A concert and made brothers who travel to libya an airport will some on returning alone to britain before carrying out that attack a month later those are the headlines the news continues here on aljazeera after the strain thanks for your time. Its us president s dont move from first visit to asia the goals to forge relations and strengthen the resolve to confront the threat from north korea but what impact can this visit really have well be live across asia to bring you the very latest coverage here on aljazeera. Hi anthony ok the strain i really could be today one nation overdosed we look into the Opioid Epidemic in the United States how do you tackle the problem with a seemingly a lack of resources. As soon as you do it its like a big blanket just. Everything just feels perfect like your body dont you just feel like a new person you dont think about the negative you dont think about nothing and its just nothing matters and i seriously. And. My mom are not actually. That came from the powerful new fault lines documentary heroines children the film explores the Opioid Epidemic in the United States and what its like for those at the center of the crisis the attics and their loved ones last year sixty four thousand people died of drug overdoses majority of them from heroin benton all and other opioids this week a White House Commission is delivering recommendations to President Trump the news comes one week after the president declared the crisis a Public Health emergency stopping short of calling it a National Emergency had that declaration been made better all funding would have been allocated so how do you tackle the problem joining us to discuss this we have a new york folland sanchez moreto shes the executive director at the Drug Policy Alliance in new jersey dr. Shes the medical director at the center for Network Therapy right here in our studio josh rushing hes host of lines and he and his producer. Just finished making the film heroines children good to have you here everybody just a statistic at our audience as well six hundred fifty thousand opioid. Prescriptions on an average day in the us according to the department of health and Human Services you cant even get your head around that number so what you do with the film was you actually said how do we make this personal and having make this people connect with whats really happening when we decided to do it. Theres a ton of coverage on this right there in the states at least a lot of coverage this may be the most covered issue. That it has been for a while so we thought theres a lot of context out there rather than retread that. Something really intimate and so what we wanted to do was to give you a film that when you watched it you really felt like you were there and you were connected to these people and you got the very human side of the story so we made a conscious choice to approach it in that very kind of intimate way and stayed away from a lot of the other context thats out there although all that stuff should be reported were just offering this kind of one very specific look at it yeah i did show some people some pictures that you take. And you take pictures as well this is from your instagram feed tell us what was. So we got called to a double overdose in chillicothe ohio small town Middle America we go into this little house there are two guys on the floor. To feet completely out of it and its this interesting scenario where youre talking about a dozen cops and e. M. T. Cram into the room theyre moving with a kind of like efficiency that you can only have if youve done something a million times think about the way you make coffee in the morning without thinking about it theyre moving like that but at the same time theyre kind of a nerd to it because theyve seen it so much but for me it was just heart stopping these guys when you looked at the guys who had a deed there giving them narc him they gave i want to say five hits in our kim and these guys werent responding to it. Theyre at their pulse is weakening theyre losing them theyre trying to save and they got to carry him out of there and the entire thing is just shocking but when you really stop and look at the guys who owed deed and i have one photo that shows this theyre somewhere between bliss and. Theyre there theyre like in the soundest sleep but not disturbed at all even though the theres all this action around im trying to save their lives. For. Most of that we didnt show their faces in the book my photos i only release photos where you cant identify them but since. I publish this since we came out with the story one of those individuals found out he was in the stock and he got back in touch with me and so i now know his story and you know your documentary is haunting us just one word to describe it when you see it and the scenes and seeing these faces and the kids and the effect on them but i think one thing that our International Audience your film has an International Audience the show does as well theyre asking this question this is on twitter and he says why is the Opioid Crisis a uniquely American Experience and why isnt it happening in other g. Twenty countries maria im going to direct this to you actually pulled up some stats here this is boxes came out earlier this year americans consume more opioids than any other country this is standard daily opioid dose for every one Million People and you can see the United States rates right there maria is this a uniquely american problem and why is. Well the opiate overdose crisis has definitely hit the u. S. Much harder than any other country and some of that may have to do with with prescription practices and broader broader issues but i also think that a factor we have to bear in mind is that the war on drugs in the us has been so aggressive that. And the lack of Public Education about drug use about the risks of drugs has been so serious and widespread that right now you have a problem where a lot of people who use drugs do so underground and do so in a way where they dont know necessarily that if you combine opioids with alcohol or with benzo die as a pamphlet that thats going to increase your risk of overdose dramatically. And where they have no ability to get their drugs checked to see if they are contaminated with fentanyl which again makes overdose much more likely and so these are situations where people are going underground they dont have access to information they dont have access to experts and health and they dont have access to treatment because. Evidence based treatment is actually very very hard to get in the United States medically assisted treatment in particular is very hard to get in the u. S. So people are adrift and dying. Though to enjoy i just want to share this with you this came from jen beijing she is a former member of the stream but also now a Substance Abuse prevention specialist and jensen jess we need to educate the public with p. S. A. Is to help in an old situation over the situation because thats a reality now were way beyond preventing overdoses do you think the general public has enough information of what it means to be an Opioid Crisis right now in the states do they know do they understand what drugs can do unfortunately no its not surprising to. Single day when a parent of. A patient of mine dorothy have no what this all. Means and want to overdose really me so i dont think people are valid you created a bargain prices even though you know this stuff is right what we want you to talk about i think a lot of people think that in arkansas answer there and theyre making that more readily available but the problem is in my experience is that its not working anymore and its not working because so much care what on the streets is laced with internal the car fentanyl and the market doesnt really those people respond to it the same way so i watch these guys get five doses of narc and it didnt bring them back and its just not going to act and lets just explain just very quickly is a drug that can be administered in different ways that sometimes in a syringe it gets put up your nose it blocks the effect of the opioid so helps people who overdose and come out of the overdose maria were going to say please go ahead i was just going to say that putting a lock son in the hands of First Responders is a positive step and its one of the things that that trump mentioned but precisely for that reason. Is so often in the supply now its really important to get the locks on in the hands of people who use drugs their friends their family members because fentanyl works so quickly that you really need to be overdose reversal medication much more quickly as well if you have any hope of making it work and all to enjoy just told us how ignorant the American Public is about drugs so sentinel in a sentence is. Felt a little it is a hundred times more important then around so it is said that it and not ill tell you to be back on the lot for not abiding by patience because i also participants used mostly been to the days of beans being used by these people who are using heroin so they by having those kind of other substances is not possible just the luck times now other than their sheer you know giving the larks and to book family members and of the person who has been given all the prescription is not the solution because all the doors is. Another planned one and its an accidental event so only it will because even if they have a lot of they cannot be using that most times these are people who are organising our lot in the whole home environment so they are now doing the brunt of the family members so our pinafores this wonder is having the lights on there and are reaching people is quite meaningful so. Weve just scratched the surface of this a p. R. Crisis issue in the United States but last week president United States declared the situation and national Health Emergency let me just remind you what he said have a listen to this. This epidemic is a national Health Emergency unlike many of us weve seen and what weve seen in our lifetimes nobody has seen anything like whats going on now as americans we cannot allow this to continue it is time to liberate our communities from the scorch of drug addiction never been this way we can be the generation that ends the Opioid Epidemic we can do it. We can do it all heres what people online felt about that this is ken on twitter he says seriously trying to clearing an Opioid Crisis in emergency makes just fifty seven thousand dollars available he goes on to say fifty seven thousand would cover tuition for one counselor is that enough to fix it all it wont buy much airtime for really really good advertisement on it especially picking up on the fact that someone earlier said we need more p s as on this but anthony here feels a little bit differently he says its good that this is being treated as a health issue and not a war what do you make of the announcement. I actually think the funding is a huge problem now we dont have enough funds or even the fund that are available right now i question are we going to spend it in the right direction so everything that the president brought to the table is in the right direction but what are we going to do for the funds that are one number to look how are we going to as support this it will be have going to me is going to be more beds available in patients who are embracing the new woman al of us like our patient you talk to fiction which is quite successful and have the cost of our inpatient treatment so that we can make a be able to fund made available to treat more people who are suffering from disease maria theres a tweet that you shared a couple of days ago heres what donald trump should have said about opioids instead he kind of retort what he should have said to the nation give us a little snippet of what the most important thing that should come in terms of leadership in ita states right now with god in the opioid is shit. I think you have to recognize that a big part of the problem has here has been the war on drugs the us has been the the main us response to drug use and the drug trade over the last fifty years has been to criminalize and trauma in his speech even though he mentioned Public Health and he did talk about creasing access to the locks on and a couple of other measures that might be helpful overwhelmingly he repeated the same lines of the past he talked about Prevention Strategies and ad campaigns that were all about just saying no which is the same campaign that nancy reagan pushed in the one nine hundred eighty s. And which failed he talked about using drug courts which are again a criminal justice tool criminalizing a medical issue he talked about enforcing criminal laws and he talked about building a wall on the border even though the fact is most immigrants are more law abiding than u. S. Citizens and even though organized crime across the world has always found ways around every wall every border that the u. S. Has has put up to stop the drug supply so my bottom line message is we need to have a new approach you cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again expect a different result the war on drugs has led us to this place where the u. S. Does have the strong magic increase and opioid overdose lets think about some new alternatives lets think about ways to acknowledge that you know what some people are going to use drugs lets teach them how to avoid the harms that sometimes go with drug misuse but teach them to avoid mixing opioids with alcohol or bends or die as a power which makes them more likely to die. Lets treat kids with respect and give them meaningful education about drugs lets offer good treatment. Evidence based treatment medication assisted treatment to those who need it lets reduce harms by offering supervised consumption sites for people who do use drugs so that at least theyre using drugs with clean needles and arent exposed to infection so that at least somebody is watching them while theyre consuming to prevent the risk of overdose so there are a lot of measures that one could adopt that other countries have adopted that some cities even in the u. S. Have have been exploring. And increasingly states want to take explore but that wasnt part of trumps speech. So that view is a huge problem and you know maria even as we look at new alternatives though there are people online who want to remember one thing this is allison she says generally addiction was viewed as a moral failing or a choice not a medical condition warranting science based treatment that slowly changing but why its only changing people have some theories josh ill show you this week we got a lot of other ones just like this from dorian who says look at the incarceration rates for blacks on drugs versus whites white people need help and blacks get thrown on infill and he references another tweets the crack epidemic from the eightys here in the u. S. Do you see a disparity there do you see a difference there i think is spot on i think the criminalization of it and i think that the media narrative the way they treated the crap epidemic in the eightys and the way we treat this now and i do believe that race is a big part of it of who the victims are. I dont think that the answer now is to cover the story the way we wrongly covered that one i mean i wish wed go back and cover that one in a different way but i certainly believe that race has played a part in this kind of narrative changing and we share with you whats going on on the web site white house dot gov as were doing this show its a meeting of the president s commission on combating drug addiction and. Just listen in for a cup. It sounds. And i think the blueprint if we stay the course and per year and recognize that we are dealing with a brutal who will. Not bring on its own to be successful and we need to follow through the growth. Addiction is and that i think in many respects. We need if you dont enjoy this is a White House Commission its how fully informing the president and the Current Administration in better ways to tackle the o. P. O. Crisis is even just seeing meetings like that is not a step in the right direction to choose beginning to change the start. You know i think as a person and. I dress the same from the top view but i think as a treat or being an addiction psychiatrist i look at this very differently decriminalizing which i really did talk about the economy single the truck charges as a part and then the realizing the drugs in itself what do i need. Then a person actively uses drugs. Charges and the. Meaningfully engaged in treatment and the treatment. Of these charges that they incurred while they were using come back to bite them and so they are not able to go back into the workforce and that becomes a trigger for them to relapse so i would think its important to really address decriminalizing. The drug charges that helps us in two different ways one it pushes people who are using to go back into work for so that a white future relapses and secondly the two hundred billion dollars have been spent on criminal Justice System and if even a release like twenty five percent of that money that can be directed to the treatment and that will be meaningful at this point i think all these factors are the only or the funding funding and funding this is the point in going ahead with all these beautiful a view that we have on the table so i hear what youre saying there i want to bring in this comment you tube live beyond as watching the show and says the only way to stop the Opioid Crisis to have only reform the pharmaceutical industry is in the corporatization of health care and no one knows that better josh than someone who sent us a video comment this is maureen she is the head of an Advocacy Group and her son is a recovering addict and this is what she told the story of how to listen. I became a bob and my something connected to legally prescribed uncontrolled controlled narcotic painkillers. That happened in florida and that happened during a time when the Florida Medical board apparently felt that for scribing three hundred because two hundred and you know ads than x. And there was an acceptable except the gold medal standard of care this went on for over three years of grossly negligent prescribing. We have folks that have become addicted all of these close the border you know because of the oxycontin express. This is a manmade. Epidemic and it is controlled by the physician community. So josh says this is a manmade epidemic does that ring true from the reporting you did yeah i absolutely think so and in fact its one thing talk about the criminalization of it now has created this that problem the problem but it that also dovetails with a movement in the medical industry to treat pain this is came out in the ninetys that patient had a right to say they were in pain and that a doctor should treat it that came around the same time as all is coming up in these type of programs where you would review doctors so if doctors didnt treat pain they might start to lose business to start those customers this also converges that same time that the companies who create these pills are incentivizing the doctors on the back end and also advertising for these pills which is unusual in america you can advertise for a prescription pill is good compared to other countries so this is really driven from the corporate side the corporatization of the american medical industry like that person said i think their spot on i talked to so many people i talked to one that his son played Division One College football really top tier athlete. Twelve kids on his Football Team which was Akron University ended up in rehab from opioids two of them including his son ended up dead and his sons addiction started with sixty vike in pills that were prescribed by the doctor is another thing that happens in the us is the way we accept authority and we think that doctors are authorities and that they have our best interest in mind so if they give your son sixty five couldnt say he needs us after the surgery we just we do it meanwhile the companies that made those pills were telling the doctors theyre not addictive dont worry about it and all of this kind of convergence together into a perfect storm of what were seeing now still into i studied this conversation with a look at how many thousands of opioid prescriptions were dispensed every day to people around the United States so im wondering is the pressure now coming back on the doctors in the medical professionals who are writing these prescription to say hold on a minute maybe we helped start this crisis can we help to end it. Beautiful question and this is a side look at a. Crisis started in the beginning of the turn of the century but the trend so ministration and the equivocation by really pushed the doctors to. Make pain as a fifth vital signs and therefore e. T. Percent of the patients identify themselves with some sort of pain and that led to this you know im partial process of writing of pain pills and here we are in the midst of all good prices and lets look at the prescription for being built in the past couple of years i would say sixty five percent of these bills were prescribed not by the specialist and are by the pain specialist being doctors but by the Nurse Practitioners and the Family Physicians and its really going to educate these people not to write you know pain medication for every person walks and not delivered or lives i dont think that in itself is control that you know there are good solution that regular cable is that let these prescription people getting pills to the specialist or treating the underlying pain say for example if someone brought their apple then the person that was treating that will be an arguably versed and that person should be the one who should also be controlling the pain perception that goes to that bridge that may be a doorway to start winter and how long you dont want the bin medication i guess they read to be any concern about the person getting addicted to where they should be referred to an addiction psychiatrist to work in our hand had been and the are the pits and so on as are being introduced to it is a big back pain then we are working with that being management person and with the addictions i bought i think that will be a better direction to take thank you doctor into thank you maria as well and thank you for being part of this program medical. So what this from dr thomas on twitter who says we need all encompassing continuum of care the entire system needs to be reformed and how we approach is that a democrat needs reform as well and on the four. Children you need to get to out call him slash four thank you guys for being with us thank you for watching. A new level of luxury has arrived. And experience that will transform the way. I could relate. But none could breaking. With the conducting business sharing the special. Things to. Assure that. Someone. Cares only going places together. Provoking debate the Corporate Tax has not hurt job growth on the brock obama the well were going to do that when thats not true tackling the tough issues restrictions on Media Freedom arbitrary killings torture giving the world if we wrap challenging the established line every single one of the three thousand people who was killed was a drug dealer yes how do we know that you didnt try them you didnt prosecute them you didnt charge them a shot one saw a joint maybe has sung for up front at this time on al jazeera. This is al jazeera. And live from studio fourteen here at aljazeera headquarters in doha for the bout to go welcome to the news great protests and celebrations to mark one hundred years since the