January 14, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 8 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session
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OPIOID EPIDEMIC; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 8
(Senate - January 14, 2020)
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[Pages S181-S183] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] OPIOID EPIDEMIC Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, one area where this Senate and the Congress, in general, along with the administration, have made significant progress is combating the ongoing drug addiction crisis in America that has affected so many families represented by all of us in this Chamber. In my home State of Ohio, we have been on the frontline of this crisis for years. Opioids, in particular, have taken a heavy toll in our communities. In fact, in 2017, our opioid overdose rate in Ohio was almost three times the national average, with nearly a dozen Ohioans dying from these dangerous drugs every single day, making it the No. 1 cause of death in Ohio, surpassing car accidents. Since 2017, we have begun to make progress, finally, to be able to turn the tide on opioids. In 2018, after a decade of increased overdose deaths every year for the previous dozen years, we finally had a reduction, a 22-percent reduction in overdose deaths. By the way, that led the Nation in terms of the percent decrease. It is still way too high--unacceptably high--but we are starting to make progress. A lot of it goes back to what is being done here at the Federal level, but also the State level and local level, to address this problem. We have dramatically increased funding here for treatment for recovery, including providing Narcan as a way to save people's lives. It is a miracle drug that reverses the effects of an overdose. We have done some things that are very important. More recently, we have sent these resources through legislation that the President signed into law just last year. There are resources also provided by the State opioid response grants and also by our bipartisan Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, helping our first responders to be able [[Page S182]] to use innovative and new approaches to ensure that individuals whose overdoses are reversed go into treatment rather than just overdosing again and again. The good news is that at the end of the year, the spending bill that Congress passed secured a record $658 million in funding for these Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act grants, or CARA grants. I was the author of that legislation, initially, along with Sheldon Whitehouse on the other side of the aisle. We started off with closer to $200 million. Now, we are at $658 million. Why? Because it is working. I have been back home, going from place to place, seeing how it works. I have watched some of these first responders in action with social workers and treatment providers who are going into people's homes and getting people into treatment who previously were not. We can't rest on our laurels because we have to do a lot more to address all forms of addiction that are increasingly becoming a problem. We have seen in Ohio and around the country that psychostimulants have now come back with a vengeance. This would be crystal meth from Mexico and cocaine. It is surging in communities across our State. According to our deputy attorney general in Ohio, law enforcement officials in 2018 tested double the amount of methamphetamine samples as they had in 2017 and triple the amount from 2016. In other words, crystal meth is growing. Higher and higher amounts of it are coming in and more and more people are being affected by this. I heard this at roundtable discussions around the State. I was in Knox County last year, learning that the prosecutor's office estimates that 80 to 90 percent of all drug incidents included crystal meth. Opioids used to be their biggest problem in Knox County, as it has been in all 80 counties in Ohio until recently. Now it is pure crystal meth coming in from Mexico. I am pleased that the spending bill at the end of last year that we passed just last month changed the way in which our funding is delivered in the fight against addiction. Specifically, included in that is my Combating Meth and Cocaine Act. This is an important bill that allows States the flexibility to use the roughly $1.5 billion in grant funds allocated specifically to combat opioids. The 21st Century Cures grants, now called the State response grants, can all be used for the treatment and recovery services for new threats like crystal meth and cocaine. Giving our local communities that flexibility is incredibly important. I have heard it constantly when I am back home. We have now done that. We have been able to help even further to try to reverse the effects, not just of the opioid crisis but of the drug crisis and all forms of addiction. We have made significant strides in ensuring that we can respond to this ever-changing addiction crisis. I am proud we are able to do it. As I said at the beginning of this speech, this is a pretty divisive time in Washington, to say the least. No one can deny that. What I hoped to show by highlighting these achievements over the past year is that even in a highly partisan environment, it is possible to bring people together to get things done and pass laws that make a fundamental improvement to the lives of the people we represent. While lots of time finding that common ground takes more work, it is worth it. The extra effort goes a long way. Fortunately, we are coming into this new session of Congress having already laid the groundwork that we need to do to continue to fight this addiction crisis. Critical right now to that fight is passing bipartisan legislation that will help us to push back against a particular kind of opioid, the synthetic opioid called fentanyl. Fentanyl came on the scene 5 or 6 years ago with a vengeance. Just as we were making progress on reducing the use of heroin and prescription drugs, suddenly, this fentanyl arrives. It is a synthetic opioid. It is 50 times more powerful on average than heroin. It is now the No. 1 killer. It has been the last few years. In States like mine, Ohio, when you look at the numbers over the past few years, although we are making progress on other opioids, we are not making progress on fentanyl. Why? Because it is being mixed into all kinds of other drugs, including crystal meth, including opioids, including all street drugs. The improvements we have seen are significant, but fentanyl continues to be the No. 1 killer. Fentanyl, unfortunately, knows no ZIP Code and is devastating individuals and families all across the country. According to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 72,000 drug-related deaths in the United States in 2017, and 40 percent of those deaths were involving fentanyl. That data showed that the overdose deaths due to fentanyl had increased at a rate of 88 percent per year, on average, since 2013. It is a real threat to our States. In 2017 alone, we had a record 3,500 overdose deaths in Ohio that were attributable to fentanyl. Last fall, our Narcotics and Gun Enforcement Task Force seized 45 pounds of fentanyl in a single bust in Montgomery County, in Dayton, OH. There was enough of the drug to kill the entire population of Ohio. That is why the Drug Enforcement Agency made the right call in 2018 to make fentanyl-related substances illegal to possess, transport, or manufacture. This means they have been scheduled. Thanks to that designation, our law enforcement officials have been able to better protect our communities by seizing and destroying large amounts of these fentanyl-related substances, which are the analogs to fentanyl. So that is good. Unfortunately, due to Federal law, the DEA was only able to make these dangerous substances illegal on a temporary basis. Think about that. You have this deadly drug that is 50 times more powerful than heroin. Back in 2018, we were able to finally make not just fentanyl but all of its analogs--fentanyl-related substances--illegal. Law enforcement was using that to begin to push back, and now we find it was only temporary. Guess what. We are fast approaching the end of that designation. Next month, on February 6, which is 3 weeks from this Thursday, fentanyl-related substances will once again be legal, and it will be much harder to keep vulnerable communities safe from these deadly substances. We cannot let that happen. I met earlier today with former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who is now our Ambassador to China. For years, many of us have been pushing China to do more to crack down on fentanyl because most of the fentanyl that comes to this country and kills individuals in our communities comes from China. Most of it has been coming through our mail system. We have done a lot to stop that. We have passed the STOP Act, which tightens up the post office's screening process, which has worked very well over the last year. We have also provided more money under the INTERDICT Act in order to provide better equipment not just to our Postal Service but also to the private carriers like DHL and FedEx. What has happened is, China has also done a better job of making fentanyl illegal and scheduling the precursors and analogs to fentanyl, and we have pushed them very hard on that. I have myself been to China and have personally done that, and I know Ambassador Branstad has pushed China hard on this. Finally, China has begun to start addressing this rampant production in its country. Terry Branstad told me today--and I agree with him--that the credibility of the United States to continue to provide pressure to China to do the right thing will be eroded dramatically if we don't continue to schedule fentanyl. As we are asking China to do it, we cannot let this designation lapse here. Obviously, what is most important is that we not let it lapse because it is the wrong thing to do and because it will affect all of our communities and all of our families who have been affected by this dangerous drug. We can't let it happen. That is why, last fall, Senator Joe Manchin and I introduced a bill called FIGHT Fentanyl, which codifies the Drug Enforcement Agency's precedent to permanently schedule fentanyl-related substances. So forget these temporary designations that have caused these issues; let's permanently schedule these fentanyl-related substances. It has very strong bipartisan support. In fact, as of a couple of weeks ago, [[Page S183]] every single U.S. State's and territory's attorney general has now endorsed our bill. That is all 50 States and 6 territories. That doesn't happen very often. This is a bipartisan group of law enforcement officials who has said: We support this legislation, the FIGHT Fentanyl Act, that we introduced last fall. I am confident we can get it passed if it comes to the floor for a vote. There are other approaches to it as well that are slightly different than ours. I support those as well. The point is, we need to pass legislation to ensure that February 6 doesn't come and go without our scheduling these fentanyl analogs. It is a good example of the need to continue working across the aisle on this issue. We have done a good job with it so far. As I have said, even in these contentious times, we have to do it again, and we have to do it soon. I am told that during impeachment, it is impossible or at least very difficult to legislate on any other topic without having unanimous consent. So we need to get this done before next week, before we get the Articles of Impeachment and before the U.S. Senate begins the impeachment trial. I urge all of our colleagues to focus today on this issue. Join us in this commonsense, lifesaving legislation. Let's work together. The Committee on the Judiciary has been working on this, and others have worked on this. We have legislation at the desk to be able to solve it. I hope we can do it by unanimous consent, but we have to do it. This is lifesaving legislation to keep fentanyl from spreading its poison even further. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida. ____________________
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