From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Brooke Gladstone is out this week.

I'm Bob Garfield.

This week at a press conference held with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,

the president took the opportunity to set the record straight on his urgent commitment to his major policy goals, like health care.

We are getting close to health care. We'll come up in the early to mid part of next year.

Economic growth. I'm going to be surprising some people with an economic development bill later on.

And the opioid crisis. We're going to have a major announcement probably next week

on the drug crisis and on the opioid massive problem. When it comes to the opioid epidemic,

next week has been a long time coming since at least his presidential campaign. It's an unbelievable problem that we have all over this country.

And if I win, I'm going to stop it. You watch what happens.

And more recently, since August,

when President Trump officially deemed the crisis a national emergency.

The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I'm saying officially right now it is an emergency,

it's a national emergency. We're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of money

on the opioid crisis. Except that no expenditure of time, effort, or money managing this

national emergency is evident as the death toll gets ever larger.

Experts estimate that last year, 64,000 people died from drug overdoses, more than half from

heroin, fentanyl, and prescription painkillers like Oxycontin. Meanwhile, the Washington Post

and 60 Minutes jointly reported last weekend that the government's ability to crack down on illicit painkiller sales has been seriously compromised, thanks in part to Trump's erstwhile drug czar pick, Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino.

As the opioid epidemic reaches new heights, a law sponsored by Marino last year, made it

tougher for the drug enforcement agency to stop millions of narcotic pills from flooding

...