hey let's go to the attorney general of the state of indiana greg zoeller attorney general thanks for calling in this morning good to be with you again jam hey let's talk about a few things that are going on right now i want to read this correctly and then we'll w backtrack a read the second paragraph and then we'll go back and you'll explain the first paragraph attorney general greg zeller publicly think north of us indiana legislators charlie brown linda lawson lanny rand off verne's vernon and and senator karen talent for their support of consumer protection and public safety bills that passed during the legislature's twenty fourteen session now the cynical people up here are saying aren't those all democratic northwest indiana legislators and the republican attorney general is thanking them for what gives you know jim when when i go around the state i thank the legislators who supported the legislation we asked for and  work we do in the attorney general's office of consumer protection is public health it's public safety so those were the ones in your community who really helped this would build i don't really care whether they're republican or democrat and i usually get support from both sides of the aisle and both the house and the senate but i think it's you know maybe it's mother taught me to go around thank people that helped me so it's always kind of a tradition after the sessions over  people have heard a lot about the bills that didn't pass and all the things that people might of raise their voices and disagree with but i think it's appropriate that we thank the legislators for the hard work the men and women do let's talk about some of these things that are coming down the pike now that our laws i think they've all been signed are going to be signed and let's talk about the prescription drug abuse prevention task force it was a number of recommendations in that and evidently those are going to be implemented can you talk about that jim we really got an epidemic in the united states and particularly in indiana the number of drug overdoses that  prescription drug overdoses the amount of abuse where people are taking prescriptions that aren't prescribed for them for a doctor is really now at epidemic proportions and we're playing catch up so this prescription drug abuse task force has really helped tighten up our statutes as it relates to perscribe ing practices it helps with something called inspect where doctors can see who's prescribed what for this patient it allows law enforcement and others to kind of look at the same data so we don't have people who buy and sell prescription drugs on the market so there's a lot of things going on and we're really just trying to catch up to the epidemic that's upon us in looking at some of these health care records and so forth i mean are we making sure that everybody's medical records are kept private where they are the the use of inspect really just shows what's being prescribed so for instance a pharmacist when you go to the pharmacy and you fill a prescription they can pull up to inspect the report that shows what this patient has been prescribed so you can see whether they're getting things from multiple doctors some of them may be too much like opioids some of it may be bad combination of the law enforcement used to see whether there's overprescribing by physicians we bring doctors before the medical board for instance if they've had a prescribe in practice the same way out of sync with the needs of the community so we don't really look at the patient records we look at the doctors prescribing records and let's talk also  i know this is this is a tough one to actually talk about and that is college students and the folks that are out drinking and is the caller going to be me alone from criminal charges and i know there's even my own kid is a little confused about this tell us where we're at on that well we've had what's called the lifeline law for a couple of years now and that was really a bill that was let's say lobbied by the college students from around the state that came to the state house and to their credit got it passed but it really provides some lifesaving immunity so you don't have to worry about whether you've got a under age drinking claim against you you can call nine one one get medical help for someone who's had too much to drink or may be taken pills so you can immediately call nine one one without any concern about having charges brought against you for under age activities so it's really it's really something that i think the students really let on we've now added a new provision which is something that we were pushing for  essentially an anti for an overdose of opioids so whether it's heroin whether it's oxy code you can really have a lot of people's lives saved if we can get this in the locks into the hands of police and fire and first responders you know the lifeline law is actually i know you mentioned one area that it's kind of expanding into you're also expanding it into folks to ma report sexual assaults or concussions what is it how does it apply there well again you know it's it's like a date rape for the teen rate they don't want to say anything at the time because they've had something to drink so their own concerns about what they may have done that was illegal in terms of under age consumption there's a munity for that so they can go ahead and report and again i'm not sure that there were any prosecutors who brought charges against some young girl but the the the version that was passed around among college students and high school students was somehow this fear that you might get in trouble and you didn't want to report so i think we really got to address some of these serious problems and even though the prosecutors told these kids that they would never prosecute having this immunity in the  statute i think reinforces that point that they were trying to make the talk about telephone privacy we've got a new law there i think it's senate enrolled act thirty three forty nine well how does that apply to ho so well you know jim we're always trying to stay ahead of some of the problems particularly when it comes to robo calls what we found is that these companies will do illegal robo calling to try to get what are called leads so the lead generator if you press nine because you want a new credit card or you want some new product they then sell that to a legitimate company but we've done with this statute is require these legitimate companies to check to make sure they're not buying illegally generated leads from these robo collars so if there's not a buyer for the robo call lead generators hopefully we'll get fewer robo calls at home talking to indiana attorney general greg zeller about a number of new laws that are coming into effect and this one here does it how does it relate to the do not call law at all well it does i mean we have in indiana we've had some of the strongest laws when it comes to do not call it robo calling which is a violation we defended and one nine hundred eighty eight but the other part and i'll be honest we've lost a little bit of our privacy at home and that was another thing that concurrent resolution sixteen focuses on the fact that the federal communication commission just refuses to help us when it comes to these robo calls that are generated overseas through the voice over internet and they blast out up to ten thousand calls a minute that's what most people get and complained to me about and there's nothing i can do about it other than to point people to the f c c who refuses to stop these called they're the only ones who can regulate it they regulate your radio station and yet they won't regulate something that blasts out ten thousand called the minutes i'm trying to stir up a little bit of public focus on the federal communications commission which frankly they communicate to us that they don't listen when we communicate to them you know that that's interesting i have my own issues or thoughts on the f c c but you know i'll i'll temper those because they do regulate us and so but i guess in a in a general sense a lot of times it seems like you're but this is another federal agency that you're kind of betting your head against a wall with well remember i  exercise our own free speech rights and calling them and given him a bit at some point i think the damage they're doing to the privacy rights that we've protected over the years is something that i'm going to have to be a little more but they loud his list greg anything else you want to tell northwest indiana well you know i come up there a lot so i'm always up there either in court or doing something that not everybody smiling about kind of enjoyed being on your show or we can talk about things that aren't be kind of a booth there we've got eight people going down and we will be courtside so make sure you stop by i'll look for you all right thanks a lot talk to you