in a mine or lost a life in a mine, when you put together things from the course of many years. >> back in 2006, two miners died. the company pled guilty to ten criminal charges and was+++[ responsible operators ÷eìáhp &hc not always even publicly at times been in agreement with the operating principles of this company or the strategy that

they employ. several board members of this company, for example, have resigned over the tactics employed. so it's been a rather maverick operation here. and the company itself has pulled itself out of our west virginia mining association, for example, and the chamber of commerce is in the national mining association. so it's a rather lonely operation sometimes here. >> on the question of these violations, we spoke with the ceo of massey energy company, don blankenship, yesterday, and aired some of that this morning. he said the violations are up partially as a result of the miner act. you tighten the regulations, companies violate these violations because they find it difficult to get compliance. do you buy that argument? >> well, some companies fought the miner act implementation. others agreed to change it when necessary and they wanted to do what was necessary to improve the mine safety health underground. and because violations are up doesn't mean it's necessarily because somebody's after them.

it means that you have to do a better job. and most responsible mine operators want to do a better job. they want to prevent accidents. they do not want to cut corners. they do not want to shortchange a miner's life in exchange for the bottom line profit. and, you know, that's number one in every mine operator's heart should be the protection of the health and safety of their employees. >> tame, though, the politics of it is complicated because of these mines. they provide thousands of jobs in this area, they put money in the community, going to be spending a million dollars to build a new school here. the environmentalists don't like it, fighting the mine companies. it's a convoluted world. >> and i recognize the charitable contributions, everything coal mining companies have provided.

i recognize what it means to our state economy. you can't turn the lights on, can't employ law enforcement officials if you don't have that coal revenue. i recognize all of that. but we're not talking about abolishing the coal industry here. we're talking act joining in a responsible manner both environmentally and safetywise. and the price of a coal miner's life, you cannot put a price tag on that and there should be no corners cut when it comes to protecting the health and safety of our most precious resource, which is the coal miner him or herself. >> congressman nick rahal, good to talk to you. i know you're headed up to the mine. back to new york. >> john, thank you. it's a first. airlines adding fees for carry-on bags. would you pay $45 for your carry-on? [ female announcer ] last year, the u.s. used

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by nature valley. welcome back to "american morning." 22 minutes past the hour. christine romans is minding her business and we're here deciding whether or not to get outraged. airlines will be charging you to put your carry-on bag into the overhead compartment, but they have the new phase of unbundling. >> this new way you buy. you pay to check the bag and you pay to sit in an aisle seat in some cases. you pay to board first in many other cases and now spirit says you can pay to put the carry on. i mean this was one of the last frontiers of things you could do was stash your carry on.

>> for armrests or a seat belt. >> not yet for an oxygen mask. they're taking apart the pieces of the fare so you pay for what you use. at the gate you would pay $45 -- not to check the bag, to put it in the carry on. if you'll put things in the overhead bins. if you go online $30. and spirit members pay $9 to be a member and then you pay $20 online. so that's how it works out. there are some things that are exempt here. an umbrella, for example, if you use assistance device, like a cane. >> or a walker. >> you don't have to do that. a baby bag, for example. say you get a big bag of food to feed your kids, a hat, you know, that kind of stuff they're not going to charge you for, but basically you have to just be able to fit the thing, the laptop bag, the purse and the briefcase underneath the seat in front of you, that's all you get

or you pay extra. ultralow fare. they say that you pay a penny in your ticket. this is how they break it out and then break it out from other things. >> you pay nine bucks to be a member and then you get a penny for your tick fret atlanta to myrtle beach and they tell you exactly how much you pay in fuel $12, and fees and your ticket is $31. it's another $20, that's what the unbundling is. so i don't know, it's interesting. i mean, people complain about it constantly. people just complain about all of these fees, but this is the way this industry is going and as long as there's something to charge a fee for, they'll figure out a way to charge a fee for it. >> do you have a roman numeral. >> this is 80%. from the flight attendants' point of view. 80%. 80% of flight attendants have had a strain, pull or injury because of these big, huge carry on bags.

now they're charging you to carry on bags, they're getting bigger and bigger, people have their tennis shoes tie around their bag and come in with the huge bags and the flight attendance are struggling to get them up. >> right. >> because no one ever knows how to quite fit them in there correctly and it always falls. >> we don't want to pay to check it so we want to bring on everything we possibly can on the plane and the next step from spirit. now we'll charge you to bring everything you possibly can on the plane. >> travel light or stay home. >> thanks, christine. everyone is hoping for a miracle in the search for four miners still missing. what are the chances if they are able to get in there today and complete the rescue mission that these miners could still be alive underground. dr. sanjay gupta will join us next. 26 minutes past the hour. hey!

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the most innovative full- size sedan in america: the taurus sho, from ford. drive one. time to check our top stories. armed with a revamped nuclear strategy, president obama heads to prague later today to sign a new arms control treaty with russia. it calls for both countries to reduce nuclear arsenals by a third. the president will host a nuclear summit next week in washington. shuttle discovery was able to dock at the international space station this morning despite a faulty antenna knocking out raid. it was the first time four women are at the space center at once. discovery should return in about two weeks. in montcoal, west virginia, they've now broken through a refuge chamber more than 1,000

feet below the earth's surface where they believe four missing miners might be trapped. they're trying to ventilate toxics gasses from the area so rescue teams can head down safely. west virginia's governor is hoping that can happen in the next few hours even though signals to contact survivors failed to produce a response. >> we're hoping we can get the mine and the air safe enough to get our rescue teams back in some time this afternoon. so the timetables are still the same as we thought they would be. the drilling went bet or hole number one than anticipated. they got through quicker. we did not get any response back from, if you will the beating on the pipes signaling. >> once the deadly methane gas is safely ventilated from the area, that's when search teams would need about five hours to reach the location where they believe the miners are trapped. so again, as we've been talking about, john, a slim hope, but hope nonetheless that perhaps

there's a miracle to be found if they can see whether or not the four miners made it. >> reporter: and the way that they cling to hope in this particular case, like the sago mine disaster in 2006, randall mccloy was found alive, the only guy who was found alive. of course, he had a lot of health problems lingersing after that. our dr. sanjay gupta talked with randall mccloy some time later. he joins us with the overall health risk the miners face. >> when you talk about a rescue situation like this, as you talked about, the methane gas and the carbon monoxide they can certainly render someone unconscious and impaired short of being unconscious and that's yet rescue mission continues because even if they don't get a response now that doesn't mean necessarily that someone has survived or not in a situation like this.

>> reporter: and there is the possibility, too, that maybe they've made it to one of the refuge chambers and they've been waiting there for rescue. >> i just find it fascinating the whole air lock situation so you're dispelling all of the potential toxic gasses which eliminated the rescue efforts and had the fresh air for a period of time. who knows. >> as it was described. it was sort of like a room equivalent of the inflatable slide and it sits tight, and it inflates into an emergency room where 36 people have enough supply to survive for four days. >> people thought about these things after sago. i did spend some time with mccloy, randall mccloy and his doctors afterward sort of learning about exactly what happened down there and again, what some of the effects are, the lingering effects of exposure to these gasses. it doesn't just simply go away. the brain is very sensitive to these types of gasses so you do have effects in the long term as

well. >> mccloy had lingering exposure. every day these people that come underground to work face health hazards that the methane gas is present in a lot of cases and they have debilitating health effects. >> i did not know about the extent of this. we all knew about black lung, but 10,000 people die a decade so about 1,000 people a year still from black lung. i was surprised by this. it is coal dust that gets into the lungs and causes a profound inflammatory response and the lungs become these boggy air bags, almost, they simply can't inflate and deflate with effectiveness anymore and that's what happens to patients. i talked to a woman whose husband at the age of 51 was essentially debilitated by this, by this black lung. >> recall that. she said he was a small person and when they did the x-ray he

just had these lungs that filled the entire chest and part of the abdominal cavity. >> that's right. it is so common down here. they almost expect it. people sort of working in the mining industry expect to get some sort of pulmonary disease. 68% here versus other places than west virginia. >> is it inevitably failure? is there any treatment? >> there is no treatment. it's not like an infection you can treat or some auto immune response where you tachl down the immune system. this is a lung that doesn't work. they put patients on breathing machines knowing full well it will be impossible to remove them off the breathing machines. you have kidney problems. later on i'll be visiting this stretch of road where there have been five brain tumor patients. whether or not that counts for a cluster i don't know, but it's certainly something we'll look into. >> you know, you talk about coal

mining and not just in the mines, but in the entire area. you talked about the health effects of the actual mining and the health effects in the surrounding area. there's a coal processing facility beside us. there's an elementary school that lives in the shadow and if you wipe your finger along the window sill you pick up dust. >> magnesium, cadmium, lead, just about every metal you can think of. you have these hill tops, what happens to all of that? a lot of times there's a slurry that's made of the coal processing. those are sometimes injected into the mines underground and seep into the water right here behind us. this is part of the process. >> this is something that you'll be looking into later today? >> i'll be looking into that. >> i look forward to your reporting. >> john, thanks. still ahead, a prescription for trouble, painkiller abuse spirals out of control in some town across america. carol costello in our special

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welcome back to the most news in the morning. it's 39 minutes past the hour right now. you've probably seen the headlines of tragic deaths. stars like heath ledger, michael jackson, but america's problem with prescription drug addiction is growing in places far away from the hollywood spotlight. it can be deadly not only for the addict, but in some cases

for the doctor who comes between the addict and his fix. carol costello joins us live from washington with the latest installment of our special series "addicted." good morning, carol. >> good morning, kieran. it's easy to sit back and shake your head about people addicted to prescription drugs. you say it's sad, but it won't touch my life, well that isn't true. it is so pervasive and so dangerous for doctors he or she may refuse to write you a prescription no matter how much you're hurting. small town america with a big problem, pill poppers. >> i didn't really realize how bad it was getting until after i'd gotten out of college. >> reporter: daniel salmon grew up in eastern kentucky. her father was a doctor who like other doctors in this part of the country watched prescription drug abuse spiral out of control. >> in december things came to a head in kentucky, population 792. in this clinic danielle's father

dr. dennis sandlin refused to prescribe painkillers to a man who was an addict. he left angry and came back with a gun. >> my dad was writing in a chart at the nurse's station and they -- someone heard my dad say you don't want to do this. i take care of a lot of elderly people and he said, well you didn't help me, and that's when he shot him. >> dr. sandlin's murder didn't come as a shock to dr. david green. >> any other phone calls? >> he works at a family practice clinic and addicts come to his clinic to shop for doctors and they use every trick in the book to get him to prescribe every powerful pain medication like oxycontin. it can get ugly. >> have you had people come in and scream at you? >> yeah. >> physically push you or touch you? >> i have less of a problem because i'm male and i'm taller.

so -- but one of the things we have to do in our office because i'm the only male doctor is i'm sort of on call for situations like that that involve anybody else, and i'll deal with them. >> reporter: but some doctors do refuse to deal with it. they no longer write prescriptions for pain medication for anyone, regardless of need. detectives in louisville can understand that. they arrest two or three suspects a day who routinely call in fraudulent prescriptions to pharmacists. >> this is a forged prescription that you went and picked up, not just once, a bunch of times. do you know who's calling these in? >> i know. is it you? >> yeah. >> claiming to be -- >> it was wasn't in the beginning, but yeah. >> it's become an old, tired story. that's actually her at the pharmacy. >> detective steve watts is dedicated to fighting one kind

of drug crime. illegal prescription drug use. he's looking at surveillance tape at a woman who used the doctor's name who called in a prescription for xanax. >> there she is with her same distinctive bag. her walmart bag walking out. >> we rode along with detective watts. it wasn't long before she appeared. along with her father and that purse. >> if i could make this her worst day of her life so that tomorrow she will seek treatment, then i've won. >> back in cornettsville there are no winners. his killer has yet to face trial. >> he has to see what he's done. he has to look at my family and know what he did. it's somebody's life. it's the lives of his patients, that community -- you know, it's everybody. >> it is everybody. danielle is working with a number of groups to make it

safer for doctors to practice medicine. kieran, here's the real problem. you met dr. green in my story help he says it's difficult to tell if someone's an addict. say a patient comes into his clinic. the only thing he can ask them is how much pain are you in and he expects them to tell you the truth. i'll share a quick story for you. he prescribed pain medication for a 79-year-old bm who lived in a nursing home and she had a broken leg so he figured she must be in pain so she started dealing the drugs from the nursing home. you just never know. >> a lot of the kids we talked to in our story, their parents, grandparents other people had these market narcotic prescriptions. some kid never went through a gateway drug or marijuana. he tried three vicodin tablets at a party and he was hooked. >> sadly, this woman in the nursing home was selling to kids

just like that. she was an addict and she sold some of the pills to pay for her own addiction so it's a continuing, out-of-control spiral. >> we're getting a bunch of e-mails about this series. a couple of people taking issue with you saying there's nothing between tylenol and oxycontin. what did dr. green coming up with other effective, non-addictive ways to treat pain. >> well, you know, tylenol was an extreme example and there are a few other pain medications, but they're milder than oxycontin. dr. green says there hasn't been enough research done on pain control. he doesn't have enough choices to prescribe to patients who might not be in extreme pain, but some pain and he's got to make that decision. do i give them these very powerful painkillers that are highly addictive or do i prescribe them something that's less addictive? he says he doesn't have many choices and there needs to be more research done in this area. >> there should be more

emphasis&like physical therapies and chiropractic and perhaps ak pufrpthur and a lot of times that isn't covered by insurance so people can't go g that route. thanks so much. we'll be talking more about this with a dea agent and the author of a new study on the rise in prescription drug overdoses coming up. we'll have much more on what's driving the increase and what's being done to stop it. 45 minutes past the hour.

48 minutes past the hour.

welcome back to the most news in the morning. all this week we've been looking at america's pill addiction in our series "addicted." before the break we heard from carol costel o the story of a doctor that was murdered after he denied one addict pain pills. in a lot of cases doctors won't prescribe oaks kont into anyone anymore. joining us is the new york field division of the dea and from west virginia university, jeffrey kobe in, welcome. thanks for being with us. >> this story has gotten a lot of attention and the results of your study dr. kobin came at an opportune time discussing pills in our nation. what were the findings as it relates to prescription drug overdoses? >> our study reinforced what we're finding in terms of the fatalities. we've known that fatalities have been dramatically on the rise. what we're finding is that's just the tip of the iceberg. in terms of hospitalizations, we saw three times as many

hospitalizations as we're seeing fatalities and this is really a significantly increasing problem. a 65% increase over a seven-year period. >> in many cases, i mean, you can take a look at the retail sales of these drugs from 1999 to 2006 going up 1,000% and you can also see that when that started to happen there were more and more overdoses. why are doctors prescribing these drugs more than they were a decade ago? >> there's been a lot of emphasis on better pain control, and i think physicians are trying to respond to that. it is difficult for physicians. we want to provide adequate and appropriate medications for patients to try to relief pain. at the same time we are trying to deal with this increasing problem of powerful pain relievers and powerful medications in the community causing more and more overdoses. >> let's bring in special agent plumber. talking about the problem, how big of a problem are

prescription drugs when you analyze it against street drugs that we typically see as a problem like crack, cocaine, heroin. >> it's becoming a problem. it's the second drug behind marijuana being used in america. >> what is? prescription drugs. >> how have you changed your tactic as an agency to address this growing problem. >> during the past several years we've instructed out tactical divergent squads within the united states we have 61 groups now geared with special agent, divergent investigators and intel research specialists as well as state and local offices, task force offices that come together and we're targeting this problem in america. >> one of the things, dr. kobin that i thought was interesting as we were doing this story. a few of the doctors we spoke with, one of the things we're also seeing is this perception among young people that prescription drugs are somehow

safer because they're not street drugs and they're not bought from a dealer on the corner. how are we tackling the way that we view prescription narcotics and these abusive stimulants as well as things like barbiturates that we've also seen. >> i think that is part of the problem. not only are these drugs more readily available in the community, but there are attitudes that suggest that people think they're safer and not as dangerous as other street drugs. i think the approach to that has to be one of prevention. we have to get messages out there that these are powerful drugs and life-threatening side effects and they need to be taken only as prescribed by the physician. >> it is interesting when we talk about this perception. it is a wrong perception. in 2006, agent plumber, they say opiate energy and things like morphine and methadone cause more deaths than overdoses of cocaine and heroin combined. that's a shocking number. >> that's the trend we've been seeing over the past years that

the death from heroin, cocaine are still the same while the prescription drug has increased dramatically. >> do you find it easier for addicts or potential addicts to get their hands on drugs and street drugs? >> people in the community and teens and people in general have started doing it is they believe it is more safer. they're being prescribed by a doctor and therefore it's safe and not as much of a threat as cocaine or heroin. >> so what do you do, then, dr. kobin, to the rise in both accidental and intentional overdoses of prescription drugs? >> think the solution has to involve the health care community. we need to do a better job of working with our patients to understand who is at most risk for abusing these medications and being judicious and careful in our use of those medications. i also think the public health

community has a role in terms of getting a message out there and effectively educating people in the community about using these medications and obviously, there's a role for law enforcement, as your other guest clearly attests to. >> and what do you think the biggest change that could happen that would help tachl down this problem could be? >> one of the changes occurred approximately a week ago. on march 31st the federal register of dea implemented a law that allows electronically prescribing drugs by sdprs that can help reduce forged prescriptions that doctors are able to electronically file prescriptions with the pharmacies. >> i got you. so that could make a big difference in terms of forgeries. >> that and also states that implement prescription monitoring programs where you can monitor the prescriptions that are being taken by people that also shows whether or not the person is doctor shopping.

if in one day they've gone to three different doctors and obtained a prescription. >> thanks to both of you for your time this morning. >> thank you. >> we'll take a quick break. when we come back, west virginia governor. no response yet is what he said for many coal miner survivors to the rescuers beating on the pipes. we'll find out more about their efforts this morning and what's changed now. 55 minutes past the hour. oil or cream? cream. some use hydrogenated oil. reddi-wip uses real dairy cream. nothing's more real than reddi-wip. reddi-wip uses real dairy cream. a we don't go lower than $130.ts a room tonight for 65 dollars. big deal, persuade him. okay. $65 for tonight. you can't argue with a big deal. we're so sure priceline has the biggest hotel deals, we're announcing the big deal guarantee. book a hotel with name your own price, and if you can find a lower published price anywhere else, we'll match it and pay you 25 dollars.

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as governor joe manchin said earlier today, it will be a big day here in raleigh county, west virginia. here's the reason why. recapping where we are just to tell you why we are, at 4:00 this morning the drill bit in the first of the holes purchased through the area where they believe the remaining four miners may be. they can start venting out some of the methane gas that has built up and prevented rescuers from being built up in that mine. one other one for monitoring as well. after the first hole was punched out, the operators of the drill were banging on the pipe for about 15 minutes or so to see if they would get any response from anybody that might be below and

able to respond. they didn't get anything. they may conduct some seismic tests a little later on today and fire off two or three shots of dynamite and listen to see if there's any response because miners are trained that if they hear something coming from the top they're supposed to pound on the roof below and sensitive