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CNN This Morning
Narcan Closer to Over-the-Counter Approval; Default on Federal Debt; Robert Irvine is Interviewed about His New Book. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired February 16, 2023 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They (INAUDIBLE) take people out.
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DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, that was in a courtroom. Look at that. It was a tense and emotional sentencing day for the mass shooter who killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store. We're going to have more in the next hour on that.
And soon a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, is expected to release a partial report from the special grand jury investigating Donald Trump's actions after the 2020 election.
Plus, catastrophic - catastrophic. Straight ahead, the warning from the Congressional Budget Office if lawmakers don't act on the debt limit.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: But, first, a potential game changer in the opioid epidemic. Getting Narcan, the overdose reversing nasal spray, could be pretty simple. It could be as easy as buying ibuprofen. FDA advisors just voted unanimously to make the drug available over-the- counter. So that would mean no prescription. What Narcan does is that it stops a drug overdose in its tracks. It is easy to use.
Take a look at this. This is an officer in Arkansas reviving someone who is overdosing.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 434 headquarters. One dose of Narcan administered.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's going on?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, we're going to get you in my truck. I'm going to give you a once over, man.
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HARLOW: Wow. Our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now.
We've heard so much about Narcan for years, but it was not as easy to administer as that. And the fact that, you know, potentially people could buy it just like they buy Tylenol or Advil would probably be a game changer, right?
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ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Oh, absolutely, Poppy, it really would change things.
Right now you can get Narcan, or the generic Naloxone, without a prescription. You don't need a prescription right now, but you do need to go to the pharmacist. It's behind the pharmacist counter. And some people don't know it's there. Some people don't feel comfortable doing that.
So, let's take a look at what this change would mean.
So, first of all, yesterday the FDA advisors voted unanimously to say, hey, let's put it out there, as you said, with the ibuprofen, with the shampoo, with the toothpaste, with - with everything.
HARLOW: Right.
COHEN: And that final decision about whether this will happen is up to the FDA commissioner. But we feel quite confident that he would say yes to this. There's not really a reason to say no.
And if approved it wouldn't just be like a CVS or a Walgreens. It could be at a supermarket. It could be at a gas station. The folks who we're talking to who work in this business say, this is great. The sort of -- one of the final sort of impediments to getting Narcan, which as we saw from that video is so important, is the price. If you don't have health insurance, it can get pricey. Even with some government support programs, it can still be quite pricey.
Poppy.
HARLOW: So, the idea would be you could apply -- if you do have health insurance or Medicare, Medicaid, you could apply that to even it over- the-counter?
COHEN: That is certainly the hope.
HARLOW: OK.
COHEN: And right now you can apply it and you don't need a prescription. So, it should work the same way.
HARLOW: OK. LEMON: My question is, Elizabeth, I have some here on the set. I don't know if you can see it. So, I got this - I don't want to put my address on there. But I asked my doctor because lots of people come visit in the summer and they hang out, they bring their kids, they go swimming in the pool and whatever and you don't know. They spend the weekend. Poppy has spent the weekend at my place.
HARLOW: Yes, I have.
LEMON: But -- and you don't know what people are doing, what they come in contact with. And so I asked if it was OK to get a prescription to have in my house. And he said that's actually a very smart thing. I'll see if I can get it. It took a while for him to get it. There are a couple of refills on here.
So, I think it's - I think it would be smart if people can get it at home, because I certainly got it. It's -- I think it's been in the house since August I think of last year, or maybe July of the summer. But how soon would people be able to get it over the shelves if there is a green light? And so I guess you think it is a good idea to be able to do this?
COHEN: Certainly. And certainly the FDA advisors thought so too.
To be clear, Don, you don't need a prescription right now, but you do need to say to the pharmacist, hey, the Narcan you have back there, would you please give me some?
LEMON: Oh, wow.
COHEN: You know, I'd like to buy some of that. So, you don't need a prescription now, you just have to ask the pharmacist. And that is a bit of an impediment. So, you can't get it at a gas station. You can't get it just sort of anywhere. I think it could be very useful. Again, the money is still an issue.
But this should happen quite quickly. Let's take a look at where opioid deaths are right now. You can see from this graph, they are just growing wildly, unfortunately. It is such a tragedy that this is happening.
So that in 2021, there were more than 80,000 deaths, more than 80,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. And if this could be easier to get, hopefully that number could come down.
HARLOW: Yes, it could be such, such a game changer.
LEMON: Very helpful to know. I've been wondering forever about that because you see the video.
HARLOW: Yes.
LEMON: You see people being saved by Narcan. And so it's just like, should I have one at home? Same with the defibrillator.
HARLOW: Yes, I was just thinking that. LEMON: Defibrillator.
HARLOW: I was just thinking that.
LEMON: Yes.
HARLOW: Elizabeth, thank you so much.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, also this morning, there is an urgent warning coming from the Congressional Budgets Office. Even if you don't -- not super familiar with that, this is a warning you should pay attention to because it's about what would happen if lawmakers do not address the debt limit soon. We're going to break it all down with none other than Christine Romans.
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JANET YELLEN, TREASURY SECRETARY: In my assessment, and that of economists across the board, a default on our debt would produce an economic and financial catastrophe.
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HARLOW: That is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen using words like "catastrophe" and "crisis." She has been saying this. Not enough people have been listening. America blew past its debt limit last month. And a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warns that we could default as soon as July if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling.
Big numbers. Big real-world impact for all of you.
Our chief business correspondent Christine Romans is here with how it could affect you.
This is what she's been saying.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
HARLOW: And now the CBO, which is, again, not partisan.
ROMANS: Right.
HARLOW: They crunched the numbers, is saying, what?
ROMANS: We're running out of time here. We're running out of time to address a near term problem. And the near-term problem is this debt limit, which we already hit, and now by July it could be that we are no longer able to pay all of our bills. By July. So we've got a dozen weeks here when you could see a situation where we're not being able to pay our bills.
What happens if we can't pay our bills? Well, we'll probably pay our bond holders first, right, so we don't destroy the American economy. That means we can't pay everybody else. And so that means you've got IOUs for 67 million people who get Social Security, IOUs for 2.1 million active-duty military, IOUs for hundreds and hundreds of federal contractors.
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And that would have a terrible effect on the economy, likely cause a recession and cause just a loss of confidence in the U.S. overall. So, that's what - that's what happens in the very near term. And the CBO is saying that could happen in a matter of months here. July is when we run out of money to pay the bills.
HARLOW: I was so struck also by what they said about the raising -- rising federal debt and just what we're looking at here.
ROMANS: So, this was a number that was very dower, grim. And this is a - this is a storm brewing, right, and we know it's coming. If we do nothing, we will add $19 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. If we do nothing. And what are we talking about in Washington? We're talking about doing nothing, right, because it's politically inconvenient and because there are very vocal, vocal voting blocks who don't want to touch Medicare and social security, which are some of the biggest driver of that debt, but so is defense. So are other veterans benefits.
And interest is rising, right? Interest payments are rising because mortgage rates - or interest rates have been rising. So that means our interest payments are going to be more expensive.
HARLOW: Right, that we, as a country, taxpayers, pay with our money.
ROMANS: Absolutely. Absolutely.
HARLOW: Pay the interest on what we've taken.
ROMANS: And so our interest costs are going to be higher. Our medical costs are going to be higher. And so there is a real unsustainable path for America's finances at the moment. And by -- what -- something the CBO said that really struck me is that in the next decade you're going to have debt that will be 118 percent of the size of GDP.
HARLOW: There it is.
ROMANS: That is really scary when you think that's never happened before where your debt is so much bigger than the size of your economy.
HARLOW: One hundred and eighteen percent of how much we're growing of our GDP. Wow.
ROMANS: You know, I mean that's -- so it's a wakeup call and a warning to Washington, but a warning that I think is still falling on deaf ears.
HARLOW: Yes. ROMANS: So, the short term problem is, raise the debt ceiling to pay the bills we've already paid. The long term problem is, look at the way our government finances are structured so that we don't end up in a decade -
HARLOW: Yes.
ROMANS: Look, if you don't change something and you run out of money in the Social Security trust fund, the next day the Social Security checks will be 25 percent less.
HARLOW: That's right. It will just happen if they don't do anything.
ROMANS: It will just happen.
HARLOW: Christine, thank you. Sorry, we had a little trouble with the magic wall.
ROMANS: It's OK. I know. It's all right.
HARLOW: Sorry, it happens.
All right, Kaitlan.
COLLINS: That is an eye-popping number.
But, also this morning, quote, overcoming impossible. Ahead, our interview with the world class chef, restaurant miracle worker Robert Irvine, about turning l's, losses, into wins.
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LEMON: W's.
ROBERT IRVINE, HOST, FOOD NETWORK'S "RESTAURANT: IMPOSSIBLE": L's are great because you never want to repeat them. And it's OK if you fall. But don't fall twice. Learn from it.
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COLLINS: He is a world class chef, author, and someone who really just does the impossible.
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ROBERT IRVINE, HOST, FOOD NETWORK'S "RESTAURANT: IMPOSSIBLE": The place is a pigsty and you have allowed it to get to that point.
The food is tasteless.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I ain't going to listen to it no more.
IRVINE: This is a wakeup call.
Them tomatoes are your health. You're going to lose this restaurant and you're going to you're your own life if you don't do something different.
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COLLINS: He is blunt.
Robert Irvine, the host of the hit series "Restaurant: Impossible" on our broadcasting cousin, Food Network. He helps struggling restaurant owners turn things around in just a matter of days.
If you're wondering how he got so good at this, he shares it all in his new book, "Overcoming Impossible." It's out now.
Don and I sat down with Robert Irvine earlier this week to talk about his latest book.
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COLLINS: And Robert Irvine joins us now.
Your new book is now out. This is actually a little bit different than the books that you've written before. It's not focused on recipes. What made you take kind of a different path with this? What did you want to do?
ROBERT IRVINE, HOST, FOOD NETWORK'S "RESTAURANT: IMPOSSIBLE": Well, the business that I'm in is saving restaurants. "Restaurant: Impossible" is in over 300 series right now. And I couldn't get to all of them. So, I thought, well, why not put it into a book and help those folks that I can't fix on television.
COLLINS: And focus on the entrepreneurial side of it. Leadership is a big part of this, obviously. You've got three pillars (ph).
IRVINE: Leadership is number one. It's like empathetic leadership, followed by losing egos, followed by trust.
LEMON: Yes.
IRVINE: The three pillars that I feel successful businesses run on.
LEMON: How does that play in - because we don't -- we don't have to deal with any of that in this business. (INAUDIBLE). So it's empathetic leadership, managing egos and trust. So, in a - in the restaurant business?
IRVINE: It's no different to any other business. And I don't just - don't realize - don't work on restaurants, I work on major Fortune 500 countries that are scalable, just like mom and pop restaurants. America was built on mom and pop restaurants and nobody's helped them. So, you know, "Restaurant: Impossible" has been doing that. And as - as I can only get to one a week, there are thousands of restaurants, over 2,000 that apply for this show every week, and I can do one. So, this book is all about, look, I've made a lot of failures. I'm
going to give you the pitfalls to my failures so you can see them coming. I never had that. And teach you how to run your business successfully. It's not a -- just a, you know, check the box book. This is full of information, full of case studies of the restaurants that I fixed and the businesses that I fixed.
LEMON: But it's so interesting, when you look at restaurants - and we have folks come on because it's an indicator, like, a key indicator for economic either health or, right, or not being healthy, our economy. When you look at what happens with restaurants, especially over the pandemic, and so I'm wondering if that affected -- if that influenced this of you trying to help restaurants because it's - it's become like restaurant almost impossible after the pandemic.
IRVINE: The pandemic was huge for us because, as you know, the 17th of March, St. Patrick's Day, pretty much everything around the world fell apart.
LEMON: Right.
IRVINE: We didn't. We got back on the road. Courtney (ph), the head of Food Network, said, hey, get back on the road. I wanted to go back on the road. Six buses. Six people in each bus. We did 66 episodes of saving restaurants during Covid.
That did spark a lot of what's (ph) in there. Why do people fail? And it's those three pillars. Because we - we -- you know, the biggest failing restaurant in America is an Italian restaurant. Why? Because mom says you make great meat balls. You got to open a restaurant. You max out your credit cards. Six months later, after all your friends have been in, you call Robert Irvine to help you because you're $600,000 in debt.
COLLINS: I think the reality of this is, in life, not just in restaurants, everyone fails at some point. And I was reading a quote from your book and it made me think of Jalen Hurts, who is the Eagles' quarterback, who, after, obviously, they lost the Super Bowl on Saturday, I was just as sad. You know he's from Alabama. But he had this moment where he talked about using a moment like that as a teachable moment. He said basically you can choose how you confront your agony. And you wrote, if you're going to take every critical note or rejection as an opportunity to allow some kind of personal vendetta to fester, you're not going to make it very far.
How should people use their l's, as you call them?
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IRVINE: L's are great because you never want to repeat them. It's painful. You know, just - you say Jalen Hurts. I was just as sad, by the way.
Look, we're put on this planet to learn and to engage and help people. And it's OK if you fall, but don't fall twice. Learn from it and teach other people. That's what this book is all about, teaching people to look for the pitfalls in business.
COLLINS: A fascinating book. It is "Overcoming Impossible." It's now out and on the shelves.
LEMON: It's good to see you. Thank you, Robert Irvine. "Overcoming Impossible" out now. And you can stream all the episodes of "Restaurant: Impossible" on Discovery Plus.
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LEMON: Fascinating. A fascinating man.
COLLINS: Absolutely.
LEMON: So, questions are swirling and tensions building in East Palestine, Ohio, this morning. Is the air safe? Can people return home? And who exactly is to blame for the toxic chemical spill in their town? We're going to discuss with our chief climate correspondent, there he is, Mr. Bill Weir.
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