#243 Steve Robinson - What If China’s Secret Weapon Was Sold at Your Local Gas Station?

The Shawn Ryan Show

Shawn Ryan Show

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.9 • 38.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 159 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Steven Robinson, Editor-in-Chief of the Maine Wire, leads New England’s fastest-growing digital media outlet focused on exposing political corruption and organized crime across local, state, and regional levels. A native of Dexter, Maine, and Bowdoin College graduate in political philosophy, he previously worked at Regnery Publishing, produced the Howie Carr Show, and handled Barstool Sports' Kirk Minihane Show and true-crime podcast The Case, which spurred murder charges per season. During COVID-19, he quit his job to travel 35,000 miles across North America in a camper van before returning to Maine in November 2022 to revitalize the Maine Wire as an aggressive, independent platform for underreported stories, bold investigations, and commentary. Robinson's groundbreaking "Triad Weed" series, launched in August 2023 after a leaked DHS memo revealed over 270 illicit cannabis operations by Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations in Maine, uncovered a vast Chinese mafia network spanning Maine to southeast China. His reporting exposed racketeering involving black-market cannabis, human and sex trafficking, money laundering, bank fraud, illegal border crossings, neurotoxins poisoning homes, murder, and national security threats—including CCP-linked properties near U.S. Army facilities. He provided exclusive details on the exploitation of U.S. Treasury–subsidized loans that allowed foreign nationals to purchase over 70 properties.. Cited in Congressional reports and featured on CBS, Fox News, the Daily Mail, OANN, and more, Robinson's work has led to over 60 articles, property raids, arrests, Sen. Susan Collins' interrogations of intel agencies, and the documentary Triad Weed: How Chinese Mafia Infiltrated Maine. Local police praise it as a field manual, though Maine media avoids the story. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Buy PYSOP - ⁠https://psyopshow.com⁠ ⁠https://betterhelp.com/srs⁠ This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. ⁠https://bunkr.life⁠ – USE CODE SRS Go to https://bunkr.life/SRS and use code “SRS” to get 25% off your family plan. ⁠https://blackbuffalo.com⁠ ⁠https://meetfabric.com/shawn⁠ ⁠https://shawnlikesgold.com⁠ ⁠https://helixsleep.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://hillsdale.edu/srs⁠ ⁠https://ketone.com/srs⁠ Visit https://ketone.com/srs for 30% OFF your subscription order. ⁠https://patriotmobile.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://prizepicks.onelink.me/lmeo/srs⁠ ⁠https://ROKA.com⁠ – USE CODE SRS ⁠https://simplisafe.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://trueclassic.com/srs Steve Robinson Links: X - https://x.com/BigSteve207 X - https://x.com/TheMaineWire Substack - https://robinsonreport.substack.com The Maine Wire - https://www.themainewire.com High Crimes Documentary - https://tuckercarlson.com/high-crimes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Steve Robinson. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me. So I have had a ton of people
0:12.5	reaching out to me, wanted to cover the 70H thing that's going on. And so we had a bunch of
0:19.4	what a bunch of people were looking at and Jeremy found you.
0:23.8	And I think we were going to get you on earlier about something too. But I don't know much about
0:28.4	the subject. It sounds like a very, very toxic chemical that they're putting into stuff.
0:33.9	And so I can't wait to dive in. Sounds like you're way ahead of the government on this right now.
0:39.7	Well, I think the government's always way behind on the new substances that the fringe of society are using to get high.
0:50.3	I know that the FDA has recommended that 70H be scheduled.
0:56.1	Who knows how long that process is going to take.
0:59.0	But the idea of sketchy substances that you can buy at gas stations and convenience stores
1:04.7	has been around for a long time.
1:06.9	And the timeline that I've observed is, you know, it's maybe a product shows up in a gas station or a convenience store and word spreads very quickly amongst the drug using community.
1:19.3	They figure it out real quickly what makes you feel good and what simulates the feeling of whether it's cannabis or heroin, and they know where to get it.
1:29.3	They know the stickers and the logos and the brand names
1:32.3	that kind of subtly communicate what they're looking for.
1:36.3	And then these things start to turn up at law enforcement raids.
1:40.3	So local police, sheriff, state police, DEA, whatever, they'll go in for a regular fentanyl raid, heroin or, you know, oxycon, whatever it is.
1:51.0	And they'll start to notice these other things they're turning up and they don't really know what they are.
1:56.0	They've got weird labels, weird names, and they kind of brush them aside, but then they start to see more
2:01.5	of them, and then they realize that there's a pattern here, and the same people who are using
2:06.0	maybe fentanyl or heroin or prescription opioids are also using some of these other products.
2:12.7	And so from that point, you know, that's maybe a five-year window, and then when it trickles up to the level of state policymakers or federal policymakers or people who are at the DEA, it takes maybe another two years or three years for there to be any kind of policy formulated that's going to limit the import of these drugs. And in a lot of cases, like with the
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