for our special guests and other members of the press, we invite you to a coffee reception in the west wing, which will be to your left just beyond the george washington statue. for those guests who wish to depart at this time, we will shortly be opening the mall exit to madison drive. there will be a 15 minute departure window. coats can be retrieved at that access. we anticipate access to the first lady's exhibition for media and guests will begin later this morning. to a close.t coming if you missed any of it you can .ee it at c-span.org

coming up, a look at regulatory changes in the trump administration. the brookings institute will release a report looking at the changes. coverage starts in about 10 minutes. while we wait, the author of a book about the opioid epidemic in the u.s. talks about the federal response and possible solutions from this morning's host "washington journal." joining us to talk about not only what goes on when it comes to opioids in america and the white house response, thank you for joining us. we are at the point where president trump is saying some kind of announcement is forthcoming, what does that say about the situation overall? is gettings topic the recognition it has deserved. the problem has been percolating for 20 plus years.

it is the deadliest drug problem we have ever had in this country . i think we will find that last werewhen the numbers counted something on the order of 60,000 plus people have died, that is more than americans lost .n the entire vietnam war finally, it is getting that kind of response. we will see what the response is. so far i haven't heard the president say anything about what that response is going to be. what i call the christie commission, because chris christie leads it, comes out with a variety of proposals i thought were pretty good. they weren't original. people have been talking about these for a long time, but it is important these things get put on paper. i think that is important. i am assuming we will have final report soon, maybe next week. >> as far as what the federal

government does currently, what is the best way to respond in light of what might happen? to understand, is the more i got into the story, the more i realized this story grows out of isolation. one isolation is isolated response. for a long time we had one response to addiction, a jail or cell. law enforcement has a robust and crucial role in this problem to play, but there has to be far greater treatment options for people, both at the moment when they are overdosing at the er .evel, but after that we have saturated whatever capacity we had long ago. and prevention is extraordinarily important. it is the community response. the federal government can't do

a lot of that. it boils down to the local folks . county and the is where it hits most heavily. county governments, jails, corners, public health, that is what is being hammered. the federal government's best response in a lot of ways is to make it easier for those folks to do their job and find ways to work together so public health and law enforcement combine. that kind of thing is probably what the federal government's role ought to be, as well as federal persecution. theere to talk about federal response, if you want to .sk questions, (202) 748-8000 that is if you have been impacted by the opioid epidemic. medical professionals, (202) 748-8001. all others, (202) 748-8002.

president trump from last week talking about what he plans to do about the situation. [video clip] going to be we are doing that next week. you know that is a big step. people have no understanding of what you just said. that is a very, very big statement, it is a very important step. to get to that step, and a lot of important work needs to be done, it is time-consuming work. we are going to be doing it next week, ok? the headline as he blindsided his advisers as far as coming up with an appropriate response. it seems complicated to fashion something like that? guest: it is part law enforcement, part public health, part community resources. one of the problems is foster children explosion and the number of foster kids because so

and parents are addicted unable to care. that would be greater if there were not so many grandparents stepping up and taking care of their grandchildren. i would like to shout out those grandparents. they are doing an amazing job under horrible circumstances. this is -- i talk about opiates, nowadays,lar heroin when you are writing about that you are writing about america. what we have become as a country. it touches so many aspects of our lives. that realization, that approach, is the best one. we have tried the unilateral approach. pills for all pain. cells for all addicts.

there needs to be a more cohesive community approach. this has to do with the destruction of community. either wealthy areas where people don't interact, or poor rust belt areas where jobs have left and people have found debilitated foru abilit that reason. caller: good morning. thank you for this conversation. i see a correlation between what is going on with the opioid crisis, us in afghanistan, and what happened in vietnam with the same problems. you see that being a potential cause? guest: i don't, but thanks for the call. i think what you are suggesting is we have lots of heroin in america today, and a war going

on in afghanistan for the last 14 years -- i'm not quite sure anymore -- and they are a major producer of heroin in the world. so, that heroin is coming in. that's not true. the heroine coming into the united -- the heroin coming into the united states has mostly come from latin america. for many years it was columbia on the eastern side of the united states and mexico on the west. is a all mexico. that stands to reason -- business reasons why that is true. herion is a commodity. if it has to travel across the continent and ocean it will be more expensive, weaker, then only has 5000 miles

to go before it reaches the united states. in our country, the heroin coming into our country almost all comes from latin america. the vast majority of that is mexico. host: for someone impacted by this, tom. thanks for calling. caller: i have 2 people who take opiates. 2/3.ut back by now the person instead of functioning for five days a week, is in bed for five days a week. the other one has opiates and ptsd medicines. both.an't take so the person is either going to die from a mental problem or from opiates. thanks for your consideration. i believe bill bennett addressed the fentanyl illegal fentanyl

and illegal -- address the and illegalanyl opiates first. thank you. guest: part of the problem is we have swung the pendulum -- we are swinging the pendulum too hard in the case of some individuals in this country who suffer from chronic pain and may need that. the problem was for a long time we prescribed a very little of this. then we got a big push, and all of a sudden it was pain pills for everyone. medians a happy where we need to nestle. what is lacking is health care in which people are actually treated as individuals. therefore, you devise an individual response to an individual's pain. pain medicine was heading that way in the 1970's and 1980's,

treating each person as a holistic being. so you would treat pain with medical counseling, a better diet, as well as pain medication. then the pills took over entirely and you have a lot of people who do have a very high daily dose of those they have to take. my feeling is a lot of them might benefit scaling back somewhat. we want to drastically cut back and leave people hanging. that is cruel and counterproductive. this is where our approach has .een flailing without much vision and direction. host: a medical professional in connecticut. caller: good morning. anesthesiologist and have been in practice for many years. the classical teaching is that

in a few situations, if a tummyt just had surgery you give as much pain medicine as you can so the patient will be relieved. as youuch pain medicine cancel the patient will be relieved. teaching.e in my opinion, just like the speaker said, a happy medium must be reached. a lot of patients can do very well with much less pain medication. if they have an addictive personality. i am sure. i would entirely agree. for a long time people come in for routine surgery and go home with the pain that will last for three or four days and have 30 days worth of narcotic pain refill. also a you multiply that by millions of

americans across the country every year for 20 years. , and a lot ofted those drugs leak into the black market. toot of the drugs are used access by the people to whom they were prescribed. a lot of times those folks get addicted. a massive amount of prescribing has gone on for 20 plus years in this country. a lot of it is, as the doctor said, people were thinking it doesn't matter how many pills you sent home with an acute pain patient -- >> i love it. i am the vice president of economic studies at brookings and the founding director for the center of regulations on markets, a relatively new at brookings. the goal is to improve regulatory process through independent