basis, only democrat supporting it, beside the facts that arithmetic does not work, but putting that aside, you turn the country apart. you would have 20 years of people saying, we won the election, you stole it. that is not good for the country. you only avoid that if the case is so overwhelming and the evidence so strong that you get faction of the people who voted for trump to agree that you really had to do that. >> you can watch the rest of that interview tomorrow at 10 :00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. c-span, where history unfolds 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's public service cable company. today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress,

the white house, the supreme policy eventsic in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. tackling thes issue of the opioid crisis through legislation this week. with us in the studio today we have -- who covers this issue. he is the washington correspondent. of, there is lots legislation coming out on this subject. there is more than 50 bills. why so much legislation? guest: so much legislation because it is that big of an issue. the chair of the house energy and commerce committee said on the floor last week that he thought this would be a record for legislating on a single issue. it needs to be pointed out that this will be wrapped up into a single comprehensive bill to address the addiction crisis.

the fact that there are 57 pills and many are one page bills that implement a pilot program. it is a midterm year and for democrats and republicans this is incredibly important. every district wants their lawmakers to come home and say, look what i did to help people in my district struggling with addiction. this will be wrapped up into a comprehensive package. the vast majority of these bills are bipartisan. it should have some impact on the crisis, but there are questions about whether this does enough in terms of building a treatment infrastructure for people struggling with addiction in this country as opposed to, i have heard the phrase, nibbling around the edges. whether it is making slight tweaks to the health care system. whether it is the way we prescribed potentially addictive painkillers. we will see years from now what impact be specific hills have

and the house leadership has said the first thing we'll do to address and it is not the last. themes?e there any, thet: it breaks down into categories you would expect. prevention of treatment and of drug enforcement. there are bills that would allow , the food and drug administration to more aggressively intercept shipments of drugs that are believed to be suspicious. over the last two years has been fentanyl. it has been used as a prescription painkiller has been imported from overseas as an incredibly powerful drug that is often the result of overdose because people are not aware that fentanyl is combined with illicit heroin are manufactured

prescription drugs, replicas of prescription drugs they might be buying on the street. fentanyl is a huge focus. there was controversy with a bill that would have expanded access to a drug, one of three existing drugs used to treat opioid use disorder. after some back and forth and questions about why the drug was being held up, has been included in the house package that will be voted on. would essentially require that the department of health and human services ensure all of the grant money it issues for addiction treatment goes to evidence-based forms of addiction treatment. that something a comment sensing, but it has -- common sense thing, but that has not been the case. you use medication like methadone and you combine it with psychosocial counseling and that is the care for this disease. this are too many cases in

country that would say the majority of addiction treatment does not conform to those standards. there are other smaller bills to help families whose babies are born with neil nabel -- neonatal abstinence syndrome that is a baby born mother with substance abuse and airport with opioid dependency. and are born with opioid dependency. if they do not question of the magnitude of their impact, there are bigger bills stepping up drug enforcement and making sure addiction treatment conforms to the standards that addiction doctors would hope it does. host: we know this is an election year. are these bipartisan efforts or do they fall on political lines? guest: these are bipartisan efforts. the bill that i mention, there was a republican lawmaker who thatad a physician on

committee who had a history of attempting to regulate it, which is an opioid, but used to treat heroin or to prescription drugs being used illicit way. think there is a broader theme that is less pronounced than it has been in the past of gemma kratz favoring somewhat more treatment side and demand-side options and republicans favoring more prevention and enforcement. mean that there is a broad agreement on the vast majority of these bills, but there are some sticking points that i believe a democratic bill would allow all medicare methadone, prescribe which is one of only three drugs out there that is used to treat opioid uses. it was it an exclusively democratic proposal that did not move forward.

energy and house commerce committee advance 57 bills to the house floor. i believe 56 of them were passed on a bipartisan basis. host: we want you to join our conversation today. call in on power lines here at washington journal. call in on the republican mine, 202-748-8001 atependents call in 202-748-8002. if you have been impacted we want to hear your stories. you can call in at 202-748-8003. there have been some controversial bills of this topic. congressman dave spoke on the floor about one of those pieces of legislation regarding synthetic trafficking. i am proud to be heard today to speak in support of hr 5788, the synthetics trafficking an in

overdose act, which is a short stop at. bypassing this bipartisan bill today, we are standing up for the health and safety of our communities and families and important loophole allowing contraband to come through international mail. in my hometate of washington there has been a 134% increase in opioid related cases between 2004-2016. -- opioid epidemic three's by 33%. this increase exceeds our state's population growth. we havey the work that been doing and congress in the ways and means committee is so important. in april we held a hearing in the trade subsidy committee with witnesses from customs and border patrol and the united states postal service.

how synthetic opioids are entering the united states through the international mail system and how we can help them put a stop to this. the bipartisan legislation that we will vote on today supports their work by requiring advanced electronic data and international mail shipments and allowing the border patrol to target for opioid shipments. it also holds these agents accountable to do so much more than they have been doing by using hardline deadlines and mandates, as well as penalties. ultimately, the bill will require the postal service to refuse packages for which this information is not provided unless there is compelling reason. the opioid crisis must be andessed from every angle that includes stopping illicit synthetic opioids from entering our country. more to protect our families, our communities and

this bill would do just that. host: are there any other bills that are causing controversy or conversation like this bill? fits into ank it broader theme of attempting to step up enforcement or attempting a crack on the root cause of this crisis. also showing it does not have a negative impact on people. i imagine we will get a call or two of people who rely on opioids for day-to-day pain management of which there are millions in this country. there are a lot of people who develop dependencies and addiction after starting with prichard -- with prescription drugs. there are a lot of people who do not. there is a widespread fear that the way the federal government and state governments respond to the crisis will negatively impact them. one thing we have seen in versions of the opioid bill introduced, but not advanced in either the house or senate is a

proposed three-day limit on first day opioid prescriptions for acute pain. it does not impact that chronic pain community we are talking --ut, but the medical american medical association. they have been opposed to that saying that the three day recommendation included in cdc guidelines in 2016 is a recommendation, it is a guideline. in no way did the authors intend for a strict three day limit. in general, folks do not like medicine being legislated to that specificity at the federal level. that, or whether empowering the postal service to tonight entry to packages that cannot fully verify, even though it is not entirely positive, that there is some sort of illicit shipment within them. there is a broader theme of hoping bills like these do not go too far. whenis a natural push/pull

you respond to something that is multifaceted. host: let's go to our phone lines. our first color is from myrtle beach, florida. is an emotional topic for me because i lost my son 10 years ago to a heroin overdose. he was a great kid. sorry. i think that you should tell people that the ability to turn around, toddicts stash the success rate is only 2%-5%. it is minimal. probably -- it was probably genetic. there is nothing you can do. i felt many times he was on the

streets, it would have in better had he spent many times in jail. that put him in touch with other trouble, andore make connections for stealing and stuff like that. campld like to see a work are occupieddicts and permanently committed to were either they put them on a work farm and growth that's to balls and it has some meaning .nd life doctors have told me that a lot due to themess is being high polar. i support the representative from washington's legislation. i think we need to crack down on

chinese fentanyl, on the other hand i have two friends that are anesthesiologist that's a fentanyl is critical in the operating room. replacement.knee had they not used fentanyl in the operating room i would have been in recovery and it would've felt like they chopped my leg offitan axe. guest: absolutely. if you points. i am sorry for the loss of your son and we hear stories like that far too often. if you points. you mentioned the potential for genetic disposition to addiction. a theme here is increase nationalmoney for that institute of health to understand addiction and potentially addictive forms of pain treatment that does not start people from the prescription drug down this road towards a more deadly substance

or fentanyl. i was not familiar with the statistics but you are right it far too small number of people with any substance abuse disorder in this country are adequately treated and make a full recovery. part of the reason for that, like i have said, is that there is a consensus in the public health world that the treatment people receive for addiction, and particularly for opioid use disorder, is not grounded in medical evidence the way that doctors treat any other disease in this country. the bill passed by the house to money to go to programs that prescribe medicine towards disease and combine it with social counseling. hopefully that is something that would go a long way in terms of making sure the care people receive is really of the quality they need. you mentioned that your son was

in and out of jail. inre are a lot of methadone two of the three drugs used to treat this disease. those themselves are opioids are potentially drugs of abuse. that does not mean they should be used. focus in jail keepillici substances out. treatment in the criminal justice system in particular there is quite a bit by state, that it is not of the quality the reliefope, and is also not of the quality you would hope, and that leads us to the conversation also about -- there was an interesting piece in the "new york times" on this topic about a week ago, whether if addiction is indeed a disease, and any doctor you talk

to will tell you it absolutely is. that if the consensus of the public health community. if it is a disease, why did we often deal with it so often in criminal justice settings as opposed to medical settings? there you get into a conversation about how this country is in an addiction crisis that touches people of all races, particularly white people and people across the socioeconomic spectrum, it has largely -- prior to others that ofe largely touched people color, to have conversations like the one where having out. a lot of talk on that one, but again, i am sorry for your loss, and i think a lot of these bills actually would change the pathway for people like your son to have gotten better treatment and make a full recovery. host: let's go to kimberly, who is calling on the independent line from houston, texas. caller: how are you all doing? host: just fine. how are you? caller: doing good. a lot of people talk about trump that elected for this reason,

for that reason, but i firmly believe in my heart trump got elected because of the drugs, and the drugs coming across from mexico, the drug war we are in. the race and because people are tired of seeing their loved ones die on the street, in the hospital. my father-in-law got addicted on pain medicine. other people have also. that is what got him elected, bought, ands not the politicians have let this go on way too far. we need more than just this bill passed. call let's go to another from castlewood, virginia, calling on the democratic line. caller: yes, i think that the first question ought to be asked is how you got addicted. if you got addicted out partying and stuff like that, then no, i

do not think there should be any help for you. i am sor, i do not feel sorry for those people. those people who actually go to a doctor and they get addicted, yes, i think we should help them. as far as thdrug clinics -- i know several people, they have been going to them 10, 20 years. i think there ought to be a limit, like of a year or two, when you're off of the medication, that they are substituting for the hard drugs, and i do not think the taxpayers ought to be paying for it. host: what type of funding are from the for crisis for the crisis to tackle it? guest: there has been quite a bit of funding between the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years, so we are dollarseveral billion spent, some specifically four opioids.

some money exists for programs with medicare and medicaid that provide health services as they are, many of which happen to be addiction treatment. just to address that caller's point about a limit on how much treatment people with a substance misuse disorder should receive, that is something that is certainly brought up periodically. and i would say -- and i have heard, you know, addiction medicine specialists say i would challenge you to think of another disease, and other addiction, for which that is true. if you view addiction is a medical condition, you would not really think of another condition for which you would want to at some point cut off care. which, you diabetes, know, in some cases, has dietary

factors that have led to it, you would not want to save a somewhat to have government-funded insulin treatment through medicaid for two years before they cure themselves. i think it is a good example of the way that people -- very ome to haveoften -- c very different views about addiction as opposed to other ways. host: let's go to claudia, who impacted by opioid abuse. caller: i recently lost my son to an opioid addiction. i would love to have a heart to heart with some of these people who do not understand it is a health issue. in my opinion, it is genetically-based. i also have a father who was taking opioids because he has pin -- the he has a

rod from his hip replacement is loose. as far as treatment goes, that is a lifelong thing, whether it is drugs -- my son, after he died, i found paperwork, he was all set to get the injection. yet, as he put it, you do not go get the drug, the drug comes and gets you. hear from larry in phoenix, arizona, calling it on the democratic line. caller: i have had some serious experience with law enforcement who were actually pushing drugs, and in a culture like that, no one is going to get any kind of help, and there is a lot of that around the united states. up in colorado, i was a one county where i asked the county sheriff, i said how can you sell drugs to your own people, and he said we are the good guys.

it is the money that drives the whole deal, just like with the corporations pushing their drs. let's talk a little bit about the punishment that lawmakers are talking about. are we talking about increasing penalties on opioid users, or are they just talking about treatment? guest: on users, absolutely not. i think it is understood here that folks, for whatever reason, whether they start using recreationally, whether they start using prescription drugs dependency that escalates into an addiction, i think it is somewhat widely accepted tha higher deterrentare a duste for possession, which should be largely legislated at the state level.

level, but nonetheless, larger penalty for possession are not seen as a productive tool in addressing the crisis. that said, president trump, dare i say infamously, in the last several months has spoken of a desire modeled somewhat after that rodrigo duterte, president of the philippines, executing drug dealers. president has said if someone is dealing fentanyl, dealing heroin laced with fentanyl, doing so knowing exactly what the substance is they are selling, the odds are they are going to be pretty directly behind dozens of deaths , if not hundreds of deaths. yet, there is a certain logic that will lead you to say if you are responsible for that level of societal harm, that is why most states have capital punishment.

there is a thought of increasing penalties for dealers, not really for possession. the focus is on treatment and enforcement, not necessarily specific to individual actors. more big picture drug distribution. not possession. host: >> c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up sunday morning, university of washington professor discusses his recent of whitehe evolution house news management in the cable and digital age. then republican strategist and former cap campaign advisor talks about the trump presidency in his book on politics. be sure to watch washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern sunday morning. join the discussion.

in his weekly address, the president urges congress to pass legislation to combat ms 13 gang violence. representative frank pallone of delivered the democratic address. >> she and her friend were brutally murdered by a gang of vile savages known as ms 13. you've all heard of them, they are bad. everywhere they go, thousands of members