioeconomic overlooking because the majority of the victims of the opioid epidemic have been white Americans.
And so it's an example where because most of them are low income and on the poorer side, they just haven't had the representation and the ability to kind of.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Well, and also though, I mean, because it's happening in a market context, I think there's been a hesitation.
People don't know what to do with it, you know, and so like, it's do. There is some scientific backing for these, especially for acute pain, not, maybe not chronic pain, but there is scientific backing that says this stuff works. So it's like, well, it's difficult. It's a difficult issue to deal with, you know, like the use of something. Okay, is that, is that on the up and up? And that's okay. But then it has a high potential for abuse. So then what do you do? Just because it has a high potential for abuse? When it's some things, particularly things that can't be patented and, you know, stuff like that, the government comes down really hard, you know, like, oh, well, marijuana has a high potential for abuse, you know, but it's, it's not killing people like that necessarily, but they'll say, oh, well, that's schedule one. That's, that's. But other things that might have a high potential for abuse, either they'll look the other way, like you said, because there's lobbying, there's a lot of people that can make money on it. So, yeah, I think you have to look at it in two ways. One is from a community standpoint or the environmental standpoint.
This is something that almost reveals underlying issues. A lot of times, like you can't look at and say, okay, because every community wasn't necessarily hit the same by this. And so what are the characteristics about the communities that might have been hit harder about it? And so you have to look at that. And sars, that's a part of it. What, what. And then what as a society can we do to address some of the factors there? And then second piece is the profit motive, which we talked about more in the, in the previous section. Just like if everybody along the way is just trying to make a buck and none of them are, are themselves doing dirt, but dirt ends up being done over the long chain, then it creates a situation where, you know, people take, put their hands up, say, look, you know, this is just the way the market works. But one of the things I wanted to. This mirrored in a way to me in talking about the community and or environmental factors, this reminded me the crisis kind of reminded me of what you saw in communities with like the crack epidemic in the 80s and so forth. As far as, you know, just when you had communities that were struggling, you know, to continue to maintain, you had areas where High despair, you know, like there are less things, less opportunity for growth and so forth, which was a part of the crack epidemic as well. And it made me wonder. These same factors.
I'm not necessarily going to point to Reaganomics, but a lot of the wealth transfer, a lot of the.
Now some of this was international stuff. So again, I'm not pointing to it in particular, but a lot of the wealth transfer, a lot of the changing of what it meant to be able to have access to and get into the middle class and so forth. These trends that were really hit hard in the 80s, they. They look like they kind of hit black folks first or black communities first, and then they kept, they kept expanding out throughout the entire countries. And it almost seemed like the crack epidemic was. This is a different drug. But from a community environmental standpoint, it might have been like the canary in the coal mine here, where it's like, hey, as our communities get hollowed out, as there's less purpose for people in our communities, as there's less opportunity for people in our communities, they become more susceptible to these types of things. And we saw it happen in the 80s in more, in a. More vulnerable, in more vulnerable communities. And then even in majority communities, you start seeing it happen in the 90s, 2000s and so forth. And so that, to me, like, it's, that's, it's a, it's a relation, it's a reflection that I saw. Again, I'm sure there's ways you could try to poke holes in it, but it still goes to kind of the. It's not happening in a vacuum, which you've already said, but it happens in the context of certain communities. It happens in the context of what's going on with people and what the level of people, the investment people have in their community and that they get from their community seems to play a role in all this. And those things seem to be deteriorating and seem to have been deteriorating. And, you know, that's just interesting to me from that standpoint and how we might have had like a precursor and then it kind of went to society at large.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's a very interesting observation. And there's a lot to unpack there that might be its own show on its own. So I'm not even going to go too far. But there's a lot, because you know what you're, what you're, you've got all that stuff and you've got to sprinkle in kind of the American culture of our history, too. So you've got Think about it. And you're right, in the 80s represented some interesting things. One is you are about one generation removed, the first generation removed from integration.
So what you had, remember, and that's why I said the uniqueness for our country is the racial aspect where blacks were segregated. So at a time during segregation, you had all kind of people living in black neighborhoods. And then what happened was during integration, those that could afford it and people that were more like us, me and you, like professionals, began to live in suburbs and other non segregated areas and.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Unfortunately change the character of the neighborhood.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Correct. Change the character of the inner cities and the black poor neighborhoods. Because then you had nothing left there except for the poverty. And it's almost like blacks were the canary in the coal mine in the 80s of where the country was going as relates to that. Because the second thing was like you're saying the destruction of the manufacturing sector starting in the 70s.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Blacks were the ones who first took it on the chin. You know the old joke, last one hired, first one fired. Well, the first ones fired were the line workers and the Ford plants and the GM plants when, you know, they used to have factories in Rockford, Illinois all the way through Michigan. And there are a lot of black communities that relied on those. And when those shut down and those jobs went overseas, they were the first to get hurt.
Not, you know, it was the whites in the 90s that began to suffer. But that was already happening in the black community in the 80s. And so you're right, what happened was, that's why I say it's a canary in the coal mine moment. Because then the following generation is wanting to happen. Everybody, meaning after NAFTA and all that stuff, by the early 2000s, a lot of the white communities were hollowed out and a lot of the upper more socially mobile whites had moved out of those older communities in the states, like West Virginia, Ohio and all that, and moved to bigger cities and spent their money that way. And what you had left were a lot of whites in the community that were poor. And same like what was happening in the black community a generation earlier in the 80s, which was just a lack of vision for the future for a lot of the youth you don't have.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: They're not seeing the upwardly mobile person just around as much. You know, I would say in both communities. And I want to just say, you know, like, because this is kind of a. I knew you would. If I threw that out there for you, that would be some red meat for you. But it's not to Say that the trends weren't everywhere. It's just that the everything when you have trends, there's a critical mass that's hit. And what we're saying more so what I saw there is really that a critical mass was hit in black communities first and then you had a similar thing happen in some white communities, later in majority communities. And it seemed to be like, we know that drugs find more homes, so to speak. Drugs can affect everywhere, drugs can affect us. It's not to say that drugs only go there, but community and environmental factors can play a role in, in addiction and things like that and the prevalence of it. And so it's just, it's something to look at because ultimately my point in throwing this out there is that we need to do more to try to figure out how we can support our communities throughout the country and not leave communities behind, so to speak, or not leave communities to fend for themselves. And where there's no. And it's not about giving handouts, it's about creating so that people see the potential, see potential for opportunity, see the community investing in them, are incentivized to invest in their community. And, and that's across the board. And so that type of stuff is the type of thing that you can, you can affect supply, but you also want to do things that, that whether it's sociologists or so forth, and I'll put some things in the show notes about this that can help affect demand, you know, and you can't get rid of it. Drugs are a part of the human condition. You know, people have been, you know, like people have been doing, you know, doing mind altering substances as long as there's been people. But in terms of when it becomes something on society where you would call it a crisis, ideally from a social standpoint, from a societal standpoint, we want to try to have interventions that can limit the, the how much that's going to, to, to really get its grips in the communities.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, and that's why it's interesting because again, our culture in the United States is to divide everything along racial lines. But this is a good example where this is about being a human being first of all, because, because you know, like you said, everybody has the potential, every group has the potential to have people affected by things like substance abuse within that group.
But it's also about the socioeconomic status of certain people in our country. Like you're saying the lack of vision and really both examples, whether it be the crack epidemic or the, and I just want to say this contrary to kind of the urban legends and cultural beliefs. I mean, crack actually was consumed by more white Americans than black Americans in the 1980s. If you look at the statistics. It just, it became kind of a meme that the inner city crack baby type of thing. But in any case, that's why this isn't about dividing people on a racial basis in terms of how they consume drugs. It's the idea that what they have in common more so than the race part, is the lower socioeconomic part. And the fact that in both examples, starting in inner cities in, in the black community, and then spreading a generation later to lower income white communities in this country, what you said was perfect, which is a lack of investment in those communities.
We had a lack of investment in public education.
We had a lack of investment in supporting the public education. So kids no longer had as many options for sports or drama or art or whatever in their schools like you and I might have had earlier on in history.
And then people didn't have, the community centers weren't being funded, so on and so forth. Right. And so to your point, when you have that, when you have the people that children can look at in their neighborhood leave that are doing something positive, like the lawyers, the doctors, this and that, and then you don't have things in those communities to still promote something else for a young person's brain to get hooked on other than drugs like arts or sports or things like that.
And you don't invest much in public education. So kids have a chance to really, not by going into debt, but by their own smarts, get into college and all that.
Then I think what it shows us is that race is artificial. Right. Because two different, what we classify as racial groups of humans responded exactly the same to the same conditions.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: It's interesting, man. It's interesting for sure. Yeah. And now I wanted to mention one other thing with this, and that was just with the way that the drug companies kind of operated and this kind of fudging. And this is with the regulators as far as the products which they were shown to work for acute pain, like pain that was happening in the moment, but chronic pain, which is something that I think that's a whole nother show as far as, like, well, what's lead? Like we have an issue with chronic pain. Like a lot of people with chronic pain. Like, what is that? What's going on there? Is it diet related? Is it, you know, like, there's a lot of questions I have on it that I would want to look at, but in terms of treating the chronic pain, though, which, you know, you could. A lot of people will have that. It seemed like this stuff wasn't really necessarily proven for that, but it got prescribed for that a lot. And was one of those things where you get into with the profit motive again, where instead of treating pain, it was actually creating a euphoria for a lot of times and almost, almost in a sense just becoming like what we think of as recreational in that standpoint. And so is there any. Did you have any thoughts on that just as far as, like how the drug companies kind of, you know, like just kind of walked everybody along and saying, one, they were, remember, they were assuring that it wasn't that addictive and everything like that. And the other saying kind of it was it could be used for more things that they had than they actually could show that it could be done. And, you know, just that goes back to the kind of holding them accountability accountable part. But it also goes into the, the regulator part. Like regulators are there because we're not supposed to have to take everybody's word on this stuff.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think there's, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, this is the part to me that was interesting because it shows the sinister nature between.
Sorry about how these things, these drugs were pushed into our society. I think this is what this stuff is probably what got them to pay the settlement and not have to go, as you so well state sometimes as an attorney, not go through further discovery.
So now, because I'm going to read a few of these excerpts here from stuff I was reading in preparation for today. I mean, it says, one of them says in the late 90s, around 100 million people or a third of the US population were estimated to be affected or having been affected by chronic pain.
This led to a push by drug companies and the federal government to expand the use of painkilling opioids. We started thinking about it real quick for a second.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember reading that and I was like, a third of people are in chronic pain. Like, we should be looking at some other stuff too, to figure out what's going on there.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: You're right. 100 million people is probably representing just how we live. People, people having back pain, because there's something there. Yeah, they've been sitting in traffic for 20 years. You know, in rush hour, their back hurts. Now how, like you said, what we eat, remember back in the 90s, we still didn't have all this education we have now about how bad fast food was.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: All that stuff was still good for you then. Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: And the tobacco settlements had just happened, so, you know, people were still smoking. So my point is, is that I realized in reading and preparing is some of this is also, I think back then was how we treated a lot of things. I thought about things like fast food in the microwave.
Like, we went through this period in our American kind of culture in the kind of middle to late 20th century where we had to do everything on steroids and on speed. You know, like, you can't just quite literally. Yeah, like. No, that's what I mean. Like, no one wanted to spend two hours cooking a nice home cooked meal. Right. It was all about, you gotta eat in within 15 minutes, you know, get the meal ready, you gotta hose it, you know, plow it down, all that. And then what were you.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Nobody wanted to eat a normal sized cow anymore. A normal sized chicken.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, and exactly, you can't let the cow actually spend a year or two growing. It's gotta be fully grown in six months with all these hormones. And that's what I mean, we, we got into this mode of everything needs to be fixed quickly. And so with it, when the pharmaceutical industry comes out and says, hey, take this pill and all that pain goes away, it's like, wow, okay, here's another magic, you know, thing. We're so smart by the 90s, we got all this technology, we can do all this.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's so much different. To your point, it's not much different than somebody saying, hey, push this, buy this microwave, push this button and your food is hate. Heat it in 30 seconds. Yeah.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: And so, and so, and again, that's why I figured, like, okay, in the last 20, 30 years, we've learned about the downsides of a lot of that stuff. Right? Whether it be the way we used to eat or a lot of people still do, but the way we eat was bad. You know, maybe cooking a meal and taking two hours actually is much better for you than heating up, like you're saying some trans fat in the microwave and hosing it down.
And so all that, all that has kind of helped us realize because now the way I look at it is, okay, there's obviously other ways to treat pain that we know of. The other interesting thing that I learned in preparation is they found that really to your point, these opioids, the Oxycodones, oxycontins, all that, Vicodins and Percocets, they're actually no better at helping pain than ibuprofen or Tylenol like some of the over the counter stuff. And so here's where I got into why probably the settlement was made discovery.
So one of the stats. Between 1991 and 2011, painkiller prescription, the United States tripled from 76 million to 219 million per year. As of 29. Sorry. As of 2016, more than 289 million prescriptions were written for opioid drugs per year. Then I go down and it says that 80% of the world's opioids are consumed in the United States. That's another thing that told me this is an American issue. This isn't about humans. Yeah. Because we aren't the only ones that sit in traffic. Right. They got traffic jams in Japan, China, all that, but they're not being pushed all these pills. So that's where I started thinking, okay, there was a concerted effort to flood our country with this stuff. Clearly no one else is doing it this way. And.
And I was looking at something of how it affects our. Our society. So they were talking about, like, teenagers and adolescents. In 2017, there were 4,094 opioid overdose deaths for teenagers and adolescents. But it says for every opioid death of a teen, there are 119 emergency visits. So when I added, okay, 4,094 times 119, that means in 2017, there would have been 487,000 kids going to the error from overdosing. That's what I'm saying. So we only talk about deaths.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: We don't imagine all that stress. Like, imagine Your kid is 16 and you find him vomiting, you know, and passed out from taking, and you got to rush into the hospital.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: All that disruption in your life. So that's what got me thinking about, like, when I was reading that stuff, I was like, yeah, this stuff is pretty serious. And. And it says. And here's the interesting thing too, and this is all 2019 numbers. 1.6 million people that year had an opioid use disorder, which I guess is their nice way of saying addiction. And it said 10.1 million people misused prescription drugs in the past 12 months, which would have been 2019. So I'm just thinking, like, that's a lot of. I mean, we've had shows like, where we joked about this, where they found trace amounts of antidepressants and opioids in our drinking water, because that's how many people urinate out this stuff that is in our actual water now. And it's like our tap water. And it's Just interesting, like what does that mean for our society that we have this many people that are on something chronically, like constantly. What does that do to their mood, their personal relationships, their ability to focus on the job? And so I think that it's all, all related, you know. So that's what's interesting to me.
[00:36:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean it's the last thing. And we can close up now. I just want to mention, close up this topic, but I wanted to mention one thing that just kind of, I remember reading like in his historically about how like opium was a big issue in China as well. If you go back 100 years, 200 years or whatever, and how like really like it became such a societal issue that the government got really strict on it and came up and cleaned all this stuff up. And like it was just like opium seems to be something that from time to time really digs its claws into human societies. Like it, it's, you know, people, like I said, people have been doing mind altering substances, have been around, you know, as long as people have been around. But it's something that, you know, you, from my standpoint, I look at that and I'm just like, well okay, well if we're going to then try to use. And it does have, there's some good uses for it, as you said. Like it does, there are things as far as the acute pain and stuff like that, like things that you get, you have like surgery or you have this and that, like there are things that it's really effective for.
But it seems like we should always be on high alert with something like this. This isn't something that hasn't been, hasn't caused societal problems in various societies throughout time, you know, and so forth. And so this is something that we should, the risk alert should be up high. And I'm, I'm looking back, you know, when they're like, you know, in the 90s, like, oh yeah, we think that the risk for addiction is very low. And I'm just like, like how did, how did that one fly? Like, how did that, like so hold on, you're gonna take something that's made, they're gonna refine and process something that's made out of opium, which has caused all these problems in all these different societies. You know, like I said, we've learned about some like, so it's just going to be cool. You know, people are just going like, oh yeah, my pain, my pain's gone, I'm good. And we're not going to have to worry about that. And so it seems what's interesting about.
[00:38:25] Speaker B: The Chinese thing is that actually had a direct lead to Mao the following century.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: That they.
The opioid crisis that was pushed by the British when they were trying to colonize China, but it was too big.
Was like, hurt that country for a long time. And one of Mao's things was, I'm gonna clean all that up. And then he went psycho with his. With his communism stuff and dictatorship stuff. But it's just interesting how those things can lead to other offshoots that, like, I'm sure In the late 80s, societal.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Society.
[00:38:58] Speaker B: No one thought now was gonna do. You know, a guy like him would come along.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: And. And then. And that's the other thing, too, is just. Just to have the final joke here.
The United States occupied the number one producer of opium through the number one, kind of the largest landmass of poppy plants, like, anywhere in the world, which is Afghanistan. We got there in 01, and it's like, I'm not a conspiracy theorist guy, but it's just a shame that while we're occupying a complete country with our total military and these guys basically had donkeys, you know, once we kicked the Taliban out, there was no one in that country that could stop the US Military. I mean, clearly the Taliban couldn't either.
Somehow. They had record exports every year we were there of poppy.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: And, you know, selling heroin and opioids around the world. I mean, again, I don't want to sit here and say our government willfully allowed the trade of opium in the black market or under their nose. But. But I'm pretty sure the satellite imagery and the drone footage that they get in the NSA and CIA has got hd. They know what was going on.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: But remember, though, it's the scale of this thing that is the thing that really stands out, because certain legitimate products are made out of that.
There's legitimate products that are made out of it. But it's like you said, if somebody's making 100,000 pills to send to a village of 10,000, it's like, well, hold on.
That there's a problem there. And so. And that's happened in all these different places. But I think we can jump from there. But. I know. I mean, you're right, though. I mean, it's. That was. That's one of those connections. I wasn't going to say anything about that, but that was one of those connections that you just look at with the eyebrow furrow, like, hold up. What? We were there. Where. That's the number One producer of opium. And we were there for 20 years running the show. And like. So, yeah, but we don't need to go any further down there. The other piece we want to talk about, which, you know, is a little lighter, but in a sense it's a little lighter. But then it's also, you know, pretty concerning as well, considering the nature of our species and what it takes for us to survive.
And that is, there's. There's this research floating around from reputable places. This isn't like, you know, a bunch of teenagers, you know, having fun, like, but that talks about how people are having less sex. And like, this is something that.
This is like, official stuff. Like, they differentiate between partnered sex and solo sex. And like in. And all of them are down, apparently, which is even more shocking if you.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Like, what about married. Sexual. Married sex?
[00:41:34] Speaker A: I think that has to be the partnered kind, I would think.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: But you can have a partner and not be married. So I want to see.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: Well, I wanted to get your reaction to this and, you know, I have some thoughts as well. But, like, is this. Is this the red flag of all red flags that human beings, you know, are like, that sex is down?
[00:41:56] Speaker B: Maybe it's another way that the Earth is messing with us because there's 8 billion of us and it's tired of us. Hey, just gotta put something in the air that people just have a lower libido. And as you know, I mean, I don't know, I started thinking about that in my head, like, joking, like, maybe this is a survival mechanism for humanity that we're just not gonna.
We're not gonna get the 20 billion. So one way or another, either nuclear war, the next Covid or we're just not gonna reproduce. But somehow.
[00:42:25] Speaker A: There are animals in the wild that depending on their environment, can change their gender. You know, if there's too many women in the area, they can switch over.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: And I've got a real bad joke.
We figured out how to do that too.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: So it's eminently believable that our own environment can influence our sexuality or our. Whatever we're doing on a hormonal level on what's going on. And it' just because, like, nobody's proven anything like that before. But yeah, I mean, like, to think that we don't have any kind of interaction with our environment on a. On an unconscious level, on a level that we're not conscious of. Yeah, that's easy to believe. Now, what it is is where you get into trouble if you start making all these guesses as Far as what exactly it is, because that's where you start needing, you know, you need some kind of scientific method. But to say that human beings interact with their environment in ways that we're not aware of, I think is, you know, almost to be, can be taken as a given.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, yeah, man. That's why I say I don't know what all that means, but.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: Superstition, man.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: It's interesting now, and I think I share with you that I saw this interesting study that they do like every decade since like 1970. And it's one of these things, I think the average age for the people. They take males and females in their 20s, and they basically leave them in a room for like an hour and they just turn all the lights off and they have like the infrared camera so you can see the body heat and you can see how people are moving. And they were saying that back in 1970 when they first did it, like about a third of the students actually had sex in that dark room. And another percentage were like touchy feely with each other. And it's like the average, the lowest percentage of people were the ones who sat on their hands in the dark.
And then they said every decade since, there's this incremental shift to less and less people exploring each other.
And it's interesting because what they did, I saw this like five, six years ago. What they said back then was, which probably is even more pronounced now since the MeToo movement and some of this stuff that they think that a lot of it was the shift in culture that like, just back in the day, men were more aggressive with women. I just said it like that.
And that it was more normal for young people in their 20s just to just like experiment sexually with a partner without it being like, you didn't need to know someone, I guess mean, like no strings attached. Yeah, like that kind of stuff. And they said other things too, like obviously things like AIDS in the 80s, you know, the advent of STDs and people being aware of those, that those all probably have played a factor too and being less promiscuous. And so I just found that interesting examples like that. And then there's other examples that I think, you know, many have heard of over the years. Like in Japan, they've had this problem of young men not being interested in sex. And then as technology got better, a few years ago, I remember hearing about young men dating their little emoji apps that they had on their phones and these little programs and having relationships with basically a program and I think I told you about the movie I saw called her with Joaquin Phoenix.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: Which was very good because it kind of spoke to that where he basically, long story short for the audience, it's like he, he falls in love in the future, not too distant future with a software that's kind of like a really advanced Alexa like he can come on the house, say hi honey, I'm home. And she, she's like fully AI provide the companionship.
[00:45:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: And so, and so it's interesting because that's what the movie showed and I believe that that could happen. If AI gets that, good people will want a companion and you can program. That was the interesting thing. He could program her in a certain way when he set her up. Like he was able to program how funny she was or not. Like is it the type of thing that makes jokes all the time or maybe 20% of the time how, how much she would argue with him.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: Some people don't like to be argued with. So you could program your AI to say no, I want them to agree with me all the time for everything or someone miles them. No, I want somebody that challeng challenges me.
So the interesting thing I found because I thought man, this is actually going to happen. Like I thought this is a good movie that'll probably is predicting where we might go if technology will allow it.
I just thought that could be another interesting thing because most people don't like conflict and don't want to deal with someone that disagrees with them and relationships aren't easy, they take work. So I could see this being a.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: Creates an alternative because if you go back X number of years, there were like conceivably the alternative didn't exist. Like if you want companionship, then you gotta, you know, sign up with a person. You try to find somebody that instead of programming you try to find somebody that you know, kind of meets those, you know, has those personality traits that you like or that you can work with or something. I mean, to me this is like red flag, like red light all of that. This is, this is. Something's wrong with us if as, as human beings right now, if this is the case. And like in the sense that like these human beings are sexual beings like this, that is how we reproduce, that is we're wired in ways to desire that and like that's not something that again, on an unconscious level. And so if that's happening now. I think you raised some good points though as far as how things got more complicated over the last. If you go back the last 40 years or 50 years or whatever, things got definitely got more complicated. And that's with it. As societies get larger, as societies, you know, there's more people, more stuff, sensibilities have changed and so forth. But you would still think like even the study you cited, you know, as far as going back to the 70s and so forth, like unless the premise from that is saying that all of these interactions, some, a lot of these interactions weren't consensual then like you would think that it's not a one way street, so to speak. Like so it, I'm just, I'm not confused but I'm just alarmed that from the standpoint of what is happening here where beings like what if, what if birds just stop flying? Like would we not look around like home, you know, I think there's something wrong here. Like the birds that used to fly around all the time aren't flying anymore. Like that's like a, like it's something that we do and it's something that's been a part of us again.
Even more of a part of us than mind altering substance. This is. And it's like oh well, yeah, we're just not interested in that much or like on again, everything here is not down to the individual level. It's on its trends, you know, over large groups is you know, where you're looking at something like this. And I mean like I said this is, this is akin to me to saying oh yeah, the birds, they used to fly but they just stopped flying, you know, slowly but surely over the last hundred years now birds don't fly anymore. And we would be like this is the craziest thing in the world. So to me I'm looking at it like that.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think it's probably only going to get worse, man, because I think that you're going to have.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: More.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Reasons for people to divide themselves in society or not behave the same way they used to. And some of them are, you know, maybe like more me too stuff and all that which will make, you know, people maybe more people apprehensive about initially coming together and, and all that. And you're going to have other things. I mean not to get vulgar here. I was, I was watching one of these shows. I don't know if it was Bill Maher or something like in the last few days, I think it was Bill Maher because he was making fun of this new thing for men to masturbate with which basically is like, it gives a sensation of, you know, like a vagina warm and soft and all that and nice and mushy, I guess. And he was joking because it looks like an Alexa. It's just like this white round, like basically this white round kind of cone, you know, like this, this, this, this tube shaped thing that obviously, I'm guessing you put your stuff in one end and it's got all this stuff to make you feel good. And it's funny because I looking at that and everyone's laughing because he's like, yeah, you shouldn't, you know, how about we don't make these things look like Alexa. He is joking like that. A kid, kid will make a mistake. Start talking to the friggin man dildo or whatever you would call it, you know, and trying to look for the next music request or something.
And I just thought about it for real. I started thinking about that and like that movie her and all that. And I thought, yeah, it's kind of like what the Japanese thing. Like we, we do run the risk. And with this metaverse and all that, I mean, if, you know, for people that have seen a movie, like Ready Player One, like, I believe all that stuff's gonna happen. Like, you know, look at where technology is already compared to just 30 years ago. I mean, I can put on my VR for the headset for the PS5 and feel like I'm flying in a fighter jet for real. Like, it's amazing. And so who's to say in 30, 40 years you don't go in the metaverse?
You got your little Alexa thing strapped to, you know, to your ball sack.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: It's virtual. It's virtual.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it's all. And you go in there and it's like Total Recall at that point, you know.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Well, but see, here's the thing though.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: You can be the big player and you don't have to deal with real people. You know, you can be in this total fantasy land.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: But here's the thing though, that again, which was like very notable about this, is that they were saying the solo stuff is down too.
And again, that goes to your desire, that goes to just whether you want it, whether, you know, like again. And that's how we're wired. Like dogs want to get rubbed on their belly. Like, what if your dog just didn't want to get rubbed on his belly anymore? Like, or dogs in general just didn't want to get rubbed on their belly?
[00:51:45] Speaker B: That would be shameful if he didn't, because that is you, you would be.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Up here like, what in the world is going on?
[00:51:49] Speaker B: And so then I'd have to look at my cats and say, what's going on with this guy?
[00:51:54] Speaker A: And so, I mean, to me, it's such a, the, the lack of, the fact that it's appears to be rooted in a lack of desire, like you would think, or you. Historically, it's joked about like people would climb mountains or, you know, do all do anything to get to that at the end, you know, and now it's just like, oh, well, no, I'm good. And like, that, to me, is such a big change. And again, I don't know what's going on in society. Or like you said, maybe this is the whole 8 billion people thing that's, that's affecting how our bodies are processing this type of stuff. That, the type of influence our, you know, it's affecting our hormones or whatever, which, again, I wouldn't put past. I mean, that's, I, I, there's definitely more going on in our body. Well, clearly we, we know there's more going on with our bodies than we know, you know, So, I mean, it's.
But still, like, I, Again, it's something that. I'm glad they're studying it. I don't expect any kind of Eureka thing here, but I wanted to just kind of bring it out here because, like, again, to me, this is like, like animals we associate with doing X. It's like if they just stop doing that, we would be like, well, what's going on here? Like, chickens just stop laying eggs? You know, like, again, like, what are we talking about?
[00:53:02] Speaker B: Because what you're alluding to is something that I don't know at all to be a fact, but it's interesting.
There could be something in our environment that, that, that is, that is chemically or something.
[00:53:15] Speaker A: For example, there's like plastics that interfere with estrogen and testosterone.
[00:53:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, it could be something because, like, look, you know that my youngest kid has type 1 diabetes.
And, you know, just having a child with that, I learned a lot. And, you know, the rate of type 1 diabetes has been increasing in recent years by about 3% a year.
And they can't figure it out. And it's just like, you know, there used to be nobody, barely anyone had a peanut allergy back until about the, the early 80s. And then all of a sudden, peanut allergies and nut allergies were going through the roof and these things they believe, like, I remember that one of the institutes were diabetes institutes. We deal with that, does a lot of research.
They think that There is something, a chemical, they say they can't identify it, but it could be even something of fragrance, they said, like a chemical in a candle that you buy at Walmart, for example, that they believe could throw off some enzyme or protein in a body that creates an autoimmune response by the body, that it attacks its own pancreas and shuts down the ability to produce insulin. That's one way they speculate why someone like my son, who his mother and I have been tested, we have no genetic markers for type 1 diabetes in our DNA. So how does this kid get it? And the same thing they say about like these nut allergies and all that, that there must be something in our environment. So what I'm saying is maybe there's. If those things are kind of. If the environment is affecting us with autoimmunes and allergies and all this kind of stuff, maybe it's not unbelievable to think that it could affect our libido too. If there's something that affects, like you're saying, our hormonal responses to certain things.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: Definitely. Definitely. I mean, as you pointed out in our first topic, we have been on a mad dash for the past 50 to 100 years or so to do everything quick, do everything on speed and on steroids. You know, like, so we have been put doing a whole bunch of stuff, adding a whole bunch of things to what we eat or what we put on ourselves or what we all around us that we don't know the implications of. So, I mean, there's a lot of.
[00:55:10] Speaker B: So you're making me really appreciate another reason why I was born before 1980.
I feel like we already had our kids. We're good. I don't have to worry about not having a lot of sex going forward.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: Because you don't need to go to anymore.
[00:55:24] Speaker B: I mean, the old generation that still had sex, that was good, that's their problem.
[00:55:27] Speaker A: I did not think we would end up there.
[00:55:29] Speaker B: Yeah, we are ending up here.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: But I think.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: I don't think that the beautiful thing about middle age, and I'll say this, and I know you can choose to join me or not, but your laugh will give it away.
The beautiful thing about middle age is not caring anymore how you perform. I don't care.
I'll be bragging all that time when I go to more than 90 seconds, I'm like looking at her putting a Superman cape on, happy as shit and laughing my ass off.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: It's great. Oh, yeah, well, see, I told you we should have cut it off. 30 seconds ago.
[00:55:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. That's the official. You better shut up. You better shut this down or else I'm going to keep going.
You're going to have me, too. Moving on. Your show plus a transgender moment.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: But I think we can tell.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: Yeah. But now we appreciate everybody.
[00:56:12] Speaker B: I'm not going to get kicked off Spotify, bro.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: And we get. Yeah. On this episode. Call it like I see it, and you can find us wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe to the podcast, rate us, review us, tell us what you think. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: I'll just be tuned. I almost made a joke.
[00:56:29] Speaker A: But we won't.
[00:56:30] Speaker B: I'll keep us on Spotify. There we go. There we go.
[00:56:33] Speaker A: And we'll talk to you next time.
I.
