coming up on five minutes before the top of the hour. welcome back to the most news in the morning. more than 1 million americans are living with hiv. in the black community, many times the stigma of the diagnosis means hiding it or in some cases not even knowing. but for one man, living with hiv the courage to open up cold change things. here s soledad o brien. reporter: two illnesses threaten jeffrey gavin. his church knows only about one. i have that makes me very tall, i m constantly in pain. reporter: he feels compelled to tell his pastor the rest of his story. i m living with hiv. reporter: jay gavin as his friends know him found out he s hiv positive four years ago. he s never mentioned it in
anticipation building here. reporter: well, john, we have been here for seven weeks now watching this rescue operation unfold. and i have never seen things moving as fast as they are now. look over my shoulder there where you can see the lights. and that is where the rescue, where the extraction point is going to be. and things, as you say, everything is a go. the steel encasing is in place, the cement platform, we re told the cement has dried. and then we saw video of one of those test runs of the phoenix capsule, a capsule that is going to haul these men back to the surface. and that was dropped down, right down to the depth of almost 2,000 feet. and you can see they ve attached the camera on it as it went down that shaft. it s going to be a tight fit, but you can bet as each miner comes up that shaft, it s going to be the ride of their lives. what s left to do? what are they waiting for before they send that capsule down there, i guess, with a paramedic and another off
the next few days to follow the fate of those 33 trapped miners. their rescue is imminent. they re half a mile under ground. a moment ago i said they re a mile-and-a-half to half a mile, 2500 feet. this rescue could happen as early as wednesday. it s going to take some time, though. they re going to be very careful how they get these guys out. they spent two months under ground, they don t want to botch it in the last day. patrick oppmann joins us from the site. what have you got? reporter: well, ali, we re talking about the preparations. in the last few minutes or so, we have seen the helicopter doing hunch downs and takeoffs, practicing to take many of these men out. the helicopter will leave from three small helicopter pads. they basically carved out the side of the mountain and take them to a nearby hospital where they ll be checked out, given extensive tests over a period of two or three days and will be checked out for any problems, any possibility of diseases, injuries they co
leading to. reporter: gavin sees himself as an ambassador leading open discussions. but his pastor has a more tempered response. whether or not he is a symbol of something that can be healthy for the church and inspiring for people who are hiv-positive, i think that remains to be seen. reporter: regardless of the outcome, gavin says he ll keep pushing. reporting for in america soledad o brien. the black churches fought for civil and human rights and now is waging a war on debt. you don t want to miss almighty debt: a black in america special october 21 right here on cnn. buying marijuana could become as easy as buying a pack of cigarettes at the corner. after the break we take you to the state where it might happen in less than a month.
changed is the economy. money-hungry states are looking for new sources of revenue and already wondering whether pot is the next cash crop. governments certainly are if they become promoters of legalized marijuana, if legislatures start it s clearly for in most cases would be for revenue reasons. reporter: still, some predict legalization in california could cause chaos starting in the courts such a state law if passed would clash with federal law launching a big battle that could end up in the supreme court. but at least for now it s all just a pipe dream with a lot of speculation, though the world of drug enforcement could look a lot different when the smoke clears on election day. joe johns, cnn, washington. be sure to stick with us on cnn. tomorrow on this show we ll talk to both sides of the debate with representative from yes and no on proposition 19 in california.