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meetings. c-span gives you a front row seat how issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interruptions and completely unfiltered. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> welcome back to washington journal, i'm joined now by regina labelle, she's georgetown o'neill addiction policy and director. she was former acting director of the white house office of drug control policy. welcome to the program. >> thanks for having me. >> can we start with definitions and explanation. what are opioids, what's fentanyl. what makes it so dangerous? >> sure, opioids are a classification of drugs, there are synthetic opioids and manufactured, those are manufactured, and then there are naturally occurring opioids like poppies that create heroin, make heroin. so what we're talking about

here is illicitly manufactured fentanyl. so fentanyl that is prescribed by a physician for pain is a powerful opioid that is life saving for people. it is a, you know, it's a drug that people use in cancer care, to relieve pain. what we're talking about here is illicitly manufactured fentanyl. it's coming into the united states primarily from mexico now. a few years ago it was coming directly from china, but right now, it's primarily coming from mexico. >> and i just want to remind viewers if you'd like to call in and ask a question or make a comment about this topic, you can do that, our lines this time are going to be by region. if you're in the eastern and central time town 202-748-8000. mountain pacific, you call us on 202-748-8001.

if you've been impacted by the fentanyl crisis in any way, you can call 202-748-8002. of course, you can send in texts and social media as usual. regina, the president highlighted the fentanyl crisis at this tuesday's state of the union. let's take a look and i'll ask you about it. >> joining us tonight is a father named doug from newton, new hampshire, he wrote jill, my wife, a letter, and me as well about his courageous daughter courtney, contagious laugh, his sister's best friend, her sister's best friend. she shared the story to millions of americans and with many of you in the audience. courtney discovered pills this high school and it spiraled into addiction and eventually death from fentanyl overdose,

just 20 years old. describing the last eight years without her, doug said, there's no worst pain, yet, their family has turned pain to purpose, working against the stigma and change laws. he told us he wants to start a journey toward american recovery. doug, we're with you. fentanyl is killing more than 70,000 americans a year. you've got it. [crowd yelling] >> so let's launch a major surge to stop fentanyl production in the sale and trafficking, with more drug detection machines and cargo, stop pills and powder at the border. [applause] >> regina, what did you think of that, as far as what he said and the fact that it was included in the state of the

union? >> well, it's very significant, you know. the state of the union address is something that people advocates, people who work in the administration are always trying to get their piece in, their policy expanded and amplified in the speech. >> the fact that he had not only, he talked about it, he talked about the stigma attached to addiction and he talked about it last time in the state of the union as well. >> for people who have suffered the loss of a loved one, it can be very-- not only devastating personally, but the stigma that's so attached to addiction and parents like the one that was in the box, you know, they feel often that they're to blame somehow and i think the main message for parents is that you're not to blame and that this is a horrible, you know, 100,000 overdose deaths, 70,000 of them are involving

illicitly manufactured fentanyl so this is had an issue that can come home to anyone so those are the steps that he outlined not only in the speech, but also in the other materials that they put out, much more expansive approach. it's all of the above approach. there is not just one solution to this issue. >> i want to show something from the c.d.c. here, describing fentanyl and overdose. it says this this, even in small doses it can be deadly, over 150 people die every day from overdoses related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl. drugs may contain deadly levels of fentanyl and you won't be able to see it, taste it or smell it, it's nearly impossible to tell if drugs have been laced with fentanyl unless you test your drugs with fentanyl test strips. how do people protect themselves? >> well, so one of the first test steps we took when i was in the administration was to overturn a federal ban on

purchasing fentanyl test strips. there are-- >> why would there have been a ban in the first place? >> because i think there was a concern that there would be false positives or that it would enable drug use and we felt very strongly, given the urgency of the situation, it was important for the federal government to send a message that the drugs are dangerous and you don't know what you're getting, if you test the drugs to know what's in it, you could prevent overdose death. that's one of the first steps we took. states across the country. there are still states that ban them as paraphernalia, but states like texas are starting to overturn those types of bans because that's a public health approach to the issue. >> and here is, from the nih just as far as statistics go, it says, so this is the national drug involved overdose deaths, number among all ages

and it's split up by gender. so you can see here, this is from 1999 to 2021. you can see the rise here, this line is male, this line is female and you can see this line here going up substantially for males. and we're taking your calls and questions about the fentanyl crisis, and let's start first with jimmy in maryland. good morning, jimmy. >> hi, i wanted to know was illegal fentanyl coming into the country under the trump administration and what were the amounts then as compared to now? >> so we've had a fentanyl issue since about 2015 and increasing number of overdose deaths involving fentanyl since then. so certainly, you know, fentanyl, it's not something-- there's a lot of attention paid

to it, rightly so, it's been a number of years, including in past administrations. >> cj is next in niagara falls, new york. >> good morning. to your guest, ms. labelle, one thing that i think i know about like the drug trade, the dealers want to string you along, you know, make sure you're you know, good and hooked. they don't necessarily want to kill you. can you, whatever, you know just get that thought like-- expand on that? because when i was a kid growing up in what would be called the hood, i guess, you know, if you heard about somebody dying down some alley, it would be like oh, i want some of that. that was like-- that's drugs themed behavior

and i'm wondering about, you know, this new whatever element that seems to be affecting, you know, young kids in the suburbs and you know, for lack of a better word, you know, a lot of white kids. >> all right. cj, let's get a response. >> so there are a couple of pieces here. first, if i could, you know-- ng the first issue is what you've laid out is, you know, the drug trafficking network. there's the retail side, which is the drug dealer on the corner or, you know, over the internet who is selling you something. that's one piece. really, the cartels are transnational criminal organizations that don't just traffic in drugs, they traffic in fuel, they traffic in people. i mean, this is a much bigger issue. now, and so that has resulted

in these stronger and stronger, more powerful forms of drugs. the last piece that you raised about social media and you know, adolescents have increased rates of overdose deaths in the last few years. at the same time that their drug use has leveled off and that's primarily because they're getting-- >> and we leave this to honor our more than 40-year commitment of live gavel to gavel coverage of congress. more work on judicial nominations in the senate today. two votes are scheduled at 11:30 a.m. eastern, one whether to confirm a district court judge for oregon and other advancing nomination for a judge for the district of columbia. for more votes are set for later in the day. take you live to the senate on c-span2. hd492(cc1) #2419 hd492(cc1) #2419 the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain will lead the senate in prayer.