California’s Opioid Crisis
This week, Marin County announced it will sue a dozen pharmaceutical companies for aggressively marketing highly addictive opioid medications. Thirty counties across California are separately suing drug companies to recoup tax dollars they’ve spent responding to the crisis. While opioid prescription rates have declined, overdose deaths continue to rise nationally. In California, more than 2,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2016, according to the state’s Department of Public Health.
Guests:
- Laura Klivans, KQED health reporter
- Dr. Scott Steiger, UCSF associate professor of medicine and psychiatry
- Brian Washington, Marin County counsel
U.S. Withdraws From Iran Nuclear Deal
On Tuesday, President Trump announced he will withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal. Signed in 2015, the deal was one of President Barack Obama’s key foreign policy achievements and required that Iran never build nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. We interview the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, Professor Abbas Milani.
The Archer Team: Fighting Terror with Tech
A group of UC Berkeley students are using their tech skills to fight terrorism. They created Archer, an online platform that offers tools to track connections between terror organizations and sanctions violations. The inspiration behind their nonprofit is personal for these students: in 2016, two of their classmates died in terrorist attacks in France and in Bangladesh. Today, nearly two dozen UC Berkeley students volunteer their time and skills at Archer, using data to fight human rights abuses, corruption and money laundering.
Guests:
- Anjali Banerjee, UC Berkeley junior
- Tyler Heintz, UC Berkeley junior
- Alice Ma, UC Berkeley alumna