Hilaria Baldwin

Well, first of all, I mean, first of all, thank you so much, Megan, for having me. And, you know, I know Eric indirectly through some college buddies of mine on Wall Street. And I'm getting chills and a little acclimbed just hearing him, you know... His son didn't die in vain.

And the work that's going on right now, the loss of his son will save thousands and thousands of lives moving forward because we have programs that are working. We do have solutions. There is hope. But, you know, right now we have 4.2% of the world's population dying. We consume 38% of the world's fentanyl. We have 66% of the global deaths from fentanyl.

A sugar packet, a sweet and low packet, has enough fentanyl in it to kill 500 people in a sugar packet that you get in your coffee in the morning. More people have died from fentanyl since 2019 in four and a half years than every casualty we've taken in World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Kosovo, every casualty we've had.

We had 58,000 plus die in the 15-year campaign in Vietnam, 58,000 plus. We had 100,000 die last year alone. We had double Vietnam in one year. And this sounds like I'll say many controversial things that will probably make you very happy, Megan, with my position on this issue. But, you know, it's kind of a blessing – this is a hard thing to say, but it's a blessing –

that it's not just happening in super uneducated, poor Appalachian families or in Compton and in Watts. The founder of YouTube, who's a multi-billionaires, her son was at Berkeley a year and a half ago, 18 year old freshmen, same exact thing happened. In our documentary, you have a woman who said her girlfriend never did drugs.

She woke up one day, had a couple glasses of champagne at a sorority party or something, had a little bit of a hangover. They said, here, take this. This will make your hangover go away. She took it. She went back to bed to sleep off her hangover. Never did drugs in her life. And she never woke up.

And this is this it's such a national absolute catastrophe at this point with the numbers that it's it's got everybody's attention on the right, on the left, in the news media, everybody.

Canada is not only a problem for America. Canada is a problem for Canada. Vancouver is a war zone right now. Vancouver looks like Portland. I mean, it's really, really, really getting bad up there. And you have to remember, this border, as Dr. Marvin said, is the longest land border between two countries in the world, plus we have the U.S. border to the north, not including Alaska.

And we have patrols that are literally in kayaks on ATVs on mountain bikes, and they can't cover it all. Many of the people on the northern border that are working for Border Patrol are processing people being deported on the southern border. The northern patrol is doing the paperwork for people that are guarding the border in the south. So we need to beef it up the northern border.

And as you said, this is not going to be addressed only on the supply side. the current Mexican president and previous Mexican president will tell you, we can take out one or two cartels and five or six will grow back as long as the demand is there.

And if we're 4% of the world's population consuming nearly 40% of this drug and the profit is there, if you take care of one cartel, someone else is going to come in from the Gulf of Mexico or they're going to come in from Cape Hatteras or they're going to come in on a kayak. I mean, right now, as you saw in the documentary, there is a park

in bc called peace arch park and the beauty of our relationship with canada is they want people to walk through the arch of the park and go to the other side of the border and put down a blanket and have a bar and not have a barbecue have a picnic there and that's the beauty of our of our open border well guess what people are coming to that border with a backpack on they walk across the border they get in an uber they go to spokane or seattle or portland with 5 000 hits of fentanyl

And that's how it's getting across the border through Peace Arch Park.

I think the left policies over the last 15 years of no harm and low harm were very, very well intended. They haven't produced the results that they had hoped. They have to course correct. Ironically, the providing a safe place to get high was not a left policy. That was the police department that didn't want to spread their resources out.

over many, many different places, say in Portland or in Spokane or in Sacramento. And they wanted to provide this so they can monitor it and control and make sure they were keeping people alive. That was a policing tactic. But low bar and no bar is a big problem because in California and in Portland and Seattle, they were talking about providing housing.

Well, it's great when you take a mentally ill addict who's homeless and provide housing. You check one box, they're no longer homeless. But they're still mentally ill and they're still addicted to fentanyl.

So, you know, it leads us to when I have this conversation and I say it's going to require the kind of services that Dr. Marbitt's providing for his Haven of Hope in San Antonio that services 2,700 people. with a success rate of over 70%, getting people on their feet, off out of the system, off the services, totally self-sufficient, totally independent.

And when I talk about 360-degree universal care, they're like, whoa, that sounds incredibly expensive. Who's going to pay for that? And I say, you're already paying too much for not enough results. Right now, you call 911. Fire department, police department, sheriffs, paramedics respond, you pay. They go to the emergency room, you pay. They get admitted, you pay.

They go into the legal system, judges, lawyers, courtrooms, you pay. They get incarcerated, you pay. Let's go downtown, Main Street. We were in Seattle. This gentleman, 21-year-old kid, blessing, was overdosing. They hit him with Narcan, revived him. They hit him with paddles, got his heart started again. He vomited.

He turned around and said to the fire department, get lost, I don't want your help. That was right in front of the Wharf in Seattle, the original Starbucks store, and he was laying on the ground in front of the Nike store. You have to say, how is that affecting tourism, commerce, small business administration, property values?

They're all declining in northwestern cities, and we have to course correct. We have to provide these universal services. these universal services, 360 services, because you're already paying too much to not get enough results. And Marvin, maybe you want to jump in here with some of the results of the care that's going on at Johns Hopkins and with CityGate and with you at Haven for Hope.

You know, getting back to this kid, Blessing, he was gone. He was flatlined. They revived him. He vomited and turned over and said, I refuse your help. And the reason they do this is not just because the high is so good. They do this because the way they feel emotionally, psychologically, and physically when they're not on the drug is so terrifying that

It's so painful to them that they would rather risk their life. We were speaking to the fire department in Spokane, and they had a 911 call for the same person six times in one day. And this leads me to something that's radical that I'm going to say that doesn't sound very left because they talk about the freedom, the freedom, the freedom. Someone does have the freedom to get high.

Someone does have the freedom to be homeless. Someone has the freedom to do drugs. And if they overdose and they die, that is free. But not when it costs you and me The taxpayer's money, that's not freedom for us to have to pay for the emergency room and for incarceration and for all the different ways in which this is affecting our lives. So I've done conservatorships before.

A definition of a conservatorship is a threat to your life and others or you harm yourself or others. Clearly... This kid, Blessing, was a threat to himself and others, overdosing and flatlining on the street. Clearly, he was a harm to himself and others.

I am suggesting, and I am not an expert, I want to leave it to the professionals, the paramedics, the lawyers, the doctors, all of those people, the nonprofits that have their sleeves rolled up and they're getting their hands dirty, literally in the encampments, like I did for a long time, but the encampments and the shelters, I want to give them the ability to take conservatorship out of the courts,

And if blessing says, no, I'm not going, and a fireman and a paramedic and a sheriff or a cop or a nonprofit say, you're going, and that person is taken against their will because they are clearly a threat to themselves and others, and they have clearly harmed themselves. And if you put it in the court system, it's a ticking bomb where you're waiting for them to potentially harm somebody else.

So I don't know how long they should be held. But a 72-hour hold is probably not long enough from what I've learned. So if they're held 5, 7, 10 days and they can get to a more detox, clear-headed position where they say, you're right, I do need the services, I do need the help, I'll go into a three- or four-month program.

Or if they say, no, I want to go back on the streets, at least they've done it from a more sober angle. clear-headed perspective. And I'm wondering if we should take the conservatorships as a pilot program, take it away from the judges and the lawyers in the courtrooms, and put it in the hands of people that know far better than they do.

Yeah, my friends laugh when I say this because I say to my children all the time, when I was in college, someone would walk up and I went to Binghamton and you'd have people from Albany and from Cornell and from Syracuse come to visit for the weekend.

And somebody would walk up that was your buddy, but their friends from Syracuse and Albany would walk up and somebody would light up a joint and say, yo, you want a hit? They'd start passing it around. I said to my children... Those days are over. You literally put your drink down and you go to the bathroom. You come back and the drink's still there. Throw it out. Go make yourself another drink.

Those days are over. And when I have this sort of bring your own stash mentality, my kids are like, oh, great parenting there, Baldwin. Great parenting there. But I know the kids are going to do some of this. They're in college. My kids go to USC. They're going to – have a beer. They're going to have a cocktail. They're going to have a tequila. They're going to have a joint.

You just have to be very, very careful. Another point I wanted to touch upon, which I think is important, Megan, is the criminalization of this. When generations ago, when my father's generation, when people got in trouble, judges would say, I'm going to give you a choice. You got five years in jail or you got five years in the army. You choose.

We depend on the type of crime, all sorts of variables, but they gave them a choice to either go to prison or to go into the service to rehabilitate. Turned a lot of lives around. We have to raise this from a misdemeanor to a felony.

We have to get a lot of this into drug court, and we have to say to a lot of these people, you're going to prison for two years, not just dealers, repeat offenders that are users, you're going to prison for two years, or you're going to a government paid for facility. The government will pay for it. You choose six months in rehab or two years in prison. You're going to one or the other.

You're not going back out on the street. They have to change the legality of this.

81 to 85. Okay. You're a little before my time, but I was at Syracuse.

My mother, my father, and all four of my grandparents graduated from Syracuse.

But let's not pretend nobody ever offered you a joint, okay? Because I know that you went to Syracuse.

Well, I'm thrilled that you had me. I'll come back again. And you should know that Marbet and I thought we would disagree on everything and we were making a scripted feature on homelessness.

called No Address, and we sat on the set and in the lobby, and all we did was discuss issue after issue after issue where we thought we were on opposite ends of the spectrum, and we realized that 80% of it we agree on, 10% is negotiable, and 10% we'll never agree on.

And we live in this world where we're being driven apart, where we have more in common, there's more consensus, there's more agreement than people realize on controversial issues.

Easy to work on mental health, easy to work on homelessness, mental health and fentanyl. Trickier to work on the Second Amendment or campaign finance reform or something like that. But you'd be surprised at how much we have in common on that issue, Megan.

Seventh grade through 12th grade, yes. Rex Heuermann was, I was class president. He'd see me and say, how you doing, Billy? Rex, what's going on? We were in classes together. My lifeguard stand at Tobey Beach was 500 feet from that burial in Gilgo.

Yeah, yeah. He was sort of ran with a group of kids that didn't, they were like AV squad guys. They were like tech geeks before the internet.

Yeah. He ran with a group of guys like that. Very bright. And, uh, yeah.

Yeah. It's funny. One of my friends from mass people sent this to me and goes, you're not going to believe this breaking story. And I put out a tweet that said, I just woke up this morning to find out that Rex Heuermann, the Gilgo beach killer was my, not my friend or my buddy or anything, but my classmate that I knew for six years. And, uh, That got a lot of interest. People were reaching.

It was very stunning because people said, did you see it coming? And I absolutely did not see it coming. Absolutely did not see it coming. He wasn't a super loner. He wasn't a person that you would ever suspect. It was like harming animals in his backyard or in his bedroom. Nothing like that. Some of his best friends were my neighbors where I grew up in Massapequa.

And there were guys that did get bullied a little bit. some of those guys, but I don't know where it all went off the rails and where it went wrong. I don't know.

You too.

Everyone who is close to Alec has seen his mental health decline. He was diagnosed with PTSD. And he says, you know, in his darkest moments, if an accident had to have happened this day, why am I still here? Why couldn't it have been me?

It's not easy. And I think part of it is that I'm in shape before I have a baby. And then I stay active when I'm pregnant. And I'm not trying to stay thin. I'm just trying to keep my circulation going and stretching and keep my muscles on up. And then? Married life is really nice. It feels different. You know that. So please. Leave my family in peace and let this all play out.

We have... Cucumber. Cucumbers. Aceite oliva.

We have olive oil. And we have some vinegar.

Ah!

And I was like, I'm going to stay over here.

I have to say that every, I don't think you make it more silly than it is. I actually feel, I feel. You didn't get that on the show? No. No, we just cut all that part out.

Cut you out. Or in Queen. Routine is key. We'll just say King and Queen at the same time. It's essential. It's essential. It's essential. But, you know, I think that us trying to, every day.

Isn't yet. Okay.

Um, oh my God, you're distracting me right now. Like now you're just doing that. Why? Why are you distracting me? Yeah. You're just distracting me. Oh my God. Stop. You're annoying me. Stop. It's not cute. No, he's distracting me. So I'm going to like walk out of this interview. I need the motherhood notes. You were doing an amazing. No. Okay. Go back. Let me go back. It's all about routine.

No, no. I think we're going to see. We're going to see how it feels to have it be out there.

Oh, my God. When I'm talking, you're not talking. No, when I'm talking, you're not talking. This is why, yes, we'll have to just cut him out of the show.

Can I tell you, from now on, unless it's history, don't take anything that this guy is going to say because he just invents it on the spot. Whoa, what?

And the world was like, no, we're going to throw a tree in your way. Can I do a face scrub on you? Like not right now. We have to whisper now because daddy is having a monologue.

You know how much I love you. Just please stop crying and stop calling me names.

No, no. This confuses me.

I want to teach my kids pride in speaking more than one language. I think just growing up and speaking two languages is extremely special. Love English. I also love Spanish. And when I mix the two, it doesn't make me inauthentic. When I mix the two, that makes me normal.

We are a mix of all these different things, and that's going to have an impact on how we sound and an impact on how we articulate things and the words that we choose and our mannerisms. That's normal.

We have very few ingredients. We have tomatoes. We have, how do you say it again? Cucumber. Cucumbers.

I want you guys to realize that we have seven kids and you being here. to escort them to school and to be there when they come home is not good. So on a human level, you guys know, I'm not going to say anything to you. You know that. So please leave my family in peace and let this all play out. Okay? So let my kids come home and you stay away from them because they asked me, mommy,

What are these people doing? And it's a very hard thing as a mom to try to explain. So please, go home. Because I'm not going to say anything and Alec is not going to say anything.

It was a very traumatic thing for everybody that was in that room. I found these text messages the other day between us, you know, the day after, and he said he wanted to kill himself. He'll never be the same. This has affected his health and his mental health tremendously. The past few years, all of a sudden, he, you know, has started having heart problems. He's been hospitalized multiple times.

And I, he's, he's fainted. And he just, and everybody's just screaming. I'm going on top and I'm shaking him.

So, yes, I agree that that's your reality of it, but what I used to do is I would say yes, and then I would do whatever I wanted, and I would just keep it from you.

No, no.

I want to think about that. No, no. First of all, I still don't understand quite what a, it is awkward, but I don't actually quite understand what a prenup is because you're like, after a certain number of kids, it's this. And after, and I was like, you know what? I'll just sign it, which was probably very stupid of me back then. Now I read it again. But like, I just said I will sign it.

I don't really want to think about the end by the beginning. And then you're like, yeah, I don't want to do it.

When

We're solid, and we're here together.