Appearing on Law & Crime’s “Totally B.S. with Bill Stanton” on Friday, former Fox News host Eric Bolling talked about the death of his son, which was due to an accidental opioid overdose:
STANTON: This next topic is very serious, and it’s anything but what the title is; it’s anything but bs, and I am really thankful for you to come in and talk about this. And what we’re talking about is opioid addiction. And I’m gonna give you my evolution on it, and then I’m gonna turn it over to you.
I’m a retired south Bronx cop, and back then, many years ago, drug dealers, or people that took drugs, I equated to as bad. … Then I got older, and I hopefully got more wise, and I became the civic leader of my community. I live in a fairly nice area, and I was shocked at good families — what I deemed whole family units — hit with this plague of opioid addiction, and the amount of overdoses. So, over the course of the many years, I’ve come really 180 on it. … So, first I want to offer my sincere condolences, and I can’t think of anyone that could speak to this better, you know, than you.
BOLLING: Thank you, Bill, and thank you for coming around on it. Yeah, opioids killed — opioids alone, not drug overdoses, opioids, that class of drugs alone — killed 64,000 Americans last year. I always talked about it … it didn’t hit home until September of this past year when I got a phone call at 10 o’clock at night that said my son had passed from — they didn’t know what it was, but it ended up being an accidental opioid overdose.
Now what happened with Eric, my son, he bought a Xanax or he took a Xanax, but it wasn’t a prescriptive Xanax, it was bought from someone on a college campus.
… He was one week back in the sophomore year, and he … bought a Xanax from someone. It was a street Xanax, and it turns out it was laced with fentanyl. Now fentanyl — you’ve probably heard about it — what people maybe don’t realize is fentanyl is a drug that they use for last-stage cancer victims, typically, when the pain is so overwhelming. Fentanyl is about 10,000 times stronger than morphine. That’s how strong this fentanyl is.
Cops will go into a bust, and there will be fentanyl … and they’ll have to wear gloves because just touching the fentanyl, they can —
STANTON: They cut it with fentanyl cause it’s cheaper.
BOLLING: Right. Well, what happened was, apparently what goes on — and I’m learning this on the fly. This is five months now — that dealers will purposefully lace — distributors will purposely lace some drugs with fentanyl because it’s such a massive, strong dose that people will say, “hey, that guy’s got good Xanax,” or “that guy’s got good heroin,” or whatever they’re taking cause it adds to it. And people will die, and that doesn’t even scare off people from buying from those dealers. People actually flock to the dealers that had an opioid death because their stuff is so strong.
Stanton then noted Bolling’s close relationship with his son, and asked the former Fox News host if there were any signs that something was awry. Bolling replied:
The last week or so, his behavior — maybe the last two weeks, his behavior changed pretty dramatically. Now, he was in Colorado; he stayed for the summer. He was supposed to be going to summer school; he dropped out — didn’t tell me. It was over the span of two weeks, he hooked up with some, you know, the wrong people who were pushing the wrong stuff on him, and it changed his life very quickly. And the point is, it can happen that fast.
Watch the video here (the pertinent portion begins at the 22:36 mark):