Warning: This episode contains descriptions of rape, sexual abuse and death.
As an epidemic of fentanyl use continues in America, causing tens of thousands of deaths each year, lawmakers and law enforcement agencies are holding one group increasingly responsible: drug users themselves.
Eli Saslow, a writer for The Times, tells the story of a man whose friendship ended in tragedy and a set of laws that say he is the one to blame.
Guest: Eli Saslow, a writer at large for The New York Times.
Background reading:
- Two friends bought $30 worth of fentanyl before making it into rehab. One overdosed. The other was charged in his death.
- Harsh fentanyl laws ignite a fierce debate. Critics say, the approach could undermine public health goals and advances in addiction treatment.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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From the new york times
to bring a tavern you see, and this is the daily.
The epidemic of fentanyl use,
continues unabated, causing tens of thousands of deaths per year. Lawmakers and law enforcement agencies are holding one group increasingly responsible drug users themselves today,
my colleague eliza saslow on a man whose friendship ended in tragedy and a new set of laws that say he is the one
the blame. It's Friday September. Twenty second eli welcomed to the show thanks so much the before we start. I want you to tell me a little bit about what you do, so I've been an admirer of your writing for a very long time, but I'm curious how you would define your beat while first of all son, I thank you. I write about the big issues in the country. The big tension points, but I do it through really personal income.
The human stories I try to think about who are the people sort of in the swirl of the big tensions in our country, and how can I find them? How can I find them at a moment of uncertainty and right now, one of the biggest issues in our country is fentanyl yeah, it's become a massive public health crisis, one of the biggest that we have it's
killing hundreds of people a day. It's ruining not only attics lives, but families lives and entire communities where the
become the dominant issue, so this is something I've been looking
do for awhile, and recently I stumbled into a case in doing this research there really kind of crystallized. For me how complicated this issue is because it's a case that shares the incredibly personal devastation of this drug, but it also shows how difficult the problem is this off and tell me about that case, mrs they call from and paid for by
an inmate at Oklahoma. County jail at the centre of that case is a guy named josh asking press one to accept all communications from from midnight. I started talking to Josh, probably about three months ago, a josh. It's you I heard york times. How are you I'm doing sorry, I'm dead man,
we got to work. We did it. It was challenged to get in touch with him because he was in jail cell first, like
this more than I call this lawyer, eventually sort of dope enough trust with them. The day gave my number two josh and he called me and Josh, and I started talking really
julie on the phone and that's how I really began to learn about who Josh was and what he'd sort of led him to the place where he was then, which was in prison in what it
learn about Josh. I learn that he'd had in many ways I think a pretty typical american childhood. I through much grew up in more
Oklahoma. Ah, I lived there until the end of my eighth grade year. Josh grew up mostly in Oklahoma. There was lots of joy. Lots of like
playing in oklahoma with cousins for wheelers
video games, but there was also a good bit of sadness, growing his parents
judge, ended very early in his life, his mama
working a lot he was raised.
largely by his grandparents and when Josh was a kid. He told me that he
raped by an older neighbour boy who lived across the street. He was raped you down and get something. He never really
What about he couldn't find anybody to confide and so
pretty early in his life, he developed these real feelings of loneliness, so he tried to find different ways to cope with that. Look, like you know, serves not imply roused up
no party
gaily after us, fifty fifteen look like starting to drink and certain smoke we
then Josh when he was a teenager use with another friend, and there were not a minor car accident. Josh heard his name. He was prescribed painkiller scope, your painkiller
and he started taking them in realized. Not only did it
take away the new pain, but they took away a lot of his dissatisfaction is loneliness, and so, when those prescriptions ran out.
Josh realise that his grandmother, who he was often staying with head around, hope you I'd, pay prescriptions and he started taking some of those has just started thinking,
I'll just this one time. Out of your time this one time and now we are just as we can and at one point in time I was able to control my usage
but as some some point along the way, I lost that control and I think a part of me is always thinking that one day I'll get I'll get directions while back, but it's it's not there anymore, and there is one moment that Josh tends to point to when he thinks about how his drug use started to really accelerate
and that's the death of his grandfather. Josh's grandfather was a huge figure in his life. He was maybe them
in authority figure and also often Josh's main caretaker. He was sort of his role model and his Josh's
and father got sick Josh was already using. Some of these pills denied tat. He passed away. My grandma,
call me over that. I, on the night, the Josh's
the father, died. They wanted Josh to come over there, but he wasn't in his right mind would regard taken some sleeping pills and are got him back into bed and told him I'll be back over. In the morning two hours later my mommy called and told me he had passed away. So
and he wasn't dairy wasn't present for his grandfather in those final moments, our carry that go with me for a long while
and ah I believe- that's where my you know, drug usage kind of took it down when star was at that point, and this started just a brutal decade, long stretch for Josh, where he would
can t you off all active addiction for long stretches, then he would have other stretches where he would emerge and he would be clean. He would go through rehab and he'd, be back for
a year even two years before the addiction started again and so like a lot of drug Alex Josh was using a lot of thanks heroin with the drugs that he used the most, but over the last five years, heroin, particularly black tar heroin, which is what Josh
the smoke it started to basically disappear from the drug market in Oklahoma, city and honestly everywhere about
two years ago in Oklahoma city fentanyl took over that entire market it started coming out in the heroin now is gang. I could tell that there was a different case. You know to their cause. I never saw it up. I've never used intravenously or anything, but I noticed whenever I was smoking, I could tell there's a different taste or for some reason, the thing that would make me throw up. So I kind of shied away from it at first. You know, but eventually you know you couldn't find any heroin that didn't have fit in all, and so it can progress from there and tell me what a sentinel addiction actually looks like like from the
spectacle of someone like Josh was addicted its miserable. I mean I've spent a lot of time with fanatics, and I don't think I've ever found. One who enjoys being addicted to fetnah
become dependent on it really quickly. That's up to forty times
addictive than heroin. It's a really fast, acting high, but its and even faster withdrawal experienced. So you can use that now and two hours later already-
actually be going into early withdrawal symptoms where your body is starting to your sec, where you're, sweating, you're feeling nauseous, you have brain fog and that's just getting
and worse and worse, and to use again so for somebody like Josh and for a lot of people who are addicted to fetch, nor on the streets
I did states right now. They are using eight to ten
times a day, fine drugs in very small quantities and then using and then sort of
feeling, ok for a little while and trying to come up with money to buy again and that money
is often like miniscule here in a lot of places in the united states right now, fetnah cells for as little as fifty cents to a dollar for a blue pill.
Contrary to cigarette for a blue pillar fattened. Also, these are constant transactions of desperation that
banning ten times are more a day for people who are addicted to your life becomes about finding the DRC
bug in even more than a very addictive drug like heroin, it's every two hours, so you know you need to constantly be going out in search of it to not go into withdrawal. Yeah you're enslaved to it that's the reality,
you're both psychologically dependent on the drug. It changes your brain chemistry and you're physically dependent because otherwise you're going to get sick and brutally sick. I mean we're talking about your unmedicated fentanyl. Withdraw most doctors equate to basically going through an incredibly difficult labor, so these are like violent
painful physical symptoms. Josh would often talk to me about how his men,
Anxiety would be not wanting to go to sleep unless he
you that he had just enough fetnah left to smoke in the morning, because the idea of waking up already in withdrawal and not being able to stave off this
there was a little bed was too terrifying. He would never be able to.
unless he knew he had that little amount to wake up to. So what is the rest of Josh's life? Look like at this point.
how it looks so grim. I went to see where Josh was living at its most recent low point and he was inside a sleeping.
In the sort of cross base of an abandoned house in Oklahoma city, there is a broad it out hole in the porch of this abandoned house.
Josh had found a way to crawl in there and get back kind of under the floorboards so that he would be out of the rain. I'm sure there's, probably no worse, places to be as toes but yeah. Definitely, you know wasn't wasn't fun, but you know at him. I guess part of me was just too proud to ask for any help or to try again tomorrow the nice centers armored they're, pretty tough to get into so
and it's this torture s place to live and he's trying to spend a little time there as possible. Honestly, so he's often
looking around the neighbourhood and one day in the spring of last year, Josh
can around and he runs into this guy who lives with his grandmother at a house that happens to be basically right. Around the corner from
abandoned house where Josh withstand this guy's name was crystal lake.
And meeting him that day really change the course of Josh's life me he followed me
and ah I went over to them to gallon hairdos himself and ah we just got to talking, and so I went over and hung around his house and Josh and chris would start to talk a little bit at first. Chris was kind of suspicious of Josh. You know at first. I think he kind of thought well as this guy
still some stuff for me, just as he is homeless or sarma, and me realize that you know just just code, as I was homeless at that time doesn't mean that you know I'm going to steal your stuff. If I get a chance or anything like that, so he can't he started come to trust,
yellow bird. I believe what both of them really one from each other was just company. They were both lonely and they would sit on the porch.
And they would have these long conversations about their lives. We talked about you in our relationship
Our moms, your own. We both had strong relationships were grandmothers
We both had a similar vein, even though we weren't practicing you obviously at the time, so it turned out, they had a lot in common
They both really relied on their faith. They each for
The bible for the sixth time, coincidentally, so they they talked a lot about how their faith had sort of inform their life and then
also talked about their own traumas that they'd been through that they thought had led them to a place of addiction where I bought confide in each other about now, some things
yeah. We about bad. You know, stuff happens. Is
when we were growing up. You know at a young age,
So we were able to bond over that as well, you know and how we had issues trusting men in our lives, sometimes because of that, just like Jos, Chris had also been molested and sexually abused when he was a kid and those were conversations that neither of them felt
having with very many people that once they realise that they had each endured a similar thing. They bore finally found they had somebody to talk to you about that, and it formed this really intimate bond pretty quickly. I think we both want define leather,
from our peers. And ah we we had difficulty with that. In the past, so I think I think we kind of bonded over that like until then justin really have friends. He had people that he got high with
He had people. They were sharing sort of his stage in life in his desperation, but he didn't have. People did he was having confessional conversations with, and that was a huge thing for him. We also talk about other things. Are we talking about? You know why you get quarantine,
how hard it was with the other thing that Josh and Chris really bonded ever was that they both wanted to get clean and that's that is now
a small thing when you are enslaved too. In addition, it beat you down.
Where's you down, and people tend to get hopeless and
and Josh were not hopeless. A lot of what they would do together was figure out. How can we get better and to be the people that we want to be so they had started making plans to try to get into a rehab facility that would help them get clean and help get their lives back on track. We had talked about going to awkward strangers, which are I'd never been to that detox before he had been to before, and he he said that he nearly caused an insta that would have helped us get in there, so the friendship it sounds like was based, at least on part, on this shared trauma right in it.
Looks like it was actually starting to make a difference in their lives like that they might actually find their way out of this addiction told me we know now that a lot of what drives people deeper introduction, these things like luminous, like disenfranchisement dissociation, and suddenly these two people founded
they're, both at a vulnerable moment and formed a real connection,
they'd begun calling around trying to get into these different rehab places. They'd. Finally, found one that was going to take them, but before they could get in their plans, got cut short what happened? Well, I mean that day. So Josh woke up one morning in April of this year, under the abandoned porch and I figured I'd, go over and see curse,
also I walked over to his house to see if he was out and did what he often did, which was walk over to Chris's house and Josh. At that point, hadn't used familia that day he was starting to Ache. His legs were starting to hurt.
he was beginning to feel hot nauseous. He went over to kill time with chris on the porch. He asked me about you get some
and Chris said, to Josh paid we're not can be able to
in this regard place for a few more days. Can we get some fetnah that might help get us through? He asked me if you john
and if I went in there you know let's go, and so the
Two of them got into chris car to go, find some fetnah, so they ended up at this motel where
saw somebody that he knew and that he bought drugs from before. I gave this person some money and gave it to us.
An josh and Chris combined their money they out about twenty five bucks. They spend all that they gave it to him,
he gave them back a very small amount of white powder. We had about three tenths of a and what's basically
tiny little dime back, I mean it looks like a little shake of sugar.
In a tiny little black back, but potentially very potent shake of sugar
an josh and chris,
put it on a little bit of tinfoil, whether in the car they cook up that tinfoil with a lighter
You write the bottom of the tinfoil, the drug start to smoke a little better,
actually like a yellow smoke and with what's essentially a straw. Chris took the first hit and then passes it over to Josh. Josh takes a hit pass it back to Chris. Chris takes one more hit. We get a fair now and we both went under at this point
both not out that's what funnel users call it this initial moment where you basically feel complete and total relax.
Vision and nothing less than you essential,
borderline lose consciousness, Josh kind of comes to, he looks up, looks around and he looks over at chris and something doesn't look right. When I get back, I notice that his lips were blue and he was not conscious, presses bent over awkwardly
His chin is down touching his chest, he's not moving at all and despite the fog of his own,
drug use in his own high. He thinks something might
Will he be wrong here with crest, so he starts tapping him on the shoulder shaking him. Hey Chris wake up man what's going on and nothing nothing is coming back from chris at all. So my first thought was: I gotta get this guy some help. I was in the driver's seat of the car, so I went ahead and took off started driving towards the hospital at this point to his credit. Josh realizes like an emergency is underway and he needs to get some help, so the hospital is fairly far from where they are.
if the brain can only survive for four minutes without oxygen, I see his lips are turning blue. I know it's probably been a little bit. Josh knows from his own experience of drugs that
can die of an overdose them less than five minutes. That's how quickly fatal this synthetic fat, nor can be. I need to go ahead.
I started doing cpr on him. That way he's getting oxygen to his brain, so I pulled in to an aerosol filling station, pulled him out of his out. The car started, performing cpr and hollered at somebody to call nine one one
so josh drives to a gas station very near by where he goes to the attending office,
on the door and says help
call nine one one. My friend is overdosing and then Josh helps pull his friend out of the passenger seat and wise him flat in the parking lot, and he starts to give his friends
We are not the mouth jaw. She had worked for a little while in a nursing home where he'd been required to go to a cpr course, and so he has some idea of how to do this
how long do you think you were given him? Cpr manage our life forever. You know, every man feels, like forever yard, say safer, good aid,
it's. You know I have hollered, for you know if somebody else could help me or nobody was moving to help me. So I just kept doing you know what
by the time the anyone's pulls up. Josh's physically drained from performing cpr he's also
terrified and emotionally exhausted, because he still doesn't know whether or not his friend is alive or dead. So at this point, Josh's called an ambulance he's frantically trying to save his friends.
performing cpr? He standing there, the ambulance arrives. He has done everything in his power to save his front.
Exactly and the only thing and Josh's head at this point is: is Chris gonna make it? Is he ok? That's the question the Josh's asking again and again first
of the paramedics when the ambulance her eyes, and then the police come a few minutes later, because they have also heard this call
and Josh standing with them and asking about Chris. Is he gonna be ok how's he doing what's happening, but slowly,
over those next met. The police start asking him a lot of questions still and what was your conversation with the police officers
Well, he had put me in the back of a car
and I id and then he said he was calling in to the officers officer like that,
and so they did. They told me that they want to talk to me
I'm about what had happened and they want to know. Where did the drugs come from? What kind of drugs who bought the drugs? Where did the money come from? Was it shared who use the drugs? First,
I definitely you know new dollars in central and I will be in some trouble and you figured maybe you'd get in trouble for buying drugs or for for smoking. Fentanyl yourself, dry, yeah and slowly it started
to dawn on Josh that this conversation was different than the one that he expected. They weren't all just talking about how Chris was going to be, but they were beginning to talk about who might be responsible, and
This conversation turned into an investigation as I live here.
The other rights me if you're just tell me and came he nodded
or to the other officer and the officer. That's my grandma arms and put my hands behind my back and told me. He was arrested me for murder and just as the ambulance was taking off chris, who, at that point, Josh suspected,
said the officer said to Josh that he was under arrest for murder and the first degree when he said murder
what was going through. Your might me
I was so sick in my stomach, because the only tell these for first degree murder are live life without parole or death. Only you know those are the only three options you have with a murder charge
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I'm carol regiment from the new york times right now,
sitting alone in the press room at the: u S, navy basic one time a bay. I probably spent around two thousand nights at this navy base.
I've been coming here since hormone,
after the nine eleven attacks I watched them,
where's prisoners arrive in those organs jumpsuits from far away Afghanistan. Some of these prisoners
you still don't have a trial day it's hard to get
it's hard to get news from the prison. Often
I'm the only reported here
If you build a military court in prison,
each of the american people, it should
Want me out of reach of american journalism. We have a duty to keep coming back,
splain. What's going on here, the new york times takes you too difficult and controversial places. It keeps you informed about unpopular and hard to report developments and
takes resource. You can power that kind of journalism by subscribing to the new york times so eli. How did we get to a place where a friend seized his friend is overdosing
tries to resuscitate him, calls nine one one and is charged with murder at the scene, just after a few questions by police. Well, we got here
because of an unimaginable amount of death. I mean fat noise killing. So many people in the united states an average of about two hundred people a day
in this country die from fentanyl overdoses, mostly accidental fentanyl overdoses. That's more people
then are killed by guns, everyday, it's more people than dying car accidents every day, and so there has been a
Ass of amount of pressure coming from
country to lawmakers to hold somebody accountable.
Penalties are kind for people, cotton dealing that dangerous opiate. That now so what's happened over the last year. Is these lawmakers have taken that pressure and turned it into legislation, possession of more than a gram of something that contains federal state? A cholera is now a felony, not just in red states, but in blue states. Frankly, in most states and more than thirty states, we ve seen new legislation to try to create harsher punishments for fetnah dealers and also for fund nor attics the bill designate.
Amy substance containing the deadly drug to be considered as a weapon of terrorism, so Virginia, for instance, recently passed a law codifying friend fentanyl as a weapon of terrorism. The bill will make distributing sentinel a class for felony, which gives you a sense of how serious it is. Wow new law takes effect this week targeting the fentanyl crisis here in the loan star state texas pass the bill, they would reclassify federal overdose.
ass from being accidents to being poisonings, and that then puts the onus on law enforcement to go out and find who is responsible for those poisonings,
our gonzalvo charters, drug dealers with murder if they deliver drugs that causes overdoes. Arkansas passed a death by
delivery bill in April to charge some overdoses murders
effort to deter anyone from selling or or even just sharing fetnah. We hope that this bill pushes the justice system to take a serious
and a lot of this ends up coming down to local prosecutors, who now have pretty wide discretion to charge people with murder after someone dies of an overdose, so in other words a real toughening
of the laws against retinal using the most stringent charge under the law. Merk yeah, that's exactly right
The challenge now is really how to
and the people who they want to hold responsible with something like this drug that the supply right now of these chemicals is mostly manufactured in china. Then cartels are producing the drug in mexico and then it's trafficked in huge volume into the united states and eventually it gets to the street and finally to people like Josh and most of the times, the street level transactions are from one addict to another and small small volume and those tend to be the people who get caught. So you have situations where the people actually being held responsible, the ones who are being charged with murder
our people like a seventeen year old in tennessee, who, after graduation her and two of her friends, used fetnah, they all nodded out in the car. One girl survives the other two died and suddenly the seventh
You're old girl is being charged as an adult at the murder charge. You have a real estate agent florida who throws a party at her house, provide some drugs for the guests of her party. One of those people dies
real estate agent, cause nine one one and then finds that she herself has arrested for murder. You ve got it a high school who meets a girl in church in ozark arc missouri and he says: hey. I've got some fun or she would like some. He gives her appeal. He gives our instructions and says only take half do it this way,
call me at this moment. She takes the whole pill she dies and now the seventeen year old kid in ozark Missouri is also being charged with murder. So oftentimes, you have a very small time. Dealers are really just users who end up being the ones who are caught because they're the easiest people to catch and that's what happened to Josh, exactly yeah the prosecutors and the
kiss said the Josh essentially acted as a middle man, he was the one who knew where to get drugs. He was the one who
the dealer he was the one who
we gotta get there. He procured the drugs and then share them with his friend which to them meant the josh was essentially a dealer. He could be held responsible, so this is really hard right. You have this raging epidemic julie. One of the biggest problems are countries facing right now and the country's desperate to remedy the situation, so a very real problem, but then this arrest for murder.
like an josh's case, doesn't really seem like the right fix like it seems like were over correcting. I think it depends on who you ask the lot. Allow makers in this country have decided that, based on their constituents,
anger and pain and fear around the sentinel epidemic. The correct fixes the pass the harshest laws possible, which they hope will act as some kind of a deterrent to people who might deal or use
I know, but in terms of whether or not this will solve the problem, I think that gets into a much bigger, more exercise
question about where we are in america, because what it looks like to solve the addiction crisis right now means keeping people alive. When there
I and then try to help them get better, and that means your nor can and medications doubt them get clean and acts
two rehab, which is a major challenge in this country and then once their done with rehab long term beds and medical care and mental health care, so that people are discharged newly queen that the tenth on the street surrounded by fat, nor that sells for a dollar a pill cause. That's not
recipe for success and even bigger than that and means addressing all of these things that right now try
We are endemic in american life and on the rise, such as sense of despair, bad healthcare outcomes, rising wealth, inequality, loneliness all of these things that we know drive people to addiction in the first place right. So the answers to what is the fix are really really difficult. So at some point it gets a lot easier and a lot more doable to say: hey this person provided the drugs. In this case, this is the person who is responsible. Let's answer the question. This way right this going after the little guy, whose very often himself, a drug user feels like we're doing something, but it's not doing anything.
The problem. That right I mean I think Josh is confused at why he gave the name of of the drug dealer who sold them the drugs to the police, a guy named shug and shug was never found
arrested are held accountable. The only one who has been held
boys Josh, and what about the families of the victims? I mean they would appear to be pretty important parties here when we're talking about prosecution right like who did, they think should be held responsible. I think it's really
in every case. Right, that's a really personal question about how people grief you have parent groups who are saying now are teenagers. Are being given these pills and are dying at sleeper overs, we want
whoever to be held accountable and to be held accountable to the full extent of the law, and I can understand why
like you, wanna punishment that meets the absolute magnitude of the loss and the magnitude of the losses unspeakable. So it's different in every case for Chris his family was mostly convey
about why Josh had been arrested for motor chris grandmother when she was told the Josh was being charged for murder. Her first reaction was for
What and when the actual circumstances were described to her that they'd shared these drugs they'd smoke them together, they'd bought them together. She frankly fought like this. Doesn't make any sense, so she doesn't blame Josh at all. No, I mean, if anything, I think she feels
some gratitude to Josh, first for being a friend, her grandson at a really difficult moment in his life, but mostly for trying to save his life.
And how is just doing now? When was the last time you guys talked were in close touch. Air Josh has allotted time, his lonely and
I always happy to talk to my like talking to him. So we talk every few days. I mean it. Is your own purse
safety and issue, and there are you worried about that
anymore more. You know I was at first now. People know me
but really charged price near take advantage of me any more urge. You know I mean that I also still talk a lot to his mom into his hand,
and for his mom when Josh went to jail. Her one solace was that she thought at least now he'll be safe, like he's not gonna, be sleeping under the abandoned porch he's not gonna, be able to use that in all the time he's not going to hurt us, but what actually is
surprising, to her and to me is that there is spent nor all over the jail
oh yeah. They warn me coming here. They were like what the stuff I got here is even more important than the stuff they got on the streets, so thou do it basically and on his first days in jail, he started buying some of this fat enough from other
maids and using it. I will always. Will you really love
you know I, like my life- is over with this time you now using it to escape his own grief over christmas death,
down pain. Over his situation, I can say that I was trying to overdose on purpose. Lack is
can't say subconsciously that wasn't either and soon after Josh god in jail. He took a massive amount of fentanyl and over dust.
So you're overdoses, probably by two or three days after after christmas overdose. Well, actually, thou for yeah. Now for days
while there and that's how josh his time in jail started he's
been clean from fat. Nor for three months, how is how is work in their day,
good? You know he's managed to nurture his faith a little bit
chaplet, the jail helping. Other people read the bible
talking to them about their faith for a few hours a day
are they and they, like me, ally, you know, and usually on friday, they'll give me a a little lunch and we'll have lunch together and stuff. So that's all
nice, so little by little just started to find a routine in there that there may be worked for him to get from one day to the next and then just in this last week
Josh had to make a really difficult decision about how long he's gonna be in prison. The prosecutors, in this case ed
did it again and had decided that they were willing to reduce the charges and give Josh a chance to plead to first degree manslaughter
Other choice the Josh could have made was to take the case to trial and to put his fate at the whims of us
done that right now he doesn't have a lot of faith and so Josh decided last week to take the play, and
he will be in jail for awhile, because he now has pledged guilty to first to remain slaughter, so he's taking responsibility for christmas death, yeah he's taking responsibility for christmas death, which he doesn't think is the right thing is lawyer, doesn't necessarily believe it's the just thing, but I think what Josh decided was. It was the smartest course of action. It gives him a chance to get home to get there
to his mom to get back to his life much sooner than if he were risking a jury trial, which would be a significant gamble and given the fact that Josh is going to spend a number of years in prison, looking back would have done anything differently that something that we have talked about.
a lot I mean. How often are you are you thinking about Chris in there
and am I, give you had a chance to to grieve. You ve had so much going on yourself yeah. You know
I mean, and- and that comes and goes you know like like I can be like you, he could have done so many things differently and up until the moment that they used drugs. I think Josh would have done everything differently.
in his life almost but from the moment that they both took their first hit of fentanyl Josh feels like he made the right decisions. I don't think I could have lived with myself if I had chosen anything different. If I hadn't
at least try to do everything that I could you know to help him. I feel like it would have been a lot heavier burden on my soul that, like maybe I could have done something differently. You know if anything it would have been to not even
the drugs in the first place, yet, unfortunately being an active addiction that not much of an option for you here
leave the car he didn't run away. He stayed with his friend. He tried to give him cpr. He got help. He did whatever he could to save his friends life and actually the fact that he did that, even though its put him in jail josh has said to me many times. He feels like it's those actions of decency that have a chance to save him. He knows that when the,
so down, he did what he feels like, where the right thanks and that's an easier way to go about living your life, then feeling like you have but a friend
without trying to help them. So this day this landed him in prison for a long time is actually a day. He's really proud of
That's exactly right, I think he thinks it's actually one of them
It acts of heroism in his life and the life that he feels really mixed. Feelings about he's made a ton of mistakes, but helping chris and trying to save him was not one of those mistakes and josh's might not try to do everything
and you know it just kind of felt like it was futile almost, but I spent I spent a lot of years, beating myself up for my grandfather dying,
thinking there aren't you have done some differently and when I did have an opportunity to have somebody else who is dying,
they still died. Anyways, I feel I almost I was gonna show me that was his providence say he, you know
allow somebody liver, not live in, and you don't know
We should spare time, but still it doesn't make it very much easier
I thank you
thanks. So much will be right back
This package is supported by paramount plus the film we set out to make was of a comedy superstar turn president, but this modern country was suddenly a boy from two time academy award winner. Shantytowns always gave the face of the six priority areas: courage following an unlikely president, through an unimaginable war, we need miracles. Ten eu cranes will win. This question is at what cost superpower now streaming exe
thirdly, on paramount plus here's. What else you need to know today on Thursday media magnates rupert murdoch is retiring from the fox in news corporation boards and making his son laughlin the sole executive in charge of the power
for global media empire that he built from a local newspaper concern in australia. Seventy years ago the move puts his business, which includes the influential twenty four hour news. It opinion network, the fox news,
more firmly under his sons control a year ahead of the twenty twenty four presidential election, the times reports-
there a succession battle may still loom murdoch. Who is ninety to put a plan in place two decades ago that his for adult children would have to work,
his ultimate successor among themselves when he dies
the Biden administration said that it would allow hundreds of thousands of venezuelans already in the united states, but without legal status to live and work
legally in the country for eighteen months. The decision will affect about four hundred and seventy two thousand venezuelans who arrived in the country before July, thirty, first temporarily, protecting them from removal and waving a month's long waiting period for them to seek employment authorization. Top new york Democrats had lobbied intensely for the move, arguing that roughly half the migrants currently living in
city or venezuelans and that the city safety net would tear under their weight unless they were allowed to work and support themselves.
Days episode was produced by move, is eighty and will read with
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