♪ (“LAST WEEK TONIGHT" INTRO MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS) -Our main story tonight
concerns drugs.
We've talked about all sorts of them before,
from opioids, to compounded drugs,
to psychedelics, to opioids again,
to lethal injection drugs, to opioids
for a third and final time, to, of course,
a bonus opioid story.
But tonight,
we're gonna talk about so-called "gas station drugs."
You know, the colorful products with weird names
that you tend to see behind the counter
at gas stations, convenience stores,
and smoke shops.
It's a whole weird world of poppers, whippits,
questionable supplements, and boner pills.
And if you are wondering who buys those last ones,
I'll let this convenience store clerk fill you in.
This is why I gotta leave Circle K soon, bro, for real.
Like, so, today I was just chilling, right?
Working, whatever.
This White dude come up.
He's like, "Yo, you got any, any dick pills? Like Rhino dick pills?"
And he did this shit with his arm.
I was like, "We have these."
He's like, "Fuck it, bro. Let me take 'em."
I was like, "All right, bet."
And while he was paying and shit,
he opened it
and he popped one.
He went... and he popped one in his fucking mouth.
And I was like...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And he was like, "Shit."
And then he popped another one.
I was like, "Oh, my fucking...
What are you doing, bro?
Why the fuck did you take two in a public area like this?
You couldn't go home?
You couldn't wait till you go home?
Like, what the fuck is going on, son?"
Yeah! All valid questions.
And I will say, after hearing that,
I won't feel nearly as bad
the next time I open a Gatorade at the register before paying.
"Look, I'll pay for it in a second, but trust me,
-this could be way weirder." -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But again, it's not just boner pills.
These products are part of a sprawling industry,
and they promise everything
from increased energy to pain relief.
And while you might assume that they're just snake oil,
that's not necessarily true.
Some of these drugs can be actively dangerous,
presenting risks of addiction just like controlled substances.
And to hear some who've been addicted to them tell it,
the very fact that that's been allowed to happen
is pretty infuriating.
REPORTER: It's a common sight
in gas station convenience stores
across the country,
so-called "natural supplements" on display.
Starting in like 2015, 2014,
it had an opiate aisle.
REPORTER: This is what hooked looked like for Brandon.
Two hundred fifty bottles consumed in one month
at the height of his addiction.
There is so much that is alarming there,
from the notion of a gas station having an "opiate aisle"
to the fact that, I'm just gonna say it,
that is too many tiny bottles of anything
to go through in a month.
Whether it's gas station supplements,
airplane bottles of vodka,
or even travel-size Olay body wash.
First, buy full-size, don't live like this.
But also, that's just too many bottles.
How dirty are you getting?
-I'm worried about you! -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And the thing is, stories like that
are becoming more common as people
increasingly seek these drugs out.
For some, it may be for recreational use,
because these products generally don't get detected
on drug tests.
But for others, it may be
because they don't have access to health care,
have a mistrust of mainstream science,
or are self-treating anxiety, depression, fatigue,
or opioid withdrawal.
The problem is, though,
these drugs exist in a regulatory Wild West.
And in part, that is by their own design.
Many of the companies behind them
try to evade regulation with creative labeling,
marketing them with language like,
"for research purposes only," or "not for human consumption."
But the most common tactic
is simply labeling the product a dietary supplement.
And that is because this 1994 law
exempted the supplement industry
from nearly all federal regulations.
We actually talked about that before
in our piece on Dr. Oz and nutritional supplements,
which, by the way, ended
with Steve Buscemi tap dancing
in front of a kid's marching band,
and just trust me, it made sense at the time.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But thanks to that law,
there is currently no central process
whereby products calling themselves "supplements"
are tested or approved before they hit the shelves.
And while there are some rules they have to follow
regarding ingredients and marketing,
many simply ignore them.
All of which means the FDA and other regulators
are essentially playing an impossible game of catch up.
And the result of that can be a guy
with a pile of bottles on his lawn
wondering how the fuck that was allowed to happen.
And that's actually the least of the consequences here.
So given all of that, tonight,
let's look at gas station drugs.
And to do that, we're going to focus
on three areas in particular.
Sexual enhancement products,
a substance called kratom
and its associated compound, 7-OH,
and Tianeptine.
And let's start with the sexual enhancement stuff.
Products like boner pills can be hard to miss,
especially because they often have over-the-top names
and packaging involving an animal.
For instance, there's Black Panther,
Blue Panther, Black Horse, The Goat,
Super Bull, Ram It, Gold Lion, Super Cheetah,
Anaconda, Rhino 8, Rhino 11,
Rhino 69, of course,
Rhino 96, Rhino 99,
and my personal favorite, Boner Bears,
which apparently contains a Proprietary Boner Bear Blend,
a cursed series of words,
and which features this image,
which looks like what a Beanie Baby would see
if it walked in on its parents having sex.
But boner pills actually demonstrate
pretty effectively the extent to which
gas station drugs can be made by just about anyone,
and I do mean anyone.
NARRATOR: It's not like there's a single company
making all of these dick pills and filling them with drugs.
What actually happens is that the empty packaging
for many of the most common sexual enhancement supplements
gets purchased online from China.
Then, the packages get filled
by an unknown number of entities.
Finally, the pills show up in stores around the country.
To show how easy it is to get into the dick pill business,
we ordered a sample of empty Rhino packaging
from Alibaba.
Now, if we wanted to, we could fill them
with oregano or pop rocks or dirt.
We could also fill the pills with natural herbal supplements,
as the labels advertise,
or pharmaceuticals,
both of which are sold on Alibaba.
Yeah, that's not ideal, is it?
You don't want a pill's ingredients
to be essentially "dealer's choice."
And you would never tolerate that level of variance
in other products.
You would be justifiably annoyed if it turned out
that some Cadbury creme eggs
were filled with marinara sauce...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...instead of what they're supposed to be filled with,
-the Easter Bunny's thick, thick cum. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And if you thought that clip was exaggerating,
just watch what happened
when they bought what looks like the same pill
from two different stores right here in New York.
NARRATOR: The packaging on these products was exactly the same.
But when we opened the pills,
it was evident there was inconsistency
between the contents' colors and textures.
Yeah, those two powders are clearly very different.
One just looks like sand,
while the other looks more like cremated Snoopy.
And obviously, I hope it's not that.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Unless, that is, Snoopy's will specifically directed his heirs
to "shove my remains into a gas station dick pill,"
in which case, I'm thankful his final wish was fulfilled.
Woodstock, may his memory be a blessing.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The point is, these pills could contain
literally anything, including, as they just said,
actual pharmaceutical ingredients,
though, importantly,
not necessarily in careful or consistent dosages.
Some Rhino pills have been shown to contain sildenafil
and tadalafil,
the respective active ingredients
in Viagra and Cialis,
and sometimes at extremely high doses,
which isn't good,
given that both drugs can lower blood pressure
to dangerous levels,
particularly if they interact with other medications.
So, someone who can't get Cialis from their doctor
for good reason
might turn to these supplements without knowing
they're about to get a megadose of it.
One pill was found to contain 14 times the amount
of active ingredient contained in a Cialis pill.
Meanwhile, others were found to include dyes and filler,
-like blue printer ink and drywall. -(AUDIENCE GROANS)
So, on one hand,
these pills could end up poisoning you, but on the other,
if your printer runs out of blue ink,
jam a few boner pills in the cartridge
and you can finish printing off your Smurf porn.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And because the FDA is basically power-- power--
-No, stop, stop, stop, stop. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Take it down, take it down.
Because the FDA is basically powerless
before a problem emerges,
the main action it often takes is to simply
offer public warnings to avoid certain products.
That is why you can come across an official FDA release
like this one, which reads,
"FDA continues to advise consumers
not to purchase or use Schwinnng products."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Which is embarrassing enough even before you realize
that the release included this image of the packaging
featuring the brand's mascot
seen here answering the question,
"What if Alfred E. Neuman got heavily into gooning?"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The FDA's also publicly warned against,
and these are all real, My Steel Woody,
Willy Go Wild, Big Penis, Australia Kangaroo Essence,
Strong Horses, Bull's Genital,
and Bigger Longer More Time More Sperms,
-which is just... -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...immaculate.
AMC, please bring back Mad Men,
because I so badly want to see an entire episode
about Don Draper pitching
a Bigger Longer More Time More Sperms ad campaign.
"It's not a dick pill.
It's a carousel."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
What I'm saying is,
these pills can be subject to far less oversight
and be much more dangerous than you would reasonably hope.
And that is also true of the next product
that we're going to be looking at tonight, kratom.
It's made from the leaves of the kratom tree
in Southeast Asia.
In its natural form and smaller doses,
it's generally considered safe and acts as a stimulant.
But in higher doses,
it becomes more of a sedative
with addictive, opioid-like properties.
Kratom's become increasingly popular,
with millions of people estimated to use it nationwide.
And it speaks to its growing popularity
that at trade shows for smoke shops,
kratom companies will happily brag
about their expansion plans.
COLBY HENDERSON: This show is huge for kratom now.
We just got into edibles
and some drinks and things like that.
Jelly 7-oh Botanicals
is our newest line of kratom gummies.
CAMERON BOOTH: I'm with this company, Hydroxie.
We're a single-alkaloid kratom extract company,
and we’re gonna be the strongest,
most purest on the market right now.
We're the first extract enhanced powder and capsule on the market.
We want it to be a soccer mom brand that,
you know, just to get your energy in the morning
instead of something else, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I do know what you mean, bro.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And I've got to say,
there's a lot that is off-putting there,
from the way Colby here talks about soccer moms,
to this guy being so wet,
to the unappealing flavors of kratom on display,
including Fresh Grape, Mocha Taffy,
and Dave's Brew.
If your product is referring to Dave,
and I don't know who the fuck Dave is...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...I'm not feeling inherently confident in it.
Kratom products are usually marketed
as an energy booster, a mood lifter,
or a pain reducer,
but there are a number of potential problems,
starting with the fact that
because many states have no requirement
for labeling when it comes to these products,
it can be hard to know exactly what you are buying.
When the Tampa Bay Times ran an investigation on kratom,
they tested 20 products,
and while some came in proper packaging, like these,
others, like this one, labeled "Trainwreck,"
were just powder in a bag.
And if you think "Trainwreck" looks alarming,
may I introduce you to "Red."
-Just "Red." -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
A bag of something with the word "red" sharpied on it.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The Times found that of the products they tested,
five had no information about ingredients,
11 had no dosing instructions,
and 13 had no details about potency,
which probably shouldn't be that surprising, given, again,
one of those products was a bag of something called "Red."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And the thing is, even when products are packaged
and have dosing information,
the packaging itself may not encourage proper usage,
as this expert points out.
Can you read this label here?
-So at the very bottom... -(LAUGHS)
...it says to not consume more than one-third
of that bottle within a 24-hour period.
But it's sold as a shot.
-Right! -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And that's clearly a problem,
because everybody knows a bottle's type
dictates how you drink its contents.
If it's in a tiny shot bottle,
you drink it all at once.
If it's in a big, tall bottle, you pour it into a glass.
And if it's in a Bud Light lime bottle,
you throw it directly into the trash.
These are the basic rules of beverage consumption.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUDS)
We even found one kratom-derived product
that claims a single tablet contains
eight servings,
meaning you'd have to break it into eight pieces,
even though it's only scored into four.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And the thing is, because these products
can seem low-risk,
people can feel way too comfortable
taking much more than the recommended dose.
Just listen to this exchange that Joe Rogan had with a guest.
I was on this discussion about kratom.
Are you familiar with this?
-I'm on it right now. -Oh, wow.
Yeah, I just took some. I--
I fucked my knee up the other day.
I did something,
and, uh, it's been stiff and painful,
so I iced it before I came here, and then I just took, uh...
took six of them.
-See what happens. -HAMILTON MORRIS: Wow.
-I took ten once. -HAMILTON: Oof.
Now I get why people might think it's a drug.
-Well, it is a drug. -Yeah, for sure,
but when I took four,
I was like-- Well, I took two for--
The first time I took it, I took two,
and a couple times I took two.
I'm like, "Feels like a mild stimulant."
But then when you get into the range
of eight to ten pills,
it's like, oh, this-- this will fuck you up.
This stuff.
The stuff I take is Urban Ice Organics,
and, um...
See, it says-- it says, "Take two."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Joe.
Joey, Josephine.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
What the fuck are you doing?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
You didn't even know the name of the pill
or how many you were supposed to take.
What did you know?
Because it seems the main knowledge
you had about those pills before taking them
was that they were pills.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And that was apparently enough for you to happily
toss half a dozen of them back.
But it really is worth knowing
exactly what you're ingesting and the potential dangers
because the truth is, kratom products
can be addictive, as this woman found.
REPORTER 2: Amy has been addicted to kratom for nearly a decade,
and she didn't buy it from a dealer or off the street.
Instead, she got these tiny bottles
of kratom extract, known as "K Shots,"
from a place many of you frequent every day.
AMY: I worked in the gas station
behind my house,
trying not to take opiates 'cause opiates are bad,
and it was in a little display right beside me.
Ninety percent of my money goes to this.
REPORTER 2: The average price of kratom
is around 15 to 25 dollars per bottle
or for the two-pack of pills.
Amy admits she spent more than 100,000 dollars
in one year on this substance.
If you think about it, that is the price
of four Honda Civic LX sedans or a high-end RV.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I mean, yeah.
I guess that is true.
But it's also a pretty strange way to illustrate
the purchasing power of 100,000 dollars.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Because you don't expect the takeaway
from that story to be, "If this woman wasn't addicted
to kratom, she'd be rolling in Honda Civics right now."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Also, for what it's worth,
I don't need the news to tell me the price
of high-end recreational vehicles.
I'm well aware of the cost, and so, by the way,
-is Clarence Thomas. -(AUDIENCE CHEERS, APPLAUDS)
Now, a key reason...
some kratom products have the potential for addiction
is because certain components of the kratom plant,
like mitragynine,
interact with the same receptors in your brain as opioids.
And while there is mitragynine in kratom in its natural state,
some manufacturers will concentrate it
in their products, and others will go even further
by synthesizing a compound from kratom
called 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH.
It's a substance that researchers have found
binds to the opioid receptors
at least seven times stronger than morphine.
As one researcher put it,
"The difference between natural kratom
and 7-OH is like the difference
between drinking a Miller Lite
versus drinking 12 ounces of Everclear."
Some products have now even ditched
the word "kratom" completely
and just put 7-OH front and center,
and sales have exploded.
Here is the head of one company,
who expanded from CBD products to 7-OH,
marveling at just how quickly his new product line took off.
I've truly never seen a product
with the type of sales this has. It, uh...
You know, we had a 10-year lead with Cannabis products,
and I've just never seen anything move like this does.
We are actually doing more sales with 7-OH
than we are all the Cannabis products combined.
-Wow. -And we're talking about
something we've been doing for a few months
versus a decade.
Yeah, it turns out,
7-OH products are as popular
as that man's shirt is distractingly red.
That is Vince Sanders,
one of 7-OH's loudest proponents.
Fun fact, he was once a car salesman
slash large-scale illegal marijuana dealer.
And even funner fact, after he was arrested in 2000,
his attorney argued in court
to void his prison term, citing, among other things,
the tax revenue lost from having
-"the number one Acura salesman in the US behind bars." -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And "I shouldn't go to prison
because I'm America's number one Acura salesman"
might be the saddest sentence of all time.
Aside from, "I shouldn't go to prison because
I'm America's number two Acura salesman."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And while some manufacturers position their products
as pain relievers or even as an off-ramp
for people from more dangerous drugs,
just as many seem to market them with a knowing wink to consumers
about their similarity to illicit substances.
There is Dopium, which is pretty on the nose,
but also Opia, and Perks and Bars,
as well as Roxy, Droxy, and Moxie.
And the addictive nature of these products
can be especially rough for people like this woman,
who'd already been through an opioid addiction
and thought, in 7-OH,
that she'd found something safe.
BELLA CARACTA: This month, Madison McManness found herself
in a place she never wanted to see again, drug rehab.
MADISON MCMANNESS: Really disappointed in myself.
I didn't think that I would be there again.
Um...
Yeah, it was really hard, you know, um...
lying in the detox for, I think, three days,
just catatonic.
My body was just-- I mean, everything was on fire. It hurt.
I just didn't want to do it anymore.
BELLA: She was six and a half years clean from heroin
when a friend suggested she try 7-OH
to help with anxiety.
Products like these.
As soon as I took that 7-OH, it was like
taking heroin again for the first time.
Wow.
It was like taking heroin.
Look, you expect people
to say that about doing things like fentanyl,
or watching a Halloween dog parade,
or getting the push alert that Henry Kissinger died.
Inject that straight into my veins
-until I happily die. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)
But not about taking a drug that's readily available
at gas station convenience stores.
In working on this story, we've seen so many clips
of people talking about how hard it is
to quit these products.
Yeah, some in this industry will try to direct people away
from those examples and instead tell them
to focus on the positive.
Like this guy in Mississippi
whose business is called Dr. Kratom.
If you Google "kratom"
and you Google, "What are the downfalls?
What are the negative effects of kratom?"
that's what you're gonna get is the downfalls
and the negative effects of kratom.
If you Google, "What are the pros and the positives
and the good points of kratom?"
that's what you're gonna get.
You gotta-- You gotta learn how to Google.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I mean Google non-biasedly and you'll get the truth.
-Sure, but... -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
You know, you can also say that about anything, right?
If you Google, "What are the good points
of mountain lion attacks?"
you might find some upsides
to getting mauled by a mountain lion,
though the results may also be from websites
secretly made by mountain lions.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And then you're really just getting the mountain lion's
version of the truth.
But the thing is, if you don't just rely
on "how you Google,"
troubling patterns do begin to emerge.
When the Washington Post went through government statistics,
it found that in a recent three-year span,
medical examiners and coroners had listed kratom
as contributing to or causing at least 4,100 deaths
in 44 states and D.C.
Now, to be fair, most cases did involve other substances,
but kratom was listed as the sole substance
causing death in 182 of those cases.
And there is every chance that that is an undercount,
given these substances are new enough
that death investigations don't always test for
or detect kratom or 7-OH.
The fact is, despite how ubiquitous
these products are,
they really haven't been tested properly for safety,
as the former number one Acura salesman in the country...
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -...readily admits.
ISABELLA LEDONNE: So, 7-OH hasn't had any, like, human trials,
like, for regulations or anything like that?
That is correct. Yeah, I mean,
the human trials have been
people choosing to use it.
-(AUDIENCE GROANS) -Look, look,
I hate to second-guess that man.
I'm afraid of the impact it would have
on the global economy.
But that's not how human trials work.
That's just selling people shit, then seeing what happens.
And what happened in his case
is that the Missouri AG has sued his company
for deceptively marketing 7-OH and kratom
as "safe products."
Incidentally, during that investigation,
it was noted that his company had recalled
more than three million pills
after a bottle of tablets that were marketed
as containing seven and a half milligrams of 7-OH
-turned out to contain around 34 milligrams... -(AUDIENCE GROANS)
...over four times as much.
And while apparently, I have to tell you,
the company insists it makes "substantial efforts
to ensure its products are safe and reliable,"
and that "this appears
to have been an isolated outlier,"
first, I think we might disagree
on what the word "substantial" means,
and that statement "appears" much less reassuring to me
than I think they want it to sound,
especially given 34 milligrams
is more than double the maximum recommended dosage
on the package.
And double the maximum dosage
is one of the more alarming reasons for a recall.
It's right up there with "it's actually horse meat"
-and "sometimes it just explodes." -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Oh, shit, oh, shit, another one's gone!
Oh, you know what? I'm sure it's fine.
Elon's a genius.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Now, I should say, some states are taking action.
For example, as of January, all of these
had some form of regulation on 7-OH or kratom,
ranging from age restrictions and labeling requirements
to outright bans.
But I admit, this is complicated.
Because first, as we've talked about
multiple times before on this show, in general,
full-on prohibition and criminalization
just isn't great drug policy.
And second, when it comes to this particular industry,
whenever one drug is banned,
another can quickly take its place,
all of which brings us
to our final type of gas station drug,
tianeptine.
Remember that guy you saw earlier
with the big pile of bottles?
Those weren't kratom.
He'd already kicked an addiction to that
after his state banned it,
only for him to then get hooked on tianeptine.
It's actually sold as a pharmaceutical in Europe,
as an antidepressant,
but has not been approved by the FDA
for any medical use here.
Instead, it's been marketed as a "nootropic"
or a "cognitive enhancer,"
in products like Neptune's Fix, Za Za, and Tianaa.
And I will say, it is not a great sign
that tianeptine quickly picked up this catchy nickname.
MARY CALVI: You can find it online
at convenience stores, even gas stations.
But experts are sounding the alarm,
calling what's in these bottles and pills "gas station heroin."
-Yeah, "gas station heroin." -(AUDIENCE GROANS)
And I know on its face that sounds like the title
of a pretty good Lana Del Rey song, but...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...it's also a real nickname for a widely available drug
that can be incredibly dangerous,
because tianeptine’s been linked to hundreds of reports of harm,
including overdoses and deaths.
Alabama actually banned it a few years ago,
but in true whack-a-mole style,
a similar product called Phrenze quickly replaced it on shelves,
with at least one store there even labeling it as,
"From the maker of Tianaa."
And even when states pass laws, the truth is,
they don't always get well-enforced,
meaning that tianeptine still wound up
sitting on shelves for people to buy.
And that has led to some tragic outcomes,
like this story from a few years ago in Ohio.
CHUCK GOUDIE: It was at this Midwestern gas station
that Chris Haggarty bought a bottle
of Neptune's Fix,
even though the product contained tianeptine
banned a year earlier by the state of Ohio.
(CRYING) I miss him dearly.
CHUCK: In an interview with the I-Team
almost four months ago,
Haggarty's mother billed "gas station heroin"
as "death in a bottle."
Fifteen dollars a bottle.
How many people bought it besides my son?
It was for sale at the gas station, just...
right next to the lottery tickets
and the cigarettes.
Yeah, that is terrible.
And it is hard to believe that something
so immediately dangerous
could be sold at the gas station next to lottery tickets.
It'd be like finding out that PetSmart
sells hand grenades next to the hamsters.
Come on, PetSmart!
You know everyone always swings by the hamsters.
You're getting people at their weakest point.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And frustratingly, behind closed doors,
some in this industry seem well aware
that the products they're selling can be dangerous.
The reason that I know that
is that one of our producers actually went to a trade show
like the one you saw earlier,
and to answer your first question,
yeah, of course she saw a kratom-themed Cybertruck
in the parking lot.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -Of course she saw that.
You could practically hear the Limp Bizkit music
-wafting out of it. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The whole convention was honestly a pretty good glimpse
into an industry clearly already planning
for what comes next.
A lot of vendors seemed ready for 7-OH to be banned
as they were already marketing newer products like this one,
whose marketing material said,
“The future of kratom,”
“Compliant in all kratom legal states,”
“7-hydroxy replacement,”
"Three to four times stronger than 7-OH.”
She also spoke to a rep from a distribution company
that sells boner pills who got surprisingly honest
about the fact that while some of their products
are kind of bullshit,
others could be actively dangerous.
Take a listen.
Wow.
"I wouldn't advise selling these to people over 50."
That is a reasonable thing to say
if you're selling tickets to an Olivia Rodrigo concert.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But not when you're talking
about your company's unregulated dick pills.
And it does feel like,
"Don't consume if you're over 50,"
is the kind of thing
that shouldn't be whispered at trade shows,
but slapped in massive lettering on your packaging.
This is a photo of that man's table,
and these are some of the pills
that he told us were "super potent."
They're called Mr. Bull tablets, and their tagline is,
"Do it like pro."
So, we actually ordered some
and sent them to this lab to be analyzed.
And they found that when that guy said the pills
were super potent, he wasn't lying.
Because each contained 180 milligrams of dapoxetine.
That's three to six times the prescription dose
of a drug for premature ejaculation
that's not been approved for use here in the US.
And they contained 270 milligrams
of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra.
That's nearly three times the maximum prescription dose.
That is a lot.
And worryingly,
none of those ingredients were listed on the package,
which instead claimed
it's an all-natural herbal supplement
containing stuff like cinnamon bark,
-licorice, and deer root. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, GROANS)
All of which just sounds like the ingredients
-on Sleepytime tea. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And there is a reason that the sleepy bear
isn't rocking a massive hard-on on that package.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -So...
what do we do?
Well, first, take care of it, but also...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...RFK and his FDA director
have actually been talking about the dangers
of some of these products, which I guess is good.
I do worry RFK's either going to say they cause autism
or suggest they somehow be replaced
with ground-up raccoon carcass,
but still, it's something.
Now, unfortunately, though, any good moves that they take
are likely to be undermined by the fact
that they've gutted the FDA, which,
even before they came along, wasn't exactly well-staffed.
Meanwhile, some states are taking
a more proactive approach.
Missouri's AG, for instance, has launched an investigation
into major kratom manufacturers and retailers
for potentially dangerous and illegal practices.
That is how they came to be suing this guy.
Although it shows how slippery this industry is
that he said that if 7-OH is banned,
his company already has another product
ready to replace it.
Look, something clearly has to be done with this industry,
but the key thing is to do it very carefully.
Because in the case of products
containing kratom, 7-OH, and tianeptine,
a lot of people have now become dependent on them.
And one thing I want to be absolutely clear about is
if states are going to start banning some of these drugs,
that should only happen alongside a plan to help people
who cannot suddenly stop using them,
whether it's because they're using them to treat pain
or because they've become addicted.
Because if we learned one thing
from the opioid crisis,
it's that every family fortune
is built on the blood of strangers.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -But if we learned two things,
it's that when you take something very strong
off the market,
not everyone can just quit cold turkey.
So there has to be a harm reduction plan
to go alongside any potential ban.
And I know there are plenty of substances out there
that are addictive or dangerous,
alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs.
But with those things, we've tried over the years,
and not always perfectly,
to match the level of regulation around them
to the level of risks they present,
to make sure that, at the very least,
you know what you're getting and what risks you're taking
when you choose to consume them.
What we haven't done, though,
is let it be a total free-for-all
where companies can just sell whatever they want
to anyone who wants it
and lie about what it contains.
And unfortunately, right now,
it's become incumbent upon all of us
to make ourselves aware of the potential dangers here,
because these products can be
much more addictive than you think,
more powerful than you may even want them to be,
and contain things you did not sign up for.
So if I may quote Joe Rogan,
something I really don't love to do...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
...it's crucial to know that this stuff could,
in his words, "fuck you up."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But unlike Joe Rogan, it's just as crucial
to not then swallow ten of them.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Because while gas station drugs may look fun and low risk,
especially when they're sold in familiar environments,
the truth is,
you could easily wind up addicted
and losing tens of Honda Civics worth of money to them.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) -Or indeed, far, far worse.