>> shihab rattanzi, al jazeera, maine. >> you can keep up with everything, there it is, aljazeera.com. >> on "america tonight." legacy of an addiction. >> i wanted to let people know that it was a drug overdose. was i proud of it? no. but we need to stop airing these young people. >> love loss and why these people want their final words to speak the truth. and drugged to death? the risk to dementia patients and the struggle to help them.

>> what did you lose? >> the connection. you thought you were talking to somebody in a vegetative state. >> "america tonight's" sheila macvicar investigates the drugging dementia. >> thanks for joining us, i'm joie chen. it is often the most vulnerable among us who are moofng thamong the greatest ris. we can't know what they are thinking but in an attempt to calm them, nursing homes will often use powerful drugs. "america tonight's" sheila macvicar has examined the effect, and there is evidence those drugs can be more dangerous even more deadly than previously thought. >> we had child proofed our doors to make sure she wouldn't get out. >> when maria's mother developed

dementia, she used to get out and she worried she wouldn't be safe until she was put in a nursing home. >> this was the person who sacrificed everything she did for you, how can i just as her daughter saw hey say i can't do. i struggled with this. my aunt said, you need to put your plom in a home. >> mom this a home. >> she found one in nearby 'em monte, california. idle acre, medicare's highest rating, five stars. >> when i go to a hotel and i choose a five star resort i expect a five star hotel. great service, great food. great accommodations. so in my mind, i correlate that

with, hey, it's a five-star facility. they've got nothing but the best there. >> reporter: guerrero says, her mother did not get the best there. far from it. one thing sanchez did get, the antipsychotic risperdol. >> my sons on her birthday would go take cakes and she would fall asleep. i would ask the nurses why is she so sleepy? they would say, oh she probably was up pretty late last night. mid visit she would conk out. >> what did you lose, what did your family lose? >> the connection, the ability to be able to connect with her. it felt like you were talking to somebody in a vegetative state. sedated. >> completely sedated. >> mary sanchez was not schizophrenic but nursing homes

have used antipsychotics off label, in spite of this black box warning, issued by the food and drug administration. for more than a decade the fda has warned antipsychotics can cause sudden death and other serious complications in people with dementia. even with that warning, a government accountability office studied this year found a third, 33%, of nursing home residents with dementia, received antipsychotics. precisely the people who should not be given the drugs. tony chicatel is staff attorney for california advocates for nursing home reform. >> they're going to tell you whether the care there is person centered, focused on the individual needs of the residents or whether the facility staff are focused on

treating everyone the same, all complaints and resistance to care is something that should be medicated away. >> reporter: the fda warning he says has had little impact. >> and it's easy to call the physician and get a prescription and then give it to them and suddenly they are quiet. >> the status quo is not good. >> dr. helen kales is director of the center for positive aging. a study published of 90,000 patients of veterans administration, kales found the risk of dying from antipsychotics was much higher than was recently felt. haldol causes an spra extra death, an additional death for 27 patients with dementia. and seraquel, one more death for

every 50. and the study only looked at what happened over a six month period. many nursing homes give residents with dementia these drugs for years. >> the phrase is if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. so out in the field, we have most providers are actually not psychiatrists. most people that see people with dementia are primary care physicians and they've probably received a little bit of training on these psychiatric medications in their training but they haven't received the kind of training that we think is necessary on what are the underlying causes of these symptoms. >> medicare in 2012 launched a program to help nursing homes address symptoms without antipsychotics. and this year, medicare included antipsychotics for their five star ratings nursing homes.

the threat of receiving fewer stars would push nursing homes from prescribing fewer antipsychotics. >> nursing homes look at those five star quality rating systems and use the information to decide what nursing homes they really want to go and check out more closely. >> reporter: some nursing homes have retrained staff to find ways to care for residents dementia without relying on drugs. but half a year after medicare changed its five star ratings to include antipsychotic use we found plenty of nursing homes where it's business as usual. "america tonight" has identified more than a dozen nursing homes across this country, each with a perfect five star rating from medicare that continues to prescribe these drugs, antipsychotics at high levels. in each of these facilities, at least two out of five long term residents are still being

prescribed these potentially lethal drugs. idle acre is one of them, at idle acre 52% of the residents receive antipsychotics according to medicare. two and a half times the national average. the nursing home still has a five star rating. >> it is enforcement light. it's not tells facilities if your rate is high you've done something wrong. if you are drugging people without the necessary clinical indications you've done something wrong and you're going to have to pay for it. >> chickotel says nursing homes are remainder fined for giving antipsychotics and the fines are minimal. >> fewer than there were three and a half years ago and that's amazing. on the other hand if you are looking at this issue as something that is intolerable then we have a long way to go. we still have approximately

300,000 nursing home residents on antipsychotics and that's a number that is embarrassing. it's a national embarrassment. >> maria guerrero's mother mary sanchez quit school at age 12 to help support her family, eventually landing a job in hollywood as a wig maker. she left idle acre in an ambulance. >> she was really dehydrated. she was malnourished. she has sepsis and she had pneumonia. >> nursed back to health at the emergency room, guerrero sued idle acre. the lawsuit was settled out of court. mary sanchez was moved to another nursing home, where she wasn't given antipsychotics.

>> her eyes lit up, she communicated everything with her eyes, i felt i had that opportunity before she passed to have that quiet relationship with her. >> reporter: a quiet relationship guerrero says only possible because her mother was free from antipsychotics. sheila macvicar, al jazeera, el monte, california. >> next, the final words of addiction and the survivors giving them voice. later, the lazarus drug, an antedote to overdose. why officers are carrying the drug to overcome overdoses. a shout out on the pope's words and why so many people feel they should judge. at aljazeera.com/americatonight. being >> there's a line of police

advancing toward the crowd here. >> ferguson: city under siege. >> it isn't easy to talk openly on this base. >> and america's war workers. >> it's human trafficking. >> watch these and other episodes online now at aljazeera.com/faultlines.

>> we've reported extensively on the sharp uptick in heroin, in

places you wouldn't expect. use of the drug by young people have more than doubled in the last decade and overdoses quadrupled. what can save lives? facing the truth about drug death. signs that families want the legacy of their children however painful to live on and to make a difference. >> my name is margaret and i lost my daughter sue to heroin on august 6th,2013. the police came to the house and i just thought that they were, you know, she was in jail again. they asked if i was alone, i said no my husband is back at the shop. we can go back there if you need to go back there. they said well let's go back there. and then they told us that she had died. it was just such a shock, even though you knew it was going to happen, it was a shock that it

actually did. i included the heroin in her obituary because she wanted me to. she says i know i'm not going to live to be very old, maybe 40 at the most or 30, 35. she says, keep this and if i die i want this in my obituary. she says i was a perfect daughter and my parents never knew i was using or drinking for at least the first five years from age 12 to 17. then, only suspected it, until the last ten years of my life when i couldn't hide it anymore. during the last ten years i never knew from one day to the next where i was going to be. i ate out of garbage cans, i beg and stole. you will become a liar and a thief. next you will lose your family, your real friends and eventually your life. the light of my life, my daughter, was taken away, even then i could not quit. i have quit now but i am dead. don't wait as long as i did.

give your life another chance. she wanted other people to get help because she couldn't. she wanted her daughter back, and she couldn't overcome her addiction long enough to get her daughter back. >> my name is kathleen pemble and i lost my son logan to heroin overdose on march 27th, 2015. i got the call that logan had overdosed and that call came from his dat dad who was told by neighbors. i left here and drove to the hospital, in peekskill which is i don't know, maybe a 15 minute drive and he was still downstairs in the er and he went up to the icu shortly after that and was there for five days before they determined that there was no way he could recover. i included heroin in the

obituary because, well, it never occurred to me to do anything other than that. logan fought substance abuse for eight years of his short life. he experienced many periods of success during which he was fully himself. a kind intuitive strong and generous young man. ultimately he lost his battle and now another heartbreaking reminder of the heroin epidemic in this country. it is incredibly prevalent even in this small town, six kids including logan have overdosed in the last two years. that's one every four months. and logan knew them all. >> my name is peggy premek, and i lost my son adam richard on may 20th, 2015. we got a call around 6:15 that morning. we got a call from the er

doctor, told us that adam was brought in, by 3:00 in the afternoon he was pronounced dead. i included heroin in the obituary because there is a huge heroin epidemic in the northern kentucky area as well as across the nation. our charismatic and beautiful son and brother died saturday from a card yacht arrest caused buy drug overdose. with adam seemingly endless positive traits he had the potential to be anything. but drugs began to creep into his life when he was in high school. the worry that we have felt watching adam struggle have been replaced by a deep feeling of loss that now exists knowing we will never see his smiling face again. i wanted to let people know that it was a drug overdose. was i proud of it? no. but we need to stop burying these young people. >> well, sue to support her

habit she robbed, she would break into houses. we would give her money which was stupid because we knew it was going to go for drugs. she stole from us many times. either boyfriends helped her, friends helped her and prostitution, that was the only way she could get money. she was with someone, he found her in the bathroom, they have to get it any way they can. >> logan would go through my why medicine cabinet, i preferred to not have him around where i had to lock up the change jar and hide my purse. it's exhausting to deal with that. unfortunately what most families do is slowly accommodate the addict and before you know it you're living as a prisoner to this person's addiction. >> i never never in my -- ever thought that adam would do heroin. stick a needle in your arm? he didn't like the sight of

needles. adam was working for his uncle, and a co-worker found him using, i believe the needle was still in his arm. his uncle let him go right then. i think that for adam was the lowest of the low. >> after losing susan sue to heroin, i've learned that no matter how hard you try, you cannot make your child go the straight and narrow. they have to want to. after their first high they can never get that high again. but they are always trying. by then they are so addict they'd they just can't leave it. it's a really helpless situation, and you hope that other kids will hear the stories and learn and not want to go that way. because the parents really can't do anything. >> what i miss most about her is her smile. and her laugh.

>> what i miss most about my son is the potential that he didn't get to enjoy of having a fulfilled, happy, comfortable life. >> i can still hear that laugh and i know he's looking down on us. and that brings me comfort. >> mdma helps with the therapeutic connection. >> exclusive access to the experimental tests. >> our fears are dancing between us. >> techknow's team of experts show you how the miracles of science... >> this is what innovation looks like. >> can affect and surprise us. >> i feel like we're making an impact. >> awesome! >> techknow - where technology meets humanity.

>> as we saw before the break, the spike in heroin use, privately painful, now being more publicly confronted. beyond survivors efforts to combat what has become a national health crisis, first responders are increasingly arming themselves with a weapon, an antedote that cannot only save lives but rescue survivors from the edge of death. lori jane gliha finds what happens when help comes but too late. >> worst nightmare that a parent could ever go through. >> reporter: renee's son alex had been clean for six months and was home for the holidays. >> alex was very special very loving, giving, affectionate, you know, would do anything for anyone, give the shirt off his back. >> alex had become addicted to

oxycodone and moved on to heroin. renee, who asked we use her first name, thought he was turning his life around. it was the rainy night last january that would be his last night at home. >> we were going to go to the gym and then meet a friend. the next thing i went to bed at midnight. at 4:00 in the morning, one of the neighbors had screamed at me and said alex had stopped breathing. >> alex went to the hospital, was mentally never going to be the same. we had to make the decision whether to resuscitate him or not, which was another hard decision. in your heart you want to but in your mind you know you shouldn't.

>> reporter: alex might have been brought back to life with this. >> it's one milligram per nostril. >> once you've injected this into somebody's nose how quickly do they come back to life? >> from 45 seconds to a minute. >> it's a drug often referred to as fla narcan. members of his department were first on the scene responding to renee's 911 call. just weeks later police would be trained and equipped with the drug that could have saved alex. heroin overdose deaths triple nationwide between 2010 and 2013. with a growing epidemic, police departments are changing their approach to drug addiction. arming police with antidotes rather than arrests. >> if we get to the scene first

we can administer it. >> moloxone has been around for years, injected with a needle. but maryland is among dozens of states that allow emergency to carry narcan. the price has nearly doubled in the past year, leading to huge profits amphistar. >> do you think there will be lives lost as a result of police not being able to afford it? >> yes. if it gets to the point where it's cost-prohibited its users are going to stop carrying it. we could come an overdose and i

could have used narcan. seconds count, you have to be there when they're overdosing. >> price increase caught the attention of lawmakers, bernie sanders, the rapid energie incrf this cost of this drug, amphistar has said the cost has risen in response to the rising cost of energy and labor. she is rushing to the hospital to pick up her son. her other son. who is also an addict. michael has been addicted to opiates including heroin for years. his mother encouraged him to appear on camera to demonstrate the powerful grip the drugs have

on him and his struggle to get well. >> can you just describe for me now what is your situation with drugs? >> i always for some reason reporresort back to them. they control me. they control everything and they make me hurt the people i love the most. >> what do you think what happened to your brother do you worry that could happen to you too? >> i was in such a dark place, i was envious of my brother, i tried to commit suicide twice, with all the anxiety, depression, drug use, i wish it would happen to me instead of him. >> but that's the last thing renee wants and she hopes narcan can help her keep him alive. lori jane gliha, al jazeera, rockville, maryland. >> lori jane says although there

are signs of hope, authorities have saved at least 300 lives since they've gotten the lazarus drug. drug giant cvs will begin to offer the drug without prescription in 12 states. tell us what you think, at aljazeera.com/americatonight. talk to us on twitter and facebook, come back, we'll have more of "america tonight," tomorrow. >> the money fell victim to the politics. >> they're more focused on getting jobs than our education. >> saturdays on al jazeera america. technology... it's a vital part of who we are - >>they had some dynamic fire behavior... >> and what we do... >> don't try this at home! >> techknow, where technology meets humanity... saturday, 6:30 eastern. only on al jazeera america.

♪ ♪ amazing grace. ♪ how sweet the sound. ♪ hundreds mourn those killed in a mass shooting in the u.s. state of oregon. president obama calls for a review of gun laws. ♪ hello. the world news from al jazeera. russia says it's going after isil and other armed groups amid accusations of civilian casualties. new efforts to keep the peace in ukraine as select world leaders prepare for a meeting in