Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

Show Notes

Company Website: https://verichemtech.com

On LinkedIn: Jay Letendre, CEO & Co-founder at VeriChem

Transcript

My guest today is Jay Letendre.

Jay is the CEO and co-founder at VeriChem, a company developing forensic detection technology that can help law enforcement to identify narcotics and detect the presence of illicit drugs.

I reached out to Jay when I was looking for a guest to talk about fentanyl and how fake prescription drugs based with fentanyl can kill those who unknowingly take them.

His company's products include those with next generation fentanyl detection technology.

VeriChem appears to be developing products that may detect fake pills that contain fentanyl as well as other illicit drugs.

Please note the show is not intended to give medical advice.

If you're having an emergency, call 911.

If you was someone who is unresponsive or not breathing, call 911.

Welcome to my show, Jay.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Great to be here.

So before we talk about your solutions and what your company is developing, I have a friend who found their daughter dead in her bedroom asleep.

She had taken a Xantex pill given to her by her boyfriend.

Xantex, for those not familiar with it, is a prescription, normally a prescription drug for anxiety and panic disorders.

The pill she took was fake, not from a pharmacy, not used in a prescription, and unknowingly to them, it had been laced with fentanyl, a drug that can cause overdose in even the smallest amounts.

So Jay, for those who were not familiar with this drug, fentanyl, and how it gets into fake prescription pills, tell them what fentanyl is.

So fentanyl is a pharmaceutical pain reliever.

You can think of it as almost like a morphine equivalent that, for all intents and purposes, when it was developed, has a good side to it.

When it's used under proper medical supervision, it's a very good pain reliever for people that have very, I would say, intense pain as they're going through either cancer treatments or as they're going through any major medical issue.

The problem, much like with morphine, is that it can get the hands of bad actors, and that's what's happened with fentanyl.

So fentanyl is what we would call a synthetic opioid, meaning that it is developed essentially in the lab, using different components together to create this very potent pain reliever.

And as you said, it's extremely lethal when in the hands of the wrong people.

And in this case, it being entered into the drug supply has really caused a huge issue in not only in the detection of it, but it's also obviously impacting lives as the example that you gave.

So just to kind of sum up, fentanyl has been around for a long time.

It was, it's predominantly used in the in the medical field.

Again, under strict supervision, it can be a very useful substance.

And so the bad guys, it can be a very lethal substance.

I did, I read about it in terms of the morphine.

It's so potent, it's basically used like end of life.

Like if you're dying from cancer or something like that, it's not intended to be a casual medication, right?

Correct.

And so how did it get in?

Do you know how it got into, with the good intentions?

I read about some of the Mexican drug cartels, still being responsible for a lot of the fentanyl fake drugs that are laced with fentanyl.

Why though?

Why would from the cartel people are getting killed?

Why wouldn't I stop?

How did this get to be such a serious problem?

So let's, and I don't mean to kind of dumb down the seriousness of it, but if you put on a business hat and you're, right, they're in business to make money.

And when you take a look at even a regular business, right, you have margins in your products.

So what it costs you to make, what you can sell it for, and then what the profit is.

So what's happening with fentanyl and all of these synthetic opioids, whether it be netazines or carfentanol or any of these synthetic opioids, the reason why they started being added to the drug supply is really just to increase margins.

So when you take a look at, let's take a look at heroin, for example, right?

Heroin is a very expensive narcotic, right?

It's grown in Afghanistan from the opium and the poppy plants.

Then it has to get manufactured into heroin.

Then you have to take that heroin, and you have to ship it to Mexico, and then from there, you know, they are cutting agents, and then so on and so forth, right?

So your margins tend to shrink with these narcotics using pursers that you can get out on the legal market.

So what you can essentially do is that you can increase your profit margin by using less of that heroin and then offsetting the heroin that you've removed and adding fentanyl, which will give you that heroin-like effect.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Right.

And because you're basically synthesizing it or manufacturing it, you don't have the limitations that an organic narcotic like cocaine or heroin has, right?

You've got to grow it, massive infrastructures, all of that.

But fentanyl can be made in the lab.

So if you have a smart enough, you can purchase precursors either from China or from India.

You can have it shipped to Mexico.

Mexico then takes those precursors, creates fentanyl, and then adds it to the drug supply.

So you're using less heroin, more fentanyl, right?

And other adulterants and additives.

So that way, as someone that's using it, you want to be able to give your customers that experience of that heroin, but not having it cost so much as a manufacturer.

So in terms of she was supposed to be taking a Xantex, why lace the Xantex though?

Xantex normally doesn't have heroin in it, right?

A prescription Xantex?

So the Xantexes and all of these other prescription pills, there's just another untapped market for the cartels, right?

So again, I don't believe that their intention is to kill their customer.

That's a terribly bad business decision.

No matter what business you're in, you don't want to kill your customer.

So I think what happened is, and I'll kind of answer your question in a second, you're starting to see, first of all, that the opioid deaths are coming down, which is fantastic.

I think if you talk to any real expert in the field, they can't really pinpoint why these overdose deaths are coming down to one actionable action that's being taken either on law enforcement or on the user side.

I think what's happened is that the cartels have figured out how to fine-tune fentanyl in that they still get all the advantage of having a synthetic opioid in there, which keeps their margins up, but they fine-tune it in a way where now they're not really killing people.

They found the right formula for it, where it still gives that high, which keeps people coming back, but it's not killing folks.

On the other side of that, you've had this proactive push of NARCAM into the field, which is reversing opioid deaths.

And then of course, you have the law enforcement side of things where they're really capturing a lot at the borders, which is again, fantastic.

So the deaths are coming down.

I think the, you know, one reason I'm, oh, by the way, for people listening, it's not just Xantex, it's Percocets and Oxycodone and it can be some other drugs.

What comes to mind though is almost as if people are going and getting the fake pills instead of the real ones because they want the extra heroin or fentanyl or that kind of...

I think they just don't know.

I think they just don't know, right?

I mean, I think case in point is, you know, we have, you know, some, you know, some friends of friends whose daughter, 14-year-old, thought she was taking a Tylenol, a Tylenol, a white Tylenol, and it wasn't.

It was obviously laced with fentanyl and obviously was overdosed from that.

I think, again, you have to take a look at the business side of things.

And there's a massive market for selling, whether it be Xanax, OxyContin, any of those painkillers, but they're also finding it in Adderall.

They're finding it in some of those other upper type pills as well.

It's big business in selling prescription narcotics because you can't get those drugs without a prescription.

And after the days of the big OxyContin problems and the big Purdue lawsuits, you can't just go to your doctor like you could 10 or 15 years ago and say, hey, I'm having this really, really bad pain.

How was it Purdue those lawsuits?

I don't recall those.

So I believe it was Purdue that was the group that manufactured all of the OxyCodones and some of these major opioids that their intention was basically to get people hooked on these drugs.

Therefore, they could increase their profit margins and make more money.

So, there's some major lawsuits that have just come to pass where, you know, now these groups, these big pharma have to pay because of really, they didn't really have above board business practices.

They were paying doctors to prescribe as much as possible.

And Florida, where we are, it was a massive, you had pill mills, you had a massive influx of people that were being prescribed these opioids, and that was kind of the initial phase of this opioid epidemic that we're in now, right?

So, fentanyl wasn't necessarily in that mix yet.

But, you know, again, what happens is, is that when opioids started to really go under, you know, the microscope, if you're a business, you start looking for other profit centers, and that's where they started looking at these synthetic opioids.

So, again, when you look at prescription pills as a whole, that's a whole different massive market, as opposed to cannabis market.

Then you have your powdered substances, right?

Your illicit narcotics, such as cocaine and heroin, methamphetamine.

Then you have your prescriptions, which are gonna be your prescription opioids, oxycodone, Xanax, Adderall, all of these things that, basically, as Americans, we've all been kind of addicted to, right?

And rely on.

So huge, massive market.

And rather than trying to figure out a way to get the legal stuff and sell it illegally, why not just manufacture your own Xanax that looks the same, that again, gives you maybe that same high or that same, maybe even a little bit of a higher high?

By incorporating synthetic opioids, you don't have to, you can compensate by not having that real patented pharmaceutical formula that gives you that and replace that with a synthetic opioid.

So let's talk about solutions and clearly never take a pill that wasn't prescribed to you directly and that you didn't get from the pharmacy yourself.

How did the person you mentioned that had the Tylenol, how do you get a fake Tylenol?

You know, I think, you know, as a 14-year-old kid, you get the story was that she got that from a friend.

How that friend got it, we don't know.

It could have been as simple as maybe their parents thought they were getting some legal over-the-counter drugs.

Maybe they thought it was a Xanax, maybe they thought it was a different kind of pill, but it looked like a Tylenol.

Then that kid sees it on his desk.

This is like when I was a kid, it was don't take drugs.

Now it's like soup, don't take drugs, and don't take prescription pills unless they're yours.

The double safety on the be careful where you...

Well, you shouldn't be taking any drugs.

Tylenol, of course, is valid.

Ibuprofen, you know, if you're on the track team or the football team.

Sure, and that's really the scariest part about all of this, right?

Is that, you know, again, I don't think we're all angels here.

We've all, you know, have past experiences, whether they be in college or high school.

Back then, it was a risk, but it was somewhat of a negligible risk.

Now you can't even risk it, right?

You can't even trust that the substance or the pill that you're getting is what it is.

So the recommendation is now you just can't do anything.

And even if you know the source, it's not a very good idea to be putting any kind of pills or powders in your body in this day and age, just because of the dangers, not only of fentanyl, but all of the other different synthetic opioids that are entering into the drug supply.

It's just not, you just can't experiment anymore.

This isn't the 1970s, it's not the 1980s.

A little bit of fentanyl, as much as a pencil tip, it's lethal.

A grain of salt is what I read, a grain of salt.

Yeah.

And the scary thing is that you have these other analogues of fentanyl, which are, think of them as like step children, where they take that formula, then they modify it even more.

And now you have this danger called carfentanyl.

Carfentanyl is a hundred times more dangerous and lethal than fentanyl, and it's even less of an amount that's needed or required to kill you.

So if you think about how difficult it is to find fentanyl, now you have to magnify that.

You have to go even granular to find carfentanyl.

And some of these synthetic opioids that they're coming out with and adding to the drug supply don't react to Narcan.

So right now, there's somewhat of this false.

So this was part of the solutions that I was going to ask you about that I don't see as real solutions.

They're test strips, kind of pregnancy test strips you can use to see if something has fentanyl.

But as you mentioned, there's other opiates besides fentanyl.

And then there's the Narcan, which you just mentioned, which is if you have an overdose, you take it, but fentanyl can last longer in your bloodstream.

And it's hard to find a solution that way, right?

Yeah.

So Narcan has been proven to show, to reverse the effects of fentanyl overdosing, which again is great.

But that's just like you said, that's just fentanyl, right?

So they've also instituted a lot of these fentanyl test strips that are great for testing fentanyl, but they don't test for other things.

So as the drug supply line is dynamic, it's not static.

Like anybody else, these drug manufacturers are looking to always one up themselves over law enforcement.

So fentanyl, listen, I think all of these things are fantastic, and it's a great way, obviously, to help reduce the number of deaths.

But Narcan only works with fentanyl and some other opioid overdoses.

So Narcan, again, is something you would take if you thought you had an overdose.

It's like the antidote, right?

Yep.

But there are some other substances that, if you have carfentanol or there's another substance that's being added called BTMPS, which is an industrial chemical that's used in the manufacturing of plastics to help prevent UV-fading, and now they're adding that into the drug supply.

That, along with xylazine and some of these other netazines, don't react to Narcan.

So if you get overdose on one of those substances, Narcan is not going to bring you back.

So your products or your company, which I want to get to now, it almost seems like you're the type of work you do to detect illicit drugs and fentanyl.

The way you described them, how they continuously come up with new ways to modify the drug.

It sounds to me like you're the security on Google or my computer.

Do you keep needing to update the security system?

Yeah.

So our solution is very novel.

So a little background.

We, the device and the technology was developed out of Harvard University, out of George Whitesides' lab.

George Whitesides is one of the most well-renowned and recognized chemists across the globe.

It utilizes what they call magnetic levitation.

And most people think of high-speed trains when we mention that.

But the best way to think of it is we utilize two magnets.

We don't have any power or any computer chips.

So we have two magnets.

And this is what the device looks like.

It's very simple.

You have two magnets right here.

And then we have a patented fluid that when you add a powdered substance to it, or a powdered mixture, like a street drug mixture that you would get from a drug dealer on the side of the road, when you put it into our fluid and put it between the two magnets, it starts to reverse engineer that mixture.

So basically, it takes that mixture and simplifies it to its original components.

So if that mixture had four ingredients, you would see four density clouds of those powders.

So from there, what we can do is we can then identify utilizing third-party tools, such as either color tests or these portable Raman devices, and we can get close to 99.9% accuracy out of those tests because we've reduced that mixture to its individual components.

So what's happening now with detection is that fentanyl is added at such a very low concentration that these tools, which have been around for 40 years, can't find them.

So if you have fentanyl, which is added to the drug supply less than 5% and these tools can't find any substances that don't have a concentration below 10%, you're never going to find them.

So what we've positioned our device as is think of it as like a magnifying glass for drugs.

There is nothing in that mixture that can hide from us once we've reversed engineered it.

It'll be like you're baking a cookie and you can't see it's got chocolate chips in it.

So you put it in this magnetic centrifuge type thing and it separates stuff.

There's some chocolate chips.

There's your flour, there's your sugar, and it reverse engineers that cookie into its individual components.

Same can be said with pills.

You take that pill, you crush it up, and then you put it in our device and it would tell you what all those different components are.

Now, from our perspective, we're focusing on law enforcement and forensic labs.

We don't have any plans right now to take a look at the consumer side of things just because we are our startup and there's quite honestly a lot of liability associated with that.

But we believe that we can effectively help law enforcement and forensic labs find the undetectable in street drugs, that current solutions and technology just have a very difficult time finding.

Long-term though, I could see the consumer.

I can also see being a startup, being an engineer, so I know it takes a while to get the first rocket to launch.

So you don't want to try it with consumers.

You'll learn more working with law enforcement, this detected it, that didn't because you're going to have more experience with the drugs.

But I can see though, my brother is an electrical engineer, he works with sensors.

So the other part of the cost, it sounds like, is the equipment after you separate the cookie and the flour and chocolate chips.

The equipment that actually tells you it's flour and chocolate chips is another expense, right?

Correct.

But if you could down the road, you know what kind of a...

you could shrink the equipment down to the sensors that only need to detect flour and chocolate chips and so forth.

It has a promising future.

We have a pretty robust road map that incorporates components of that.

You know, we are, you know, in a rather...

we have a very unique position in that.

Again, once we've reduced it down and simplified it and concentrated all of those different components, there's a few different ways you can do detection, right?

So on the surface of it, the maglev itself, based on density, can, for all intents and purposes, identify what that substance is.

For example, we know, because we've done tests at a DEA lab using the maglev and real street samples, we know what the density of fentanyl is.

So in theory, from a presumptive perspective, law enforcement could take a look at those separations and say, and we could tell them, hey, if you see a clatter of substance floating right here, chances are that it's methamphetamine or it's fentanyl based on the density of that chemical.

Now, we also know that law enforcement has also invested heavily in a lot of these technologies.

And coming from the tech side of things, we know that organizations don't like to replace massive expenses that they've already sunk money into.

And that's why what we're saying initially is, keep your portable laser devices and even your color tests.

We can make them better.

So we can reduce the amount of errors, we can increase the accuracy, all with a very low cost, simple, easy to use solution that can be included in your identification workflows without you having to invest another, you know, 10, 15, 20, 30.

I mean, you're talking about a device that's less than $2,000.

So what's the difference between on your website?

We've been talking about the Maglev lab device, and there's also a Maglev field and a Maglevel ID.

Yeah.

So we, as I said, we have on our tech roadmap and actually are working on, right now, this particular device, think of it as almost like your desktop computer.

So your desktop computer, in theory, you could use it out in the field, you could bring extension cords out there, you could set it up and you could use it, but it's not very conducive to that environment.

So what we've been doing is we've been taking this technology, the Maglev technology, and putting it into a form factor that's more conducive for use in, say, a cop car.

So same technology, just a different design, more conducive for law enforcement in the field.

So that's the field device.

As far as the identification goes, without giving too much away, we are looking at incorporating identification technologies into our device, where not only will the separation occur, but also that identification all in one device.

So law enforcement won't have to rely on color tests and portable laser devices.

What is a typical law enforcement application like in the field look like?

Because part of my various jobs that I've done, I've been environmental testing, and I used to get calls to do, because I'm kind of environmental chemistry expert, a forensic guy myself, to see if a house or a building had been used to make methamphetamine.

Sure.

At first, I'm like, okay, I'm your guy because I'm an engineer, and you tell me what you're looking for, and what kind of chemicals.

And then I said no, because they're cutting corners.

It's like impossible to really, really, really test even a single building, a single site for every conceivable ingredient you could use to make methamphetamine.

I'm going to miss one.

So I said no, because of liability.

Give me like a typical, because I'm wondering just how robust the existing system is.

As you said, they don't want to change it.

So tell me what they do.

Yeah, so law enforcement basically utilizes two different kinds of technology to identify narcotics.

They use what are called wet chemistry tests or these NIC-2 color tests that have been around, you know, over 50 years, where basically you have a little plastic baggie, and inside of it, you have these two glass tubes that have what they call reagents in them, and those contain chemicals.

When you add a suspected powdered substance into that baggie, and then break the two glass test tubes and shake it, that reagent reacts with the powder added and changes of color.

And then you use a color chart, and if it says, okay, it's blue, then it's positive for cocaine.

If it's pink, it's positive for fentanyl.

The problem with color tests is that each...

It's like the methamphetamine test that I would...

I was like, no, I'm going to pass, because they were doing the same thing, but it's only looking for amphetamine.

And that's not like everything...

That's not all the toxic stuff in it.

So think of this.

If I'm a patrol officer, right, and I pull you over, Daniel, and I have to proactively think of, okay, is this guy on meth?

Is he on cocaine?

Is he on heroin?

Because there's up to 27 different kinds of color tests that I have to pick the right one.

If I don't pick the right one, it's going to come back as a false positive or negative, move on to the next one.

They do have a test that they call the Marquis test that you do initially if you have no idea what the substance is, and it's supposed to tell you, okay, this is an opioid, use an opioid test.

Well, the problem is that, for instance, with the cocaine test, and there was a study that was done by the University of Pennsylvania, it was a two-year study, the cocaine test not only tests positive for cocaine, tests positive for up to 80 legal substances.

So if you have prenatal vitamins, your mother, you get pulled over or you have pre-workout stuff, and it just happens to test positive in that cocaine test, you're getting buttoned up and you're getting taken to jail.

And then they're going to take that substance and send it to a lab.

And right now, there's such a tremendous backlog, you could be sitting in jail for up to three months until it comes back with a positive or a negative.

So those are the color tests.

The second part that they use is they use these portable, what we call laser devices, portable ramen, FTIR, again, been around for 50, 60 years.

And what they do is they shoot a laser into this powdered substance, and then it comes back with what they call a spectra, which is a...

It's like a rainbow, like a rainbow of colors, depending on the ingredients, right?

Yep.

And then law enforcement has to try to figure out and remove the spectra that they don't need and try to find the narcotic.

Very expensive, you're talking about anywhere $50,000 to $100,000 for these devices.

You have to go through training.

They require subscription agreement.

And the problem is, is that most law enforcement departments, again, you have to take the major metropolitan cities out of the mix, right?

So New York, LA, they have big budgets.

And it's kind of an end.

It's almost like an engineering piece of equipment.

And it also doesn't tell you what exact drug it is, I'm guessing, but it tells you the chemistry, like the types of oxygen, hydrogen, whatever, at least the fears that I've seen.

They're not black and white, like this is it or this is not it.

They're very complicated, right?

And then if you're a small police department, right?

And you have a very small budget, and one of these devices costs $100,000, if you're the police chief, you have to ask yourself, okay, do I buy one of these devices or do I buy two cop cars?

So, most of the time, they don't have that.

So then they're reduced to either using color tests or because of this whole fentanyl problem, some law enforcement isn't doing field testing at all.

So they come across a powder, they zip it up, they package it up, and they send it to a lab.

So long-term solution would be what you're speaking of.

I don't want to ask you too much because it's your intellectual property and your startup.

Ultimately, you would somehow integrate your MAG device with the sensor technology, the other technology that you're developing to make it easier and smaller and convenient and cheaper.

Right.

So think of it this way.

If we can bring the lab and have a very simple, easy-to-use device that law enforcement in the field, not super chemists or someone with an electrical engineering degree, can very simply add a substance, separate it, and then make that identification all within minutes in an affordable package.

Think about what that would do.

Think about all of the bad stuff that you'd be able to get off the streets.

And again, these devices are, when you see the DDA.

I think of not just getting the bad guys off the street, but as you mentioned, the mothers on prenatal pills, keeping them out of jail.

I mean, my gosh, which one would pick your bet pick?

Pick which one's more important, I guess.

They're both good causes.

So, I mean, when you see...

So these laser devices are fantastic with highly concentrated substances.

So you'll see pictures on social media and on the news where they have a table, and it's got big kilos of fentanyl, and they're like, we just busted pounds.

Those tools are really great at finding that because it's pure fentanyl.

But you're not going to have that on the streets of LA., right?

You're going to have little tiny gram bags.

And so while it's great that we're getting the big bulk fentanyl off of the streets, you still have to worry about all of those little tiny gram bags that are more realistic, that it's more realistic law enforcement is going to come across.

And the ones that could kill your child.

Correct, yeah.

So that's where we believe we have the most value, in that there isn't an ingredient in a mixture that can hide from our particular device.

If it's in there, we'll find it.

Right.

Is there anything that I haven't asked you, we haven't talked about that you'd like to add, Jay?

No, I just, like I said, we're just another tool in the toolkit.

There is no silver bullet for law enforcement or even for federal agencies when it comes to finding fentanyl in these.

It's a tough job.

My hat's off to them.

It's a tough job.

And every law enforcement district is different.

Every state is different.

Every region is different.

Every cop is different in the way they handle this stuff.

So again, from our perspective, we just want to arm law enforcement that's going to keep them safe.

That's going to be able to identify all of the stuff that's killing not only our kids, but our fellow citizens.

I mean, again, you're looking at over a quarter of a million of Americans have died from fentanyl.

To me, that's inexcusable.

I used to see the billboards and I used to wonder, what is this fentanyl?

I used to, it just says fentanyl and drugs and I didn't get it until now.

Yeah, it's, and unfortunately, it's just the beginning.

I mean, synthetic opioids, the ease of making synthetic opioids added to obviously the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the ability of artificial intelligence to essentially assist and aid in the development of these narcotics.

I think you'll start to see that, you know, fentanyl was just really the tip of the iceberg.

And we should learn from it.

We should learn, okay, what worked, what didn't work, and how can we be prepared for the next crisis, which unfortunately, that's just the way things work, right?

You get over one thing, there's going to be another way to come to stuff.

Like I say, your product or your technology is like the security system on your phone, or your computer, or Google.

You have to keep up with it, keep updating it.

Yeah, and that's the other great thing about our solution is that because we don't use chemical reagents, and we don't rely on software, if it's a water-soluble powder, we can reverse engineer it.

Whether it be fentanyl today, carfentanil tomorrow, netizines next week, we can reverse engineer it, and we can find it.

Yeah, because once you have that platform, the basic tool, then it's just adding stuff on to it.

That's correct.

Yep.

If you work at a forensic lab or in law enforcement, and you're interested in learning more about this, Jay's company's website, VeriChem, is V-E-R-I-C-H-E-M-TEC, T-E-C-H, verichemtech.com.

The details will be in the show notes.

Jay, thanks so much for being on my show.

Awesome.

Thanks for having me.

It was great.

Have a great day.