[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 8, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1691-S1692]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. MANCHIN (for himself, Mrs. Capito, Ms. Klobuchar, and Mrs. 
        Feinstein):
  S. 581. A bill to include information concerning a patient's opioid 
addiction in certain medical records; to the Committee on Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I rise again today to share the story of 
this beautiful young lady, Jessie Grubb. She is a West Virginian who 
passed away a year ago last week, and she was only 30 years old. She 
was a bright young lady with a great future ahead of her.
  After years of struggling with heroin addiction, she had been doing 
very well. She had been sober since August of 2015. She had surgery for 
an infection related to a running injury and died a day after leaving 
the hospital.
  Her story of addiction is known to many. We have told it many times 
here. Her father David, a former West Virginia State legislator who 
served with me, a friend of mine, shared their family struggle with 
addiction when President Obama traveled to West Virginia to bring 
attention to the growing opiate epidemic that we are all encountering 
in all of our States.
  West Virginia has been hit the hardest by the opioid epidemic, where 
drug overdose deaths soared by more than 700 percent from 1999 to 2013. 
More than 600 lives were lost last year--just last year alone--to 
prescription drug overdose, legal prescription drugs.
  Jessie's story and her family's pain are all too common in West 
Virginia and throughout this Nation. As I said, we lost 627 West 
Virginians to opiates last year alone.
  When you think about it, this is a pill, this is a product that is 
manufactured by some of the most regarded institutions, pharmaceutical 
manufacturers in the country. It has been approved by the Food and Drug 
Administration, which basically says what we can use and what we should 
consume should be safe for us.
  It is then prescribed by the most trusted person who is not in our 
family--and next to our family is a doctor. You would think that this 
is something that should be helpful for us, that should be part of the 
healing process. Instead, it has been part of the killing process. It 
has no home. It is a silent killer. We kept our mouths shut; we didn't 
say anything for many years, and now we have an epidemic on our hands, 
which we are trying to control.
  We had 61,000 West Virginians who used prescription pain medications 
for nonmedical purposes in 2014. This includes 6,000 teenagers. As I 
have said, our State is not unique. The Presiding Officer's wonderful 
State of North Carolina is facing the same challenges we are.
  Every day in our country, 91 Americans die from a prescription opiate 
or heroin overdose. Since 1999, we have lost almost 200,000 Americans 
to prescription opioid abuse.
  Jessie's story deeply impacted President Obama, and I spoke with him 
about her death and the pain her family is going through. He reached 
out to David and Kate and the entire Grubb family. It is horrific.
  When President Obama came to Charleston, Jessie was in a rehab 
facility in Michigan for the fourth time. Before her life was taken 
over by addiction in 2009, Jessie's future was bright. She was the 
beloved daughter of David and Kate Grubb, a beloved sister to her four 
sisters, and a beloved friend to so many.
  She was an excellent student, scoring in the 99th percentile on all 
of her tests since she had been in education. She was a cheerleader at 
Roosevelt Junior High School, and she was an avid runner, an athlete.
  At the time of her death, she was looking forward to running in her 
first marathon. She had been training for that. The only trouble she 
had ever gotten into at school was when she protested the Iraq war, and 
she was on the right side of that one.
  Needless to say, she was a natural-born leader. After graduating from 
Capital High School, she was thrilled and looking forward to her bright 
future at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
  She was sexually assaulted during her first semester, which caused 
her to withdraw from school and return to Charleston. The traumatic 
event that caused Jessie to turn to heroin to escape the pain was that 
horrific experience.
  Over the next 7 years, Jessie would battle her addiction. She would 
overdose four times and go into rehab four

[[Page S1692]]

times. Until her death, she had been sober for 6 months and was focused 
on making a life for herself in Michigan. All of her hard work was 
ruined because of a careless mistake.
  I introduced this piece of bipartisan legislation; everybody has been 
so kind on that. It makes so much common sense. I introduced it almost 
a year ago. At the time, I told David, Kate, and the family: This is 
something that should be a no-brainer. This is something we should 
easily pass. It was called Jessie's Law, after this beautiful young 
lady.
  I will explain how the events unfolded, and then I will go into the 
bill. Her parents, David and Kate, traveled to Michigan for her 
surgery. They traveled to Michigan, and they told her doctors and the 
hospital personnel that she was a recovering addict. Jessie confirmed 
it. She said: Yes, I have struggled. I am clean. I am proud, and I want 
to get healthy. I want to get my leg injury fixed, and I want to run 
that marathon.
  After Jessie's surgery, the discharging doctor, who said he didn't 
know she was a recovering addict--the parents were there when she was 
admitted. She told him. You would have thought they would have asked: 
Do you have any allergies, penicillin?
  You would have thought they would have flagged it: I am a recovering 
addict.
  They sent her home with a prescription for 50 oxycodone--50 
oxycodone--because they did not know, because her records had not been 
properly identified, that she was very prone, being a recovering 
addict, to any type of opiate. There are other ways of treating pain. 
Not knowing, the doctor went ahead and released her with what a normal 
person would get for pain relief.
  Needless to say, she should never have gotten that prescription--no 
way, shape, or form. We must ensure this never happens again. That is 
why today I am reintroducing Jessie's Law.
  Let me tell you what I ran into. David and Kate accompanied her as 
the parents. They were with their beautiful daughter. They both 
confirmed that she had an addiction problem and she was recovering: 
Please, we want you to notify anybody who handles, anyone who 
dispenses, anyone who is working with Jessie. Please know what we are 
dealing with is very fragile.
  I said: We will write the legislation. And we did; we wrote the 
legislation. If you have a consenting guardian, parent, and a 
consenting patient, it should be flagged. Because of privacy laws, we 
know we are very concerned about that. For some reason, I cannot get 
past the bureaucracy of getting this bill to the floor to be voted on 
because they are saying there is objection to the privacy laws with the 
parents' being involved. So guess what. I finally called David, and I 
called Kate, and I said: I know you would think it makes common sense 
that, basically, we should be able to pass legislation the way we would 
like to pass it--where the parents acknowledge it and the patient, who 
is their child, acknowledges it. They both are cooperating, and it 
should be done.

  In order to try to get this piece of legislation passed as quickly as 
possible, we are taking off the parents. It is only the patient 
herself. Jessie comes in and says: I want you to know I am a recovering 
addict. Please make sure that everybody who handles my case knows that. 
That is all we are asking for. I am hopeful, Mr. President, that you 
and others will be able to join me because we don't want anybody in 
North Carolina going through what we have gone through in West Virginia 
or what the Grubb family has gone through, losing this beautiful, 
bright, talented young lady. It should never happen in this country.
  Even the healthcare providers are saying: We need this legislation to 
go forward so we can identify that, so we can mark that, hotline that, 
redline that, and so that anybody who is handling Jessie from the 
beginning to the end, especially when they are discharged, is going to 
have knowledge. In no way, shape, or form will anybody prescribe an 
opiate or any type of addictive painkiller that they are going to be 
affected by, because their life has been changed by it already.
  The bottom line is that we need to go at this problem from every 
angle with the help of everyone: family assistance, counseling 
programs, drug courts, consumer and medical education, law enforcement 
support, State and Federal legislation. We need everything. This is a 
fight we can't lose.
  This is the first time in my lifetime that my State has fallen under 
50 percent of adults of working age not working. We are down to 49.6 
percent. We have always had the reputation of having some of the 
greatest workers--hard workers--giving you a good hard-working day for 
good hard-working pay. They have always been there. We just have too 
few of them. There are three things that keep you out of the workforce, 
basically: a lack of skill sets, if you are addicted or you have a 
criminal record, or a combination. Addiction has taken over and has 
basically changed the lives of Americans, changed the lives of West 
Virginia, and it is ruining families.
  There is no way that her sisters and David and Kate, her parents, are 
ever going to get over losing Jessie. There is no reason they should 
have lost Jessie and no reason you should lose another North 
Carolinian--none of us. As to the situation where they are go in and 
they are identified by all the professionals with the help they need in 
the systems they are asking for, we owe that to every person in 
America, and we owe it to Jessie.
  So I am asking for the cooperation of all my colleagues--the 
continuous support, tireless work that everyone has done. Jessie's 
death is heartbreaking and reminds us all that this is one death that 
could have been prevented and one death that should never happen again 
because of a lack of legislation that prevents us, because of the 
privacy laws, to identify a person that is in need.
  If you are looking at addiction and happen to be looking at addiction 
as an illness, an illness needs care. If they need care, then we are 
going to give them the care to protect them while they are getting that 
care. That is all this does. I hope it is something we can do as 
quickly as possible. We will be forever grateful. In Jessie's memory, 
her parents are going to be forever grateful. Basically, Jessie's life 
will not be in vain. That is exactly why I am here. I am not going to 
sit still and lose a beautiful person who could contribute to society 
the way this young lady was going to contribute to society and say 
there is nothing we can do. We can do it and do it in her honor.
                                 ______