Report from Santa Fe; John Heaton

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I'm Lorraine Mills. Welcome to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is Representative John Horton, Democrat from District 55. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much for having me. It's always a pleasure. Well, I always count on you for a certain kind of information, because you are the only pharmacist of now actually your retired pharmacist and small businessman, but you're the only one who brings this vast amount of pharmacological knowledge to the legislature. And a lot of our problems in the state are pharmacy or drug related. Health issues are the number one problem in the country and the state. We have a question. And so we're going to start with that area, because you were the leader in the fight against meth labs, and maybe you could tell our people a little bit about Sudafid, the drug, Sudafid and why it's a problem, and what happened in the last session to help restrain the growth of meth labs? Well, I had a bill that I had introduced to pick up on the Oklahoma law, which was very, very significant in that it reduced the number of meth lab interdictions by 80%, an amazing reduction in the number of interdictions in the whole state of Oklahoma.

So it was the same bill. And unfortunately, we introduced it too late in the session, really, to make much progress. The attorney general was behind it. A thousand percent has been very active in that regard. I think all the attorney generalists were behind it. They're all over the country. In fact, I think Congress now has a bill that's introduced in both the House and the Senate, and hopefully it will pass because it has made such a significant impact on reducing methamphetamine. It is one of the most insidious drugs that we have in society today. One of the major problems is people that take it because it energizes them, they like it. It makes them feel good, they talk fast, and so they like the drug, but it has some tremendous side effects that are really, really horrible and ruining people's lives totally.

It causes significant amount of paranoia. It causes hallucinations. It causes heart problems. It causes blood pressure, stroke problems. Many people become schizophrenic in nature after they take it for a while and push the doses. And so end up with a life of psychiatric problems, and it's just very, very difficult for them. So for people to start on it is a horrible mistake. In the old days people used to take similar type drugs for appetite control, and they simply don't work for that. They work for about five to seven days, but after that they cease to have those kind of effects. But the way it's being used today, it's more or less the poor man's cocaine, if you will, and it's promoted that way. But it's a very, very dangerous drug, and it has enormous number of side effects.

So what happened as a result, the Board of Pharmacy has stepped in, and they have passed some rules across the state now, so that drugs with pseudofedron, which is the precursor to making methamphetamine, and it can actually be done fairly simply with a simple lab, unfortunately, with household products or products that you find around. And there are many internet formulas for it. I wish it were more complicated, but it's not. And they use pseudofedron as the base. So eliminating pseudofedron in the marketplace in large quantities is a way to eliminate the manufacture of methamphetamine in this country. Let's just have a little word for the innocent drug pseudofed, which is used when people have any noses. I mean, it's a very common. It's used so commonly, you would hardly think that it was going to be a foundation of keystone in this big drug abuse problem.

That's exactly right. And that is the foundation drug. That's the precursor to making the methamphetamine. So the Board of Pharmacy restriction is that you can only buy two packages of pseudofedron products within a seven day period, and the product has to be under surveillance within 20 feet of some personnel and a store that's selling it. But there's no registration. There's no follow-up. So it's very difficult to do. The bill that I would have had would have required all the pseudofedron products to be put behind the counter in a pharmacy sold by a pharmacist restricted to nine grams within 30 days, which is enough for anybody to treat their congestion. And you have to write, you would have to register, you'd have to show identification. And it would have a major impact on the distribution of the drug. The problem is if New Mexico doesn't do it, Oklahoma has done it. Colorado is talking about it. Arizona is talking about it. If we don't do it, then everybody will come to New Mexico to make their purchases, even though they may be selling it at other place.

New Mexico will be the center for the production of methamphetamine and meth labs. So it's important we do something. And our law enforcement is particularly eager to have us take this step because we are full of the wide open spaces. And that's in meth labs, you can just have them out in the country. Because there is an aroma. A very chemicaly smell isn't there associated with them. Very strong smell. It's very dangerous having children around it. In fact, we created enhancement to abuse and neglect in the state. If you make methamphetamine and have children around, and it's very, you can't get it out of the furniture and the walls and the carpet, it's the smell is just permeates everything. But I want to say that reminds me of the fact that this is not really an underworld drug like you would think heroin and the old Asian isn't that. It's a kind of crossover drug because you get college kids staying up all night for their exam. And then you get housewives, it's like the Rolling Stones had a song mother's little helper.

There's so much demand on people to get so much done that a perfectly normal middle class housewife might be tempted in a time of stress to take something like this to get everything done that's demanded on her. And then suddenly she's on the downhill slide before you know it. That's exactly what happens. So we want to make this as hard to get as possible. That's the point of it all and try to stop it where we can. We have to change the culture in this country. We cannot be a country that has all of these illicit drugs that we're depending on and using. We have to change the culture and that's what it's about. And we have to take a pretty tough stance about it because I think that's the only way you really do change the culture. We have to think differently about it. What are some other drug related or pharmacological issues that are facing us as a state? The, you know, the health care is a huge issue across the country. I like to talk about three areas that are keeping the United States and perhaps New Mexico from being competitive.

And number one on the list is health care because within the scheme of health care we are the met we have the most expensive system in the world. We are twice as expensive as any other country in all the OCD nations and yet the results from our health care system are not good. We're still 37th and I think male life expectancy 36th and female life expectancy we still have where we have a very terrible mortality rate where we're first or second in the highest infant mortality rate in the world. So we're in the OECD nations. So it's really our system that we have needs to be changed needs to be converted. And as we age a couple of things that really need to be done. And when we talk about the population aging and we talk about chronic disease there the CDC suggests that in 15 years the cost of health care will be related to what we call metabolic complex, which is a disease complex made up of obesity and diabetes,

high cholesterol, hypertension, and heart failure. Those five conditions will consume 65% of our health care dollar. So for us as a country, not to take a step back and begin to focus on lifestyle and begin to focus on prevention teaching our children that if they're overweight early that they're going to end up with diabetes and this complex of conditions that ends up meaning that you're going to have limbs cut off at a digit of time. We're going to have a whole eyes kidneys. We're going to have all these organ transplants going on that are enormously expensive and they absolutely ruined people's lives. And so they take the quality out of people's lives. And so people need to react early. So we need to begin to get on a trail where we teach our kids. I mean, I never saw a juvenile type two diabetic people that the diabetes that people get later on in life when I was practicing until the last few years of my practice.

And now it's rampant kids under 18 that have type two diabetes. It is a tragedy that that's going on, but just think about the cost of treating them for the rest of their life for that particular condition and all the associated conditions as opposed to prevention getting away from the obesity factor, which really is the stimulus for it all. But that's the same cultural shift you're talking about as with drugs. Absolutely. And so and and you're not the only voice crying in the wilderness. There's a doctor, Dr. Mehmet Oz and his partner who were among Clinton's prison, Clinton's doctors, they have a book called Your Body. And they in effect say whatever you get from age 40 on is your own fault. It's mostly in most cases. It's lifestyle related. Absolutely. It's lifestyle related. And people are sitting around whistling Dixie like it's never going to happen. And then the other component of it all is to get into a disease management program instead of treat our whole system is we treat everything like it's a sore throat.

You come in and you see the doctor and he says you've got this or he changes the dosage of the drugs that you're taking and says come back in two months or three months or next week. And we treat everything like it's an acute disorder. These are chronic diseases that are lifestyle diseases and people need to be taught how to manage them themselves. We should not be so paternalistic in our healthcare system. We should teach people to manage their own conditions. And I think that's another critical critical juncture and how we change the healthcare system. And it saves enormous amounts of money and we get better results. What are some other paradigm shifts to cure some of our? A couple of other problems that I talk about us being internationally competitive is that we have to do something about energy. I'm not telling anybody anything about this.

So in five years we'll be 65% dependent on foreign oil. We can never ever be dependent or independent as a country when we're 65% dependent on a resource that drives our whole economy. It comes from somewhere else and especially rogue areas like the Middle East. So it's really concerning that we continue to be so dependent and we've not really done anything about it. In the electricity generation arena, we of course have coal and some other products that drive that nuclear power that drives the energy that's producing our electricity. But when we get to our automobiles and our vehicles, we have no alternatives and we need to make some dramatic changes when you talk to the Department of Energy's people in Denver that have alternative fuel sources. They begin to talk about us being able to replace of that 60% a third of it, 20% of our demands on fuel, getting those from alternative sources like alcohol and vegetable oil and creating biodiesel and alcohol products.

So right now we could convert and get 20% of our fuel from those products alone. And then by focusing on more growth of corn and other products, vegetable oil seeds that would produce other oils, we can go to biodiesel. Ultimately, I think that we all think that maybe hydrogen is one of those ways to get there, but you don't get to a hydrogen economy really without nuclear power. Everything else is too expensive. You plow all of your energy resources back into production of the energy. It's creating the hydrogen. So you have to get to nuclear power. It's clean. It's reliable. It's a great source of energy. It's cheap. It's the way we need to be thinking to get to the end of this. And then the last thing that really concerns me is our R&D technology. The United States, its major economic resource is our intellectual property that we develop in this country through our national labs and through our universities and the investment that we make in it and the understanding of how valuable we think research and development is and staying ahead of the curve.

And there are 6.3 billion people in the world. We're the point three of the 6.3. And IQs around the world are distributed rather uniformly. We would all assume and we don't have all the intellectual horsepower in the United States alone. But we used to lure them here to go to our universities. And then after 9.11 our visa requirements for foreign students were so strict that we lost a lot of the best and brightest just weren't going to come here. And the other universities across the world now are developing their university systems and there's some very good ones around the world. And so these kids that were coming here to take advantage of our great universities in this country and our focus on research and development are willing to invest in it now are going to other countries and guess what?

Countries and companies in the United States like Intel who had never never put an R&D facility overseas before a month ago announced five new R&D facilities overseas. It's to go where the engineering and the intellectual resources are so that they can stay ahead of the curve. I had heard the most staggering statistic that in the last year in the total United States we graduated 65,000 engineers and in China in the same period they graduated two million people with engineering degrees. And that's what companies are looking for the best and the brightest that they can find anywhere to do innovative creation of technology. The other astonishing fact that I heard about China was that they are now testing all of their four to six year olds for math and science aptitude.

And if they find a child that's particularly gifted they will take them away from the family and give them the state of the art education in math and science because they know whoever figures out the solution to the energy problems you're describing whoever comes up with a new source of energy is going to literally rule the civilized world. They have no question and all of the products that have been developed in this country now begin to get shifted overseas. You only have to talk to the university presidents to understand that foreign students who by the way typically were paying 100% of the tariff of their tuition and room and board. And they're no longer that mass number of people that were coming here no longer coming to the United States because they can't get in. So we need to make some significant changes in that those students aren't tariff. Those students are people that really want to pursue a career.

And then once they have lived here and enjoyed the American lifestyle a lot of them will stay here particularly thinking of doctors who come here to medical school they either go back to their country some of them will stay here and and Lord knows we need the doctors. They weren't for the J1 visa program and the healthcare business we wouldn't the New Mexico would probably have a third fewer doctors than they presently did. What is the J1? Well it's a program for physicians who have come over and have gone to school here and then then stay a few years to work through their visa before they become citizens but it takes five years to become a citizen. So you have to spend some time here in order to get your citizenship and many many did many many did where we are melting pot we're all from somewhere. So so many of these things you know the roots to which are in our youth and the way they're being educated.

So if we make them aware of that their choices are going to determine their own health in the future their own educational sources are going to depend not only their own future but the future of our country. And so how do we make this little sea change in schools and in the consciousness of the students? Well I think one of the things that really impresses me is the families that are raising children today have an enormous focus on their kids. I look at my children and how they're raising their children versus how I raise them and they're much much better parents than I ever was. And even though my wife is an extraordinary parent I was not that great a parent and I'll openly confess that but on the other hand my kids and their involvement with their children and homework and and play and things they do with other adults and incorporating them into a home. But it's standing on the shoulders of giants the expectations of a dad back then we're very different and I'm sure you did all those very very well and now dads are you know they're much more involved it's not just throwing the football it's like driving the kids in places it's the almost focusing on their homework and focusing on on school and the importance of grades and schools are more involved in that.

No child left behind even though it has some negative things it has some very positive things it's focusing on these subgroups that were being left behind and requiring that schools spell it spend a little bit of extra time working with those children so that they in fact are brought up to the level of other children and they are making advancements too so I think that this whole focus is very very good and I think that there will be good come from it. Now in New Mexico we're working as hard as we can with energy I'm so pleased that we have such a big solar program and then the wind turbines I recently was out at the wind turbines by San Juan and there are some fields that can actually give enough power to say power was well for a year and some that could even power Santa for a year the problem is the intermittent quality of wind but they're able to counteract that and one of the things those that's changing too very close to where I live in the in the Guadalupe mountains there's a major power plant wind power plant there and it's about a hundred megawatt it's the equivalent of what used to be considered a standard power plant

and so they're doing very well but now they have figured out that they can make larger blades they're now over 80 feet in length which means they're 160 feet an enormous distance from one tip to the other tip up on a hundred foot tower and there are two megawatt generators and these blades spin very slowly it doesn't take that much wind to make the move yet they have an enormous amount of torque so they they turn the generator very speedily so that they at a high revolution so they generate the power and by the way they're not a threat to birds because they're going so slowly birds fly right through them right between the blades so there are a lot of improvements that have been made I actually find them really beautiful I think they're beautiful they are they're picturesque and I like the sound they make too

they make a lot of noise when you get close I want to bring you back to your pharmacist background because everyone is talking about the Medicaid prescription drug benefit and it's so confusing for all of our viewers do you have any advice for people who are in this category who are having to try to decide what Medicare prescription drug plan is around to there there will be a multitude of plans that end up being adopted by Medicare we had thought that there would maybe only be three or four in each particular district but that's not going to be the case I think it's pretty clear now there may be as many as 40 or 60 in each area so it is complex and it's difficult for a lay person to be able to choose which company is going to be able to give them the best price and which company is going to be able to give them the drug that they need for their particular condition my advice my clear advice to everyone is to go and talk with their pharmacist the pharmacist is clearly the best source of information they will know which one of these PDP's is

which one of these PDP's prescription drug plans will be providing the drug that they need and making it that accessible to them so I think that there's not a better resource for them to go and talk to and I think the pharmacists are all getting up speed on the program and they understand it and they understand how it's being rolled out and those those companies will all be designated by the 15th I believe of October and then the 15th or the first part of November enrollment begins people that there's a certain group of people that when they fall between the under the 150th power percent of the poverty level they will be 100% they won't have to go through what's called the donut hole they won't have to do the deductible upfront but they will have to pay a copay between 100 and 150 will have to pay a copay but under 100 won't even have to pay a copay

so it's important that they go into their pharmacist fill out applications correctly the state has a responsibility in this as well and will have the health department and human services will all be out there as well trying to collect applications but it's extraordinarily important for people to get the right medications the ones they've been stabilized on so going to their pharmacist and asking them who they should roll with is will give them a major leg up a major major advantage if you will so the pharmacist would know what drugs you're taking and if they were proprietary or if they were definitely covered on certain plans that's exactly right they'll know everything they'll know all the plans and which ones will be to the to the best advantage of the patient thank you very clear advice thank you very much good our guest today I'm sorry we're out of time but our guest today is representative John heaton Democrat from district 55 resident of beautiful curls bad thank you for joining us today

thank you for having me it's been a pleasure and I like to thank you our viewers for being with us today and report from Santa Fe we'll see you next week report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico tech on the frontier of science and engineering education for bachelor's masters and PhD degrees New Mexico tech is the college you've been looking for 1-800-428-TECH