with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> during his first trip overseas, president biden and first lady jill biden will speak with u.s. troops and their families stationed at royal air force golden hall in the u.k. watch live coverage at 4:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> fbi director christopher wray testifies thursday before the house judiciary committee. watch that live starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app. a good wednesday morning. go ahead and start calling you now. we will get to your phone calls but first, the grim numbers on the opioid crisis during the pandemic from a recent "new york times" story.

more than 87,000 americans died over a 12 month period from drug doses. that eclipses the total from any year since the opioid epidemic began in the 1990's. the biggest jump in overdose deaths took place in april and may when stress were rampant, "the new york times" rights, and restrictive lockdown measures were in effect. that preliminary data released by the cdc show 29% rise in overdose deaths from october 2019 through september 2020 compared with the previous 12 months compared with the previous 12 months. yesterday from "the hill" newspaper story on that hearing, congressman maloney, the chair of the oversight committee, pressed lawmakers to approve legislation meant to prevent the sakker family, the owners of the company producing oxycontin from

the crisis. it would allow them -- this from a portion of chairwoman maloney's opening statement yesterday. [video clip] >> over the past two decades, nearly half a million people have died as a result of the opioid academic -- opioid epidemic. yet, there is not a single thing the sackler's would have done differently. it is shocking and appalling and shows why we desperately need accountability for the sackler's deadly and outrageous conduct. covid-19 has claimed 597,000 american lives. the opioid epidemic is nearly as deadly as the worst pandemic in modern history. and there is no vaccine for opioid addiction.

since the december hearing, even more information has come to light since learning the sackler's deadly disregard for human life. much of this information has been brought to us by a recently published book, "empire of pain," reveals new, deadly details of the sackler's leadership in pharma and the opioid epidemic. in his book, the author provides a horrifying account of how the sackler's disregarded the opioid crisis as it ignited and pushed executives to sell more and more of the dangerous prescription painkiller as the crisis raged and blaming those experiencing addiction in order to protect

oxycontin and its process. [end video clip] host: hearing more from that hearing this morning, you heard chair maloney mentioned "empire of pain" by patrick radden keefe. back at the end of april, on "afterwards," we discussed his book, opioid crisis if you want to watch that on our website at c-span.org. this morning, we are listening to you, hearing your stories, especially from the past year when it comes to the opioid crisis and a year that saw historic surges in deaths. if you have been impacted by opioids, (202)-748-8000. medical professionals, (202)-748-8001. all others, (202)-748-8002. mark is at first, englewood, florida, on the line for those who have been impacted by the opioid crisis. good morning. mark, you with us?

you have to stick by your phone. we will go to scott in hutchinson, kansas. good morning. caller: good morning. am i on? host: yes or. -- yes sir. caller: thank you for c-span and all you do, but i personally have not, but family members have. one individual that i felt it was not right, he had an injury, got addicted, and he tried to get off. did not get medication, and so in trying to, he ended up -- he had one pill in his possession and was hospitalized because he had a fit, and he got a felony for that. and the felony affected his family's ability to earn income in a good way, and that stuck

with him. it really had a ripple effect that was even more than just the addiction itself. also, -- host: scott, can i ask how he did during the pandemic, the lockdown, during the time of social distancing? caller: he has done better. i mean, he has not had the problem as much because he has had children since then and has been more involved, but it was a real hard road for him. i would also like to just say that the fentanyl problem, it is high numbers, and what is really sad is, you know, if a person hits bottom on alcohol, they can come up from it realizing they need to make a change, but with this deadly fentanyl, these young people cannot. there is a lot of them that die

from it. i guess there are two types, one is a lot more potent than the other. host: on the fentanyl and synthetic opioids, that surge we saw was a large part because of the synthetic opioid deaths. you can see this chart from the health equity fund, looking at the start of the pandemic in march of 2020 and the surges in deaths, the bottom line is the surge in synthetic opioid deaths, which led to the increase in all opioid deaths, the middle green line, and the blue line, the total overdose deaths in this country, taking up, especially in those months immediately following the lockdown, march, april, may, and into june. that is from the commonwealth fund. robert in fayetteville, pennsylvania, good morning. caller: hello.

i am a 59-year-old male. i am retired. i hurt my back around 22 years ago, work-related injury, several work-related injuries, and i have been on opioids for over 20 years. i think the numbers, these high numbers, i think a lot of them represent the people who are in genuine pain, like i am, on a daily basis. a lot of these people have been thrown off on physicians forced to cut back on the amount of prescriptions they write. they might have been writing too many prescriptions, but i think it is very hard to get a

position to write a prescription for opioids right now. host: robert, what about having that conversation with a physician face-to-face compared to the increase in telemedicine that we have seen during the coronavirus pandemic? have you gone through that experience? caller: i do not know of any physician that will prescribe an opioid over the phone through telemedicine, zoom, or anything. i personally have to go see my physician once a month in person, face-to-face in order to get my prescription, and i have to travel about 35 miles away from home just to be able to find a physician towards our state capitol. i think they are being forced by the powers that be to cut back on them, regardless of how many people are in pain or not.

if a doctor says you cannot have any more medicine, that is a great deal of people who have been cut off and who have sought relief of their pain elsewhere. those are the ones who are inexperienced with street drugs and such and such. those people, i believe, will get tripped up in buying street drugs with fentanyl. host: robert, have you ever been tempted to do that in a time when the opioids are running low? caller: yeah, sometimes -- well, it is hard, like you said, some days are worse than others, and if you don't have enough pills to make your next prescription, yet, i could see -- yeah, i could see people doing that.

i have a regiment where i can take, i can cut down -- i can take a pill, cut them in half and then push it. instead of every six hours, go have and have one every eight hours. if you are a day behind, that will help out a little bit. host: robert, thanks for sharing your story out of fayetteville, pennsylvania. on the line for medical professionals, dr. doshi. good morning. what are you seeing in your part of the country? caller: i am a physician in mississippi, and i will tell you briefly how it happened. the judiciary decided that the patient should not suffer in pain. pain is subjective, and they have made a picture of pain as a vital sign which is subjective.

if a patient is in pain, they should be given some medicine for the pain. if not, then the judges have taken up against doctors. it is a complicated predicament. these drug companies and doctors are designed that way to help alleviate the pain. where do we draw a line in the objective and subjective pain? these opioids have been known to be addictive since the beginning of time. host: what kind of medicine to your practice? caller: i am a primary care internist. host: how has what you are seeing in this area, how did it change during the coronavirus pandemic? caller: what happened is coronavirus is very complicated because the whole system shutdown. health care people are shut down. people don't have an axis, and even if they do, there restrict monitoring of the patients who are drug seekers or not, and selling and buying. and a lot of people working in

medicine, they all have become clinicians. and long-term events have to be thought upon. in the pandemic, it becomes difficult for patients, and if they are addicted, they need some way to get their system clean, which is a long-term process. host: dr. doshi out of mississippi. the line for medical professionals, (202)-748-8001, if you want to share what you are seeing in your part of the country. if you have been impacted by opioids, (202)-748-8000. all others, (202)-748-8002. setting aside this first hour of "washington journal" to talk about to talk about the opioid surge during the pandemic. having this conversation after

the hearing yesterday focusing on the sackler family and purdue pharma. during that hearing, one of the top republicans on the hearing, the ranking member, focus, as well, on the border crisis and the trafficking of illicit drugs coming across the border. i think that is part of this continued surge we are seeing. this is congressman james comer, the republican from kentucky. [video clip] >> we have a growing number of opioids streaming across our southern border. my republican colleagues and i have sent three letters to chairman maloney asking her to hold a hearing on the biden border crisis. we have not had it. the longer the chairwoman waits to hold a hearing on the border crisis, the more americans are dying due to fentanyl coming across the border. and the economic shutdowns during the covid pandemic have prevented opioid abuse disorder patients from accessing care.

without access to care, patients are isolated at a higher risk and -- and at a higher risk of relapsing. this hearing is focused on the sackler family that it forgets the epidemic affecting millions each day it forgets the epidemic affecting millions each day. the chairwoman to hold a hearing on the border crisis to stop the illicit trafficking of fentanyl to reopen our country so that patient access and can access the care they need. [end video clip] host: that was congressman james comer yesterday before the house oversight and reform committee. the sackler family and purdue pharma have testified before on capitol hill. this certainly not the first hearing on their role in the opioid crisis. this from december of last year, members of the sackler family asked by chairwoman carolyn maloney if they would apologize for purdue pharma's role in the

opioid crisis. this is kathy sackler, the former purdue pharma vice president. [video clip] >> i have tried to figure out is there anything i could have done differently knowing what i knew then, and not what i know now, and i have to say, there is nothing that i can find that i would have done differently based on what i believed and understood them, and what i learned from management and the reports to the board, and what i learned from my colleagues and the board. it is extremely distressing. >> mr. sackler, will you apologize for the role you played in the opioid crisis? >> i echo much of what my cousin

said, but i will say to the american people i am deeply and profoundly sorry that oxycontin has played a role in any deaths. while i believe i conducted myself legally and ethically, and i believe the full record will demonstrate that, i still feel absolutely terrible that a product created to help, and has helped so many people, has also been associated with death and addiction. [end video clip] host: all these hearings are available, and you can watch them in entirety, at our website, c-span.org. this morning, we are spending our time hearing from you around the country about the opioid surge during the coronavirus pandemic, the opioid death surge. the numbers from the cdc showing death rates at historic levels. as "the new york times" notes in

their recent story on it, and unlike in the early years of the epidemic, when deaths were common in rural areas, it is affecting black americans distal portion of. those numbers out in april from the cdc, showing some 87,000 americans died over a 12 month period and ended september last year. this is tina, huntington, pennsylvania, impacted by the opioid crisis. good morning. caller: good morning. please be patient with me because this subject is very touchy. i lost a son in 2012 to oxycontin, a mixture of p urdue medication that he took and passed away. my point i would like to make is our government is primarily just as responsible as purdue is for that type of opioid overdose.

i now am also a chronic pain patient who goes through the stigma of, hey, she's an addict because she has to take something. and we have congresspeople sitting up there, looking at us like we are addicts chasing a drug, which we are not, but they allow these pill mills, and i can number after my third or fourth back surgery, walking into a clinic with a pamphlet that said $500 off your prescription. and it was that prescription. but our government today needs to get out of the doctor's office. we are patients first. if you put us all in a room, and you give us all drug tests, we are able to cope with her medication. -- cope with our medication. i have clear reps to the point where i cannot move. i am only 52 years old.

there are times i cannot move. i cannot take motrin. i cannot take aleve because of other issues. now, the government is giving me the god complex. if you walk into a pharmacy, and you hand them a prescription, they look at you, and they say, you don't look like you need this, they deny you. and it is people like me that congress needs to be listening to, not the billionaires that are putting the poison on the streets, like the cartel. my god! all they have to do is watch "catch a smuggler." it is coming in from everywhere. it was just in minneapolis last year. the fake pills that looked identical to what is prescribed turned out to be nothing but fentanyl. i am so thankful that you guys are touching the subject, thank you so much. host: tina, thanks for sharing your story. i am so very sorry for the loss of your son. tina in pennsylvania.

she mentioned pill mills. last month, the house passed a bill to crack down on pill dumping and pill mills, pill dumping by drug companies and the distribution of massive amounts of pills in certain parts of the country. here is part of that debate featuring congresswoman debbie dingell of michigan. [video clip] >> this bipartisan legislation would limit safeguards against pill dumping and other abusive practices to address that opioid epidemic, which remains one of the most pressing public health crisis faced in our country. last year, over 88,000 americans lost their lives as a result of the opioid crisis, including 2650 individuals in my home state of michigan. communities across the country are hurting, and new tools to address pill dumping and other dodgy practices that have

exasperated the opioid crisis are needed now more than ever. this actual strength and oversight and integrity of the opioid supply chain by requiring that drug manufacturers and distributors exercise due diligence when they receive a suspicious order for controlled substances. this includes blocking or declining to fill the suspicious order and providing additional orders in question. this legislation's common sense reduction will save lives in michigan and all around this country, by making distributors and manufacturers active partners in curbing these abuses. [end video clip] host: michigan congresswoman debbie dingell and her remarks, talking about the surge in

opioid deaths on the impact in her district, the ann arbor and dearborn area. plenty of stories after the cdc numbers came out about the surges in specific parts of the country. here is the area here around washington, d.c., from "the washington post" story that came out about it. the d.c. area someone of the largest surges, increasing 46% in the district, according to city data. virginia reported 2020 as the deadliest year for opioid-related fatalities with a 47% increase compared to 2019. maryland saw a nearly 19% jump in fatal overdoses involving opioids, according to luminary data. and for visual learners, there is a chart there from "the washington post" showing the increases from 2016 through that preliminary data that we have been talking about into 2020 in the maryland, d.c., and virginia

areas. john out of cleveland, ohio. good morning. caller: good morning. i have been in the pharmaceutical industry for nearly 40 years, and i blame the distributors most recently, even before the crisis, and congress looked the other way. and the white power hit wall street, that is ok, look the other way. supply chain, barcode has been in existence for years. there are shipments of painkilling medicine, look the other way. no other country other than new zealand and america allow thousands of commercials on the tv. every day they bombarded with commercials. how many americans know the prescription? they cannot even spell the name of the chemicals included in the medicine. advertising makes the money. blame the internet for fentanyl,

and the pharmaceutical lobbying, i left the industry. thank god. this is a supply chain and they try their best -- i do not want to mention the company name, i know a couple of opioid companies in the beginning, they all made the billions. and i want to mention this -- host: when and why did you leave your job in pharmaceuticals? caller: because they wrote a paper for no reason as a guinea pig, and it is not the tv either, you can hear my accent, so i came here to graduate

school, and i was there for a bunch of time, and i am a volunteer in cleveland, but the thing is, i am not against drugs. painkillers are being abused since they've been fda approved and congress looked the other way. the barcode system distribution, you don't need that until it is delivered to your house. host: donald, hickory, north carolina, you are next. donald, go ahead, sir. caller: yeah, i am with you. good morning. host: good morning to you. caller:? host: yes sir. caller: in 2007, i got throat cancer, and they had to put a tube in me, select the times to

four times a day, i was shooting liquid oxycontin and xanax in my stomach. after months of going through cancer, you are addicted to that, especially what is a liquid going straight to you, so after my cancer treatment, my body was hurting. when back from 2007, it had had pills from chemo and the radiation was horrible. my doctor was prescribing me 330 milligrams oxycodone's, many as annex -- many xanaxes and i was on 16 drugs for 12 years. i had a heart attack. host: how long would 300 pills last year?

-- last year? -- last you? caller: i was doing 10 day. it is supposed to be 304 30 days, but when you get addicted to that stuff dashers was to be 300 four 30 days, but when you get addicted to, when you don't take it, you feel like you are about to die, and you will do anything to get another pill. host: donald, how are you doing these days? caller: i am not doing real well. i am still affected by the chemo and radiation i got. it has really tore my nervous system up my thyroid, and

depression and anxiety because i went for 12 years not even knowing what i was doing, driving on trips to virginia. and then i had a bunch of seizures because of the xanax, when they took me off of it, and then i ended up getting bleeding on the brain and was in hospitals for 10 days. host: do you still need opioids? caller: no, i quit them last june the 12th by myself. host: how are you able to do that? caller: well, i did have my doctor help me. i told me my -- i told my family physician i wanted off of them

because they were ruining my life. i cannot remember what i was doing and just a mass of confusion when you are taking that much, and then you add opioids with the xanax, and then we had medicine for depression, and the xanax was for anxiety. host: appreciate you sharing your story and your efforts over the years. thank you and good luck to you. lance in fort lauderdale, florida, you are next. caller: good morning, john perry how are you doing? host: i am doing -- good morning, john. how are you? host: i am doing all right. caller: i have been to the eye of the storm. i started on oxycontin when i became disabled. i have a genetic disease destroying my body, so it is doctor prescribed. i started to take it, and then a year later, i lived in the

higher the storm where it all got started and crazy. i walked into my pharmacist and ask for my prescription and the pharmacist looked at me and said, we don't carry that. i said for the last year you have carried it and you drop it every tuesday, what do you mean you don't have it? they said we don't have it. i said when they going to have it? they said, we don't know. you cannot tell that to someone dependent on opioids. i ended up in the er because i did not want to go on the streets, and they would give me enough to bide me through. i finally had to get off oxycodone because i cannot get it in the county and i switched to morphine, which i have been on for the last decade, and it amazes me that there is all the stuff for oxycodone and there is anything about morphine. this gets me angry, when all the things were happening i the countyn, i called the dea and

said, what you doing shutting down the pharmacies? don't you understand what that is going to do to patients like me? they said, people are dying and i said, that does not help me. also, i see the commercial on television where the guy says he lost a son and they had no idea. have you ever seen a prescription for oxycodone or morphine/ there are 3 -- or morphine? there are three or four pages of material telling you to be careful. this is agreed on part of the doctors and the pill mill. host: you said you would change people to giving it to you, what do you mean? caller: i would go to the er, and i would tell them i need oxycodone or morphine or i will go into withdrawal, and i have a heart condition and could die. so they would give me a couple

of days where they would let me out the next day, and then i would call up the insurance companies find somebody, one of the pharmacists i was working with to give me my dose, and then once i switched to morphine , it went away completely. but the doctor i go to for my pain medicines, every time i go, i see him once a month, he tests my year every time i go. the government says you only have to test once a year, but he does not do that because he doesn't want people playing games. if i am too high, they will cut me off and say i am abusing. in the 12 years i have been with him, i have never missed a test. it just amazes me how people by a drug or are prescribed a drug and they don't read the material that comes with it. if you get it now or morphine,

there is a small book attached to it telling you the dangers. you have the internet to find out. when i spoke to the dea and said, don't you feel bad about young people dying? they said, yes, but they knew what they were doing. i do not see how penalizing me for their stupidity is going to make things better. host: that is lance out of fort lauderdale, florida, this morning. just after 7:30 on the east coast. you can keep calling and as we talk about the opioid surge during the pandemic. phone lines for those impacted by opioids, medical professionals, and all others. just want to update you want to update you on a busy on capitol hill. yesterday, plenty of storylines we have followed. a couple of headlines from this morning's papers, the infrastructure deal may now hinge on talks with different bipartisan groups. president biden ending

negotiations with a group of republicans led by senators on his infrastructure package after they failed to strike a deal and they enter a new uncertain pace as the president shifts his focus to a second group of, cuts and republicans in hopes of reaching that deal. plenty more on that later today and the days to come as we focus on that issue, so from the senate side yesterday for foreign affairs, the senate approved a $250 billion bill, trying to boost competition against china and other nations. bill passage 68 to 32, 1 approval passage being delayed, the legislation writes a potential landmark effort to turn the tide on several long-term trends in u.s. competitiveness. they include eroding federal

investment in the shrinking share in the world's semiconductor manufacturing. we talked about this briefly yesterday and is on the front page of "the washington times" today. members of congress and the house specifically use i- constituent, hit with a ransomware attack. the house chief administrative officer said it is unaware of the cyber attacks and how it affected the data, with plenty of offices affected, and we are going to be talking more about cyber attacks, specifically ransomware attack's, little later in our program. today, we will be joined by jamil jaffer. "washington journal" viewers have seen him before on this program. he will be joining us in our 9:00, 8:45, actually, eastern. back to your phone calls, john,

columbus, ohio. good morning. we are talking about the opioid epidemic and its surge during the coronavirus pandemic. caller: good morning. i could talk forever on the subject. i was an over 30 year active cocaine, crack addict, whatever you want to call it, and the early 1980's. anyone with a basic knowledge of opioids, it is a physically addictive drug. you can only take it so long before you can become addicted to it. the body has to have it. we are all focused on this now, and i have never seen anybody mentioned their bootlegging xanax now, the bars, the long ones, and they are cutting it

with sentinel and people are dying from that also. back in the 1960's, we had the heroin epidemic and lsd, and in the 1920's, -- i do not want to be sexist, but the cost, it wasn't opioid. this has been going on so long, the war on drugs. seems that we have forgotten everyone else, the sufferers out there, but do you know the odds of success of active treatment? very, very small. host: what are they, john? caller: back when i was in the progress, it was 2%. i looked it up, and the when i looked at said it is similar to hypertension, they compared it to hypertension and diabetes,

and i think from zero to nine, and then when they started doing the treatment, of course, it went down. and then when they got out, it shot back up to about seven or eight. it is so low, you know, that i kept going back, and back, and back. that is what it took for me. host: what finally helped you beat it? caller: 13 treatments, and finally, i was ready, i guess. they say it happens when you are ready. host: that is john in columbus, ohio. this is jay in north carolina, good morning. are you with us? we will go to marie, greenville, mississippi. morning.

caller: good morning, john. i wanted to make some statements . i am going to talk really fast because i don't want you to think i'm getting off track but it has to do with the subject. one of the things that always puzzles my mind was on donald trump made to involve the lady over the education department i always wondered when they say she donated $200 million to his campaign, and you have never even heard of this lady or her family before, where did they get $200 million? and you were the one who interviewed, if i'm not mistaken, her brother, and he had been in afghanistan the last 17 years, and -- host: i do not remember that interview. you may have me confused, would bring me to the opioid epidemic during the coronavirus pandemic.

that is what we are talking about this morning. caller: yeah, ok, i am coming to that, so that is what i felt like was blood money. host: let's go to the opioids. caller: ok. i feel sorry for those people. like i said, i made the statement in the beginning that i had never been affected by it, but that is why donald trump lost that election the last night of the debate when he kept marking joe biden's son about being a drug addict, he never considered all of these people that have struggled with drugs. he never considered the fact of all the people who deal with opioids. he kept marking joe biden, and when he looked in the camera and said, yes, my son struggled with drugs. he struggled but got himself together, and i told my mother, at this point i looked at her, and said, donald trump lost the election because joe biden just

connected with over millions and millions who struggle with drugs, and donald trump never did anything to help them trying to get over this opioid because he had taken that blood money for his campaign from devolve and her family --

patients like me who depend on that make us feel like drug addicts because we can't make it through the day. i have to jump from one pharmacy to another pharmacy because the doctor has to then transfer the prescription to another pharmacy. there is not any alternative.

and i think that, like one of the gentlemen were talking about, how drug dealers would lace heroin with even rat poison, and people were dying. as was back in the 1970's. i think what they did is they started having this go to doctors so that doctors could prescribe pain medication. >> on the issue you bring up of the lack of alternatives, it was a topic that came up during a hearing last month, a senate appropriations hearing on the dhhs budget. senator brian schatz was talking with the director and he was talking about alternatives when it came to opioids for pain

management. >> chronic pain and non-opioid alternatives. i passed a couple of laws in this area to enable research. i think when people think about opioids, they move right in there might to alternative medicine. what i am talking about is a non-opioid pharmaceutical solution to chronic pain. i wonder whether we are making progress in that space. if people find other ways to alleviate their pain, i am for all of it. but there is still a space here for a pill that you can take to alleviate --