Sixto helped fuel the crime and addiction that hollowed out his town. Then something happened that I had never heard of in thirty years of this work. The same judge who sentenced him asked him to help solve the crisis.

In 2023, I spent much of the year in Española, New Mexico. It’s a rural town halfway between Santa Fe and Georgia O’Keeffe country, and one of the hardest-hit places in America. I subbed at the high school. I sat with people on the streets. And I met Sixto.

This is a conversation with a man who knows from the inside how drugs took hold of a community. Now he’s being trusted to help pull it back. We talk about Española, about the families left behind, and about what it means when the court that convicted you asks for your help.

Exploited is a podcast about the monetization of addiction — who manufactures it, who sells it, who profits from it, and why almost no one is held accountable.

Website: exploitedpodcast.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulosophia

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Exploited is a Paulosophia LLC production, independent of United Against Fentanyl.

Every one of these deaths is a transaction. Somebody got paid.

EXPLOITED is a series about the monetization of addiction — who manufactures it, who sells it, who profits from it, and why, after hundreds of thousands of dead Americans, almost no one has been held to account. Fentanyl is where Exploited starts. It is not where it stops.

The first episode returns to Española, New Mexico — the town where this began for me. It publishes Monday, October 26, 2026.

https://exploitedpodcast.com

—

I spent three decades asking why people use. I got a reasonable answer. What I never got an answer to is why we let the people who profit from it walk away clean. Gambling, pornography, the platforms, the pharmaceutical companies, the cartels — different products, one business model. Find people in pain and build a market on them. That is the subject of this series.

Hosted by Paul Martin.

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Exploited is produced by Paulosophia LLC, independently of United Against Fentanyl.

#Exploited #FentanylCrisis #Addiction #TrueCrime #Podcast