Treatment . What solutions would you recommend . If you have experience with opioids, 2027488000 is the number to call. A line for medical professionals, 2027488001. All others, 2027488002. You can also catch up with us on social media. On twitter or facebook. A very good thursday morning to you. Whats happening in your community when it comes to the heroin and Opioid Epidemic. What solutions would you recommend . You can start calling in now with your comments. Heres Chris Christie yesterday at the white house event launching this new commission. [video clip] i think the president and i both agree that addiction is a disease. It is a disease that can be treated and we need to make sure we let people know the president talked about how folks dont talk about it. We talk about cancer, we talk about Heart Disease and diabetes. People are afraid and ashamed to talk about drug addiction. While they dont talk about it, we lose lives. Lives of good people. The president ended by talking about life. He and i are both prolife. We are prolife for the whole life. Not just for the nine months in the womb, but for the whole life. Every life is a gift from god and no life is irredeemable. People make mistakes. We all have. , but we is a mistake cannot throw their life away. The president and i believe that every life is an individual gift from god and his precious and thats why it was such an important issue for him in the campaign. Thats whites its important to understand the value of second chances. Why its important to have a president who understands the value of second chances. Host among the members who will be involved in the national fight that is being led by new jersey governor Chris Christie, politico reports attorney general Jeff Sessions will be part of the commission, tom , jamesdavid chilton mattis and five other members joining the commission as well. Reports it would review the funding and availability of treatment and determine best practices for prevention and recovery, evaluate federal programs and the u. S. Health system to identify regulatory barriers and recommend changes to federal criminal law or other processes. The report from the commission expected to come later this year. We want to hear from you this morning on washington journal. We are asking whats happening in your community, what recommendations would you have if you were to make recommendations to this panel . Mike in missouri. On the line for those whove experienced opioids. Go ahead. Caller i think it should be treated with suboxone. They take it for five or six days. I took it for five or six days, got off of it and i was fine after that. Theres no withdrawals after that. Host never relapsed after that . Relapse,ou can still but not necessarily. If you get into the right program and stuff, you can define that you can do fine. Host what other things could officials do to create the right program . Caller good god into your life. Aa, support groups. Get god into your life. Host how long are you addicted . Years. On pain pills, 10 host how long have you been drugfree . Caller six years. Host thank you for the call. Good luck to you. Brian is up next in arizona. Medical professional. Morning. Caller good morning, america. Ant to make a comment weve been managing an opioid addiction for generations. This hasrecent wave of been subsequent to engagement with a couple of different pertinent issues. First and foremost is the expansion of Drug Distribution by the medical model. This was enacted in 2002 with Medicare Part d. It caused a burgeoning of pharmaceutical distribution. They have subsequently resulted ofmassive concentrations opioids being distributed to people. Resulting in their addiction. That pattern has not changed. Expand. Seen it we can change that. Start voting effectively. Secondly, theres the fact that weve also created an environment where our population has experienced a great deal of stress. In medical results professionals who dont have the. Kill set to manage that stress the usually go to their prescription pad to distribute their treatment. Until we change that pattern and the medical model, this condition will not change. That it is assertion money that drives most of this pattern, we have to change the way we are doing business in america in the health care system. It sends like you would agree with senator dick durbin who wrote on twitter yesterday that the firstever Surgeon General report on opioid addiction last year told us what works event overprescribing and increase treatment. Prevent overprescribing and increase treatment. We will go to another member of congress with their comment yesterday. Tim ryan, democrat from ohio. He said what we need more than commissions is money for a local communities. President trump is serious about fighting addiction, he should work to strengthen the Affordable Care act. Enthusiastically support the request of 9. 4 billion for 34 key administered of programs that create a comprehensive response. And dominate a new director for the office of National Drug policy. Lets hear from rose. Experience with opioids from michigan. Caller good morning. Calling i have a son who is addicted to all these medications. He had a herniated disc in his back and was told that he had surgery, he had 80 chance of being in a wheelchair. They gave him all these pain sentinel then gave him fentanyl. If you dont put it where you , you getsed to put it high and the pain goes away faster. It shut down his whole body and killed him. Thated to tell this doctor i didnt think he needed all this pain medication because he was Walking Around like a ghost. He was 40 years old and i was told i had nothing to say how he was being taken care of him even though he lived with my husband and i because of his condition. These doctors have to be monitored more. These prescriptions were written like they are, it is not the right thing. Host what was his name . Caller mark. Host thank you for sharing marks story with us, rose. The house energy and Commerce Committee talked about the Opioid Epidemic and heroine and specifically fentanyl as the andth of fentanyl distribution in the nine states. Thats in the United States. Talking about the scope of the problem in this country. [video clip] i will put these overdose death numbers in some context. Today and Major League Baseball will kick up their season next month. Picture the mlb stadium in your respective city. Than 52,000 americans we lost in 2016 would overflow any of those stadiums. This is an unimaginable tragedy. The sentinel threat fentanyl youand opioid threat have substances many times more than heroine being sold by criminal networks on our streets as prescription painkillers. Based on laboratory analysis, one of every five contains three lethal amount of fentanyl could for the average user, death is lurking in just one of these pills mexican cartels are exploiting the opioid use epidemic and aggressively purchasing a list of the produced fentanyl from china and shipping it to mexico and mixing it with heroine and other substances and shipping it into the United States through established this division networks. Distribution networks. Why are they doing this . Greed and a complete disregard for human life. Host we will show you more on that hearing today in this first hour. If you want to watch it in its entirety, it took place on the 21st, last week. You this firstto hour. We want to hear your stories, what you think works, what recommendations you would make. Yaya is up next in chicago, illinois. Medical professional. Caller good morning. Pain is ao say that subjective disorder. Someone can have a bit of discomfort on a tooth and go to the doctor, they could go on r days bscess four day doctors want to treat their patients. Pointed out caller there are pill mills, doctors who just right scripts write scripts. But theres regulation needed an education so people should be on behavior and she should have had an option to report that somewhere. You have patients who have whoous chronic illnesses will always require access to some sort of pain medication. Combating the crisis, repealing health care is not a solution because some cases support tochological combat their disorder. You dont have access to those i dont know if this administration is competent enough to handle this. At least weve made progress. Back in the 1980s, the crack epidemic was treated like a criminal problem. This is at least acknowledged as. Medical problem host what do you think of former congressman ocker tom price dr. Tom price heading the health and Human Services department . Do you have confidence that he will be on top of this . Caller absolutely not. From what we know about him and his jd stock shady stock purchases tied to the legislation, he is walking a fine line. No, i dont trust him at all. The states that are having covered problems are the 19 states who refused to implement aca. They dont even have the aca in texas. Here he is, blaming the ac april the covered problems. All hishe aca for coverage problems. They need to do themselves a favor and isolate themselves from trump. He was not kind to them during the primaries and he will not be kind to them in the future. Host tom price was on capitol hill yesterday for some testimony and he was asked yesterday what he was doing to help combat the Opioid Crisis in the country. [video clip] 52,000 deaths and overdoses last year. Just a scourge that knows no bounds or no limits. Every one of us know a family who has been harmed significantly or communities who have been harmed by this crisis. I hope the Committee Members know that the president today is signing and having a ceremony to put in place or to identify task force or commission for opioid abuse and drug addiction. Im pleased to have the opportunity to serve on that the 21st century cures was a remarkable commitment, evidence of a commitment by this congress to identify the challenges we face and put our resources behind it. The grants that will go out on april and we will work through over the next number of months and make certain we identify those areas that are having success in their treatment. How can we put the greatest amount of resources in an area that will demonstrate and will have the greatest amount of success in return . That is the process. It is a work in progress. Host we want to hear from you about what you think the best way of combating the Opioid Crisis is. Lets go to the line for all others. Deborah waiting in succulent appeared in south carolina. Caller ive been hearing about crisis for several years now. I have an objection to it. An eightyear activeduty veteran. And it hasck broken caused nerve damage. My entire body from that point of fracture is in pain. The only way i can live a normal life is to take the pain medication. Why are they calling all of us addicts . Do youyou think think any sort of crackdown on this will impact you . Caller oh, yeah. It has already. Off on painbacking management. With proof of injury. Host what has that meant for you . How much harder is it for you to get the Pain Management you need . Caller it is difficult. Host what are the new steps you have to go through to get it . When i broke my neck, it also caused a seizure disorder because of a head injury. It is right down to the minute as far as when these can be refilled. On one of these people who try to think ahead, not just live by their schedule. I am one of those people who try to think ahead. I had to assure them that i would lock it in a safe. Host thank you for sharing your story. Kevin up next in seattle, washington. Experience with opioids line. Good morning. Caller good morning, america. I just wanted to say, one thing is that we should start by changing the language you dont combat things like Opioid Epidemic, you handle it at the community level. Things thate of the make people want to change their consciousness. You have to take care of those things, first. What is making people want to do all these drugs . Its the oppressive things that we have to deal with on a daytoday basis. Childhood, ally the abuse we have to deal with. Poverty, for one thing. Poverty is horrible. It does a lot of damage to people, especially when theyre young. , it is awn experience battle, but its a personal battle. It is not something you take an enforcement law activities. With medicalng professionals and psychologists and whatnot to take care of. It is not for Law Enforcement to handle. Host what is the best way to get people to engage with those folks who can help . How do you get people to those Treatment Centers or medical professionals that can help . Caller handling it from the point of view of wanting to interdict the pathology of addiction first. Instead of trying to eradicate it or cover it up or just work like a bean counter and reduce its numbers, you will never be able to do that. Addiction is a thing that is on a continuum. Theres addiction to cspan, addiction to heroin. Its just a continuum. We have to be able to go at this disease and end this problem with the scalpel, not a sledgehammer or asxe. We have to slow down and go at this slow. Use the best techniques, the best minds, stuff like that. We are dealing with people here, not some mystery ghost thing. If i can just plug one doctor who is on the right track, his mate. S gabor he is a vancouver doctor who deals with addiction. I call him once a month. Host ken in seattle, washington. Catherine is up next in massachusetts. Line four all others. Line for all others. Caller i have an experience with this problem that goes back quite a ways. First, i dossue is believe pain israel and there are many people who really are in pain. Pain is real. I dont want to take that away from them. They feel degraded enough and afraid enough. What i do feel is that the medical profession and the Insurance Companies need to understand the effect of drugs are having on people and families. They should be doing bloodwork to make sure that the doses are right. A week ofcribe painkillers and followup. Maybe they have more office visits. They will stay on top of the patient and the pain. Ive been in pain clinics where patients have fallen asleep at the table. Ive told the doctors that there alcohol issue that gets ignored because the patient and the in front of me doctor doesnt take what im say and im living with a person it was a tragedy for our family to see this happen. A lot of it started with a car 30ident and overprescribing painkillers, 30 days of painkillers and just represcribing. What a lot of these people end up doing is selling. They say the pain level is a 10 or 8 and maybe it is a two or three and they sell the extra drugs to make money. And then they buy them back when they run out. It is a vicious cycle for them. It is very sad. There is a lot we can do if we just really do a better job in the very beginning. When this first prescription is written. Host kathryn in massachusetts. We are asking whats happening in your community this morning. We point you to this story in Bloomberg Businessweek talking about a report, the county Health Rankings report. A decade ago with the suburbs were the safest place in america when it came to the number of drug overdoses. Now, they are the most dangerous. Thats the finding of a shocking report that came out on wednesday. Comparing the causes of death, the project analyzed how many lives were lost per 100,000 people. Large suburban metro areas had the lowest potential life loss of any Community Back in 2006 but the highest in 2015. Increase was 50 . The other lines there the red line, or large urban areas and the green line, smaller metro areas. The dark green line, rural areas. Herbert of next in georgia. Experience with opioids. Good morning. Caller good morning. Startedience with this when i was 18 years old. Im 66 now. I wasetired because raised in miami. Addiction. Year this people youre talking to for we started off recreation. Then, we started injecting. Theres not a person on this earth who will sit up there and tell you that they want to be addicted. But thats where it starts off that. They started giving drug addicts methadone. Better stuff ive seen when i got incarcerated, i saw what they used to do. You are going through physical withdrawals. You dont want nothing to eat. That person just wants more drugs. Get the sickness off. You know what ive seen . When theyre going to that , they give the methadone, it relaxes their body. Once you get that person in their sound mind, you are ready to talk to them and you bring them back to his childhood. Nobodys going to tell you i want to be a drug addict. They started off with recreation. Host is treating the physical rathers the easier part than treating the mental side . Caller thats the thing you have to do. Once the person goes through the physical withdrawals, you Start Talking to them mentally. At the time, hes going through those physical withdrawals, all he wants to do is just get high. Once you get him off that physical withdrawal, for two weeks, hes ready now. He will start eating a bit. Now, youre ready to talk to the mental now. Now, you are ready to get back to his mental state. I used to wake up in the morning trying to get drugs. I had 25 friends who died from heroin. My last friend died in 1991 that i grew up with. I have a friend right now who is a teacher, he got off of heroin. Experience,us have we need to talk to these doctors and legislators and tell them what youve got to do. Thank you for talking to us this morning about it. Heres a few of the folks on twitter, some of the comments so this morning we are talking about this this morning come a day after that task force, that commission was announced at the white house by President Trump and new jersey governor Chris Christie. It is tasked with reviewing the federal governments efforts when it comes to drug addiction, opioid and hair when addiction heroin addiction. The Washington Times story talks about christies history with drug policy. Personal aecame decade later when one of mr. Christies best friends developed an addiction to the script and drugs and died in an overdose in a new jersey motel. Addiction to prescription drugs. If you could talk to that commission that Chris Christie is now leading, what would you say . Gary on that line for all others in illinois. Caller how are you doing . Host doing well. Go ahead, gary. Caller i am a 55yearold black male. Ive seen a lot of heroin in my life. ve never done any i come from inner cities like gary, indiana and detroit. Ive seen a lot of hair when uses. Is i stay outay in the suburbs now, what i see opiatesainly the scop problem is a white suburban problem. Why dont they just do a war on drugs, a war on opioids . Ive seen them do a war on drugs in the black community. , i wasar in wisconsin racially profiled while waiting. O be called by the judge this young white male had to go up before the judge and the judge said this is your fifth time being in here for this opium problem. I will release you and put you on an ankle bracelet and release you to your mom. You come in here again, we will have to take further action. But this was his fifth time. I was on me and opiates and coming in there for the fifth time, i know what would happen to me. Why not have a war on opiates . Because it is mainly a weight problem. A white problem. Host what you think would happen to you . Caller i would go to jail. I got racially profiled, i got fined for the ticket i clearly wasnt guilty of. But this was his fifth time. Host janice in virginia. Experience with opioids. Good morning. Hello . Host go ahead, janice. Caller im very much involved in all of the above. I am a pain patient. I am no longer one because of all the people being afraid of prescribing pain pills. So come on i suffer daily because i dont want to get back on that again. So, i suffer daily. I choose to be in pain and its terrible. I also see the other side because i have two sons addicted. Doctors giving up opiates to patients who need them, that causes a problem with heroin and meth and diction. Meth addiction. Ive lost a lot of friends. Some of them committed suicide. Suboxone doesnt work. Ive seen what it might one of my sons try to get off that. They need to do something else. For instance, methadone. They just keep going and getting it. With suboxone, thats one of the hardest drugs ive ever seen. They need to do something else. They dont have insurance, they can go into any treatment. Cant go into any treatment. See them suffer one of my sons has a heart valve damage due to shooting up drugs. He is on a downward spiral. On the other hand, im sitting here in pain. Its like a catch22. Either the doctors are afraid to prescribe it to people who really need it because they are afraid they are going to get in trouble and all these other drugs are flooded in from mexico , heroin and meth, and drug addicts are using those. Host thank you for sharing your story and your familys story. More of your stories coming up this morning on washington journal. I want to tell our viewers about the other news going on around capitol hill. That story that was breaking at the end of this program yesterday, right around 10 00 yesterday morning. Drove herold woman vehicle into a u. S. Capitol police cruiser. The disruption closed down streets near the capital for three hours. Shots were fired during the arrest attempt. The event appeared to be criminal in nature with no nexus to terrorism. Was charged with seven counts of assault on a Police Officer among other offenses. One other story breaking ,vernight out of North Carolina the Republicancontrolled Legislature and its them a credit governor announced yesterday that they have reached an agreement to repeal the controversial state law that curves Legal Protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Gayrights advocates raised objections from arguing the compromise has continued to allow dissemination. Discrimination. One more story on the latest on multiple probes taking place in terms of russias ties to the nine states elections last year United States elections last year. This focusing on the Senate Panels investigation. A briefing by richard burr and mark warner. Those two men talking yesterday about the latest on their investigation. Here is a bit from their joint appearance yesterday. [video clip] this investigation scope will go wherever the intelligence leads. It is absolutely crucial that every day we spend trying to separate fact from fiction and to find some intelligence thread that sends us to the factual side of all the names and all the places that you in this room have written about. Just the fact that you say it doesnt mean it is fact. It is incumbent on our staff and our members to connect that intelligence thread to that to make some determination as to the relevance of it in our investigation. Mark and i work handinhand on this. We are partners to see this is completed and that weve got a product at the end of the day that we can have bipartisanship in supporting. Put some of the techniques that russia used in this downion would send a chill anyone who believes in the democratic process in this country. The committee will follow the intelligence wherever it leads. We need to get this right. Etimes, that means especially for somebody like me who wants things done yesterday it is not going to happen as quickly as i would like or many members of our committee would like. Getting it right is more important than getting it done quickly. Host that Senate Select committee having a public hearing today. They will be hearing from Cyber Security officials, a former u. S. Intelligence officer for russia. That is happening at 10 00 a. M. You can watch it on cspan3 or listen to it on cspan radio and on our webpage. Back to your calls this morning as we are asking this question about what the best way is to combat the Opioid Crisis. Ron waiting on that line we have set up for those who have expressed with opioids, calling in from deltona, florida. Caller how are you doing . My daughter has been an addict now for 10 years. The best way i could say i dont think there is a best way to battle this. It is a big problem. Theticed two groups people who need them and the people who use them. It is an easyk out and dont realize how hard it is to break away once you enter through that door. It is probably the best way to combat it, to warn those constantly,eatedly, how very bad this is. It goes beyond that. When they try it when they feel fantastic. Feelen they try it, they fantastic. Host does your daughter feel that way . Does she understand the danger . , with my daughter, it is just like the guy was talking about, it is to get the sick away. She has two ways of doing it. Just come up even when it shes got it comes time to party and she gets close to death. Theyve done cpr twice. She stopped breathing. It is a nightmare for all involved. Waves whenike the you throw a rock in the lake. Its use over everybody. It spews over everybody. This has to be professionally done must a need and then professionally done, studied and done right. Host debbie is in rockland, maine on the line for all others. Caller hello . Host go ahead, debbie. Caller good morning. Im calling in about this opiate addiction. Ive been on opiates for 40 years. It started with a car accident, they went to pain meds and from pain meds, it went on to the methadone. The methadone is the worst thing ever. It had me trapped for 10 years. I couldnt get off it. When i had my accident, i was on the methadone. It woke me up a bit. Here in our town, we had somebody overdoses. So many overdoses. Now, everyone is on suboxone. Me, i feel that is the best thing i have found for me and others i go througo grous with. Right now, im concentrating on doing my suboxone and staying up the pain meds. Staying off the pain meds. Host can you explain what suboxone is . What it is used for . Caller it is used to stop your cravings for lets say i wake up one morning and dont take my suboxone, i might have the craving. Willill crave heroin, you ys now,take some ox i dont crave that krapp. I get on with my day and its great. Ys. Ake some ox now, i dont crave that crap. I get on with my day and its great. Host randy in clearwater, florida. Morning. Caller hello. Have a medical Health Condition and needs to see a wille doctorh do a physical and evaluate you meds you are supposed to take as directed, nothing else, as directed. All these other people that make the opioidso abuse and other medicines, i have no compassion for them because they make that choice rather than take their meds as directed. Goodbye. Host john in district heights, maryland. For those with experience with opiates. Caller from the standpoint of a city Police Officer, donald trump talking about a study look at 50 years of studies. African americans died by the thousands on opioids and heroin. Over,e finding bodies all especially in certain areas of the city. Oakland, new jersey, california, they were dying by the thousands on heroin. All the studies that were done this thing is a moneymaker. This thing makes money for everybody except for the poor people who are on it. It would take billions of dollars to turn this thing around. The gentleman that told you about how you got to detox the victim before you can get the mind, thats where you have to start. When you see how our nation is spending money on militarism and then theyre going to talk about bringing up some kind of counsel with christie to deal with the situation circa the studies are there. Look back at all the studies. There. The studies are its a moneymaker. Those Strong Enough to get off it will get off it. It will be the same thing for two years from now. 50 years from now. The bottom line, it is a moneymaker. The doctors make money, the hospitals make money with the lawyers make money. I dont know how to deal with this thing come up but i know the research is there to deal with it. I dont know how to deal with this thing, but i know the research is there to deal with it. Member of theing subcommittee that was holding a democrat from colorado. She talked about what the Affordable Care act has done to help combat this crisis over the years. [video clip] need to findnk we a way to address the treatment site of this epidemic and this is sadly where i have significant differences with my majority colleagues. Taxes from the portable care act has led to 20 million americans Getting Health Care coverage. The aca has enabled governors to expand the Medicaid Services they offer which was critical in states that were overwhelmed by the Opioid Epidemic. 2014es estimate that since , 1. 6 million uninsured americans gained access to Substance Abuse treatment across the states that expanded medicaid coverage. This is particularly important hit states like kentucky where residents saw a 700 increase in medicaid beneficiaries seeking treatment for Substance Abuse. Host that repeal and , pulledent bill failed before it got a vote last week on the house floor. When the president announce this new commission yesterday with several members bringing up the put about the money aca has towards Addiction Treatment over the years. If you want to read the statement on twitter david in georgia. Line for all others. Caller i did call in on the wrong line. Im used to calling in on the independent line. I have expense with this. This experience with this. The wrong way is to let. Egislators study that we are a Small Community my wife, my late wife was in extreme pain. Both of us being subjected to addictive personalities in our past, i was really hard on her to try not to take these pain medications. I thought she was trying to get away with something. Shet before she passed, contracted cancer of the throat. Nd i understood her pain at one time, i was taking 620 20 milligramssix oxycodones a day. Theres a lot of misinformation going on. It has nothing to do with doctors now. The put the burden on pharmacist. They have a certain number you riod. Ake in a 30 day pe doctors need to be compassionate. They need to treat their patients. What ive done it takes personal conviction. Each person approaches it different ways. I was told we cannot prescribe this for you at this level anymore and i got scared. What am i going to do . Changedckled down and from six to four a day. To two a day of the oxycodones. Now. S where i am at my plan is to go down to one day and hopefully, by the end of this year, i will be off these altogether. The wrong way to approach this i listened to the guy from maryland who was in Law Enforcement and the other guy who had tobefore it. No sympathy for it. I had the experience in my family and i thought i knew what it was. You have to be in some sort of terminal pain to really helps and how this how addictive it is. These legislators will not be able to come up with a committee and do anything about it. It has to come from the medical community. Host good luck with your doctors visit next month. A few other comments from witter helen in california. Experience with opioids. Good morning. Christie guess chris has to do some damage control for bridgegate, so he is going to champion his fellow desk jockey im fed up with the testimony coming out. I had taken opioids for five years. I still do. I take about two a day. For people who arent aware, tylenol probably kills more people than any opioid. If you take over eight tylenol a day, it can shut down your liver. , im in my 60s and i still have to work. I lost my house. Pain. To work and im in i use it carefully. I take two a day. 23 a day. I mix it with tylenol. Heres the chart we should earlier from the county health report, the story from Bloomberg Business week talking about premature deaths by method of injury. Drug overdose is the leading cause of death in 2015 for americans. That is the red line on the chart. Motor vehicle crashes on the green line. You can see that over the years. The blue line, firearm deaths. That chart in Bloomberg Business week. John in maryland. Exteriors with opioids. Good morning. Experience with opioids. Good morning. Withr ive been dealing now due to 56 years an injury i received theres two points i wanted to bring up. The people who say they have no compassion for people whove become addicted, a lot of people dont understand how the opioids work. These are drugs with diminishing returns. The longer you take them, the less they work. Your body becomes tolerant to the medication. Cycle whereby you are taking more and more over the years. It makes it much worse, much harder to get off. It like an eating disorder or Something Like that where the further you go along the line, the harder it is to come back from it. That is. 1. Oint one. If you want to help people with chronic pain, one of the best ways is to expand access to medical marijuana. Betterhave the same or Pain Management properties that a lot of the opioids do. It is nonaddictive. It is not something you will become physically dependent upon. Nearly as much as opioids are. Tois Night Impossible overdose on host . A study on the use of marijuana to help aend the opioid help end the Opioid Epidemic. Inconclusive. A few more stats on the opioid overdose epidemic. Since 1999, the number of opioid deaths quadrupled. The lees and caught leading cause of accidental death. Overdose rates are highest among people aged 25 to 54. Four out of five heroin user started out misusing painkillers. Stephanie is waiting in long beach, california. Good morning. Thank you so much for cspan. I would like to make two points. One is that the fda is complicit in this. In 1995 when they approved , even after criminal charges they declared it was safe even after charges were brought for this fraud, they never change the approval of oxycontin. I would like to share a short sample from a Senate Hearing february 22 the very second 2016. Theid what is causing overdoses . The answer is clear. Over the last 10 years the Drug Enforcement agencies increasing of oxycontin has increased. The dea has told big pharma it produce 1. 4e million grams of oxycontin. Almost for for a full bottle of painkillers for every man woman and child in 2016. Host whose testimony is that . It seems to be caller i have to go down to the bottom of the page. I believe of mr. Multis testimony. You can look up in the hearings for yourselves if you want to. Check out any hearings we have covered at cspan. Org. Thatll do it for this first segment. Former senator medicaid and medicare tom scully will join us. We will be joined by john delaney later for a discussion on Infrastructure Spending and tax reform. Last night, james comey spoke ce and the intelligen National Security alliance on intelligence gathering and Law Enforcement. The last year, almost a year now, has been both difficult and easier than you might think. Ive never been prouder of the fbi. What makes it easy is we are not on anyones side ever. We are not considering whose ox will be cored by this, we just dont care and we cannot care. Are the facts,t what is the law, what is the right thing to do. We often we find ourselves choosing between bad and worse. Having a short menu of options. In a way, that is been easy, because that is who the fbi is. People look at me and say look at what you did, actually the f the i decisions in a high quality way. The reason we confuse people is most people see the world differently than we do, especially in a hyper partisan environment. Most people wear glasses that filter the world according to their side. This is a challenge i face when i testify in congress. They see facts at how they will affect their side. When they encounter people, im one of 37,000 like this at the fbi, who never consider side, it is confusing. Because youre trying to help this person and then that person. One of my daughters shared with tweet. Summer a i am on twitter now. She showed it to me and it said is such a comey political hack, i just cant figure out which party. [laughter] and smiled and i took that shared it with my senior staff and said that the greatest complement. We confuse people because a lot of people cant imagine people who arent considering side. We are not fools, i know what i make a hard decision, a storm follows. Honestly, i dont care. If ive thought about it carefully and in doing the right thing, making the right judgment, it does not matter. Washington journal continues. Ust tom scully is back with , a former administrator of the centers for medicare and Medicaid Services. We want to discuss the future of medicaid in the weeks after the failure of the aca repeal and replacement deal bill that included changes for medicare and medicaid