Original subtitles

♪

[man] Previously on The Trade:

[man] Drug trafficking is the most lucrative

illegal trade out there.

I've never seen this kind of epidemic before.

[male reporter] 20 kilos of deadly fentanyl

-are off our streets. -Steph, where you want guns?

But authorities say more is on the way,

and they simply cannot keep up.

[man speaking Spanish]

[woman]

[man]

[Skyler] I never thought that I would ever be like this.

[sobbing] I can't... I'm sorry, baby.

-Not me. -This is our house.

Our house, not yours.

The conditions are that you don't get high,

and we know you're high.

[Jen] Just go. Get out of my house!

[Laina] I am getting out of your house!

[Rod] I'm calling the police right now.

-[Laina] Go for it! -All right.

And I'm filing charges for fucking assault.

-[Rod] Okay, okay. -[Laina] You just pushed me!

Oh, my God.

♪

♪

[indistinct chatter]

[man] Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Wake up! Get water, get water!

[man] America's overdose crisis is worse than ever before

because of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

It is deadlier than heroin...

[man 2] Overdose deaths have almost doubled

from this time last year.

[man 3] Get up!

Get up!

[man 4] Look, she's asleep. She looks like she's dead.

[man 5] The synthetic opioid fentanyl is causing carnage

like America has never seen.

[man 6] Overdoses are now the leading cause of death

for Americans under the age of 50.

-[child crying] -[man speaking indistinctly]

[man 7] If heroin's the epidemic,

fentanyl is the plague.

And the plague is here.

♪

All right, Mark. In a few minutes here we'll be executing

a search warrant on, uh, a trap house.

It's low level,

where there's a lot of people that use heroin inside.

[man over radio]

Let me know if we're green-lit.

[Smith] America has an insatiable thirst

for narcotics.

There's money and people just have that need

for immediate gratification.

All right, you've got a green light to the target there, LT.

[man over radio]

Copy that, LT. Thank you.

-[engine starts] -Bear 1, are you ready?

-Bear 1's ready. -All right, guys. Let's do it.

We are en route.

[woman over radio]

Ten houses from here. Ten houses.

All right, we're going up over the curb. Go ahead.

Bump! Bump!

Still gonna be a driver's side bump.

-Driver's side. -Driver's side it is.

[over PA] This is the Franklin County Sheriff's Office.

We have a search warrant. Come out with your hands up.

Jesus.

They collected tinfoil.

There's a syringe right there.

I mean, just everywhere.

[coughs]

[groans] Sewage.

You don't want nothing to do with that.

Okay.

[Smith] Seeing the living conditions

that people are in,

where the addiction's taken over their life.

It's overwhelming.

Oh, my God.

Now you have this addition of fentanyl,

which is exponentially more dangerous than heroin.

Dealers are killing people.

We have to start to hold them accountable

at higher sentences.

[man] I unfortunately think it's gonna get worse

before it gets better.

I don't know how much more prevalent is fentanyl

-on the streets these days. -[Smith] Fentanyl went up

500 percent in overdose deaths last year.

It's just like exponential growth every year.

-[man] Yeah. -I know we're over,

in the state of Ohio right now, over eight a day.

[man] It's just huge right now,

and this is kind of our first foray in Columbus

into using some of the federal statutes

to do some of those cases.

In the federal realm, the sentencing guidelines

are really, really high. It's a bigger hammer.

So we have to be selective in the cases that we take,

and it should be used in some of the worst-case scenarios

-that went first. -Yeah, we feel

the exact same way.

Our suspect, Rich, he's the dealer going around.

We also have evidence he's still dealing right now.

Uh, we have two victims, one non-fatal, one fatal.

It'll most likely come back as pure fentanyl.

Rich knows what's going on,

but he still has a blatant disregard for the public.

And we want to bring him to where he's actually

going to be facing some serious time.

♪

-Hey. -How you doing?

-Good. How are you? -All right. Can I help you?

Uh I have an interview.

-Mr. Jordan. -Yes, sir.

We have Skyler...

How do you pronounce your last name? [bleep]

-[bleeped] -Okay, Skyler.

This is the program director, Mr. Robert Jordan.

-Hey. -How are you, sir?

-Good. Nice to meet you. -Come on in. Have a seat.

Skyler, what brings you to us today?

I've just been doing this for so long

and I'm just over it. You know?

I really just can't go on any longer at this point.

It's just gotten to that point where it's so bad.

Okay.

-Are you homeless? -Yeah.

I'm just going back and sleeping in the car at night,

just trying to keep myself busy.

Okay. Tell me a little bit about family history.

I have a good family, good support, you know.

They all have their shit together, basically,

and kind of just went my own way and started, you know,

got addicted to drugs.

And your girlfriend, how is she now?

Uh, she's doing good.

She's basically in the same boat that I'm in.

She's getting into a program, waiting to...

-Okay. -...hear back from.

How do you understand recovery?

I don't understand it very well

because I've never actually tried before, you know?

I always just kind of faked it till I made it, you know.

So this is the first time I've actually wanted to get clean.

Okay. Understand, we are an abstinence-based program.

-Mm-hm. -That means that recovery

-is the rest of your life. -Yeah.

Know this. The disease of addiction does not want

Skyler to reach his destiny.

And it will fight you. Your brain will fight you.

-How long have you been using? -Like ten years or something.

For ten years, your brain has been running your life.

-Yeah. -So Skyler cannot

-trust his brain. -Yeah.

We're here to help you think. Okay?

Mm-hm.

Are you on board for a year-long program?

Yeah. Mm-hm.

Cannot have a vehicle, cannot have a cell phone.

-All right. -All right?

This is not jail.

If you want to change your mind, that's okay.

But commit to this process because you're worth it.

You have value, my friend.

[mumbles] definitely

-Welcome home, man. -Sounds beautiful.

-Yep. Okay. -All right.

-It's all good. -Oh, sorry. [indistinct]

-You can do this. -Appreciate it. I really do.

-All right. Welcome aboard. -Thank you guys.

All right.

♪

So Skyler had his interview at The Extension today.

-And I'm-- -[Rod] It's still new.

So we're still just kind of like absorbing it.

[Jen] We're still cautiously optimistic.

But this is a different kid than I've ever seen before.

For him to go on his own, willingly...

[Rod] It's the first time it's ever happened.

-First time it's ever happened. -Mm-hm.

There were no ultimatums. There were no, "You have to."

-There's no court order. -Mm-mm.

So us keeping strong and saying,

"No, you have to get in somewhere,"

that finally clicked in.

-Good. -[Jen] Yeah, and if I thought

not letting him in and making him sleep in a car...

I think that's gone a long way.

...I would have done that a long time ago.

[Rod] Yeah.

So what's their success rate so far down there?

-Um... -Eight out of ten?

-Seven out of four? -[Karen] Not a lot different...

-[laughs] -[Jen] It's pretty low.

Pretty low.

♪

[Spanish]

[crows]

[man] Yeah.

[chattering in Spanish]

[sighs]

[bell tolling]

[speaking Spanish]

[sirens wailing]

[man] Mexico is now the second deadliest country in the world.

[man 2] This year Mexico is on track to report more homicides

than in any year in the last two decades.

[woman screaming]

[woman]

[man]

[man] 43 students went missing.

Mexico says corrupt local police turned the students over

to members of a drug cartel.

♪

[Spanish]

[crowd shouting in Spanish]

[continues shouting]

[Mario]

[crowd shouting]

[shouting in Spanish]

[man on phone] I'm parked in this driveway

in the neighborhood directly behind it.

Someone's coming out the backdoor right now.

[indistinct]

[Smith] In nine years of law enforcement,

heroin is the most dangerous drug I've ever come across.

[man over radio]

[Smith] Breeds violence and people living in fear

in the source country.

And then on this side,

it causes broken families and death.

There's nothing good that comes out

of narcotics trafficking.

[man on radio]

[siren wails]

[man speaking indistinctly over radio]

-A federal? -Yeah.

-For what? -Homeland Security.

-Homeland Security? -Yeah.

-Is this loaded? -Yeah.

He's got heroin, crack and weed.

Pop in the back there and we'll get you downtown.

You're gonna sit at the far table.

He had heroin on the stop, though, right?

Yeah. His record is trafficking, trafficking, trafficking.

He's responsible for fatal, non-fatal.

Every overdose in Whitehall, Reynoldsburg knows Rich Edwards.

Have you ever seen that individual before?

I can promise you you'll never see her a day in your life,

-'cause she's dead. -I never--

She's dead because of what you sold to him,

that he brought home and shared with her.

She overdosed, she died.

Causing serious physical harm or death of an individual

is a 20-year minimum mandatory.

You start at 20 years.

All we're-- look. Rich.

Just like the last time we talked...

[Rich sobbing] I need your help and you take me down!

[indistinct]

[Smith] It's just this horrible cycle that we're stuck in.

[indistinct]

Year over year over year, we're taking 30 percent more

heroin off the street.

All right, come over here.

We're indicting 30 percent more people.

But the overdose death rate is going up right along with it.

What are your arrests so far?

Um, the arrest is up to 26 heroin-fentanyl dealers.

[Smith] So Chief Minerd and I started a unit that would

hit the problem from both ends.

What is our percentage in terms of scheduling appointments?

[Smith] It was 68 percent.

While we're holding dealers accountable

-at a higher level... -Sounds good.

...we're attacking the demand side as well

by getting people treatment.

♪

[Jen] Skyler goes into rehab in two days.

He set this all up on his own and we just feel that we need to support him.

So, we're gonna let him stay here

until he checks in on Monday.

[meowing]

[Skyler] Hey, Mom.

[no audio on TV]

You might as well just make some more tea.

-When you fill this up... -Mm-hm. Yeah.

Want me to do it, or you got it?

Go ahead.

Watch the hole in the back. That's where you stop.

-How much sugar? -I'll put the sugar in,

'cause you put way too much sugar in.

No, I don't. It's good.

And then you can clean out that pitcher please,

and put it in the dishwasher.

[Skyler] The last couple weeks, I've just been getting by.

Out in the streets, you know.

It's crazy how many people are out there doing it now,

how many kids come from good families,

and are just strung out on dope.

Seems like almost everybody I grew up with

is struggling with it.

They're either in jail, on the streets,

or dead already.

Hey, Elvis. Are you hungry?

-[meows] -Hi.

[Skyler] Gotta make sure the cat eats before you do.

One of your last crappy texts to me was,

"You love your cat more than you love me."

[laughter]

Guilty.

[Skyler] Things are looking a lot better than they were

for my life, you know?

[Skyler sighs] Time to go to sleep.

[Jen] It is so time to go to sleep.

-[Skyler] Good night. -[Jen] Good night. I love you.

See you tomorrow.

Mm-hm.

I'm fucking so tired.

-Mm-hm. -What time is it?

It is 11:10.

Thought it was already midnight.

The day seems so much longer when you're sober.

Yeah.

A lot of long days coming up.

[sighs]

♪

[indistinct chatter in Spanish]

[man speaking Spanish on radio]

[shuts off radio]

[Don Miguel]

[whistles]

[speaking Spanish]

[Mario]

[indistinct chatter in Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[baby cries]

[line rings]

[woman] This is 911. What is your emergency?

[woman] It's an overdose! Can you please send somebody!

Please!

[siren wailing]

♪

[man] His pupils are constricted, guys.

Yeah. Narcans it.

Come on, wake up for me!

[man] Ohio's opioid epidemic

is the worst that I've ever seen.

County coroner's literally running out of room

for the dead bodies,

as one Ohioan dies nearly every three hours.

[siren wailing]

Parents endangering their kids while they shoot their veins

full of heroin,

or try selling their children for money to buy more drugs.

And we're fighting an ever-changing adversary.

That adversary has new, more powerful opiates,

like fentanyl.

And it is, I think, sometimes tempting for us

to say we're overwhelmed.

But we must get in front of this problem.

[Minerd] Um, fentanyl has been a game-changer.

But it's a community problem that requires

a community solution.

So we tweaked our program with the development

of the HOPE Task Force, the Heroin Overdose

Prevention Education Task Force.

So what we do is we go out into the field,

and investigate fatal and non-fatal situations.

Hey, Jake, we're about five minutes out.

Copy that.

[Minerd] So from a law enforcement standpoint,

we're extracting information that would lead back

to arresting the source supplier,

the folks that are capitalizing on people's addiction.

Nice to meet you. I'm Sergeant Smith.

I work for the HOPE Task Force.

I'm trying to find out where bad dope is coming from.

[woman] Right.

[Minerd] But at the same time, linking families up

-with treatment options. -Mitchell. What's up?

I'm not here to arrest you. Can I come in?

-[man] Sure. -[line ringing]

I'm calling to let you know you're not in any trouble

regarding what happened, but I'd like to follow up

with you and let you know

some healthcare opportunities that we have.

Pulling up right now.

We just try to put you in the right hands,

let you know what's available, you know.

Suboxone or a Vivitrol shot or some counseling.

-[woman] Okay. -If we don't get you

out of this cycle, these two young men in here

are gonna be without a mom.

Cops are used to driving people to jail,

not to a treatment appointment.

-So initially... -What's up, Travis?

...folks from our agency and other surrounding agencies

looked at that a little, you know, like,

"What are you doing?

Are you turning cops into social workers?"

No, we're thinking outside the box.

Do you remember our first meeting?

-[laughs] That shit was funny. -It wasn't that funny, Travis.

It wasn't that funny to you.

I think your exact words were,

"If you try to put cuffs on me, when I come out there,

I'm gonna swing on you, motherfuckers."

[laughs]

So far it's worked out pretty well, right?

Yeah, it has. I mean, if I'm not on my Vivitrol,

the urge to get high overrules everything.

I'm like a fucking hamster on a wheel.

So in January, was that the first time you overdosed?

No, not at all. Um...

How many times did it happen before we got to you?

Oh, I'd say... probably like three or four.

That's crazy.

I guess it's kinda hard to be careful.

It's so cut up now.

Oh, that's what's honestly causing the majority

of the overdoses and the deaths.

-Right. -Is fentanyl.

It's popping up in everything, man.

People don't even know what the hell they have anymore.

That's crazy.

♪

[Smith] Eight years ago, you know,

when I started undercover work...

...the thought was people who are addicted,

you know, it's a bad person.

You wanna go arrest them

and go hang up your hat for the day.

Then the more you learn about addiction

and what they went through in their life...

...you learn to hate the addiction,

and not the person.

I've seen successes out of this model.

I hope there's an end in sight.

But I don't think we have touched enough people

to actually make a difference.

Run around and give hugs to everybody.

-How was the funeral? -It was hard on my husband.

-Yeah. -I just had one last night.

One of my friends from high school,

it was their son.

-That's four in four weeks. -Gosh.

I mean, my son told me, he would say, "Mom,

I pray every morning, every morning in my closet.

As I'm using I'm praying, God, please take this.

I don't wanna do this." But it's just too hard.

Mm-hm.

My daughter, you know, the first time she went to rehab

it was kicking and screaming.

And this time she was like, "Okay, well, I'll call you

when I can." And she was in detox.

You know, right now she's got almost, I don't know,

nine-- almost 90 days, 80 days,

-somewhere around there. -Keep the hope.

♪

-[woman on phone, indistinct] -Yeah.

-Hey, Mom? -[Jen] What?

So I was just talking to Laina, and I think what I should do

is go see like a psychiatrist or something

for my anxiety and depression and things like that.

Just 'cause the detox place is just a waste of time.

-It's just... -The detox place

is not a waste of time.

It absolutely is not a waste of time.

You know, you called and you said,

"I'm done with this life, I can't live this way anymore."

Whatever the case is. Like, are you done?

[laughs] I can't answer that. I wanna be done.

But the detox doesn't work.

And then I have a chance of ending up using

and fucking overdosing at that point, you know what I mean?

Like...

[Jen] Well, you've only been one time to detox.

[Skyler] Well, I just think that I should just sleep

for a couple of days until we figure out where I can go

to get on some type of medicine.

We went from tonight to tomorrow morning

-to a couple days. -To a couple days, exactly.

Well, I'm just throwing an idea out there.

That's what I was thinking.

[Rod] Okay, that's not gonna be an option.

Because the way we view it is, again,

you don't really want real help.

You're just trying to scoot your way through.

-No, it's just... -You're saying you can do it

on your terms here, but you can't do it...

-I'm not saying that. -...on their terms there.

[Skyler] Well, I don't have any terms there. [laughs]

-[Jen] Skyler... -I'm not going to these nutjob,

nuthouse places that are like jail just to detox.

[Jen] I understand, but you have to be detoxed

off all this crap.

You see, you're gonna have to make it work.

You're gonna have to choose, "I'm either gonna try

to really do this, or I'm just gonna have to be on my own."

[Jen] You don't have to live in cars.

You don't have to couch surf.

You can sit on a nice sofa and sleep in a nice bed.

You can do it.

I mean, look, you can stay here tonight for sure.

But tomorrow, we either have to do that

or you're gonna have to be on your own.

You know what I'm saying?

[Jen] We're talking about tomorrow morning.

[Rod] So I guess you have tonight to think about

-what you wanna do. -Yep.

♪

[baby coos]

[Spanish]

[woman speaks Spanish on radio]

[turns off radio]

[Mario]

[clattering]

[sighs]

[speaks Spanish]

[child shouting]

[rock music on radio plays softly]

♪

[door opens]

♪

[Jen] Skyler? Skyler?

Hey, what are you on? Look at me. What are you doing?

Nothing, Mom.

You're gonna have to get your stuff and go. He's fine.

Sorry you made this decision, Skyler.

[woman] The latest government numbers show

that drug overdose deaths continued to climb

despite so many more efforts to stop the epidemic.

[man] Deaths last year likely topped 59,000.

[man 2] The coroner says numbers on that scale

are a mass casualty event

and should be declared a medical emergency.

Until then, the death toll will continue to rise.

[man] This is the Franklin County Sheriff's Office!

We have a search warrant.

Yeah, and there's fentanyl patches too.

[Smith] Nobody grows up and says

they want to be addicted to heroin.

But sometimes people make mistakes

and sometimes you can't come back from them.

[woman] In Franklin County alone,

two people die every day.

-[man] 20 more overdoses... -[woman] Five overdoses reported

-yesterday... -[man] In the last ten days,

first responders have seen 30 overdoses.

One in every five of them leading to death.

[Spanish]

[man] Despite drug-related violence,

Mexico's southern state of Guerrero

continues to be a main producer of heroin.

[woman] The surest supply of lifesaving Narcan

-is running out. -[woman 2] They use 400 doses

-of Narcan... -[woman 3] There are concerns

it may get worse if a new drug...

[man] A warning over a drug known as Grey Death.

[woman] It's 100 times more potent than fentanyl.

[overlapping voices]

[man] Everyone wondering how it will stop.

♪

♪

The stigma is being reduced the more people talk about it.

-Yes. -It helps me.

-It definitely does. -I talk about it.

I get support from all of you ladies.

[woman] The insurance companies run that,

and the thing is it saved her.

All because of this education.

And it didn't matter that I'm in the field

and that I do this.

♪

[Brittany] Addiction is a son of a bitch.

And I need to stop the cycle now

because I don't want my kids looking in a casket.

♪

-[person on phone] Hello. -Hi, children.

-[child] Mommy! -What's going on?

-I'm freaking starving, like... -Me and you are hungry.

♪

[John] These are like all the people that died recently.

Doug, John, Kavee, Nick Washburn,

Lauren, JP, Zane, Sarah, Joey, Chico.

Yep.

♪

-Hey. -Good morning.

-Good morning. -How are you?

-Pretty good. -What's your number?

2366.

All right, then. See you tomorrow.

Have a good one. I'll see you tomorrow.

-It might be better... -Yeah.

♪

At this point, Judge, I'm just surrendering.

I thought I was out there living,

and I mean I was just dying.

I believe in you.

But you gotta believe in yourself and do it.

-Yay! -Oh!

♪

As a result, in January of this year

the sheriff's office formed a multidiscipline effort

called the Heroin Overdose Prevention

and Education Task Force, or HOPE.

The initiative includes a team of cross-trained narcotics

and homicide investigators with the primary goal

of prosecution for the source of supply

for overdose cases... [voice fades out]

♪

[Spanish]

[indistinct radio chatter]

-[bell tolls] -[singing in Spanish]

♪

♪