Voices for Voices®

The Secret War to Save America's Middle Class | Episode 180

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 180

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The Secret War to Save America's Middle Class | Episode 180

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Chapter Markers

0:02 Supply Chain Risks and Substance Abuse

24:34 Global Supply Chain and Substance Risk

Could our nation's security be compromised by the very products we use every day? Join us on this gripping episode of the Voices for Voices podcast as we tackle the intricate web of the global supply chain and its unforeseen risks to national security and public health. We shine a light on the need for scrutiny regarding the origins of our goods, particularly those sourced from countries that might pose a diplomatic challenge. With illegal immigration and crime entering the conversation, we emphasize the significance of legal immigration and reflect on the historical paths our ancestors took. Through personal stories and societal observations, we aim to cultivate a sense of caution and awareness in our community.

As the conversation shifts, we confront the pressing issue of substance abuse with a spotlight on the deadly rise of fentanyl, its troubling links to China, and the curious absence of the problem within its own borders. We explore the hazards posed by potential contaminants in our food, drink, and clothing supply chain, urging vigilance and preventative measures. The connection between mental health and substance abuse is underscored, highlighting the necessity for ongoing attention. With heartfelt gratitude to our Voices for Voices supporters, we call upon our listeners to engage with and advocate for these efforts, with the goal of nurturing a healthier, more resilient society.

This episode examines the complex issues surrounding substance supply chains and their impact on public health, particularly focusing on the prevalence of drugs like fentanyl. By addressing personal experiences with addiction and the risks posed by global product sourcing, the hosts aim to promote awareness and informed decision-making among listeners.

• Discussion on the dangers of global supply chains
• Personal experiences with addiction illustrated by the host
• Exploration of legal versus illegal substances
• Delving into the implications of fentanyl use
• Call for greater transparency in product sourcing
• Importance of informed consumer choices to safeguard health

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Justin Alan Hayes:

Welcome to this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. We're grateful that you're with us, watching, listening, just being a part of the Voices for Voices movement. Thank you so much. Check out our merch shop, voicesforvoicesorg our merch shop. We have so much great merchandise, from planners to cups, to hats, to t-shirts, and the list goes on, and we we couldn't do this if it wasn't for the help and love and support that you all have given us over the course of time that Voices for Voices has been a part of the world and we're marching towards that 300 episodes and we'll hit that here by the end of 2025. And it's again because of you following and letting us share a lot of content, a lot of experiences that aren't always shared. You know we talk about being transparent and not everything that we talk about is, I'll say, the, maybe the most interesting, but what I would say is it's the most important for all of us because at one time or another, a story, a part of a story maybe not in every single episode, but there have been over 175 episodes at this point and we may very well be in the 180s by the time that we publish this and drop this particular episode, and that's our goal. Our goal is to share the voices of ourselves, yourself and or the voice of somebody that you may know that may not be in a position to to be able to share it for a variety of reasons nobody's fault at all but there are some many stories that we learn about and we want to share, which is what has led us to additional content, not only that for the first time in 2024. And so you're seeing different content coming from different sources and it's important. So that's why we share it and we're grateful that you're with us.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So on an on an earlier show, we were having the discussion about health, about food ingredients, supply chains, where ingredients and where products and food and drink, where those come from, how those potentially may come from competitors or are big competitors, you know, either on the military front or just on the business front, and we talked about how intelligence gathering and spies and all that goes on, and that if a particular country wanted to hurt a population in a certain area and that certain area is consuming products from them, how easy it might be to slip things in there that shouldn't be in there, from a component and they call it a hard product. Like a hard product, like a, like a mobile device, mobile phone, like an iPhone, a droid, uh, or like, uh, a particular drink, particular snack. And we're not here to place blame on anybody. We're here to talk about the reality that is the world and the reality here in the US. We have a lot of countries, a lot of people that would like to do harm to us, and that's just a fact of the matter. And so, as a, as a country, we we need to have our guard up pretty well more buying products, seeing you know where those products were or were made, where the product or the components, or about food, the ingredients, where were those sourced from? Because we know for a fact here in United States that we source a whole lot from other parts of the world and that could, and it is a liability, while we might not see on a day-to-day basis, it's a liability. We don't know exactly you know where every single component element that makes that component. We don't, we don't know. Yeah, we can look at a package and we can talk to listen to an investor call or listen to a president or a prime minister or ambassador, but we don't truly know. We're putting a lot of faith in those people that are looking after our backs that they're really not trying to hurt us and harm us. So that brings you up to speed on that episode. Where we're going to take that is another unpopular topic and we've touched on it a bit and we're going to continue to touch on it until it ceases to be a problem, until it's ceasing to hurting and killing people here in our country, in the United States and around the world. But predominantly we live in the United States. So that's what we're going to focus on.

Justin Alan Hayes:

We know drugs and substances are inherently not good for the body. They just aren't. Long term use exposure can make us very sick. It can take our lives. We could overdose from taking too much of a product. Whether we know it or not, suicide is huge in our country.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And I'm not laughing, it's fine, it's because I last night I was perusing the news. And last night I was perusing the news and there I don't remember the gentleman's name. He was on television in one of these popular shows here in the United States called the Voice, and he was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head, and so that's a suicide. So that's a suicide. So was he taking illicit substances, drugs? Excuse me, I don't know, but what I do know is he did, it came from somewhere, and what I do know is so we're turning the page from that particular story. What I do know is, if there weren't things available good, bad and different we would not consume them.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Let me put it another way if we're not supposed to be doing something, sometimes, we sometimes knowing, yeah, we probably shouldn't be doing this or shouldn't be doing this, but we can. What am I talking about? I'm talking about being an adolescent under 21. And for me, alcohol was one of the big addictions that I ended up having that really drove me down the dark path. Really drove me down the dark path. And I remember not being 21, but knowing that, hey, this is the law, we're not 21, so we can't legally purchase alcohol, but we could potentially find people that are, that may buy us alcohol, and so that, knowing that this is against the law and we shouldn't be doing this, that played into things, and so some people, some individuals, just that thought of well, I shouldn't be doing this, or I'm just going to try this once. Well, if we're not talking about alcohol, we can't be talking about alcohol. In general, you have a couple drinks alcohol. It would not take your life. However, depending on the type of alcohol, that could change things.

Justin Alan Hayes:

But what I'm talking about here is you know these drugs, you know heroin, cocaine, crack pills, when we're excuse me this is how it ties to the previous episode when we so we've already, so we've already also we've also went past the point of, okay, we know something's not good for us, we probably shouldn't do it. Something's not good for us, we probably shouldn't do it, but I'm down on my luck, or I did this or tried this before. Somebody mentioned this to me. Let me just try it one time, or maybe that one time turns into two, to 10, to 20, to 30. I don't know what I do know and how this relates to talking about the food and the drinks is in talking about the supply chain, not knowing where all the ingredients come from, and the more ingredients, especially that we can't pronounce. We don't know where those are coming from. So somebody has a substance abuse problem, an addiction, and again we're not. Somebody has a substance abuse problem and addiction, and again we're not talking down on anybody, because I've been there from on the alcohol side and talked to a lot of people Okay, over the counter pills for me as well. So I understand how that wanting to do something, wanting to quote-unquote, feel good, feel high, feel like I'm floating, whatever that thing or things are for you, we have these substances and they have ingredients to go into them.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So whether you're drinking the coca-cola or you're shooting heroin in your veins, there are two products. One has a label on it, the other one doesn't. Doesn't mean that coca-cola overall is the safest drink to have on a continuous basis. But just making a comparison of a Coca-Cola and I'm not trying to say Coca-Cola is dealing drugs at all, so don't take it out of context A Coca-Cola with a label is a substance, it's a drink, it's a soda. And then you have heroin that somebody is shooting up, the person that's shooting up heroin. The only thing they know about the supply chain is who they purchased that from, who their dealer is, and is it the good stuff? Their dealer is, and is it the good stuff? Is it pure, which would mean it wouldn't be cut with anything, or is it not pure, which we know a lot, a high percentage of substances are cut with something we've had that previous episode where you know I talked about.

Justin Alan Hayes:

If we have two of a substance, don't worry whether it's liters or ounces. You have two substances, two things that are not good for us to take. So we have two. I could sell that for $200. Or I could cut, which means take a little bit of the first and a little bit of the second and put a filler in it. It Just like we talk about vitamins. If we get, let's say, pure vitamin C, that's what we're looking for is to have the closest thing to the purest form of when I'm talking about vitamin C. But the more fillers that a vitamin manufacturer, an organization, puts in, they can make that two turn into two more and equals four. Two for 200. They can sell four for 400 without adding any additional. Uh, in this case let's call vitamin c to to those. And so there's really, we think about it how you get two to four is you're taking half, which really turns into, yeah, half of one going into another and a half but the second one going into another, and so a product, a vitamin C capsule, instead of selling a 45 count they, they could sell 90. And they could be making a larger profit because they didn't add additional vitamin C. They took this pile of vitamin C and then they cut it and so they put fillers in it. So go ahead, look at your vitamin uh, look at your vitamin bottles and and see what's there.

Justin Alan Hayes:

I've gotten to be way more pickier where the vitamins. I've done one thing, a couple things. One is I've gone from taking many, many, many, many different individual vitamins to condensing and taking AG1, ancient greens one. It's great. I've been taking it once a day. Mix it with a little bit of water, shake it up, you're good. Once a day. Mix it with a little bit of water, shake it up, you're good. And so that has taken a little stress out because I don't have to open, close, open, close, open, close, and then if I'm traveling, it makes traveling very hard. So I'm trying to do individual days and it just really gets out of control. So I was able to do individual days and it's just really it gets out of control. So I was able to do that, so I was able to reduce but get the same or what my body needs from particular vitamins and minerals and minerals, whereas on the flip side. You know I was spending a lot more money, hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month, and was I getting the most pure vitamin C, the most pure vitamin D? Probably not. Uh no, there's a lot, of, a lot of vitamins and minerals. You can get the pure amount. But then it comes to how are you going to mix it and or how are you going to measure it out and then mix it? And for me, I already have a complex mind that sometimes it just gets to be over overload, sometimes it just gets to be an over overload.

Justin Alan Hayes:

But bringing back to our conversation that person that's taking substances for whatever reason, because we're not here to talk down on anybody, we're here to talk about that supply chain. So a person that has heroin getting ready to shoot in their veins, again, supply chain-wise, they know. And sometimes maybe they don't know, because maybe if they purchase in a group buy situation, maybe there's a point person and they buy for four or five. I don't know how that buying process goes. So in that case, that individual who's getting ready to do heroin, they're not even going to know who the dealer is, who are they buying it from. On the other case, they may know who they're buying it from. But aside from that, they don't know the middle person. But aside from that, they don't know the middle person, they don't know the person or persons that have come across the border or come through a tunnel underneath the border. We know those exist. So it's 2025 and we weren't born yesterday.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So then that supply chain adds that layer of where are those elements going into the heroin coming from? Oh yeah, and then that thing called fentanyl, and fentanyl comes from China, and China is way on one side of the world and we're in the United States on the other side of the world. Somehow, someway, it finds its way here to the United States. And it finds its way here to the United States. It finds its way into substances. Pure People know that. Hey, I know I'm taking fentanyl and I know that so much hurts somebody, so I know that I don't want to take as much as that because I don't want to get hurt or end up in the hospital or worse. Or it could be in the substance. Oh yeah, I'm buying a cap of heroin. It doesn't say I'm buying a cap of heroin and fentanyl. So not all individuals know that that's happening, but it is is happening and people are getting hurt and people end up in hospitals. There's a lot of people dying from this, and so that's why that's why we're talking about this, and we're talking about this and this episode as well as other episodes, because it is a problem, and so until fentanyl stops coming across the border here in the United States and until people stop dying from fentanyl, overdoses and really any substance that's coming from anywhere that has illicit intentions, we're going to continue talking about it. So if that isn't something you want to hear, well, maybe you or somebody you know could be part of the problem. That's not on me. It's not on us as an organization. What is on us is to share and to talk about these tough topics at times, because there are people who were here yesterday and they're not here today, and so a lot.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Some individuals, even in our own country, are upset about the current administration, the new administration. I don't care what your political affiliation, I don't care, it's democrat, republican, libertarian, independent. I want somebody who's taking action and is trying to help people and we can question well, this person's done this wrong and this person's done that Well, who cares? We've all done things wrong. We all have skeletons in a closet. We've all been through some crazy stuff, we've all been through trauma. So let's put that aside and let's actually start fixing these things.

Justin Alan Hayes:

And so when the new administration comes in and they're taking people who shouldn't be in the country, uh, that are the worst of the worst. You know gang members here from other countries, other countries. They'll empty their prisons and then they walk right here in the united states and then they commit other crimes. There's people like lake and riley, like her, who is no longer here because somebody that should never have been in our country. We're all for legal immigration. You go through the process that my grandparents and your grandparents and people who followed the law, so don't get into this debate. Well, he's talking about all immigrants. If you go, you do it the right way, then there's no problem. It's when we don't, and when we have that and we've had people in leadership you want to call it who the last four years who haven't done a darn thing then it looks really extreme.

Justin Alan Hayes:

When the new administration comes in and they're starting to handle business and one of those areas of business is fentanyl, the united states. We don't want that in our country. No way, no, how doesn't matter where it comes from. We don't want substances, other substances that are harming and hurting and killing and putting far too many people in that you know life or death situation of the thought of taking their own lives, and we know how much mental health and mental illness plays into it. I've been a thousand percent transparent about my own. It's not easy. It's not easy for anybody. It's not a curable thing Like oh, I'm cured today, so I'm all back to new.

Justin Alan Hayes:

We have good days, we have bad days, but fentanyl is part of a supply chain. Supply chain starts in china. That's where the previous episode we talked about, as well as early in this episode, about food and drink and the substance of different things. Different components, different ingredients come from different areas or different countries. Different full products come from different areas of the world. We know fentanyl comes from China and if they interesting part is, I don't believe they have a. Fentanyl comes from China and the interesting part is I don't believe they have a fentanyl problem in China, though I could be wrong, but I don't think they do. So that makes you wonder, right, a country that is exporting fentanyl, but yet that country that is producing it, they don't have a fentanyl problem. Hmm, makes you wonder now, doesn't it, doesn't it? So that's where, you know, talking about the supply chain with food and drink and clothing comes into play.

Justin Alan Hayes:

If a country, a government, an organization wants to do harm, and the country is able to do harm like fentanyl, what puts past them where they wouldn't put something in food or drink or something that's going to come in close contact with their skin to be absorbable. That's really the conversation. That's really what we're talking about here. So, voices for Voices. By now you know we're the real deal. We've made quite the statement here, beginning of 2025. We thank you for joining us on our journey. If you could give us a big thumbs up, share like, follow, subscribe and, if you're able to, if you're able to help us and donate, voicesforvoicesorg will get you there. So until next time, we'll see you later.

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Justin Alan Hayes

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