We have divided our lines a little bit differently. If you have been impacted in some fashion by heroin use, we want to hear from you. 2027488000 is the number for you to call. If you are a medical professional and you have been involved with heroin in some fashion, 2027488001 is the number for you. All members can call in and voice your opinion at 2027488002. You can also make a comment on social media on twitter. You can also join the conversation on facebook at facebook. Com cspan. This week on capitol hill, there was a hearing on the heroin use in this country. The director of the office of National Drug control policy is spoke there. If you look at the overdoses we have seen, there is a direct correlation between the amount of prescriptions we are giving out and Overdose Deaths. Has been going on for 10 years. And i think the medical community has a role to play and that is a good start. What about liability . What about adding joint liability for the Drug Companies and the doctors who pushed this stuff out . These people are unsuspecting and getting addicted. There has been legal action against pharmaceuticals for that reason. They have a role to play, not only in terms of making sure they are following the letter of the law by marketing, but also creating abuse. The duty to work with the da and others to go after outlying prescribers who are vauntingly ignoring the law. That you are right, we need prescriber education, good Prescription Drugs monitoring programs soap physicians can identify people who might be going from dr. Todoctor to doctor. If we are going to reduce the magnitude of the problem, we have to scale back on the prescribing and identify people who are developing problems. Host from our Facebook Page this morning tracy asays in my small town we have had four heroin Overdose Deaths. Alder female. High School Aged Kids are becoming hooked on not Illegal Drugs, but legal described medications. This is a shame and it is going on on a much larger scale than most would like to admit. That is tracy on our Facebook Page. Here is how you can participate through the phone lines as well. 202 is the area code for all of our numbers. If you have been impacted by heroin use, 2027488000. If you are a medical professional, 2027488001. And all others, 2027488002. Elijah cummings is the Ranking Member who held the hearing. People are dying in baltimore, orlando, Salt Lake City manchester, and cities all across our nation. We can no longer ignore this Public Health emergency. Congress needs to put its money where its mouth is and actually help. Help our states find a treatment programs to stop this epidemic in its track. Drug Treatment Facilities without Adequate Funding are like firemen trying to put out a raging inferno without enought water. Last week, leader pelosi sent out a letter urging speaker ryan to schedule a vote on 600 million in emergency funding to help states address this epidemic before this recess week. Our colleague from connecticut is already introducing this bill in the house. The senator has been pushing this legislation in the senate. Congress did not leave town until we take Emergency Action to increase funding to helps sta states combat this epidemic. We must also fully Fund President obamas request for 1. 1 billion in 2017. Opioid addiction is one of the most pressing Public Health and safety challenges facing the u. S. Today. According to the centers for Disease Control and prevention, prescription painkillers and heroin are driving one of the deadliest drug epidemics in the nations history, claiming the lives of 78 and americans every day. Randy is calling in from long beach, california. Go ahead and make your comments. Caller hello, i am a longtime viewer and i am very interested to tell you about the fact that i learned this from cspan and washington journal, one of my favorite shows. I am in california. What i saw on cspan, washington journal, it was actually a map up on the back of the wall and it was showing afghanistan, the city of afghanistan with a little bit of pakistan on the side, but it had all the green areas where they were growing heroin. And they said the hair wheneroin is three times the amount of heroin before it used to be before we actually got there with our cia and our war. I am quoting what you said on washington journal. Host what you think that means . Caller i feared it was starting in europe about two or three years ago it was hitting them pretty bad. Now it has hit the shores of the United States. We have the Atlantic Ocean dividing us. Obviously, there was a two or three year wate. We are getting here, all 50 states from what i understand. Host this is frederick in blakesley, pennsylvania. Caller good morning. Look, i was raised in brooklyn. In the early to late 60s or early 70s, use of people who overdosed on heroin. The problem that is bothering me back then there was a crime problem. Now all of a sudden when people are overdosing in massachusetts New Hampshire now all of a sudden you are hearing people talk about it as a medical problem. I think it is unfair that now it is going out into the states i have seen a lot of programs. Nobody is really talking about back then when i was growing up. Host frederick, are you referring to the fact that its affecting white people . Caller yes, that is what i in saying. Host there is a different attitude towards it now. Caller i am here in cummings talking about it. Like i said, in of the late 1960s or early 1970s, it was running all through my neighborhood. I had friends who overdosed on heroin. And nobody talked about it. At that time, it was a crime problem. Now that it is in the suburbs it is a medical problem. My here them talk about all the clinics and programs they want to use. What to use more money and more money because they call it a medical problem. Back in the 1980s, it was a crime problem. Host this is earnest in hollywood, South Carolina. Caller on because of pennsylvania. I am an addict now and i have been recovering since 1995. When i came back from overseas all of the heroin addicts came from vietnam. Is in thing the guys that in pennsylvania. It is the same thing the guy in pennsylvania was saying. If we have a disease in africa sooner or later, it will come overseas to america. And that is what is happening now. It is beginning to affect tehhe shiwhite people and now something is being done by it. It is a shame but this is what is happening and i am glad that something is being done, but it should have been done way back then. Host ernest, you said you are an addict. What kind of addict . Caller i was addicted to cocaine. I used heroin and i have been recovering since 1995. Host what was your addiction like . What were some of the impacts of it . Caller well, most of my addictions happened to me when i was in the military. Everything happened to me when i was in the military. I had seen some traumas and i had seen a lot of addicts shooting up. It was like a shooting gallery right there where i was stationed at. And you know, these guys are just sitting around and shooting heroin all day long. Nothing was being done. They just let them out on the street. And the devils came home. No program or nothing was being done for these guys that came back from overseas. And we still have the impact right now. Host do you see the impact of heroin use in hollywood, South Carolina . Caller it is being used here, yes. I know it is. Host is easy to get . Caller if you wanted to, you could get it. Host thank you for your time. Water is calling in rum new jersey. From new jersey. Caller this heroin problem like the gentleman was saying, it should never have been dealt with as a criminal justice issue. But as you go on you learn more and you know how to better deal with things. It should have been dealt with always as a medical issue. Host thank you sir. Warren is a medical professional in a windsor mill, maryland. Look at of medicine are you involved with . Caller i work in Substance Abuse, basically. Host so, in your view is there a heroin epidemic in this country . Caller well, i actually live in baltimore and work in washington dc. I get to see both sides of how of what you call the problem has i mean, i see the affected people. [laughter] but it is a big problem. My thinking is, a lot of the support staff available to help treat this problem like counselors and Substance Abuse counselors and all the social workers, do not get paid a lot and are overworked. As a result, a lot of the people who come in for treatment and of being managed and not actually treated. So they just go back to using. They make progress and that they go back into doing the same thing. And i also, i agree with the last two callers. It would be better with this as a medical problem and not i mean we cant just put people in jail for doing the same things. Whatever, i mean, the court system is doing, it is not quite a help at this point. It is just making the whole situation bad for everyone. Host warren, a lot of the research we did for this program says that heroin abuse began as Prescription Drug abuse. Do you see that . Caller yes, i agree with that. A lot of the people who i actually work with, started with what you call Prescription Drugs and then moved on to heroin and other things. They have different drugs that they use now which are basically opioidbased drugs. But you know if we just can i mean, we need more of a budget. So people can actually have a little bit more care and can actually take their time and reduce the amount of caseloads for a lot of tehsehese counselors who in some cases have 40, 50, 60 patients. It would reduce, i mean, it would increase what you call the success rate. Host what is a defective way to treat heroin addiction . Caller the effective way to treat heroin addiction to me is basically well, you have to address the entire person as a whole, which means the medical aspect has to be addressed. The physical aspect the mental aspect of the person. It takes the entire Treatment Team to actually get that person off the substance. You can say well, lets just focus on the heroin and then we think we are going to get some results. They are just going to go back to the same behavior. The most effective way to me, is to handle all aspects possible of the individual. We have support for them. For example, if they are homeless we might have to find them, what you call, a home. If they have mental aspects going on, they have to get treatment for their mental situation, whatever is going on. And mabye we can also provide medical treatment after we have addressed those other issues because a lot of times what we do is something whichat you call a patchwork. They come in and we put them on methadone and send them out. And no further aspect is followed. We will followup on how they leave and how they get food to eat. How they live with their families, or their partner. We need the entire structure to be inside to treat them. Host thank you for your time. Mike is in ohio. Mike, we are talking about the heroin epidemic in this country. Caller good today peter. How are you . Host im fine, how are you . Caller a flashback to the iran scandal under bush one and we had that cocaine epidemic. Remember that . I think they were trading machine guns for cocaine in south america and we had that cocaine epidemic in the 1980s. That was under bush one and reagan. And he is telling more stories now on the fox channel. But anyway, now we are into the heroin epidemic. And you know, we have been to afghanistan and their production is three times as much as what it was before we went in, like what it was 15 years ago, and here you have got the state department and all of this stuff going on and here a while back on cspan i heard that one of our top senators, his brotherinlaw, a man from china in charge of the shipping containers coming into this country. So, there was mention of that. So, i think we need to connect the dots here on what is actually going on. And you know, paul ryan the other day said we should not lose faith in government. Host mike, we are getting a little off course there a little windy. Lets give back on course to talk about what we are talking about this morning, which is the hair went epidemic in your community. Eddie from new york go ahead. Caller good morning, peter. How are you . Host please, go ahead. We are listening. Caller i am just commenting on heroin and this war on drugs. It just doesnt work. You know . We talk about how we demonize addicts and what do we do, we throw them in jail . Like before this call, i totally agree with the other three ok . That we have to build the infrastructure for these addicts. They are ending up on the street with nowhere to go ok . Like you take the you know, sweden profile, what they did over there. They legalized all of the drugs ok . Host are you in favor of that . Scott wong caller yes, i am. As people who would read this book chasing tehhe screen they would have a different outlook on how far back we are. Host that is eddie in a new york. Here is the first page of yesterdays new york times. Towns antidrug plan, a safe site to use heroin. The mayor of ithaca, new york has opposed a legalized open area, or an area for people addicted to heroin to be able to use it legally. Rogers represents a lot of rural kentucky and he was at this weeks hearing on heroin and opioid abuse in the United States. Without for years, we end the countries and others, have fought for years to get the pharmaceutical companies to develop abuse deterrent formulations, to make opioids so they cannot be crushed and take away the time release of the drug to just a split second. And now weve got i think five abuse deterrent opioid pills on the market. But doctors are not prescribing them. I dont know whether they dont know about them, or dont care about them, or whatever, but the bottom line is, they are not using what we have developed as an of these deterrent strategy as an abuse deterrent strategy. What you think about that . There are Different Reasons they might not be using them. One that is important for us to be aware of is that we have to be certain because this abuse deterrent requires development. They tend to be more expensive than the old opioid medication. You want to be mindful that there are insurances that when a physician prescribes it, the patient will be reimbursed for the cost associated with it. With have to create a system that incentivizes the utilization of these abuse deterrence formulations. They will be more expensive. Host here is a cover of the most recent National Review. Ground zero in the opiate epidemic is not in some exotic coffee field or in some cartel bosscompound. It is right there in walgreens and the middle of every city and town in the country. This is kevin williamson, who went to the country and reported this story, including going to drug corners. Hear is a little bit of what he wrote. In 2013, walgreens made the secondlargest fine ever imposed for being so Loosey Goosey and handling oxycontin at its distribution center. It enabled untold quantities of the stuff to reach the black market. A typical sells 73,000 oxycodone pills each year. Six walgreens in florida were going through more than one million pills a year each. A few years before that, Perdue Pharma was fined for misleading the public about the addictive miss of oxycodone. Kentucky, which has been absolutely ravaged by opiate addiction, is still pursuing litigation against purdue, and it has threatened to take its case all the way to the Supreme Court if it comes to that. We have a herbert calling from georgia. Caller good morning, peter. I am 65 years old. I have been off of heroin for about 30 years now. I started when i was 18 years old. They are talking about oxycodone and Everything Else. It is differntent. I have not had oxycodone since i have been off of heroin. Those guys dont even know what they are talking about. I was on, up until 1991. But what made me get off of heroin. I am ita black guy. Ive been through everything. All of my friends, a whole flood of my friends, died up of air when. We used to have shooting galleries. Let me tell you, when you get those physical withdrawals thats what makes them go to the heroin. I am telling you, every part of your body, from your toes, to Everything Else aches when you are heroin addicted. That is what those guys feel. That is what makes them go out there, just to maintain, just to relieve the pain of the heroin. You dont get the high no more. You just are trying to relieve the pain, to not be sick. You start vomiting and Everything Else, man. You try sipping on through ruenals. They are talking about the codon. I have been through it and gotten off of it. I have scars of my arms right now, peter after 30 years that you can see that i a injected heroin. I injected heroin in my neck and in my foot. I saw a white couple one day a mcdonalds. I seen them with the spoon. I kept looking at them. I try to stop them because i saw them at the beginning. They were going to shoot some heroin. I try to relate to them. I said you dont want to get this happy. When you get is happy, you just want to relief from the aching pain. It is different than oxycontin and things. I have got to the experience and came out of it. Most of my friends are dead. I can count maybe Three Friends who are still living. I have a teacher friend who recently retired. These to shoot heroin together. We used to shoot heroin together. He is active in the ministry. Me, i tried to talk to people. These people they need to talk to, to went to the window. A lot of them got on methadone but they did not give them a high dosage. They started breaking down there dosage. But thank god, thro