Morning Wire XX
[0] More than 20 people were killed and thousands displaced after several powerful tornadoes tore through parts of Mississippi over the weekend.
[1] My community is gone.
[2] We break down the damage done across the state and the recovery effort underway.
[3] I'm Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[4] It's Monday, March 27th, and this is Morning Wire.
[5] The widely prescribed ADHD drug Adderall has been in short supply since last year and both patients and doctors are demanding answers as to why.
[6] Demand has definitely increased, and supplies just can't meet demands.
[7] With competing theories about the drug going viral online, we discuss what appears to be causing the shortage.
[8] And court records reveal the extent of the international fentanyl trade and its staggering death toll among Americans.
[9] Where is the fentanyl coming from, and what's being done to address the crisis?
[10] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[11] Stay tuned.
[12] We have the news you need to know.
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[20] A federal emergency has been declared in Mississippi after a series of powerful storms and tornadoes ripped through the region over the weekend, killing at least 26 people and leaving thousands displaced.
[21] Now, rescue workers continue to sift through the debris and search for survivors.
[22] Here with more on the disaster as Daily Wire's senior editor Cabot Phillips, cabot a terrifying weekend for people across the southeast.
[23] What can you tell us?
[24] Well, on Friday night, a supercell storm system rolled through the southeast, producing severe weather across the region as at least 10 confirmed tornadoes touchdown in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee on Friday night alone.
[25] And then on Sunday, another system rolled through producing tornadoes in Georgia, prompting a declaration of emergency from the state's governor, Brian Kemp.
[26] And while each of those tornadoes produced serious damage, one in particular brought the most destruction, staying on the ground for more than an hour and traversing 170 miles.
[27] Well, just really horrifying to think about what kind of damage did that tornado do?
[28] So, according to the National Weather Service, they believe this was an EF4 tornado, meaning that winds reached up to 200 miles per hour.
[29] Residents in the path of the storm said that even though it was dark, they knew it was coming directly at them based on the transformers they could see exploding in the distance and the sound, which many described is that of a freight train.
[30] At one point, Matt Laupont, the meteorologist at the local station WTVA, began preying on air when a new projection came in on live TV, that showed the tornado heading right for the town of Amory.
[31] Listen as he realizes where it's heading.
[32] We got a new scan coming in here as we speak.
[33] Oh, man. Like north side of Amory, this is coming in.
[34] Oh, man. Dear Jesus, please help them.
[35] Amen.
[36] Intense moment there.
[37] While a number of towns were hit hard, it was Rolling Fork, Mississippi that experienced the most damage.
[38] What did we see there?
[39] Yeah, when the sun came up Saturday morning, Rolling Fork, which has a population just under 2000 had been wiped almost entirely off the map, and that is not an exaggeration.
[40] Here's Congressman Benny Thompson on CNN describing just how widespread the damage is.
[41] The police department is destroyed.
[42] City Hall is destroyed.
[43] The county courthouse is damaged.
[44] The fire departments are devastated.
[45] There's no grocery store that's operable in the community.
[46] So there are a lot of things that are having to be put in place just for people to be able to get back.
[47] Now, survivors in town with nowhere to go say they broke into a John Deere store in the middle of the night and set up a sort of triage center to treat the injured and await relief.
[48] But when help finally did come, victims could not go to the town's only hospital because it too had been severely damaged.
[49] That meant the injured had to be transported more than 50 miles to the closest functioning hospital.
[50] So it's going to be a monumental task to rebuild the town's infrastructure.
[51] And that's where the federal emergency declaration comes in.
[52] Exactly.
[53] On Sunday morning, the White House issued a disaster declaration from Mississippi, which is important because it opens up federal funding for those hit the hardest.
[54] D .A .J. Secretary Alejandro Maruarkas was on the ground Sunday with FEMA head D .N. Chriswell to assess the damage and gauge the federal response.
[55] Chriswell said FEMA agents would be going door to door throughout the region to help residents apply for federal aid, which will help cover medical costs, temporary housing, and emergency home repairs.
[56] And many victims will also be eligible for low -interest loans to help cover damage on uninsured property losses.
[57] Well, a long road ahead in rebuilding, it sounds like.
[58] Cabot, thanks for reporting.
[59] Anytime.
[60] That's Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[61] Coming up, supply shortages of Adderall spark questions and controversy.
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[71] The drug Adderall has been in short supply since August, and patients and doctors are left wondering why.
[72] Pharmaceutical companies and federal regulators can't decide on who's to blame.
[73] Meanwhile, medical conspiracies about the drug have rocketed around the internet.
[74] Here with the details is Daily Wire Reporter Tim Pierce.
[75] So, Tim, first off, what is Adderall and how many Americans are taking it?
[76] Adderall is a stimulant drug containing amphetamine that is most commonly prescribed to treat attention deficit disorder and sometimes narcolepsy, but it has other off -label uses, too.
[77] It's also extremely popular on the black marketing can be highly addictive.
[78] For that reason, it's what's called a Schedule II drug, which means it's tightly regulated.
[79] It's one of the most prescribed drugs in the U .S., as there were more than 40 million and prescriptions written in 2021, so it is incredibly popular.
[80] But for the past six months, there has been a significant shortage, leading to some strange conspiracies online.
[81] TikTok videos related to the shortage that claim ADHD meds aren't working like they used to have been viewed millions of times.
[82] Here's an example from one video that has over half a million views.
[83] My Adderall is not working.
[84] I got a new script about a week ago -ish, and the pills look a little bit different.
[85] The name, actually, is not the exact.
[86] exact same as my last one, which they normally are the same name.
[87] It says Adderall 20XR, whatever it is.
[88] Now it says something salts.
[89] Some claim circulating online say that Adderall medication is being replaced by sugar pills or some other placebo.
[90] Now, is there any reason to believe that the product people are getting is actually different now?
[91] There's no evidence that pharmaceutical companies have tampered with a product in any way, but patients could have issues with their medication for a variety of reasons.
[92] For example, if one drug manufacturer is out of its version of Adderall, doctors might switch to prescribing a different brand, and depending on the formulation, that could have slight impacts on the drug's effectiveness.
[93] And because of the conspiracy theory circulating on social media, there could be a cognitive bias component to this as well.
[94] That is, people hear these claims about Adderall not working, and they're more likely to think there's a problem with their own prescription.
[95] But there really is a shortage.
[96] So what do we know about the reason for that?
[97] One reason is increased demand.
[98] Here's Dr. Stacey Dumas, a psychiatrist at Hackensack Meridian Health, explaining some of that.
[99] There's increased demand for the stimulant medications.
[100] That happened during the COVID pandemic.
[101] And it also became easier to get prescription medications because of the introduction of telemediciatry.
[102] According to the health research firm IQVIA, prescriptions for Adderall increased 16 % from about 36 million in 2019 to over 41 million in 2021 in the United States.
[103] And that new demand is one theory as to why it's now in short supply, but there's active debate about that.
[104] In a nutshell, the drug companies say that they are facing red tape from the DEA, but the agency is denying that.
[105] The DEA says that pharma companies ended last year with a surplus of 35 ,000 kilograms of Adderall's raw ingredient amphetamine on hand.
[106] So they say it doesn't make sense for there to be a shortage.
[107] Okay, so there is theoretically a surplus of the precursor chemical, but patients are experiencing a shortage.
[108] So what's the explanation for that?
[109] Well, again, it depends who you ask.
[110] What we do know is that for 2023, the DEA set a quota on Adderall in its substitutes of about 43 ,000 kilograms, well over the estimated demand of 38 ,000 kilograms.
[111] So theoretically, drug companies shouldn't have a problem supplying that amount of outerall, but the companies claim they aren't being allowed to.
[112] The DEA is responsible for divvying up that quota amongst the drug manufacturers, and companies say the DEA isn't allocating the full quota to manufacturers.
[113] They say the agency is turning down requests from companies to make more, and that's what's causing the bottleneck.
[114] The DEA, on the other hand, has said it has no record of ever turning down a request.
[115] So it's a mystery.
[116] Well, the most concerning thing that jumped out to me was the 16 % jump in prescriptions.
[117] Tim, thanks for reporting.
[118] Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
[119] A series of court cases and detention hearings have given the most comprehensive view to date of the international fentanyl trade that has led to the deaths of thousands of Americans.
[120] Here to give us a closer look as Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presses Giacomo.
[121] Hey Amanda.
[122] So first, what are these court cases about?
[123] Hey, John.
[124] So there are two major court cases.
[125] One involves a Texas man who fled Mexico a few years ago.
[126] According to an indictment, Rafael Galindo Gallegos, originally from Plano, oversaw the importation of illegal drugs into the U .S. for Mexico's most notorious gang, the Sinaloa Cartel.
[127] The other court case involves the top executive of a Chinese company that is suspected of trafficking fentanyl powder to Mexico where it's sold to gangs.
[128] The gangs then make it into pills and traffic it into the United States, usually over the southern border.
[129] Yeah, tell us more about that, how the drugs make it into the U .S. and what's China's role in the process?
[130] Yeah, China's role here is really big.
[131] What the country is doing is sending what's called precursor fentanyl chemicals to Mexico.
[132] I spoke to Dr. Pablo Calderon Martinez, author and assistant professor of politics and international relations at Northeastern University London.
[133] Here's what he said about the supply chain of fentanyl.
[134] A lot of the supplies and chemical supplies and sort of the raw materials that you need to create a fentanyl come from China and they enter from China to Mexico.
[135] And then fentanyl is prepared in Mexico in clandestine labs and then is moved from Mexico and from other parts in Latin America to the United States.
[136] That's more or less the supply chain.
[137] All right, so these cartels are making their own illicit fentanyl with these chemicals from China, and this is totally unsafe.
[138] Absolutely.
[139] The special agent in charge of the Dallas CEA office, Eduardo Chavez, recently spoke to the Dallas Morning News and basically said these cartels' version of quality control is to monitor the overdose deaths in the U .S. Too many overdose and they'll dial back the formula.
[140] Chavez said the U .S. has become, quote, real -life research for the cartel.
[141] when it comes to trying to tweak their formula.
[142] The cartel pushing the most fentanyl is the Sinaloa cartel.
[143] They have hubs all across the United States.
[144] The other major cartel is called Halisco New Generation.
[145] They're looking for more control over the border and in cities across the U .S. to challenge the Sinaloa cartel.
[146] Illicit fentanyl has enormous profit, unfortunately.
[147] Just how much fentanyl is making its way across our border?
[148] Well, we don't have numbers on the amount of fentanyl successfully smuggled across the border, but seizures of the drug have exploded in recent years.
[149] In 2022, U .S. Customs and Border Protection seized nearly 15 ,000 pounds of the drug, which is enough to kill literally billions of people.
[150] On that note, we do have some hard data on the drug's impact on Americans.
[151] Deaths from fentanyl had just skyrocketed over the past two decades.
[152] Back in 2000, there were fewer than 800 synthetic opioid -related deaths in the U .S., mainly by fentanyl.
[153] But by 2021, about 80 ,000 Americans died from synthetic opioid overdoses, about 90 % of which were caused by fentanyl.
[154] So what are lawmakers doing right now to address this crisis?
[155] We reported pretty extensively here about the border security issues and that partisan divide.
[156] But what's getting more attention right now, at least on the right, is how to address China's role in the epidemic.
[157] Just last week, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institution, held a hearing on how the CCP is, quote, fueling the fentanyl crisis.
[158] Here's Professor National Security expert, Selina Rialio, at the hearing.
[159] The Chinese serve as key enablers of the Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
[160] They profit at the front end of the business cycle, purveying fentanyl and precursor chemicals, and at the back end, by laundering the millions of dollars generated by the Mexican cartels in the U .S. Well, let's hope we get some solutions here and soon.
[161] Amanda, thanks for reporting.
[162] That was Daily Wire reporter, Amanda Press, Jacques.
[163] Another story we're tracking this week.
[164] Former President Donald Trump held his first rally of his 2024 campaign in Waco, Texas this past weekend.
[165] This comes as the former president is facing a potential indictment for a hush money payment he allegedly made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
[166] The former president made the following remarks about the case.
[167] Prosecutorial misconduct is their new tool and they are willing to use it at levels never seen before in our country.
[168] We've had it, but we've never had it like this.
[169] The grand jury hearing the case is expected to meet again today.
[170] Well, that's all the time we've got this morning.
[171] Thanks for waking up with us.
[172] We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
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