a forecast of significant rain causing flooding. maybe again, here in bahrain as well, western iran, and even in q, wait on saturday. is this a one year? and normally i have to say, i don't know, it seems to be an extension of the monsoon drop. will it be repeat in future years with yet to see? ah, this is al jazeera, these are the top stories, the u. s. and chinese presidents have held more than 2 hours of chalks and what's been described as a tens phone call. she didn't brings warn joe biden over taiwan saying he shouldn't, as he put it, play with fire. u. s. economy is contracted for the 2nd quarter in a row, but the by the administration insists it's not in recession. g d p fall 0.9 percent of the 3 months from april to june. but job growth is still strong, which hasn't been the case. and previous downturns, ukraine says russian forces of launched a mis islet sagnier key for the 1st time in weeks. russian troops withdrew from the area, months ago, after failing to capture it, the northern region of summer. he was also targeted on thursday family of al jazeera journalist. surely in a box, i have made an impassioned plea for us politicians to support an independent investigation into our killing. they are the support of 80 members of congress. showroom was shot dead by his really forces while on assignment in the occupied west bank. in may. any family of us citizen who is skilled abroad expects their government to put its resources behind an investigation. this is the very least, the biden administration must do. they cannot rely on israel's word. war criminals cannot investigate their own crimes. to many palestinian families suffer every day as our family is suffering. now. they all deserve to live in safety with their families. they all deserve justice. they all deserve freedom. protest against guineas military john to have brought the capital con agreed to a standstill. organize a se one demonstrator was killed in confrontations with security forces. the unrest begun just before the head of the regional block echo was said military rulers had shortened their timetable for transition to civilian rule from 3 to 2 years. for there's been no confirmation of that from lucy until there was the headlines. the muse continues here on al jazeera of the stream. good bye. how and why did soon become so obsessed with this law, we were giving them a tool to hold the corrupt individual's human rights abusers accountable. they're gonna rip this deal apart if they take the white house, the point 25. what is the world hearing what we're talking about by american today? your weekly take on us politics and society. that's the bottom line. ah, i on semi ok in the united states, a record number of people are dying from drug overdoses. let me give you an idea of how serious the numbers are. in 2021, the numbers of recorded fatalities meant that it was the equivalent of one passing dying every 5 minutes in the united states. according to the centers for disease control in united states, there is a surge in the number of less particularly amongst people of color, black communities and indigenous communities, which is why we're doing this show. i'm going to start with an expert voice that expert voice is terrence cooper. he's a needle exchange coordinator. i say to comb with them. i fit know it like at the same time and i do not think 4 of them were people that worked in. if people got so much time when they had no drug uses, words will alter ha, with doubly with this fit law. and his new stuff the came out is crazy. this is the fear. now, he will say in a death, in the rise over those death, why is fentanyl and other powerful drugs particularly impacting communities of color in the united states? and what can be done about that at expert panel? andrea charles merits, sir. welcome. good to have you all here on the stream. andrea, please say hello to our audience around the well, tell them who you are, what you do. hello. hello for the invitation. my name is andrea, my lee. i'm from the had a nation and i'm calling in from the unseeded unoccupied. piscataway in southwark territory here in baltimore, maryland. i'm currently a research associate at the center for american indian health, a john polk, and bluebird school of public health. hello. so good to have you. thank you so much . hello charles. please introduce yourself to our viewers around the globe high for me, thanks so much for having me. my name is charles hawk eye and i am an equity of harm reduction project manager with the california bridge program based out of oakland, california. our i help emergency department star hemorrhaging programs all across the state is to have you on board admiral. so welcome to the street. please introduce yourself. thanks for having me. i'm mertsa perez, i am based in washington dc. i am currently the director of the office of federal affairs for the drug policy alliance. i guess i want to get your quick opinion on what we're seeing right here on my laptop. so this is the rise in us drug overdose deaths by race and ethnicity 2020 over 2019 black, 44 percent american indian and alaska native, alaska native, 39 percent white, 22 percent asian pacific islander 22 percent is spanish. 21 percent. what does that tell you that 1st glance, charles, you start for sure. yeah, i think that if those are important for me to be able, i can tech to conceptualize this dana within the history of how, how drug use is looked over the past several, several years. i think thinking about kind of even going back to when drugs were, were beginning to be criminalized in the early twenties drug use has always been criminalized around the boundaries of rights in the us. that's always been what has really been the trigger point of what drugs are legal and which ones are not. so when we kind of think about what's been happening around 2020, i think especially when the serge access worker was saying in that video earlier this combine, pandemic didn't all an covey coming together. overdose is something that looks very different now than it did even like 10 or 15 or 20 years ago to 15. 20 years ago before fitting are usually when you were seeing over doses. they were people who had either not used, they were new people who are using drugs. they were people who are changing the method they were using, maybe going from like using pills to injecting or people who are returning to use after being in jail after being in drug treatment or being absent for a period of time. when fitting all began to hit the streets and you know fit and i was now all in one day. it was a wave that occurred over several years starting in the east coast and making its way over towards the west coast. and it kind of changed up, it became a thing where people who were very seasoned users, people who are very experienced users, all of a sudden like you didn't know you were taking, you didn't know what dos you were at. you didn't know how much of a percentage this was you didn't know what was cut in tier drugs, and that's always been the case with alyssa drugs. you never really know what you're getting. i'm ok, but then everything in that car. yes, i thank you. has a great start and you, i want to bring you in here because i'm wondering if there's white privilege involved even when drugs are being consent. because why with the number of fatal overdose is be less for white trucking says, the truck is issue of color. you know, thank you for that question. i think absolutely white privilege pay the play, the part in this increase overdose rate. and i think the other part of what the data that you shared shows is that indigenous people, black people, people of color, we're not getting access to access to the services that we need. whether that treatment, whether that's harm reduction, many people do not feel safe and accessing health care health care because of racism experienced within the health care system. i think that's a huge piece of this work. and another thing that brought up for me is that, you know, these aren't just numbers, these aren't just percentages. it's been unacceptable that the rates of overdose have been so high for black and indigenous people beyond 3. prior to the pandemic, and that were shining a spotlight on it now. and thing, it's terrible, it's been terrible and devastating for so many years, way too long. and that these are just numbers there. people and people that have meaning in our lives that we care about, or a family friend and our friends and our community members already. and so also watching guests on youtube and i didn't even invite them to the conversation they were right in there with us. immediately i like this the thought here, which comes from ricardo, who asked about the apparent ease of getting drugs. is that going to be problematic? does that help put the, the numbers up or the search up in terms of people of color in those communities? charles, you're nodding, and then i'm going to go to marissa for her take as well. tells you, you start. i mean, drugs always been available. no matter where you are in this country, drugs have always been available. what may be the question that is much bigger to kind of after what kind of drugs and what quality of drugs are people. and so when you think about people who have money and resources, there is very high quality heroine still available in this country. you can spend a lot of money and get very good heroine that is not cut with it and all that is not cut with thing. but when you are living on the streets, when you don't have a lot of money, when you're buying heroin, because or pay or opiate medications, or opiate drugs, illicit drugs because they're trying to manage pain or because you're trying to deal with the big aspects of your life, you get what you can get and if you don't have a lot of money, you get cheap stuff. and if you get cheap stuff, the things that are putting you more at risk, i'm going to go to you more. it's about via you choose a get another good question. doesn't this imply lots of what we already know more rates they have had to make effective people of color more than white americans? what else can these numbers tell us brits that help us out in? yeah, i know, i think my colleague spoke to it earlier, you know, this is very sad because these are members of our community. but i think what's also really sad is that these are systemic policy failures that we've known about for decades. we know that there have been an equity throughout all of our social systems, including the criminal justice system. as my colleague pointed out, we also know that we have disparities and access to health services and other social inequities. i'm thinking about, you know, lack of housing or transportation that could drive somebody to a touring service program or a health service. but this was certainly all compounded by the pandemic, which is why the drug policy alliance has been pushing for access to harm reduction services to meet people where they're at, including making sure that people have panel test strips so they can consume. so before the consumer substance, they know what's in that substance, they can make a safe decision, no lock phone, reverse effects of an overdose on but also things like through the service program so that people have clean needles and have access to information about substance abuse. but all of this needs to be addressed in addition to addressing other social inequities like the inequities in our criminal justice system and access to housing and good paying job. all of that, it really does take a holistic approach. so my goodness, andrea is not in charles, he's not angry. you go 1st. yeah, i mean, i really appreciate what you know charles had shared around the impacts of prohibition and who is who is criminalized through our drug laws. and i think that, you know, like charles, the saying that access to drugs has always been there, you know, as long as humans have been humans, we've had the ability to create different substances and use plant medicines to alter experiences. and i think what's really have changed for us is the impacts of foreign to just people in particular, colonialism and all of the follow that comes with that. that creates this pain in our lives. that is one of the drivers of increased substance youth. yeah, i think that that's a huge point to kind of tie it back the coven 19. like during this shelter in place moment? you know, i was in college. i live in california. we were one of the 1st states to go on on lock down. it's really isolating. we know the things that drive drug use. you know, the things that dr. overdose isolation not having accept regular medical care. not having access to people who are checking when you using alone. those are all things like coven really push forward. and when you combine that with this history of prohibition, and i think like to kind of put it into the human context. people don't trust our government. people don't trust health workers. people are saying, if this person is overdosing, if i call 911, and a lot of states, the police show up and a lot of states, you don't actually have protection. if people, if the police show up and people are using drugs and drugs are they're like, so it becomes a question of how did we actually build the system in which this is what happens. we have intentionally built that over decades over century and just absolutely degrading the trust that by people in indigenous people have in our system absolutely degrading the quality of service that people are able to offer. and then it feels like a thing. and then we get back and what happened and it's like, well, what will happen, what happens, what the intention of this system where that happened, which were to continue the history of genocide that was started so long ago and to prevent people from being able to get back up to the service, we felt i want to focus more on what 8 takes to stop people from overdosing because it is a needless scatter. it's a waste las death, a pointless death. and what the challenges are, though, starting with some of the challenges you've already been building them up for us to thank you for that. but criminalization is something that came up in our conversation. and also from abdullah who is a research brown university. this is what he told us earlier, haven't listened and then build off what he was saying. so as racial disparities, continue to increase in the over those crisis. i think it's important to remember the counterproductive role that criminalization plays in this in this whole thing, that you can't have a health and harm reduction approach to treating the drug crisis if people are afraid of being criminalized for using those services. so you can't have outreach workers going and reaching these communities. if you then also have these communities that are incredibly policed afterwards. my fear is that as this crisis, you know, becomes perceived to be less white because of course it hasn't always been white, but it's been perceived that way that we will see a doubling down in criminalization which is happening. yeah, that's such a great point in something that i think about quite often. i think in some ways this country has made significant strides in terms of providing greater access to health services and harm reduction services for people who use drugs. but i'll tell you what, at the federal level, i see a lot of the opposite happening. i see a lot of the old drug or rhetoric of the past crop up time and time again. i think one specific example of this at the federal level continues to be how we're treating fact. all right, now, on one hand, we're seeing people who use drugs need health services and that's great. but on the other hand, we're, you know, also saying that we should treat all fentanyl, analog schedule and drugs that we need. it felt like we need to put people who are selling personal and track of trafficking fentanyl and joe in prison. you know, joe biden has said that he doesn't believe anybody should go to jail or president for drug use. yeah, he's supporting this effort to criminalize fentanyl analogs and fennel it further criminalize, the substances and i also have to point out that across the country. unfortunately, we still have laws on the books that criminalize harm reduction tools like clean needles, like no log stone like battle test strips. these are all literally life saving mechanism. so we really need to reverse that and do away with these old drug war tactics of the past, because all about leads to criminalization in stigma, and will prohibit people from reaching out her help should they need it. i want to bring you another voice into conversation. this one comes from the random duncan, he's arrested in d. c. he's in his mid sixty's. he injects her in on a daily basis, but he talks about them to know an impact he's been having on other people that he knows who take drugs, tossed out a new job age of 18. and i'm in office, yahoo, yahoo, all my life using that. so just to really start using you in one day i bought some from yeah, no, i didn't know sitting there and i went out. good morning, the old you a my friends. i never you back. almost every to reach are here most of my own those you know, did i know that story? he story, maybe wonder about how communities of color, how indigenous communities are handling, having fatal overdose is in the community having drug. can you see that communities do you start charles and you pick up? sure. yeah. you know, it's, it's really tough and it's really tough to have a conversation about it. because so much of overdose is truly caused by stigma. shame and judgment. if we're a person who's eating substances, whether we have an addiction or a substance use disorder, or we're using recreationally on the weekends, it's really hard to have that conversation with someone in our life about our substance youth, which is on there by puts us at risk for overdose because of the shame that we have around our substance youth. so i think although indigenous community has been so severely impacted by this crisis, i think indigenous communities have the knowledge of the experience and the tools that will help us get through this crisis. because this is unfortunately, one of many crises that we as indigenous people have experience and we know how to take care of each other. yeah. yeah. i really love that. that last piece. and i, and i think what i would add on to that is in, within our communities. so i guess i could tell them a little brief story. so in my previous role, i did a lot of harm reduction trainings and cisco working with a lot of different types of groups. and i would always remember when i would be giving training. so groups of what mostly black staff members are mostly, indigenous staff members because the energy in the room was very, very different. and so much of that has to do with the historical relationship that our communities have half the drug use. and specifically the relationship we've had, the criminalization of substances being used, recreationally of substances being used as part of community affairs, which is being used to literally just get through the day and work when we talk about the time period. post slavery during the sharecropping era where you had black people making half as much less than half as much like $0.10 on the dollar. that of what white people were making when they are going on doing manual labor. they were going out and they were using cocaine and they were using that because that's what you needed to do to work long enough hours to pay your bill. and then you had something like the crack, the crack down around crack that happened in the eighty's, the beginning of the war on drugs. and i think about how so much of my family, how so many of my, my elders have had really been really brought up a lot for people when i talk about harm reduction among my, my black community among older folks in the community who are like alive, during the eighty's, it's horrifying. the stories that people tell the ways that people get caught in the same spiral around criminalization. getting your kids taking away, not having access to jobs, not being able to get housing. and you're just stuck and stuck and stuck enough. the system that was created and then tell around as that system gone, charles that we done with and it's and it's getting in, it's getting broken down. but even if you think about like the system um health care, i'm one of the things that so i guess to kind of tie it back to the work i do at california bridge. one of the things that we do a lot, we work with emergency departments and in emergency departments. it is not uncommon when somebody comes them regardless of what their health issue is. if somebody says the beer, how the evidence they use drugs that will kick that personnel doesn't like or that doesn't matter if it's because your leg is broken or you got a headache or whatever, they won't even engage with you sometimes child. well, the conversation that you would have with those people because there's obviously an education process even within the medical profession as the educational processes. so if an emergency unit with say ok, you cannot come in here. you have broke her leg, but you're also sentinel will have to leave. what would you say to the team in that emergency unit? i would say something along the lines of the role of the emergency department is to be an accessible place for people to access care, regardless of their ability to pay or guard lists of disability, regardless of medical issue and regardless of race. and so it is your job as a medical provider to provide this person high quality care. and sometimes what that looks like is just giving them the literal care that they're asking for. and sometimes it's also about giving them some new skills because a lot of that does come from that stigma and that uncomfortable lity and an even bigger way, not knowing what to do. they don't know, a lot of times providers don't feel for adequately trained to provide those services. and so a big part of what we do also is teaching them. here's how you do a start around dupont orphan, which is a medication for, for substance use disorder. here's how you start that an emergency department, you can get in a locks on distribution program and give people no lock. so there's education that you can offer and counseling that is in the e d that is really sign that short term and, and immediate. and i think the more skills that both providers are able to get, the more comfortable did they get, being able to actually provide those services and not just have this gut reaction of we don't know what to do. it seems from our conversation that it doesn't seem to be that expensive maritza to save lives. charles is laughing. it sometimes, you know, we, we, we sort of wrangle with a, an issue, and this is so expensive. we can't actually handle this. but this doesn't seem to be expensive. am i being naive here? oh, is this cheap to save? lives lives could be saved. i think it's a complicated question, but i'll tell you why. i think congress always going to back are these $1000000000.00 budgets for the department of defense and for war and for weapons bay. i don't see that same energy or domestic programs that could really help our people that can help our residents stay healthy. and i think this is a perfect example of that. we've been fighting with congress to give us more money for health services for harm reduction services. for final cas strips and the lock stolen answer into service programs. what we're asking for is a drop in the bucket compared to the other things i see congress passed every day. so it does require a meaningful investment, especially because we have the significant racial inequities and access to health services. and to be frank, this is a country that has only recently, and only parts of the country have started to embrace harm reduction. we are in the midst of record number overdose, that's we absolutely need to scale every service operates. and that's going to require a huge investment. i'm going to show our audience something that shows how new hom reduction is to united states. other countries are way ahead of united states, have a look here on my laptop. this is a look inside the 1st official safe injection sites in the us. there's going to scroll down here and what you're seeing, i'm just gonna just read here. this is joe collado. he's at a clean white table in a sunlit room. and there's a few balls, and he is injecting himself with harrowing. when you read that, that's quite startling. i'm now going to show you nelson grant, who has also been in that facility in new york. and he explains what he learns as something he use his drug. that helps keep him safe, his nelson. if you do more tomorrow, if you're going to use or just you're going to you later to try to you safely known for in his room to talk to you safely. go don't every review of your shame noodle even going here. he was in the doorway user, killing one. no, sure. if you happened to say were incredibly over. richard have stepped from shovel . how to do retro i have a minute and a little bit left in the show. i would like to hear your mood guess whether you're hopeful about hom production that these fatalities in indigenous and people color communities. if in 2022 there is a hope for way for what andrea you start? sure, absolutely. i feel hopeful. i think that harm reduction is a new word for indigenous practices that have been happening since time immemorial . and that ultimately we are strong communities and we are able to work with each other to protect our communities. and so i have the shelves really feel hope yamisha share the moment with rich seco ahead rizza. i also remain hopeful. i have seen a shift in conversation, i just want us to remember that people who use drugs need health services need to be treated with dignity and need to be a part of the conversation. and i find, hoping that, yeah, thank you so much. and charles, you bring us home, wraps up. charles. yeah, i mean, i've been cope is as big as what we're willing to work towards it on. and if we want to continue to grow in this, we have to continue to just like build up the services that actually work and break down the things that don't work like formalization and that's how we move forward. thank you so much. you can follow charles hall phone on twitter at chiles will phone back. here you go. and maria it's it is all set on twitter at maria said perez, thank you so much or say to andrea for being part of our program today. and you on youtube for your thoughts and your comments. i'll see you next time. take, ah, counter feet lose cheap and sometimes dangerous copies of the real thing of been found all over the world. and then even the most expensive premium products. it's the secretive and deadly multi $1000000000.00 business. we found one problem, but about one 3rd or stay in a in us, which was just an incredible finding. during raids on one of the most notorious mafia gangs in calabria, italian police found consignments of fake olive oil made from industrial lubricants that were being exported to the united states. the main thing that we do when we carry out criminal investigations is to reconstruct the money flow and the flow of goods and connect pieces together. it office, broads, does profits that are easy to make and hard to ignore. perhaps it means that all of us should be a little more vigilant about what we put on our plates from the world's most populated region in den and untold stories across asia and the pacific. to discover the current events with diverse coaches and conflicting politics. one 0 one east. on al jazeera, they watch us. they gather evidence with so can we can american cyber activists develops and tap used in brazil to monitor the police . we have more cameras than they do because where the people a bigger brother rebel peaks on are just you know, ah.

Related Keywords

New York , United States , Qatar , Taiwan , Doha , Ad Daw Ah , Piscataway , Maryland , Oakland , California , Iran , Alaska , Washington , Brazil , China , Yemen , Syria , Russia , Pakistan , Bahrain , Ukraine , India , Israel , Kuwait , Italy , Charles Hall , Spain , Katara , Arkhangel Skaya Oblast , Baltimore , Italian , Spanish , Chinese , Russian , Pakistanis , Northern Region , Palestinian , American , John Polk , Joe Collado , Terrence Cooper , Joe Biden ,