Tall Cop: Vapes and Drug Culture

Tall Cop, Jermaine Galloway, is back! He paints a very clear picture about the reality of vaping and general drug culture and how parents play the most important role in protecting their kids.  Beyond just statistics, Galloway takes us through a journey of understanding the real-world effects of substance abuse, including the normalization of drugs in media and daily life that's contributing to a surge in mental health issues among young people. Prevention is key!

Transcript

: 0:01

Today we have a returning guest on the show, Jermaine Galloway with. He is known as Tall Cop and he is a drug expert. Thank, you.

: 0:12

Welcome to the show, Jermaine.

: 0:19

Why don't you, for the listeners who may not have listened to your other show, just introduce yourself briefly, tell us about you and who you are, how people can find you, that sort of thing.

: 0:27

Sure, I know it's a little bit, but no one knows remembers my name. I'm known as Tall Cop says stop. That's what people do remember. So to find me, just Google search or go to www. tallcop says stop. com. But former law enforcement officer for 18 years, left law enforcement at the end of 2015,. That's because I do so much of this. I travel and train across the country. I'm actually at home in Texas right now. I live in the Dallas area, but normally I'm in a couple of states a week. So this week I got back yesterday morning from Alabama doing some trainings there. I head to South Carolina next week and Texas I'm doing some trainings in Texas tonight and next week and I train about 90,000 people a year, all in drug trends. My training is anywhere from an hour long to two and a half days long. I mean it can go all across the board. So everything from schools to mental health to treatment, law enforcement, everything. If you deal with drugs, I train you. That's kind of me in a nutshell.

: 1:23

And don't you also do events like for parents and families?

: 1:27

I do All those community nights. I actually have one this evening coming up where I will be just I guess that would be just right outside. Fort Worth is where I'll be later tonight, and then I have another community event next week in Texas. So I do those all the time where I train parents also and I show you guys what's going on in schools and what's going on on the streets and why our drug issues are going to continue to increase. I actually show you. I don't just tell you why, I show you why.

: 1:56

Give us that in a nutshell, talkop. If you could say we need to be looking at this for all these reasons like, summarize that shortly for us, for parents, so we can get ahold of this, we can understand the magnitude of the problem?

: 2:11

That's a good way to ask it. So there's drug correlations First. It starts with this what drugs? Especially when you talk kids, the most popular drugs with kids are stuff they can get easily and are cheap. Those are your two main factors, period. So if you talk about the top drugs with kids, what are we seeing? Cannabis, some of our Delta stuff Delta 8, delta 9, delta 10, prescription pills, alcohol, vapes. Are any of those expensive? Are any of those hard to get? Are any of those hard to find? No, three of the four minus maybe pills most of us see every day. We come across that stuff every day. We see the Delta stuff in our gas stations. We see vapes every day.

: 2:48

So with that, if it's easy to get in cheap, that means more people are going to use it. If more people use it, you're going to see more mental health issues. You see more mental health issues. You see more depression, more aggression, even more suicides. All of those things are going to rise. So what my point is is this when I walk into a store this week in Alabama and I find gummies that work like mushrooms and I find stuff that is synthetics and I find other products that are cannabis alternatives. Then how is anyone going to tell me mental health is going to increase when they're selling stuff in gas stations for six and seven dollars that our kids can purchase and that most of which have no age restrictions to it? So tell me again how mental health is going to get better when our kids can access the stuff that easily and, in many cases, are self-medicating to.

: 3:35

Absolutely.

: 3:38

I feel like you painted that beautiful picture for us in a very short amount of time and everybody's like, yes, that's exactly. We're seeing the spiral of mental health, of, you know, school shootings, of, like the kids are struggling and we often say, well, what, well, like what's happening, and it's literally the breakdown of the normalization of drugs. And then you combine that with social media, I mean we have a crisis on our hand with these kids and we have to know what we're looking at.

: 4:09

You do, because you know you hear the conversation. Let's use social media, the desensitization of things, of of sex, of violence, of drugs, right, we're all becoming a society desensitized, all those things and the normalization, all that. You drive down the street, you see billboards, you hear people talking about it, there's references on T shirts, People make drug references in music, so we're just kind of numb to it all. But the problem is, when you desensitize something, you increase the use of that. So if you're desensitized to eating cookies, you say, well, cookies aren't gonna, aren't gonna make me fat, Cookies aren't a big deal. Who cares about cookies? What's the big deal? You're gonna need more cookies. And if you need more cookies you're gonna get more weight, right? So that's kind of the association that you have. And with drugs we're seeing that where they're desensitized, Like what's the big deal? I mean I tell parents you know, when you talk to your kids about it Now don't just listen to what they're saying Watch their demeanor. Their demeanor is telling you this really ain't a big deal, mom, this really isn't a big deal and if they feel like it's not a big deal, they're gonna do it more. I'm not saying all are gonna do it, but in general they're gonna do it more, Not just our kids. That accounts for you and I too. So that's the problem right there. And then we make it more accessible.

: 5:19

Because let me go to the second part of this If you wanted to do a certain drug, let's say you wanted to do cocaine and you're like I'm desensitized to cocaine and I really want to do cocaine. The problem is, if cocaine was $100 a bundle, $400 a bundle, you say I really want to do it but I can't afford it. And then if you sat back and said, well, I can't find it either, because it's really hard to find a cocaine dealer, you might want to do it but you can't do it because a couple of those elements are out of place for you. But now if you want to do cocaine and you say cocaine is $4 a bundle and we sell it six blocks away, you go I got five bucks and I'm gonna go try it, I'm gonna give it a whirl. And some kids will sit back and say I don't like it, I didn't like the way I felt, I don't want to get in trouble, and some kids will go man, that felt good, I can't wait to do that again and that's what we're dealing with.

: 6:06

So we're dealing with those increased numbers, and a big issue with the increased numbers is this we don't have enough people to help with the numbers we're seeing. So I know it kind of going on tangent here, but here's a question I get. Well, what about treatment and mental health? I fully support that and we need more treatment providers and we need to be putting more funding towards that, Totally agree. So you know, I'm not discounting that at all. But what happens when the numbers exceed? How many people exist to help? And that is what we are starting to see. You know, you go to a school and they have one counselor for a thousand kids. That span of control is not even reasonable and there's no possible way that counselor can impact a thousand kids or even 400 kids. So what's happening is our numbers are rising and we're basically overwhelming the system and we're overrunning the system. That's another part of this. You know, great piece of the puzzle that's going on.

: 7:02

We're seeing that in our organization as well.

: 7:05

Yeah, and if you don't get the mental help that you need and you return to that drug, that becomes your help and then it's just this cycle, you go back to it, you go back to it, and the accessibility is one thing, but also the cost for mental health. Like for a lot of families, they don't get coverage that includes mental health professionals. It's kind of like the cocaine. Yeah, it's like I want to do it, but I can't afford the help that I need and it's cheaper for me to self-medicate over here. And then they're back in that loop again. Right, right, it's just it's very frustrating.

: 7:41

Well, and you might even have a parent that says I want to help, I want to do this, I want to do it, but it's a single parent household, Mom's working two jobs. Mom might not have a car right, she doesn't have the financial accessibility to be able to make this stuff happen. So mom might not have a car. And then also, how does mom who lives in rural America because this is the part we forget. So mom lives in rural America, three hours out of San Antonio. How does mom get their child to treatment when treatment's an hour and a half away? And two hours away, Is that reasonable to say? Mom can make a two hour trip twice a week up and back to do that.

: 8:13

So there's all these moving parts and moving factors that are happening. You know, because I do a lot of trainings in rural America and they're really up against it because they don't see numbers like Dallas or San Antonio or Houston does, but they see numbers that far exceed their capabilities out there and they have nowhere to go. So that's a whole nother aspect of this. I mean, there are so many different aspects of why we are seeing what we are seeing on our streets, and one of the things I tell my classes is we are trimming the shrub at the top and not at the root. We're not fixing the root cause and as long as we trim it at the top, the shrub's going to continue to grow and we're never going to get to the root cause of it.

: 8:50

And we're not. We really aren't. If you talk to mental health professionals, they will tell you we need to be addressing this earlier. We need to be addressing this with treatment. We need to be addressing this directly and not just waiting until someone becomes an addict and addressing it then. And in some cases that's what we're doing, including with kids.

: 9:10

I want to go back to something you said a while ago, because I want you to help us explain. You said drugs are readily available and they're cheap. Why is that? As a parent, I'm over here screaming like why is that?

: 9:22

So there's a few reasons. Let's start with the first one. A drug is not banned. Unless it's banned, we kind of have this conception of it must be illegal, right, because it works like heroin. So it must be illegal. Not necessarily unless it falls under an existing law or unless we've banned it it's not illegal. So let's say a new drug shows up tomorrow and we say that drug works just like opioids, it's just as strong as heroin. That drug's not illegal unless it falls under a law we already have or ordinance we already have, or we ban it. So therefore we have new products that show up that are legal, and legal means no age restrictions.

: 10:00

So you know, I have a nine-year-old daughter sitting at the elementary school right now. That means she could buy this stuff. She could not take it to the elementary school because it'd be a policy violation. So isn't it crazy to think that in some cases school policy in Texas is stronger than Texas state law? So an elementary school can put more sanctions on kids with some drugs than Texas police officers can, and that's in every state. So that's the first part.

: 10:25

The other part is this and we talked about this a little bit earlier kind of off camera is, some laws are unenforceable. If you pass a law that says we're going to do this but it's so big, what law enforcement officers have time to go deal with that right, and we have agencies. On a little side note, law enforcement agencies are all shorthanded. Every major agency in the United States is down officers, so what they're doing is having to kind of triage what they go to. So now we start looking at the prevention side, and that's the side that always gets cut first is prevention, because then we become more reactionary.

: 10:58

So as you talk about the prevention side going well, we need to go address this with these gas stations. People are going to say we have people dying of fentanyl every day. I don't even have an officer's responding for 20 minutes till that. I don't have time to send someone to a gas station to address a vape issue. So there's that piece of it also. So you sit back as a parent and you're like, oh, what's going on? And we need to figure out laws and ordinances that are enforceable and that will also help law enforcement or the health department or whoever we task with these things, to be able to address them.

: 11:33

Well, I think that's why we wanted to have you on the show, because you just outlined for us like, yeah, we need laws, we need more police officers. You know we need all of these things, but that's going to take a minute and so, literally right now, the first line of defense with our kids is the communication and education that we're doing at home, and I think that's why you're in such high demand and why we need people like you, because most parents, I think, want to have this conversation. We're just not educated on it enough, and I think that's where your benefit you are so beneficial to me as a parent and our listener.

: 12:08

Yeah, thank you, and that's why we have to get the information out. And it does start with the parents, you know. But a comment that I hear from parents, and this one, frustrates me. So a comment that I hear from parents sometimes is this at least my kids are not using the hard stuff. So let's address that real quick. Parents Okay, no heroin user started with heroin.

: 12:26

No meth user started with meth. Okay, no ecstasy user started with ecstasy. No cocaine user started with cocaine. Just to be clear. Now they all started with something else and generally that was cannabis, weed or alcohol. Now we got to add factor in one more thing it's going to be vapes now too. Okay, so vapes are your gateway drugs. So when you look and say, well, I'm going to buy my daughter this vape because at least it keeps her from the other stuff, I'm not saying if your child vapes, they are going to use heroin. I'm saying, if your daughter ends up using heroin, she started with vapes, alcohol or cannabis. Okay.

: 12:57

So my point is you have to address the small stuff and hopefully keep it from getting to the big stuff. So make the small stuff a big deal, address it. Make it a big deal, because I would say that most heroin users that I have come across on the streets or people in recovery I get a lot of people in my classes in recovery I would say most of them did not intend to end up there, but they did end up there. Most of their parents did not want them to end up there, okay.

: 13:22

So with that in mind, we have to focus on the small stuff and addressing it younger, because our kids are starting younger, our kids are using more. And even for the parents on here who listen that say I did that drug. Just to be clear, because I'm addressing all the stuff that I hear, right, just to be clear, you did the course light version of the drug. Your kids are doing the ever clear version of the drug. Okay, the drug is the same name, it is not the same drug. So, just to clarify all that, right, some of these hurdles that we hear and some of these obstacles that are put up, we need to knock some of those down.

: 13:58

That's so important that you said that, because we hear similar statements like that all the time, including I don't want to teach my kids or tell my kids about these things, about these trends and these drugs, because then I'm introducing the idea to them and then they'll be curious and go use it, which we know is not true. You have to educate yourself and then your kids so they know why not to use it. But I'm sure you come across that as well.

: 14:24

I do. Kids are going to be curious, period. So let's not discount that or try to figure out a way to dodge that. Kids are going to be curious. We were curious as kids. All kids are curious and they're going to be. No matter what you do, they're going to be curious. So with that, you have to take a step back as a parent and say is my child going to learn about vapes? Yeah, in elementary school they're going to learn about vapes, and I don't mean from the teachers, I mean from the students, because we're seeing vaping as young as second grade. So they're going to learn about vapes in elementary. So, parents, don't be afraid to talk to your kids about vapes because you're going to train them or the kids at the school are going to train them, but someone's going to train them. So also, you look at cannabis. They're going to know about cannabis by middle school. So these are some things you can talk about that you don't have to worry about increasing curiosity. It's already there and they're already going to learn about it.

: 15:09

Did you talk about different ways to hide methamphetamine in middle school? No, probably not. That that's a later conversation. So you have to use common sense. But just ask yourself this question Are they going to learn about this drug and when? And if your answer is, I think they're going to learn about it next couple of years and you better talk about it. And if you're watching the news media and your child's sitting there with you and you look at a news story and they're talking about it, well, your child just learned about it, so now you better talk about it. So we need to be having the conversations earlier. What I'm telling people in my trainings is we need to be talking to kids about Drug-started second grade at least, and that doesn't need to be all drugs, but that needs to be vaping and other and other similar drugs to that.

: 15:48

Absolutely use teachable moments and don't sweep their questions under the rug because you're afraid we cannot do that. We cannot. I want to circle back to something you said earlier and I think you really painted that picture of the slippery slope to where some people are saying, well, it's just a vape, at least it's not cocaine or something like that. I think that is a very common thing that parents of older kids, especially like high school college kids, think and I want to talk about this a minute because you said we the small stuff like the Little vape, we have to go in and we have to educate about that when it happens young. And I would like to talk about what that looks like a little bit. I know one of the things that that I think has been helpful in my home is just explaining, like, the history of the vape too. You know, like I would tell my kids, you know, this was created to help smokers stop smoking. That's the original intent of the vape.

: 16:44

But somewhere along, somewhere along the line, it became marketed to children as a new product.

: 16:50

So now we have people who have never had nicotine in their lungs before, little kids Taking this in and we have no research on how that's going to impact a kid's lungs, right, and so when they see that big picture of you, know and then I'm not demonizing the vape I mean, some people have used the vape to get off smoking, and that's a great thing, right. But it has also been used horribly, marketed to kids, to just use when they didn't even have a smoking problem. And so helping them paint that big picture, I think is really important. But do you think that's good? And what would you add to that? As far as your kid comes home, either elementary middle and you, they've been caught with a vape. A friend has been caught with a vape and we need to educate right now, because this is a moment. We don't want to look ahead 20 years and think, oh my gosh, now they're addicted to cocaine and it started right here and I had an opportunity and I didn't take it right.

: 17:45

So here's what I'd say first, talking to your kids, don't use scare tactics, because Whatever drug you're talking to your child about, they probably know someone who's doing it. Okay so, which means you can't sit back and say you're gonna die in this and that, because they're gonna think to their buddy, john, and John isn't dead and John runs faster than me and PE and John's the best basketball player on the team. So that's what they're gonna be thinking about, why you're talking about. So don't use scare tactics, but also be real with them. This you know it took us 25 years to understand tobacco what we know about. You know smoking on Airplanes and smoking around our kids and smoking in cars. It took us 25 years to figure that out. It's kind of laughable when you look at it now going. We didn't, we didn't figure this out earlier than that. So it's the same thing with apes. Talk to them about the harms, talk to them about the unknowns, talk to them about the chemicals. Pull up the chemicals. Pull up and say this is what the chemicals normally used for and they're putting it in there and then also explain to them.

: 18:36

I know why you, why your friends like it. I understand. The mango flavor tastes good. I understand the type of nicotine gives you more energy. I get all that. But there's other ways to get that. There's other ways to get that energy that are healthy. There's other ways to do this and I understand that everybody's doing it because it's normalized in a high school. Every you know high school. Some schools report by 50 60% of the kids. So when we're seeing those numbers, your kids are like what's the big deal? Everybody's doing it and they're all perfectly healthy.

: 19:06

But again, took us 25 years to understand tobacco and we don't understand the harms about babes. But is it safe to say Something is gonna come out at some point, going, wow, this was actually pretty dangerous, right? So I mean, we've seen some stuff, but you can, you can have, probably guess other stuff's gonna show up at some point. So just be real with them. Don't use scare tactics. Just be real. Don't, you know? Don't? This is your brain on drugs, with the little egg and the skill and all that, what we saw.

: 19:31

Don't, don't, don't do all that stuff. You need to have real conversations with them and then, ultimately, you need to follow up and pay attention, because our kids are gonna make mistakes. Our kids do sometimes stupid decisions and that's called being a kid. All right, that's real, it's called being a kid. We were kids. We made mistakes, we had stupid decisions too, but with that we have to be following up as a parent and be active as a parent. And when your kids make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. That's why you're following up and that's why you're being active. You address it and move on.

: 20:01

There's our great, great tips. That's super helpful and so true because we grew up with those scare tactics. A lot of times that's the place we go. You know you're gonna die. This is the worst, and so, yeah, that practical advice is really good for For me as a parent. I really appreciate that and you know, speaking of vapes, there are some new trends and some different things that we want you to Lay out for our listeners, because that's part of the education is knowing what's happening and it changes all the time, and you are like the go-to guy with the the best and newest information, so share with us what you're seeing now with vapes.

: 20:37

So let's talk about a few different ones, because they all kind of pile in together.

: 20:41

So first, with vapes, price points are still dropping. Vapes are cheap and really it's because the market's flooded In a time where it costs more money to get new tires on your car, or groceries are up percentages, you know of, everything is up, right, inflation, everything's up, we all know that. But we have a vape market to where you can walk into a store, a smoke shop, the shop that you know, folks, is on pipes, glass, drug paraphernalia, and they have a wall that runs 20 feet that's full of vapes from the bottom to the top, so you have thousands of vapes on that wall. Well, what's happening is, you know, yes, vapes are popular, but they're not that popular where you're selling thousands in the gas station, so thousands. And the other smoke shops on thousands in the shopping mall, some thousands. So ultimately they're dropping prices. So you can find vapes that are multi hit for 10 bucks, $9. A common number I see is like 15 to 20 bucks. And let me tell you what I mean by multi hit. Just, we can put this in a context.

: 21:34

You, most people remember the jewel vape, right? That was the one that drew all the news J-U-U-L the jewel vape. The jewel vape was about 200 to 300 puffs in a pod. So you have a little vape, you put the pod in and then, when you put the pod in, you take your smokes, take the pod out, throw it away that's why we found it in school parking lots and everything and then you would just keep the vape. So a pod was 200 to 300 puffs, 200, 300 of those, okay and a four pack is it a three or four pack? If I remember right so for like 12 bucks. So let's kind of do some simple math here. We have, let's say, four pods, 300 hits, that's 1200 hits, for, let's say, $12, $15, all right, let's go 15 bucks.

: 22:18

A vape now that I find is on average 5,000 hits, 6,000, 7,000 hits, for about 15 to $20, okay. So what you saw with the jewel was actually a very low amount of hits compared to what the standard is today. I rarely see a thousand hit vape or less today, where before the pandemic I rarely ran into a thousand hit vape. They're almost like 400, 500, 600, 700 was a lot then. Now if you find a 700 hit vape, you can buy that for two bucks because they're not even selling those anymore.

: 22:51

I was in Alabama just this week and I do community scans where I go through stores. So I've done. I've been through stores in every state in the US and multiple cities and I do this every week and I have for 20 years. So in Alabama this week I found vapes that were 15,000 hits. I found vapes that were 9,000 hits, 8,000 hits. They were in their gas stations. They were in places that kids frequent. They were gas stations near the school system and even in their smoke shops. That is what our standard has become. I would say. Somewhere in the several thousand hits is where we are right now and the prices are going down. So in other words, to kind of put all this together for you, the dosing is going up, addictions going up, prices are going down and that means we're pricing your kids into the market. As long as we price them into the market, they're gonna use it more. So it really is that simple.

: 23:42

And the normalization of it is going up, which contributes to the big picture of what it's not a big deal like everybody's doing it and that's it.

: 23:50

And as long as that continues to go, that's why this spring drug issues are gonna be worse in schools, not just vapes, drug issues in general, as we're seeing normalization of all of it. So as we go in February, march, april, you're gonna see more drug issues. Then this summer, that's when you have to take a pause, cause schools go home. They rest right, teachers rest, enjoy vacations, kids though. Parents are still working, so kids have more unsupervised time. Because what people don't give schools enough credit for is schools flag a lot of issues. A lot of issues are flagged in the school system, not at home. So now your kids are unsupervised for three months and then in August they're walking back into schools. So I'm telling schools strap in and get ready, wait till what. You see, what August looks like. You're gonna wish you had this year back. Just wait till August and the hurricane that's gonna hit schools with drugs the first week of August, the first week they're back. So it's gonna be a nightmare for them. It really is.

: 24:44

Well, and we are seeing some changes in laws. I know it varies by state, but we're both in Texas so we're a little bit more familiar with our state laws. But we are seeing change in laws, which is a good thing, but then we run into the problem of enforcement of those laws, because we have so many of the problems and so then it kind of waters down the law in general because we can't enforce it right. I mean, that's what we're seeing kind of, and I'm speaking specifically towards like newer vaping laws that we've seen this past year.

: 25:13

Right.

: 25:13

So here's what I tell people. Here's my example I give in class for laws. Imagine this morning so I know you guys are in the San Antonio area imagine this morning. Everybody in the San Antonio area says we're not gonna obey the traffic law, we're gonna drive as fast as we want. So everybody, rush hour this morning, every single vehicle in the whole region, you know a million people say we are not gonna obey any traffic laws. Now, of course there'd be 100 Rex, right, but we're gonna go as fast as we want to work. At some point, how many police officers do you have pull cars over, right? You'd only pull over not even 1% of the vehicles who are offending. So and they would all be tied up on traffic stops and after a while the officers would go. It's too dangerous out here, I can't be out on these roadways because I was driving by me 100 miles per hour and then they'd all just be going to Rex. So that's my point.

: 25:56

At some point the drug issues can overwhelm your system, can overrun the system, I should say. And we're starting to see that, we're starting to see where schools are saying we're dealing with this. And guys, I'm not talking Texas school, I'm talking some other ones here because you know I communicate a lot with schools when I've had schools say it's too many, we're not even doing anything about it anymore. We take the vape and send them back to class. We take this. Let me give you a really good example. I won't say what state this is, but state west of us talking ahead of school security there and it's a large school district. It's a metro school district, kind of a suburb. And he said we're relieved when it's just weed that we find on the students because we are dealing with fentanyl and all of these other things in the school system. If it is just cannabis, we're relieved, that that's all it is. And we are dealing with so many drug cases we are completely overwhelmed. So that's what's happening.

: 26:48

If so many kids just say I don't care, I don't care about your sanctions, I don't care about anything, send me to alternative school. Then the alternative school says how many spots do I have open? So one student comes in, that means one goes out the back door, right, so we're running into that. Then you say we have sent them the treatment. The treatment provider goes I can get you in in six months, eight months, I don't have a spot for you, and then some people say I don't have insurance to pay for that.

: 27:12

I mean this is the steamrolling of the issues. So what we have to do again you know I'm telling our problems what we have to do again is address it at its root. We need to get our numbers to either pause or start to reduce. That way the system can kind of catch up right. Because that's what we saw during COVID the hospitals started to get overrun. So we're trying to reduce numbers and then at some point we started to play catch up and the hospitals like okay, we don't have to just have someone out the back door, we can handle what's coming in. Well, if you look at it like this, we're starting to not be able to handle the numbers that are coming in. And even for a student who says I am addicted, I do have a problem, I do want help but can't get it. So I mean that's the other side of it. It's pretty frustrating. We have some pretty frustrated professionals out there that are like man, this is overwhelming which unfortunately some of them are now quitting. They're just leaving the profession.

: 28:03

So burnt out because it's so overwhelming, like you said. Yeah, how would you say? You would explain that we need to get to the root. So what's the best way to do?

: 28:17

that Through policy and laws, taking it seriously. Not just addressing the big drugs, what you consider to be the big stuff, the stuff you see on the news every weekend. Not just addressing that but addressing the small stuff and addressing that through mental health and treatment through other resources. Looking at parents who can't get their kids places. Offering more resources to schools that they can offer to parents. Looking at some of that, those causes, and addressing it younger too, getting the things at a younger age.

: 28:48

But also that doesn't just mean the schools, because I had a school administrator just a couple weeks ago. She kind of raised her hand in class and she said we didn't sign up for this and I said I know you didn't. And her philosophy is this I signed up to be an administrator to kids to help education and get them into college and further their education. I did not sign up to be a drug enforcement counselor and I get that and that's a part of it. Some schools are like I'm all about it, but this was not what I wanted, this was not what I asked for, this was not what I requested, otherwise they would have gone into counseling, they would have gone in the law enforcement. So I tell them unfortunately, this is the sandwich you've been handed and it ain't going away, so we have to just embrace it. We don't have to like it, but we have to embrace it and then we have to just move forward with it. That's kind of the big piece.

: 29:38

Jermaine, I think you did such a great job today, like showing us the picture, the bigger picture of the problem. Because I know, as a parent, the more that I listen to you, the more I felt like, oh my gosh, like I really do have to address the little stuff, because prevention is key. I don't want to end up searching for an addiction facility for my kid in 10 years, you know, and there's no help for them, like in that I can't imagine. I mean, we've walked with parents that are just walking through that. It feels hopeless because you know your kid needs help. Your kid is at the point where maybe you've been praying they're finally there, where they're like I need help. You know they finally come around to see the problem themselves and then there's no treatment available for them and there's so much to fix this problem.

: 30:26

But I do think, as a parent, like you really empowered me, like I'm part of the solution here. I'm part of the solution. The more I keep my kids mentally healthy and making them good choices and educating them, the more I contribute to the school success, the more I contribute to my community success. And it just takes all of us. It takes all of us working together to shed a light on this problem. So I thank you for all the work you're doing. Keep doing it. We may want to have you back again, because it's so good and our time is always. It goes by so fast.

: 30:58

You're welcome. Well, thank you guys for having me. And look at it like this parents, every child's not using drugs, and even for some who might try it or might experiment, it doesn't mean they're all gonna be addicts. We have to talk about the bad side of things. We can't just sit back here and say, hey, everything's going great in the world, we're just gonna keep it up, right, I mean that that's not podcast worthy, okay. So, with that in mind, keep your heads up and even if there's a hurdle, it's gonna be alright, gonna be alright, we're gonna be alright, so don't get too frustrated.

: 31:29

Thank you. I do want to say one thing before you end. I loved when you said you know like even good kids make mistakes and you got to walk them through it. And that's something we always say at next Talk, like love your kid. Their little brains are not developed. They're gonna be impulsive. They may make a bad decision. Don't be triggered by it. You know, don't go. My kid used a vape to. Oh my gosh, they're gonna be a cocaine addict. I think that's a very wise thing that you told us Don't rush to that, but we do need to stop and educate, because it's a teachable moment.

: 31:57

Yeah, and to get more education, I do podcasts. TallCopSaysStop. I'm on Apple and Spotify. You can follow me there. My podcasts are on different drugs. I put different drugs out there. I have about 15 of them that are already out there. And you can go to my website, sign up for my newsletter. I send you updates that way too. So these, these are the ways I get you more info, so you can kind of keep up with drug trends that way. Just follow me on those platforms.

: 32:23

That's great Thanks.

: 32:24

You're welcome, guys.

: 32:25

Thanks.