[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 84 (Thursday, May 26, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3253-S3255]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



               Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Bill

  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I rise today to talk about an issue 
that affects all of us in this Chamber and all of the communities we 
represent. I also rise on behalf of the 200,000 Ohioans who are 
currently struggling with an addiction to prescription drugs or 
opiates.
  Heroin and prescription drug addiction has gripped our country. 
Unfortunately, we are facing an epidemic now, and I want to rise today 
to talk about how we can do a better job to address that. This is the 
seventh time I have come to the floor of the Senate to speak on this 
issue since the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act passed the 
Senate on March 10. That vote was 94 to 1, showing that Members from 
every single State are affected by this and want to address it. The 
Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, CARA, is a good start and 
will make a big difference because it is comprehensive and it addresses 
every aspect of the issue, from education and prevention through 
treatment and recovery, and helps our law enforcement folks and helps 
get these prescription drugs out of our communities. It is a good piece 
of legislation that I hope we will be able to get to the President's 
desk for his signature.
  For the first 5 weeks I came to the floor, I talked about the fact 
that I hoped the House would act. I urged the House to act quickly on 
this emergency that is affecting our communities. Last week I came to 
the floor to say thank you to the House because they did act. They 
voted on 18 separate bills. Combined, they were a response to this 
epidemic, and I think that was a very important step forward.
  I am encouraged that now the two Chambers, the House and Senate, are 
trying to figure out a way to come together with a conference to come 
up with one bill that can be sent to the President for his signature. I 
do believe the legislation we passed in the Senate is more 
comprehensive, and I hope the House will be willing to take some of our 
measures, particularly in the area of prevention, which was left out, 
because I think preventing this addiction in the first place and 
keeping people out of the funnel of addiction is incredibly important.
  It has been 77 days since the Senate passed CARA, and we lose about 
120 Americans a day to drug overdoses or about 1 every 12 minutes. This 
means we have lost about 9,000 Americans to drug overdoses since the 
Senate passed this legislation back on March 10. About 300 Ohioans have 
lost their lives to heroin and prescription drug overdoses.
  We were told by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that 
in 2014 Ohio had the second most overdoses of any State in the Union 
and fifth highest, overall, overdose death rate.
  I have seen the consequences of this every time I go home. I will be 
home tomorrow and will have the opportunity to visit with some people 
who are trying to help on this issue, but everywhere I go I hear about 
it.
  Last night I had a tele-townhall meeting. We have about 25,000 
Ohioans on the phone at any one time at these tele-townhall meetings. 
Somebody called in to talk about our legislation, CARA. His name was 
Joe. He is from Delta, OH, and he was very open about

[[Page S3254]]

his situation. He said he had been a heroin addict for 15 years. He 
said he was 33 years old. He said he had a stroke when he was 25 that 
was related to his use of heroin. He said he had been in and out of 
treatment programs. He was clean now, but he was tired of going to 
funerals. He said he had been a pallbearer at about 20 funerals of 
friends of his who had died from overdoses. He said he was ready to 
straighten out his life and get back on track. He also talked about how 
tough that is; that the grip of this addiction is so strong, it is very 
difficult to go through a treatment program and into recovery and come 
out clean. He said he likes our legislation because he believes there 
should be more treatment out there. He said many people who want to go 
to treatment cannot get the treatment they need. We also talked about 
the stigma that is attached to addiction. That many people don't go 
forward to even tell their families, much less get into treatment, 
because of the stigma around this disease.
  Unfortunately, stories like Joe's are in the headlines every day. 
Just since I spoke on the floor last week, more headlines are coming 
out of Ohio. It is everywhere, by the way. It knows no ZIP Code. It is 
in the inner city, it is in your community wherever you live, it is in 
suburbs, and it is in our rural areas. In fact, the per capita use in 
rural areas may be higher than it is in the inner city.
  This week the Cleveland Plain Dealer began a series of stories on 
those whose lives have been cut short by this epidemic, and I applaud 
them for that. By raising awareness of this issue, I think that will 
help in terms of the prevention side of this, and I think it will also 
help people to be able to seek treatment.
  The stories the Cleveland Plain Dealer is featuring includes a 
fentanyl overdose death of an 18-year-old named Nicholas DiMarco, who 
was an honor student at North Olmsted High School. They include the 
story of Patrick O'Malley, a bright, young graduate of Ohio University. 
Patrick used prescription painkillers--drugs we all know the names of, 
like Vicodin and Percocet. He abused them and became addicted. Money 
started being missing from his mom's wallet. Laptops, televisions, and 
other items went missing from their home. He told his brother he didn't 
want to keep using. He wanted to stop. He said he had a disease, and it 
is a disease. He sought treatment and went into rehab at the Free 
Clinic in Cleveland, OH. I have been there and have seen the good work 
they do. Sadly, he relapsed, and just 2 weeks later his brother found 
him dead in his bedroom with a needle stuck in his arm. He was 25 years 
old.
  Unfortunately, these stories continue to be told because this is what 
is happening in our communities. Mary Jo Trocano was a grandmother who 
had chronic pain. She was prescribed painkillers to deal with her 
chronic pain, and like so many others, she became addicted to them. 
When she ran out, this grandmother switched to heroin. It is less 
expensive and more accessible. She fought this addiction for 10 years, 
but Mary Jo was found dead in the backyard of an abandoned house in the 
west side of Cleveland recently in her late fifties.
  These are just stories from one town, Cleveland, but they can happen 
in your hometown. Again, no ZIP Code in the country is safe from this 
strong grip of this particular addiction.
  Just last Friday, police in Niles, OH, seized $100,000 worth of 
heroin from one man. Three days later, a prison guard in Athens, OH, 
pled guilty to assisting the drug traffickers and getting drugs into 
the prison system.
  In Columbus, a mom pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter after her 
daughter, Annabella, who was just 14 months old, ingested fentanyl-
laced heroin at a drug house. Annabella died of an overdose and her mom 
is now facing up to 11 years in prison. Fentanyl, by the way, is a 
synthetic form of heroin. It has similar qualities except it is much 
stronger--often as much as 50 times stronger than heroin. 
Unfortunately, many of the overdose deaths in Cleveland are due to the 
fentanyl that is often laced with the heroin. In fact, there have been 
more deaths in Cleveland, OH, in this first quarter than ever. In fact, 
we are looking at probably doubling the number of overdose deaths if we 
continue on this pace in Cleveland, OH, compared to last year. This is 
how serious it is in my State and your State, wherever you live.
  On May 9, Ohio State troopers seized $20,000 in heroin on Route 23 in 
Marion County, a rural area. Just 3 days later, three people died of 
drug overdoses in Marion County in a 24-hour period.

  Every one of these victims had family, friends, or classmates who are 
now suffering themselves. It shouldn't be this way, but unfortunately 
that is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to the 9,000 Americans 
we have lost since this legislation passed the U.S. Senate--think about 
this--there are hundreds and thousands more who are wounded. They have 
lost their jobs, been driven to theft or fraud, gone to jail, broken 
relationships with loved ones because the drug is everything. This is 
what I hear and what I heard last night in the tele-townhall. What I 
hear from other recovering addicts is that the drug becomes everything. 
Therefore, the families are torn apart and therefore the job means 
nothing. They turn to theft when they had never before crossed that 
line of committing a crime. That is the status quo today.
  Getting a comprehensive bill to the President's desk for signature 
and getting it to our communities will help. It has to be comprehensive 
because we know it is not going to work if it just addresses one side 
of the issue or another.
  There has been a debate over funding for this legislation. Some have 
said more funding is the answer to all of our problems. Unfortunately, 
some have tried to politicize this a little bit, and I suggest what 
they are doing is not going to help because what we need to do is get a 
comprehensive bill out there that talks about providing funding--and I 
believe there should be more funding--that goes to the evidence-based 
programs we know work, and that is what this legislation does. It is 
based on 3 years of work. We brought experts in from all over the 
country. We had five conferences in Washington, DC. We had conferences 
about how to help our veterans, pregnant moms, addicted babies, and 
ensure that we have more people who are given the right kind of 
treatment--medication-assisted treatment--to be able to get back on 
track.
  Yes, I have supported more funding, and we should continue to try to 
get more funding to address this problem, but it is not just a matter 
of putting more money into it, it is also a matter of spending that 
money wisely. That is what this legislation does. Yes, there is more 
money. It has $80 to $100 million in additional funding, but it also 
has funding that will be used for what we know works.
  We need to be sure we do this soon because, again, this epidemic is 
growing. CARA, Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, insists that we 
are targeting this funding toward evidence-based education, treatment, 
and recovery programs. There are 130 national anti-drug groups that 
support this legislation because of the fact that they were part of 
putting it together. They know what works out there and what doesn't 
work. This is a national effort. It is one that will save lives and 
will make a difference in so many other people's lives and will begin 
to actually turn the tide on this epidemic.
  Again, this legislation is one that 94 Senators supported. Only one 
Senator opposed it. Again, that shows how this has become an issue in 
every single State that has to be addressed because it is affecting 
everybody in every community. CARA has a number of things on prevention 
education that are incredibly important to keep people out of the 
funnel of addiction and help people make the right decisions, 
particularly for teens, parents, other caretakers, and aging other 
populations. It does more in terms of making people aware of this 
connection between prescription drugs and heroin. Probably four out of 
five heroin addicts in Ohio today started out with prescription drugs, 
and for people to know that, it helps them avoid being in the situation 
they are, like the grandmother in Cleveland I talked about who was 
exposed to more and more painkillers and became addicted to them.
  CARA also improves treatment by expanding the availability of 
naloxone. This is the miracle drug that can actually stop and reverse 
an overdose. Law enforcement agencies and first responders support our 
legislation because they appreciate the fact that

[[Page S3255]]

there is more funding for naloxone, also called Narcan, and also 
because there is more training in our legislation so people have the 
training to be able to save lives and reverse these overdoses.
  It also expands treatment for prisoners who are suffering from 
addiction disorders. With evidence-based treatments, we can break this 
cycle of addiction and crime. Prosecutors have told me that in some 
counties in Ohio, more than 80 percent of the crime is now directly 
related to this opioid addiction. We are told that 95 percent of the 
people who are in jail or prison will be released someday and about 
half of them will end up back in jail within 2 or 3 years. Much of the 
recidivism, this revolving door in the prison system, has to do with 
this drug abuse issue. Families are torn apart when people go back and 
forth in the prison system. One of the reasons for the increase in 
crime, and why many crimes are committed, is to pay for an addiction. 
Breaking that cycle will help ex-offenders stay out of prison and help 
them to live out that God-given purpose.
  CARA also expands disposal sites for unwanted prescription 
medications to keep them out of the hands of our kids. It would 
strengthen prescription monitoring programs to allow the States to 
monitor what goes on in their own State and to also know what is 
happening in the State next to them. If somebody is monitored for 
overusing prescription drugs in one State but can simply cross the line 
into another State and get those drugs, that doesn't help solve the 
problem. This legislation provides the ability to have a drug 
monitoring program that is inoperable between the States.
  These are critical policy improvements, and they are part of a 
comprehensive approach to an epidemic that is devastating communities 
across the country. Yes, we need more funding, but we also need some of 
these changes in law to be able to spend the money more effectively.
  I know these statistics about drug abuse are heartbreaking and can be 
very discouraging, but there are also many stories of hope we should 
not forget, and those stories are inspiring. It is about those who are 
struggling and find a way to get their lives back together.
  Ashley Bryner of Newton Falls, OH, which is near Youngstown, started 
using drugs when she was 13 years old. By 16 she had gone to cocaine 
and by 18 she was addicted to painkillers. When she was 24, she 
switched to heroin when the painkillers became too expensive and too 
hard to get. Again, heroin is less expensive than prescription drugs 
today in my State of Ohio.
  She said:

       When I was in addiction, I was living in hell. It just 
     takes over your mind. . . . Everything I did when I was using 
     was all to feed my addiction.

  The drugs became everything. Then she decided to get help. She was 
ready. She didn't want to live like that anymore. She checked into 
Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Trumbull County. It took her 18 months to 
recover.
  She said:

       I had to re-learn to walk, talk, everything, without dope. 
     It was like being born all over again.

  Four years later, she is clean and has full custody of her three 
sons. She is working for the Trumbull County Children's Services. She 
is helping others fighting addiction and excelling at her job. She is 
beating this.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I hope we can send this comprehensive 
legislation to the Whitehouse as soon as possible, to give more people 
hope, to be able to reverse the tide of this addiction and allow those 
Americans to live out their God-given purpose.
  I yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, shortly we will be voting on Laura 
Holgate for the nomination to the position of Ambassador and U.S. 
Representative to the Vienna Office of the United Nations and the 
International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA.
  I urge my colleagues to vote for her confirmation. She came through 
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is strongly recommended by 
that committee.
  Ms. Holgate's extensive experience makes her uniquely qualified to 
serve in this position. She has served in senior positions in the 
Department of Energy and the Department of Defense for 14 years, 
building and leading global coalitions to prevent States and terrorists 
from acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction.
  She currently serves as the Senior Director for Weapons of Mass 
Destruction, Terrorism and Threat Reduction on the National Security 
Council. Having this post filled with a highly qualified nominee has 
never been more critical. The position of the U.S. representative to 
multiple U.N. agencies as well as the IAEA includes the U.N. Office on 
Drugs and Crime, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and 
the International Monetary Money Laundering Information Network, among 
many others.
  This position covers a range of other issues at the IAEA, including 
North Korea. The International Atomic Energy Agency in the coming years 
will be responsible for monitoring and verifying the nuclear agreement 
with Iran, confronting North Korea's continued violations of its 
nuclear obligations, and dealing with a variety of other 
nonproliferation threats. We need Laura Holgate in this position to 
represent U.S. interests and for our national security, and I urge my 
colleagues to support her nomination.

  I yield the floor.