tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. , tonight the humanitarian crisis in syria. we gather an assessment on what world leaders can do. we talk with gail lemmon. then a conversation with jamie lee curtis who has written a powerful blog to the huffington post about her own struggles to fight addiction. we are glad you joined us. those conversations are coming up right now.

♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. the escalating war in

syria has left 9 million people in the middle of a conflict that shows no sign of abating and has put a most read million people on the run, including a number of children. according to officials the u.s. is using all tools possible to bring an end to the conflict. in the meantime, the humanitarian crisis continues to escalate. joining us is a senior fellow for the foreign relations and foreign policy program. good to have you on this program. what do we make of where this situation is that the moment? some months ago there was a sign of hope that something could be done to deal with the stockpile, and now we have a crisis that seems to be spinning further out of control. >> i think a lot of people hoped we would be in a different pace than we are. we face the biggest humanitarian crisis we have seen unfold in a long time. what is so striking about it is

the children who are paying a price. you have two point 2 million refugees. half of them are kids. three quarters of them are under 12. it's just the catastrophe of such large proportions that even trying to keep up with it has swamped donors imaginations and the world's ability to absorb anything in terms of the numbers and sheer magnitude of what happened. they will be speaking with president obama. what is your sense of that conversation given that so many syrians are looking for shelter in jordan. >> the thing is jordan and lebanon have been absolutely swamped. one in four in some of these countries are refugees. you think about that, that is 30 million people coming to america at once. we cannot begin to understand what that means in terms of schools, in terms of water, in terms of places to live, in

terms of jobs, and these countries are really asking for support. jordan is a u.s. ally, and it has a need to be bolstered. bolstered in what way? >> financially. the world has yet to pony up in that.of you have 60% of what the you and has asked for. that leaves 40% the world has yet to say, we are going to help the world food program. they need to hundred 70 million between now and march to keep everybody fed. -- 270 million dollars between now and march to see everybody fed. they want to get people engaged in all kinds of ways. to your point about not necessarily just military, it seems one could make the argument the humanitarian crisis forces us to look at military options that were once on the table and have been taken off.

what is your sense of the link between the humanitarian crisis and our or some other country's hand being forced to do something to deal with this crisis? >> i hate to be simple, but i don't think it is the -- to be cynical, but i don't think it is the humanitarian crisis that is going to force people to act. right now the ghost of iraq hangs over everything. if there were no a rack, it would be hard to argue there is no action in syria. the american public is exhausted i all these years of war. the president and the administration is not keen to say, let's start a new war. i think they are trying to figure out how do you do as much as you can short of military intervention, and right now none of the options have been great. it is a question of our foreign extremist club med.

it is basically afghanistan on the mediterranean. you have foreign fighters coming in and using syria as their base. if there were any action it would be that that would be the basis. oris it just financial aid, would king abdullah be wise to press the obama administration that plus.y for if it is that plus, what is the plus? >> the plus for many months, if you talk to the department that work with allies in the region, is diplomatic pressure. worked so hard to secure chemical weapons, yet the future of syria's children has not been secured in the same way because we have never seen that as an imminent threat. ,f you look at what happened that many children are out of school. arnie duncan will talk about that link between violence and low educational attainment. this will not be a problem that

stays local for a long time. i think that is something king abdullah continues to say. >> far be it for me to speak for the obama administration. i think the president would say, that is what we are trying to deal with, by pressing syria on what they have done with their own people, that is how we avoid these children being placed in harms way, that is how we avoid a humanitarian crisis, because there is a link. >> absolutely, but you need more. you have left every conventional weapon on the table. i had one aid worker said they have seen more people killed in two weeks then they sought in the entirety killed by chemical weapons. the chemical weapons makes itself feel better because it is important, but in terms of people killed on the ground, people are dying every single day, and you now have basically the equivalent of burbank, california or cambridge, massachusetts, killed. take those cities off the map.

it is more than 100,000 people. >> someone argue if you cannot the you inreement in the u.n. among the security council to do more bees of these -- vis- these of these -a-vis syrai? >> i think that is a good point. the administration has been blocked. if you look at how do you get the chemical weapons deal, that is people with real energy pulling all nighters to get the stockpile secure. we should talk about the fact that less than five percent of that has actually happened. the deadline was supposed to be the end of this year, and now we are looking at the middle of this year. i think the diplomatic imagination from the american side absolutely has to be there. i think secretary kerry has worked very hard.

could we do more? yes. tavis: some would argue when the president had to backpedal on the issue that diplomacy won the day. that was the spin he put on it that i am going to hold off military action and advanced diplomacy. for the moment diplomacy won the day, but look at what diplomacy brought us. it was holding the bone on military action and engaging diplomacy that wrought us this. >> -- that brought us this. >> i think it keeps getting bigger and bigger. when you talk about doing more, really supporting the moderate opposition, really going in. all of this really is evaluated because there is a real fear about what it means to have that many extremists wreaking havoc in one country, because this crisis has not stayed local. it has commuted around the region, and there is real fear

from people you have on the show all the time that it will not be a local threat for a long time. the question is what do you do diplomatically, and i think you have to go back to the u.n. you have to go back to the russians, and you have to use every tool. the same way you did with iran. the actual sense the u.s. cares very deeply about what happens there. presidency might be where this all started with the threat of military action. he started there, did a 360 -- 0180, and it may end up being a 360. using that threat to get something done diplomatically. let me ask you how much more lebanon and places like jordan can do. even though countries are trying to be charitable and generous in letting others come across their borders, there is only so much they are going to take of that. at some point they are going to

close their borders. what happens then. >> lebanon and jordan have been taxed in ways that are unimaginable to us. i think now the question is how do you get more support to young people who are there. to get a second shift of schools in lebanon so kids who are from. in that country can actually go to school. there are all kinds of creative plans like that to help alleviate the burden on those countries, but short of this conflict ending, there is nobody you talk to on the ground whose season ended terms of what could make things much easier. i think you are going to see that grow. tavis: we will continue to talk about it. thanks for your insights. coming up, a conversation with jamie lee curtis. stay with us. if you have the opportunity to read day millie curtis's

insightful blog, good morning life, you know something of her own successful struggle to overcome an addiction. she has always been honest. her message about what leads smart, talented people to seek escape through drugs offers important insight into an addiction. jamie lee curtis, i am always happy to have you on this program. >> thanks for having me. >> let me jump right in. this story of philip seymour hoffman's passing has resonated in a way that shook me. he was on the show half a dozen times. we did a tribute to him, and that kicked up a lot of conversation on the internet, but nothing quite like what you wrote on the huffington post. i assume you sell responses to this. >> i don't. talkingverybody was about this piece you wrote.

it got so much traction in social media. art of it because you were transparent, because you were honest, and because people were looking at the way in to have this conversation. >> that is what people want. they want away and. i did not know him. i respect you and him. i thought he was a tremendous artist, but he was an everyman to me. he represented every man. he was willy lomans. it was the death of a salesman. he represented the possibility that everybody could be an actor because you looked at him and thought, he looked like a real guy. his being an everyman makes his death profoundly effective to people like your does happen. people who are in the public i and if public eye die,

they die in circumstances like he did it does rock people. tavis: two they die in part because they are in the public eye? an illness,add to the demands of same. that's not why i am here. that's not why i wrote what i wrote. what i wrote is this is a problem we have all over the world but particularly in america. we have 40 million people who are addicted, and i was once on the board in columbia, the center of addiction and substance abuse, bringing my experiences as a woman to that board. they are a think tank, and they study the effects of drugs and alcohol on the prison system, women, older women, schools, teenagers, and they publish reports. i would strongly suggest your readers -- your viewers read up on their study because they will

be helpful. 40 million people are addicted. this is a nationwide epidemic we have to look at. invoicing my own personal -- by the way very personal experience so that others might feel that they can voice their own personal struggle, then i will feel that my outing myself in a public way has been valued. tavis: the flipside about outing yourself in a public way is because you have been sober for so many years, you didn't have to be that transparent. once you safely get through that, you don't have to. >> you check the box and move on? tavis: you don't have to put your business out there? >> i have tried as an adult to put my business out there, because for me, what is the value of having same if not to

sort of pull this to me and then push it back out there and hopefully for good in whatever i am trying to do, help raise awareness, help raise funds, whatever it is. it isn't just for me. i do believe in the role of a public person and the responsibilities of a public person. that being said, his being a public person wasn't necessarily on any level the reason for his passing. his passing became because he is an addict. aaron sorkin wrote a wonderful piece saying he didn't die of a heroin overdose. .e died of heroin addiction that's why i am here, to just broaden the dialogue. dialogue,aking of the i don't know that this broadens it, whether or not it has been shrunk too much, but the conversation we are having in this country on drugs is a

conversation about making it legal. up until hoffman's death a few days ago the addiction conversation was not really on the docket. we were talking about state after state after state, what happens after colorado. the conversation is about legalizing drugs. >> the criminalizing. avis: there is discrimination. there are folks who want to do decriminalize, and there are folks who want to legalize it. it is not focused on addiction. what do you think of that reality? >> the way our government looks at it, it is about incarceration. it's about trying to control it through laws, which is not about understanding the mind of an addict. it is a disease of the mind. there are people who will debate me. i'm certainly not going to be in a public debate about it.

people are entitled to believe what they want to believe, but when you look at people, that young man corey who died. you look at me. upstanding person. i am trying to live my life with the committee and grace. i am married a long time. i am raising two children. i am trying to work within my community to help people. ?m i just a bad person was agiven vicodin, which narcotic painkiller tom a and i became addicted to it, so the question is am i an addict, or i am i a bad person responsible for my addiction? if you have diabetes, you give someone insulin. do you give someone insulin for a month, or do you give someone insulin for the rest of their

lives? atelieve we have to look drug treatment and drug addiction in a much different way in this country, and i have worked with drug court. i have attended drug court graduations. it works. it has proven to work. i think we need to realign the conversation and make addiction and understandable disease people can get help through the myriad ways you can get help. tavis: this is what one of my problems used to be with the criminalizing and legalizing -- decriminalizing and legalizing. it seems like we do the right things for the wrong reasons. we are not having this conversation is a matter of consequence of public health. it's a conversation about controlling crime. it's a conversation about raising more tax dollars. it's a conversation about emptying some of these prisons that are overloaded, and that

brings other problems because there is cruel and unusual punishment like we saw here in california. we are not doing it to have a real conversation about public health. we are doing it for these other reasons. >> this is a mental health issue. this is a disease of the brain. these opiates fill a part of our brain if we are addicts that we need to fill, and once you have , you want it. i am telling you i was addicted to painkillers. i would have done anything, including steel them, because an addict needs to get their drugs. i didn't have a choice. you say to people -- i have been reading certain blogs. >> they have their opinions. are screwedof them

jamie lee curtis, screw philip seymour hoffman. it's a choice. >> it's a moral choice. it talks about -- >> what's the response to that argument? >> i think i already made it. look at me. i wake up every day trying to make the world better. i don't mean that in some modlin way. this is how i wake up, so it totally took me by surprise, but then i found myself wanting more and more of it. i would do the things you need to do to get it. i cannot debate somebody if they don't believe it is a disease. i daresay if you peel back the your of any american family will find somebody within that immediate family that has some itnection, be it alcohol, be

marijuana, be it drugs, illegal drugs or as we have seen with mr. hoffman, heroin, which is on the rise. people are looking at heroine and again as some sort of -- tavis: recreational. >> if you are not -- if you are an addict, it is not really recreation. what i said in my piece was i am not an expert. i don't pretend to be an expert. i know they have re-classified vicodin, which used to be very easy to get, and now it is harder to get. they are starting to pay attention that these very adjective drugs were being prescribed very easily and creating addict out of people who were not addicts who then got these drugs and now have an addiction to them. an next think you are

part. i think anybody who has gone through this and survived, that makes you an expert, and i am glad you wrote what you did. we seem to be as a nation engaging in conversation about this for the moment, these things come and go. while the attention of the nation is focused on the conversation about drug addiction, what's your advice -- what's your suggestion to everyday people? we are all talking about it. our agency as regular people to advance this conversation? >> my real reason for coming here besides getting to sit opposite you for another eight minutes of my life is to tell people help is available. and that i am a living testament to the fact that without fancy rehab, without pharmaceuticals, i was able to find sobriety as have millions of other people in

rooms all over this country, all over the world, and help is available, and as we de-stigmatize it and take it away from being a moral choice and make it an understanding this is an addiction, this is an illness, and there is help, but the hell needs to be long-standing, ongoing. i wanted to be here today happy. it goodhy i called morning heartache, good morning life. good morning heartache is the sad reality. good morning life is my life, and i would be dead. iwould be dead today if didn't get sober when i did. tavis: there are a lot of reasons why i love jamie lee curtis. " trading places," the glasses, the hair. tavis: he likes my glasses.

>> but the main reason is you are as transparent and giving a person as anyone in this town. inc. you for writing your piece. i know you normally don't do this. for writing your piece. if you haven't seen it you can go to our website at [indiscernible] org/tavis. the conversation is there. that's our show for tonight. as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with the disney hisator floyd norman about

time at the studio. at next time. we will see you then. ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more

& . ♪ [ music ] >> it's hard to remember. i'm going to be a little lost on the way. we had a lot of people die along the way. >> when they asked for volunteers who wants to be in the first group of bomber pilots. i said i do. >> i hope to find this park. people come on these tours and they're excited about where they've been and what we've done and i think that's amazing. tampa bay. ♪ [ music ] ♪ [ music ] ♪ >> hello and welcome to this is this is i'm becca king reid on the captains ring on the uss