Name: How Politicians and Profit Made America's Opioid Epidemic Even Worse
Uploaded: 2025-07-15T14:00:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Politicians and Profit Made America's Opioid Epidemic Even Worse' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Politicians and Profit Made America's Opioid Epidemic Even Worse' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-15. Transcript available.

let's talk about ibogaine and what it is because that's kind of your specialty
is that fair to say
that's fair to say okay so by pure accident by the way not by design or
ambition you just ended
up just ibogaine yes sir okay well look hold on now were you like an after-school
user or what
happened really well i came to it in the same way that most people come to it
and it was through
desperation i practiced law in kentucky for 16 years and then went into state
government service
i ran the state social security disability system and some other things and
after being in place for
about six years there were some folks who said you know he kind of does a
decent job with some things
and we'd want him maybe to run the state's opioid commission and kentucky like
a lot of appalachian
states it's been ground zero for the opioid epidemic that began with oxycontin
being introduced back in
the late 90s so all these opioid manufacturers and distributors had settled
with a bunch of
states and paid them money for all the damage caused by the opioid epidemic so
when it came time for
kentucky to get its money they had to set up an agency to administer and
oversee it and they called
it the kentucky opioid abatement advisory commission so a guy by the name of
barry dunn who was deputy
attorney general at the time under my boss daniel cameron came to me and said
hey the legislature has set
up this opioid commission is this something you'd be interested in running if
you know i think you
probably know being a southerner that as much as we love home and the society
at home sometimes the
governments have not always function the way they're supposed to you know boss
hogg and the dukes of
hazard was a was an illustration of some of that old-timey way of doing
business where everybody who's a
working person gets their bones picked clean by the people who are in power
amen always so when
barry said hey would you be interested in doing this job i said barry this is a
very treacherous
opportunity because we've got some aristocratic power structures here in kentucky
that are used to
having their way with anything that involves the dollar bill if y'all are
willing to allow me to run the
commission so that it is accessible to the every average average everyday kentuckian
that grassroots
organizations that ain't used to getting these sorts of opportunities can be
resourced and that we do
it in a way that is accountable and transparent i'll be interested in the job
but i don't want to take
it if the expectation is just going to be to hand the money over to the usual vultures
amen and he said
we'll back you a hundred percent i said all right so i went through an
interview process and in the
interview process i was asked what do we need to do with this money i said well
let's put the big
picture in context here we're getting 842 million dollars now that's a big old
bunch of money to
anybody oh yeah massive i mean you just hope you win 842 million dollars on the
lottery oh that's damn
scrooge mcduck yes all the way rich rich yeah but the problem is when you put
it in context purdue pharma
made 100 million dollars a month on oxycontin sales for 12 years yeah so the
entire state of
kentucky with 4.8 million people is getting about eight and a half months of
purdue pharma's oxycontin
sales but over 15 years right so it's really spaced out and put up a picture of
the sackler family
just so i can just tell them to go themselves if you don't mind throwing it up
there i'm sorry if you
ladies have to hear that language but there you go that's a group that got off
scot-free that's
still alive well hundreds of thousands have been killed by their greed so hope
they're doing well
hope you see them on the street and so you guys had an experience recently in
texas where you
were able to achieve some um litigation right or was it litigation or was it it
was the passage
of the largest single public investment for psychedelic research and medical
development in all of
history and we got it done in the state of texas it was the successful
completion of the project that i
began in kentucky we began our conversation discussing me coming into the role
of running the opioid commission
in that state i had proposed that we take 42 million dollars of the state's
opioid settlements to get
ibogaine through the fda's drug development process as a breakthrough
therapeutic for opioid dependency
because of what it can do within 36 to 48 hours to essentially fully resolve
any withdrawal from opioids
that project was terminated uh well let me let me back up that project received
great bipartisan support
while it was under consideration in kentucky yes sir and i am convinced that if
it had gone to a ballot
vote the way they do in california for different initiatives people in kentucky
would have voted for
it 60 40. but unfortunately that state has a history whereby its power
structure oftentimes serves itself
first and foremost often to the detriment of everyday people and in the case of
ibogaine in kentucky that's
exactly what happened even in a state that was so afflicted by the opioid
epidemic that's correct
because you have some people in power there who have profited handsomely off of
their association
with the creators of the opioid epidemic for instance current kentucky governor
andy beshear
and his father steve beshear were partners in a law firm called stats and harbison
while steins and harbison represented purdue pharma and their litigation
against the people of kentucky
a case that was worth one billion dollars was settled for a measly 24 million
dollars just days before
andy beshear became the attorney general of kentucky wow so that feels like
allegedly that is some stink to
it because that should have been a much bigger settlement should have been a
much bigger settlement and there
certainly should have been some examination and interrogation in connection
with how that settlement
came to pass bring up a picture of mr beshear so i even know what he looks like
so often we have
people making choices for us and we just don't get a gander at him look at this
fella right there and
where is he from he is the son of former kentucky governor steve beshear
he is a guy who i think you and i theo grew up around a lot born on third base
thinks he hit a triple
likes to talk a lot about his religiosity oh yeah his positions in the church
house
and likes to do a whole lot of using performative public piety to hide what
happens behind them closed
doors at the capitol yeah it's just unfortunate i don't understand how you
wouldn't give every opportunity
four-year people especially in a state that was so devastated uh yeah born in
louisville um went to
vanderbilt that's a bummer i mean vanderbilt's great but uh i just think he
would you know that
just bums me out because it's here in town so he was willing he was just milling
around here
um he was hired by the law firm stites and harbison uh oh you're not going to
see that on his wikipedia
entry oh they won't put that on there they're they're not going to draw the
fine line of
association between he and his daddy their law firm and purdue pharma they're
going to try to run him
for president in 2028 really is did that really happen that really happened
well just google did
andy bashear and uh did steitz and harbison bashear the governor's office
points out worked for
louisville-based steinston harbison the law firm representing purdue pharma
against the people of
kentucky wow there we go i can't believe 24 million dollars it's grotesque i
remember thinking 24 million
was an awfully low amount robinson said i mean look at what oklahoma got and
they haven't been hit with
the crisis we have um let me see stumble goes further in his criticism of the
case is handling
by both of his successors and lends credibility to an attack being levied by
republican governor
matt bevin who has raised conflict of interest questions surrounding bashear
and conway bashear the
governor's office points out worked for louisville-based sites and harbison the
law firm representing
purdue pharma against the state before being elected attorney general in 2015.
so he worked
for the law firm representing purdue pharma against the state that's correct so
uh he worked for purdue
pharma he worked for the law firm that worked for the purdue pharma and theo i
am a lawyer i went to law
school i was a partner in a couple of law firms and i can tell you any law
partner who draws a
partner's draw from a firm is receiving cash from its collective clientele
there's not one part of
cash that comes from one client to one lawyer and another pot of cash that goes
from one lawyer to
another particularly in an insurance defense firm like steins and harbison
there's one big communal pot of
money so if steins and harbison is making money representing purdue pharma
against the people of
kentucky as partners in that law firm steve and andy beshear were making money
off of steins and harbison
representing purdue pharma against the people of kentucky and that is the very
best that can be said for
the situation i mean allegedly that would would be how it would work but then
how does he get over to
represent how does he retire from there and just get to come into office well
it's his dad who retires
his dad retires as governor he goes back into law practice and then andy
becomes the attorney general
in the meantime while his daddy's governor the firm's representing purdue pharma
and when andy goes in to be
attorney general the firm is still representing purdue pharma you see how all
that works and
lawyers would tell you oh we have these ethical rules and we didn't talk about
it and we didn't
discuss it what was it that we talked about in terms of how evil operates it
does so with the
respectability of white collar suits and fancy degrees i think that we can see
what underlying reality
might be as opposed to what's presented i mean it feels like there certainly
would be a conflict of
interest there to me that's what that does feel like and is so but did he get
elected to attorney
general he was elected to be the attorney general by so the people voted on it
they didn't know about
this so at the time that he was running for attorney general state media did
not in any way confirm or
advertise the fact that andy besher was a law partner at the firm that was
representing purdue pharma while
he was running for attorney general this was not a fact that came out before he
was elected he was
elected by uh i think a thousand votes in that election and he received
criticism from uh then
governor matt bevin for the relationship and essentially governor bevin's
criticisms as you saw they were
repeated by one of the state's paper but that relationship has never received
any sort of real
in-depth examination or investigation hopefully that'll happen before he runs
for president in 28.
that's pretty fascinating and so who's the governor now governor is andy besher
it is so he went from
being attorney general to being governor and now he is talked about as a top-tier
candidate for president in
2028 and anybody who listens to this show just needs to know he was a law
partner at the law firm that
represented purdue pharma against his own people while he was a partner there
and then that settlement
happened and then recently after that settlement he ended up as attorney
general that is correct
dang dude what so this is not a democrat or republican issue though this is a
bipartisan issue oh yeah well
i think it's at this point it's it's become the people versus the government it's
neither one of
these sides i think we've started to realize certainly here on this show is
that nobody has our interest
very few people it feels like have our interest anymore um it's us against both
of them it feels like
95 of the time um it is scary it is the conflict between those of us who
recognize that we are of god
versus those of us who aim to play god that is the conflict and there are
members of both parties on
each team and what's important in the here and now is that those of us who
recognize that we are of god
regardless of what we call ourselves gay straight trans black white purple
green red rich poor middle class
we are all one human family under the hand of our benevolent loving creator
whose stardust runs through our veins and it is us versus every other hand that
would seek to control
and separate us from each other amen man yeah it's time for people who believe
to rise up i believe you
know and i don't mean that at any like yeah anybody if because it's like how
how much more proof do you need
that they're trying to extinguish uh like what makes us us you know that they're
that that like how much
like what other proof do we need you know um it's it's dark i think a lot of
times we don't realize
right that evil evil has a plan right evils you're not just running around your
neighborhood just tickling
people or whatever and yelling profanities and stuff like in the street like
way you know evil will will
sell you the problem and sell you the solution that's right that's how far they've
already thought ahead
that's right they've already made the solution half the time before they made
the problem if evil makes
a solution they won't say let's offer the world a solution they'll say how do i
create a problem so i can
sell you this and then i can sell you that right you know i don't know i'm
preaching sometimes i don't
notice for myself that evil is smart evil is not ignorant it's very
sophisticated and on the exterior
it's not scary if evil look like all the monsters of our imagination it's easy
to identify it and avoid
it but it's slick and bible says the devil will appear as an angel of light
there's also phraseology
in modern literature that refers to the banality of evil it's very boring evil
often appears in very
high scale white collared business suits and ties carrying fancy degrees in law
and finance from ivy
league institutions all these measurements of external respectability evil
knows how to put it on and shine
yeah and they're there to sell us whatever they can sell us to make us its
subject yeah and that's where
we find ourselves dang man it's true and it happens there's a lot of ways it
can happen but yeah i think
just the psychology of evil i've thought about that more recently in my life
like evil is a strategist evil
is a wizard yes sir you know and you have to be a wizard for your own life you
know we have to try and do our best to do that
Thank you.

How Politicians and Profit Made America's Opioid Epidemic Even Worse

let's talk about ibogaine and what it is because that's kind of your specialty
is that fair to say
that's fair to say okay so by pure accident by the way not by design or
ambition you just ended
up just ibogaine yes sir okay well look hold on now were you like an after-school
user or what
happened really well i came to it in the same way that most people come to it
and it was through
desperation i practiced law in kentucky for 16 years and then went into state
government service
i ran the state social security disability system and some other things and
after being in place for
about six years there were some folks who said you know he kind of does a
decent job with some things
and we'd want him maybe to run the state's opioid commission and kentucky like
a lot of appalachian
states it's been ground zero for the opioid epidemic that began with oxycontin
being introduced back in
the late 90s so all these opioid manufacturers and distributors had settled
with a bunch of
states and paid them money for all the damage caused by the opioid epidemic so
when it came time for
kentucky to get its money they had to set up an agency to administer and
oversee it and they called
it the kentucky opioid abatement advisory commission so a guy by the name of
barry dunn who was deputy
attorney general at the time under my boss daniel cameron came to me and said
hey the legislature has set
up this opioid commission is this something you'd be interested in running if
you know i think you
probably know being a southerner that as much as we love home and the society
at home sometimes the
governments have not always function the way they're supposed to you know boss
hogg and the dukes of
hazard was a was an illustration of some of that old-timey way of doing
business where everybody who's a
working person gets their bones picked clean by the people who are in power
amen always so when
barry said hey would you be interested in doing this job i said barry this is a
very treacherous
opportunity because we've got some aristocratic power structures here in kentucky
that are used to
having their way with anything that involves the dollar bill if y'all are
willing to allow me to run the
commission so that it is accessible to the every average average everyday kentuckian
that grassroots
organizations that ain't used to getting these sorts of opportunities can be
resourced and that we do
it in a way that is accountable and transparent i'll be interested in the job
but i don't want to take
it if the expectation is just going to be to hand the money over to the usual vultures
amen and he said
we'll back you a hundred percent i said all right so i went through an
interview process and in the
interview process i was asked what do we need to do with this money i said well
let's put the big
picture in context here we're getting 842 million dollars now that's a big old
bunch of money to
anybody oh yeah massive i mean you just hope you win 842 million dollars on the
lottery oh that's damn
scrooge mcduck yes all the way rich rich yeah but the problem is when you put
it in context purdue pharma
made 100 million dollars a month on oxycontin sales for 12 years yeah so the
entire state of
kentucky with 4.8 million people is getting about eight and a half months of
purdue pharma's oxycontin
sales but over 15 years right so it's really spaced out and put up a picture of
the sackler family
just so i can just tell them to go themselves if you don't mind throwing it up
there i'm sorry if you
ladies have to hear that language but there you go that's a group that got off
scot-free that's
still alive well hundreds of thousands have been killed by their greed so hope
they're doing well
hope you see them on the street and so you guys had an experience recently in
texas where you
were able to achieve some um litigation right or was it litigation or was it it
was the passage
of the largest single public investment for psychedelic research and medical
development in all of
history and we got it done in the state of texas it was the successful
completion of the project that i
began in kentucky we began our conversation discussing me coming into the role
of running the opioid commission
in that state i had proposed that we take 42 million dollars of the state's
opioid settlements to get
ibogaine through the fda's drug development process as a breakthrough
therapeutic for opioid dependency
because of what it can do within 36 to 48 hours to essentially fully resolve
any withdrawal from opioids
that project was terminated uh well let me let me back up that project received
great bipartisan support
while it was under consideration in kentucky yes sir and i am convinced that if
it had gone to a ballot
vote the way they do in california for different initiatives people in kentucky
would have voted for
it 60 40. but unfortunately that state has a history whereby its power
structure oftentimes serves itself
first and foremost often to the detriment of everyday people and in the case of
ibogaine in kentucky that's
exactly what happened even in a state that was so afflicted by the opioid
epidemic that's correct
because you have some people in power there who have profited handsomely off of
their association
with the creators of the opioid epidemic for instance current kentucky governor
andy beshear
and his father steve beshear were partners in a law firm called stats and harbison
while steins and harbison represented purdue pharma and their litigation
against the people of kentucky
a case that was worth one billion dollars was settled for a measly 24 million
dollars just days before
andy beshear became the attorney general of kentucky wow so that feels like
allegedly that is some stink to
it because that should have been a much bigger settlement should have been a
much bigger settlement and there
certainly should have been some examination and interrogation in connection
with how that settlement
came to pass bring up a picture of mr beshear so i even know what he looks like
so often we have
people making choices for us and we just don't get a gander at him look at this
fella right there and
where is he from he is the son of former kentucky governor steve beshear
he is a guy who i think you and i theo grew up around a lot born on third base
thinks he hit a triple
likes to talk a lot about his religiosity oh yeah his positions in the church
house
and likes to do a whole lot of using performative public piety to hide what
happens behind them closed
doors at the capitol yeah it's just unfortunate i don't understand how you
wouldn't give every opportunity
four-year people especially in a state that was so devastated uh yeah born in
louisville um went to
vanderbilt that's a bummer i mean vanderbilt's great but uh i just think he
would you know that
just bums me out because it's here in town so he was willing he was just milling
around here
um he was hired by the law firm stites and harbison uh oh you're not going to
see that on his wikipedia
entry oh they won't put that on there they're they're not going to draw the
fine line of
association between he and his daddy their law firm and purdue pharma they're
going to try to run him
for president in 2028 really is did that really happen that really happened
well just google did
andy bashear and uh did steitz and harbison bashear the governor's office
points out worked for
louisville-based steinston harbison the law firm representing purdue pharma
against the people of
kentucky wow there we go i can't believe 24 million dollars it's grotesque i
remember thinking 24 million
was an awfully low amount robinson said i mean look at what oklahoma got and
they haven't been hit with
the crisis we have um let me see stumble goes further in his criticism of the
case is handling
by both of his successors and lends credibility to an attack being levied by
republican governor
matt bevin who has raised conflict of interest questions surrounding bashear
and conway bashear the
governor's office points out worked for louisville-based sites and harbison the
law firm representing
purdue pharma against the state before being elected attorney general in 2015.
so he worked
for the law firm representing purdue pharma against the state that's correct so
uh he worked for purdue
pharma he worked for the law firm that worked for the purdue pharma and theo i
am a lawyer i went to law
school i was a partner in a couple of law firms and i can tell you any law
partner who draws a
partner's draw from a firm is receiving cash from its collective clientele
there's not one part of
cash that comes from one client to one lawyer and another pot of cash that goes
from one lawyer to
another particularly in an insurance defense firm like steins and harbison
there's one big communal pot of
money so if steins and harbison is making money representing purdue pharma
against the people of
kentucky as partners in that law firm steve and andy beshear were making money
off of steins and harbison
representing purdue pharma against the people of kentucky and that is the very
best that can be said for
the situation i mean allegedly that would would be how it would work but then
how does he get over to
represent how does he retire from there and just get to come into office well
it's his dad who retires
his dad retires as governor he goes back into law practice and then andy
becomes the attorney general
in the meantime while his daddy's governor the firm's representing purdue pharma
and when andy goes in to be
attorney general the firm is still representing purdue pharma you see how all
that works and
lawyers would tell you oh we have these ethical rules and we didn't talk about
it and we didn't
discuss it what was it that we talked about in terms of how evil operates it
does so with the
respectability of white collar suits and fancy degrees i think that we can see
what underlying reality
might be as opposed to what's presented i mean it feels like there certainly
would be a conflict of
interest there to me that's what that does feel like and is so but did he get
elected to attorney
general he was elected to be the attorney general by so the people voted on it
they didn't know about
this so at the time that he was running for attorney general state media did
not in any way confirm or
advertise the fact that andy besher was a law partner at the firm that was
representing purdue pharma while
he was running for attorney general this was not a fact that came out before he
was elected he was
elected by uh i think a thousand votes in that election and he received
criticism from uh then
governor matt bevin for the relationship and essentially governor bevin's
criticisms as you saw they were
repeated by one of the state's paper but that relationship has never received
any sort of real
in-depth examination or investigation hopefully that'll happen before he runs
for president in 28.
that's pretty fascinating and so who's the governor now governor is andy besher
it is so he went from
being attorney general to being governor and now he is talked about as a top-tier
candidate for president in
2028 and anybody who listens to this show just needs to know he was a law
partner at the law firm that
represented purdue pharma against his own people while he was a partner there
and then that settlement
happened and then recently after that settlement he ended up as attorney
general that is correct
dang dude what so this is not a democrat or republican issue though this is a
bipartisan issue oh yeah well
i think it's at this point it's it's become the people versus the government it's
neither one of
these sides i think we've started to realize certainly here on this show is
that nobody has our interest
very few people it feels like have our interest anymore um it's us against both
of them it feels like
95 of the time um it is scary it is the conflict between those of us who
recognize that we are of god
versus those of us who aim to play god that is the conflict and there a