20. Why are americans Young Diane Young at alarming rates . We will open up our phone lines for you this morning. If you are in the eastern or central time zones, we want to 202 7488000. If you live in the mountain or central time zones, call 202 7488001. Text us at 202 7488003 and we are always reading on social media, http twitter. Com cspanwj social media. Lets set the groundwork, first. Im going to read a little bit from report here so that you can see what we are going to talk about. Heres the article. Now i want to read from you a little bit from the actual report itself. Here is what it says. Hear from thes director of the cdc, dr. Robert redfield, discussing why the opioid outbreak is a crisis here in washington, d. C. Here is what he had to say. [video clip] the outbreak of our time is the opioid outbreak. Im going to stress that i think there are a lot of lessons for us from what we learned in the Ebola Outbreak. We dont need to wait for the perfect solution to the challenges that we have with opioid and drug use. We need to embrace science, bring it into the field, to the operational and Clinical Research and advance this. It is the Public Health crisis of our time. 130 people die each day in our country from drug overdose. We are making progress. This year it looks like Overdose Deaths are down by 5 , but we have got a long way to go. But i do think that we need to stay focused. I can remember when i started as an aids physician in 1983, my patients had 10 survival and look at where we are today. Again, the same has to be said for those individuals that are confronting opiate addiction or drug disorder. You have earned me say this before, the first thing we need to do is recognize it for what it is, a chronic medical condition. Not just a chronic medical condition, but a chronic medical relapsing condition. We need to embrace it for what it is, its not a moral failing. We need to put the Science Behind this so that we can draw up longterm solutions to this medical condition. On the one hand, methamphetamine is the leasing the leading cause of death in more than eight states in the country in science has a long way to go to give us medical interventions for methamphetamine addiction. But then i would just encourage us to realize that if the who and the nih can figure out how to do science that makes meaningful impact in the middle of an Ebola Outbreak in the drc, we should be able to figure out how to bring science into a meaningful impact against drug use disorder. Our phones go to lines and talk to eric, from pennsylvania. Eric, good morning. Caller host host good morning, how are you doing today . Just fine, go ahead. Caller i want to thank you for bringing attention to this important topic. Im 32, from northeast pennsylvania. Its a huge issue. Everyone i know in my area has died as know someone who died from suicide or drug addiction. One of the big things in my area in particular, we seem to like behind the Economic Prosperity you care about in the United States. Wages have not really grown here. A lot of my generation, graduating from college out of the great recession, we didnt instantly get that american dream, buying the house and having all of these things you are supposed to have any age of 30, 32. A lot of people that i know turned to drugs and alcohol. If you couple that with i speak for myself, i have a wonderful counselor who helps me immensely and my copay is 50. I would like to see her twice a month but because of the circumstances i only go once a month. You put these factors together, along with president ial candidates who appear in pennsylvania, seems we get pandered to during the election by republicans and democrats. They come up here and promise they wont forget about us and nothing seems to change. Again, i just really thank you for bringing this to attention. It is an epidemic. Many people my age, it breaks my heart. I went to a funeral couple of weeks ago for a young man quite went to high school with who committed suicide. Its a problem, thank you for addressing it. Let you go, how old are you in due you think that the people in your generation are getting enough health care and Mental Health support . Old. S im 32 years you know what . I think we have come a long way as far as bringing it out of the shadows with Mental Health being a stigma. Myself i suffer from anxiety. Most people i know my age do. Its tough with earning enough and, again, the kind of you know , not feeling you are where you are supposed to be at certain points in your life. I have a deductible on my Health Insurance that is 4500 dollars. Click i said, my counseling deductible is 50 copay, which you know, coupled with my Student Loans and other bills that i have, car payments, life in general, sometimes i do, i put a counseling session i may think i need in a put that aside , you know, to cover something else. I think that is, speaking for me, i cant speak for everyone, thats a problem i find. One more question for you, but are the solutions . What can we do question mark this is your age group we are specifically talking about here. What can be done to help to change, to increase the Life Expectancy . Man, thats the milliondollar question, right . We have to keep promoting Mental Health. Make it, you know, keep taking it out of the darkness and into the light, right . Saying its ok. Everyone goes to problems in life. You are not alone. Like i said, everyone i know, whether it is a mild anxiety or for some it is crippling. That is probably the biggest thing. To increase access, you know, access to these treatments and again, kind of continue to take the stigma out of it. Final thought is, you know, surely with Purdue Pharma and, you know, growing up in high school it was much too easy to get prescription painkillers. Benzo, valium, seems like they were everywhere. At least here in northeast pennsylvania. You can read the articles on reuters in an other news publications, but these drugs during the late 90s and into the early 2000s were everywhere. Lets go to barbara, calling from pompano beach, florida. Good morning. Good morning. I just woke up and boy, ive got a lot to say. Hopkins 45 it at jon years ago about drug addiction and what causes it. These druggies all have very high iqs. The higher the iq, the more susceptible you are to artificial food flavoring and food coloring. There was a holistic doctor in who let me come in there and read his jon hopkins book, a case history book. They proved 45 years ago that the higher the iq, the more susceptible you are to artificial food flavoring and food coloring. It scrambles the brain. A lot of these druggies come down from up north to go to these rehabs. And theres a lot of them down here. They get out of the rehabbed and they start buying drugs. I can prove why they do what they do. You self medicate when you have high iq. They smoke, nicotine. You notice a lot of them smoke. Then you have got heroin. And then you get the fentanyl in the heroin, causing the death. You are saying that because americans are getting smarter, its killing them . You inherit the exact iq of one of your parents. They proved that. That is why a doctors son is more likely to become another doctor, they inherit the exact iq. Thats also why you usually marry. Apart and have a divorce if you marry a stupid wife and you are smart. Lets go to philip, calling from springfield, massachusetts. Philip, good morning. Caller im 81 years old. Back in 1963i met my wife. In 1964i had to go to a Family Doctor to get an exam to go to work. , used to at the time smoke four and a half packs of cigarettes a day and he told me they found out that smoking is bad for you and all the doctors were giving up smoking. The sad thing about it is that my wife could never give up smoking. She tried everything, she couldnt do it. Fast forward to 2007, she passed away from emphysema. Smoket care if you cigarettes or whatever it is. You cant do it is once you get in your 60s, you will die from your emphysema. Thats just the way it is. Callingts go to matt, from philadelphia, pennsylvania. Good morning. Jesse. Good morning, yeah, i think this is a combination of the perfect storm. For the younger people you have a sense of hopelessness that drives them to the opioid epidemic. For older people like myself, the problem i think is the food supply. You know, all the fructose that is nothing more than corn sugar added to our food. So many peopleen now, especially my age, my 60s, coming down with type two diabetes. It and the worst part about it is, you know, diabetes is a very expensive disease to treat. A lot of people dont have the money to treat it. So you know, you have the perfect storm. The younger people with the opioid epidemic. The older people with the type 2 diabetes. Its no surprise to me, jesse. Lets look at some of the places where we have where we have seen the increase in mortality. From the report of the journal of the american medical association, we have seen that the increases seem to be coming from the west belt and appalachia. This coming from the report from the american medical association. Lets go through it specifically statebystate and where we see the states with the biggest increase in midlife mortality rates. Here with New Hampshire, we see an increase of 23 . Main, 21 . Vermont, 20 . West virginia, 23 . Ohio, 22 . Indiana, 15 . Entucky, 15 once again, we are the states and the rust belt and appalachia , they are seeing the most dramatic increases in the death rates for americans ages 25 to 64. Once again, what is going on there . Keep in mind, you can call in. We want to hear from you about what is going on here. Before we take more calls, lets look at some of our social media followers and what they have to say about this. Here is one tweet host lets go back to our phone lines into see what you think about why americans seem to be dying young at a alarming rates. Lets go to angela, calling from texas. Good morning. Caller i think a lot of it has to do with addiction. I think that addiction does stem from, you know, Mental Health issues. I figured out a long time ago that you dont get addicted to something. You get addicted to nothing. Feel happy, you cant feel sad, you dont get excited. Unfortunately, especially with the younger kids, it is so, its really prevalent. You get it almost anywhere. You know . Myself, and 37 now, i went to rehab. Twice. That,enever i did decide you know, i have to get sober, things are bad, things were really bad. My sponsor told me to buy a black dress. Because you will be using it a lot. Within six months, probably, four people died. Most of it was heroin. Them, you know, they liked to mix heroin and methamphetamine. You know, its hard. Its hard to, its hard to accept anything whenever nothing is what you want. It columns the storm in your head. These deaths that youre talking about, where they people around your age . Older, younger . They were actually younger, probably in their mid20s. Most people do decide to get andr between the ages of 34 37. Thats the most typical time somebody decides to get sober. You have to want it. And its hard. Host having been through this, for can be done more to help . Is there anything to be done that could help . Caller yeah. I think that if you walk into the er because something was wrong, you know . They need to look at that. I needed help. Im also a schizophrenic. I told my husband, somethings wrong. Something is going wrong. Something is really going wrong. I ended up getting a criminal case and i remember none of what i did. I was like you know . I wish i could blame that on drugs, but its Mental Illness. , things in life happen and you dont know how to deal with it. Start usingple do whatever from p a pressure. Told mystarted when i ,ousin something that, you know that was really big for me to share. In she said here, take this, you will feel better. And i did. So you know . People dont really take Mental Health seriously. They dont understand what it really does to a person. If you dont have it, if you havent experienced it, yeah, you can see what it does. But you dont know what its really whats really going on. Host lets talk to herschel, calling from cedartown, georgia. Herschel, good morning. Morning, thanks for taking my call. I live in a small, rural county. Theres been a lot of people who have passed away young and middleaged. Im a 59yearold male. I have seen quite a bit my life. Usually people who die from alcohol, car wrecks. Things like that. But we have a flood of methamphetamines coming into our. Im sure our county its all over the country know. Heroin, methamphetamines, fentanyl. That myself, but my child has had issues with it. And the otherr people, shes clear of it now, but its amazing the number of people to go back and repeat to jail, go to the hospital, go to something and get clean. But then the relapse. Until something can be done about the river of methamphetamines, fentanyl, rolling into a small town, there isnt a lot to do it a small town in you have got to figure stuff out. Drugs is not the right way to go. But around here . Start andal drugs to then from there it turns into the habit and the addiction. I feel like methamphetamine is one of the worst things that has ever come into this county. Herschel, i got to spend time in a small town over the thanksgiving holiday. What is the effect you are seeing in these small towns, these Rural Counties from these methamphetamines users . Other young . Which you say they are middle aged . What are you seeing exactly in these small town Rural Communities . Tell me what you see. Caller honestly, it has progressed from say middleaged too young and old. I think in the paper not long was arrestedld man for methamphetamines. Trafficking, too. But the trap they fall and i think is that it is so strong of an addiction that when they run out, they will do anything. We have a massive amount of siva reza goes on around here. Its all ages. Its like a black cloud that has rolled into the pleasant Little Country area here and just absorbed people into it. They will do anything for more of it. And now that heroin is here, they make a lot the police, i follow than the hallway, they make a lot of arrests and busts where i live and just one county they just shut down a backyard meth lab with four pounds of it. Coolers everywhere of solidified math meth. I have a threeyearold grandson and my daughter has been up and out. She is clean and, working a job, thank god for that. But these other people, i swear, some of the young people look like sundays. Frank ins go to spanish fork, utah. Im 72, but i have been involved in drugs by whole life. For a long time. Got sober when i was 60. I volunteer at the local county rehab. The people i see there are in the age group you are specifically talking about. A lot of things can be set on the subject and im going to try to keep it to a few specifics here, so i dont lose track. Has been said on the program earlier, i think some of the isgram, some of the problem the cause of addiction and as ang to change reality activity. You know, we used to work on farms and that can of stuff and be more active. Now we sit around and get paid. The healthy ones that are not addicted get they pay money to go to the gym. It. Economy is part of technology and the changes that are happening. Idleness, myself that its the devils playground, that kind of thing. As far as a solution, i believe and iehab is helpful believe it needs to be made available better. I volunteer at this county rehab . Rehab. People had good union insurance, good insurance policies coming from out of states. Celebrities would come here. Go the problems of addiction across all of those economic lines. Being someone that has worked at a rehab, is it working . We have seen several callers this morning say that they have seen people in rehab over and over and over again. The rehab being done now, is it working for anyone . Its a very small percentage of people who are successful. But what i always stress about rehab, you also need to go to a support group, some sort of recovery aftercare group, like aa or na, Something Like that in your community. A phrase called 90 meetings in 90 days. It is good to get indoctrinated with the 12 steps. Everybody copies them. They are good at life exercise. Its a behavioral modification if you will avail yourself of the suggestions they say. The point is he will go to these support meetings and you start hanging around the people who are getting sober and its very easy to go back and hang out with your old friends you were getting high with. So, when you get out of rehab, thats a big, big turning point there. For the rubber hitting the road. Some people get out and od if they have had a little taste of a program or going to some meetings, even if they relapse, as they keep coming around, you see them slowly over time, you know, start getting sober. But it is still a very small percentage that helps. You know . That actually do get sober. Host lets go to alfred calling from california. Good morning. Its a complicated subject and im happy to hear people with more experience with regards to their personal life. Im looking at it from a macro point of view. I think the big problem we have here is the overreliance or ,cceptance of freemarket forprofit incarceration. Health Insurance Industry that is way overpriced. Lots of money going to very few people, shortchanging education. Shortchanging young people. That could go to communities, to get more Recreational Educational Services to young people who are going to fatten the already fat cats that are the producers of the poisons that are being sent to the small towns. Im from california, ok . Im 68 years old. My first friend that passed away due to drugs, i was 13 at the time and he was 14. My own brother passed away as a heroin addict. Have some familiarity, a lot of familiarity with this. But not like from a small town. Here in california, marijuana is legal in a think that that may be something that could help, too. Believe it or not. Its a, its, you know, its something that is intoxicating, but not as toxic and lethal as these other drugs. In september the Rand Corporation hosted a d