[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 88 (Monday, May 22, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3056-S3057]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Stop Act

  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I came to the floor last week to talk 
about our police officers. It was during Police Week. We talked about 
the bravery and heroism of our officers back home. I talked about 
tragic stories of police officers who were gunned down in the line of 
duty and talked about what they do for us every day.
  Today I want to talk about an issue that is endangering their lives 
and the lives of so many in our communities but specifically law 
enforcement. This happens in every single State represented in this 
Chamber. This danger is this new epidemic of synthetic heroin, of 
opioids.
  We know more about heroin and prescription drugs. Now we have these 
synthetic heroins coming in that are even more powerful. Being a police 
officer has always been a tough job, but it is becoming riskier today 
because of this. Some people have heard it as carfentanil or fentanyl 
or U4. Most of this synthetic poison coming into our communities is 
coming through the mail system. It is coming from overseas, primarily 
from China, where they have laboratories, where some evil scientist is 
mixing up this chemical mix and sending it over here into our 
communities.
  Let me tell you about something that happened last Friday in East 
Liverpool, OH. Some of you may know the name ``East Liverpool'' because 
it is the same city where there was a photograph that went viral on the 
Internet of a couple who had overdosed in the front of a car, with 
their 3-year-old grandson in a car seat behind them. It showed the 
grandson, and it showed the two who had overdosed passed out in the 
front of the car.
  In this same town of East Liverpool, OH, an officer by the name of 
Chris Green pulled over a car in a routine traffic stop. As he came up 
to the car, he noticed there was white powder sprinkled around the car. 
He took the appropriate precautions. He put on his gloves, he put on a 
mask, and he began to deal with the situation at hand. The people in 
the car apparently had spread the powder to try to avoid it being 
detected, but it was easily detectible.
  At the end of his arrest process, there was a small amount of powder 
that was left on his jacket, which he did not notice. He went back to 
the police station. When he got there, he noticed the powder on his 
shirt and instinctively he went like this to get the powder off of his 
shirt. This small amount of powder touching his hand caused him to 
overdose. Officer Green is not a small guy; he is about 6 feet 3 
inches, 225 pounds. He is a big, strong police officer who overdosed 
just by trying to get a few flakes of powder off of his jacket. Why? 
Because this fentanyl is so powerful. It is so deadly.
  Fortunately, his fellow police officers were able to save his life 
with naloxone. This is a miracle drug which reverses the effects of an 
overdose and which is being used on our streets every single day to 
save people from dying from overdoses. In this case, it was used to 
keep a police officer who was doing his duty and who had simply tried 
to get a few flakes of powder off of his uniform from dying of an 
overdose.
  East Liverpool police chief John Lane put it this way:

       If he had been alone, he'd be dead. That's how dangerous 
     this stuff is.

  Chief Lane later made the point that if Officer Green had gone home 
in that shirt and unknowingly had this powder on his shirt or his 
jacket, he could have endangered the lives of his family. That is a 
scary thought. Obviously, that is true. That is how deadly these drugs 
are.
  It only takes a few milligrams, just a few specks, to kill you. This 
chart will show you how much it takes. Here you see that 10 milligrams 
of carfentanil is powerful enough to sedate a 15,000-pound elephant. 
Here is the carfentanil over here, as shown on this chart. You will see 
why a fatal dose can be a very, very small amount--30 milligrams for 
heroin, 3 milligrams for fentanyl, even less than 3 milligrams for 
carfentanil.
  By the way, for those of you at home, if you look at a penny, you 
will see Abraham Lincoln's profile on one side of it. The deadly dose 
of fentanyl that we are talking about here is enough to only cover up 
the face of Abraham Lincoln on a penny. That is how little we are 
talking about and how deadly this stuff is. You can see why our law 
enforcement officers are so concerned about this.
  Officer Green is not the only one to experience this. There was a 
famous case last year where two officers in Atlantic County, NJ--
Detective Dan Kallen and Detective Eric Price--overdosed on fentanyl 
just by breathing fentanyl in the air at a crime scene. As some of you 
have heard, fentanyl is so dangerous that they are afraid to use dogs 
to try to sniff it out because just by trying to sniff these packages 
to see whether fentanyl is included in them, the dogs could overdose 
and die. Fentanyl is dangerous stuff.

  By the way, it is taking up more and more of the resources of our 
police officers and other first responders. Earlier this year, I came 
to the floor and talked about Officer Ben Rhodes of Chillicothe, OH. 
Last year Officer Rhodes reversed more than 50 drug overdoses. This is 
one officer in one small town.
  Talk to the firefighters in your community and ask them whether they 
go on more fire runs or more heroin and fentanyl and carfentanil 
overdose runs. I almost guarantee you they will say they go on more 
overdose runs. As a result, in some communities, those firefighters are 
not there to be able to protect us as you would typically think from 
the fires that still continue to be a major problem. So this is a real 
issue. It is taking up more and more of their time and more resources 
and causing more and more crime.
  On Thursday, in Middletown, OH, which is a town in Southern Ohio, a 
family was getting ready to leave the house. In fact, they had already 
strapped their 3-month-old baby into a car seat. It is not clear 
whether they had shot up with heroin before they put the baby in the 
car seat or after, but they went back into the house and they overdosed 
in the house. They had the baby in the car seat in the car. They 
overdosed in the home.
  They have another son who is 5 years old. He ran out of the house 
barefoot. He went to a neighbor's house, to his stepfather's home, 
which is a few blocks away, and yelled at the door: Mom and dad are 
dead. Mom and dad are dead.
  The grandfather called the police, and they rushed to the scene. They 
were able to revive the boy's dad with naloxone. They used seven doses 
of naloxone on the mother, but she still couldn't wake up. From talking 
to police officers about this, they tell me that there is a very good 
sign this involved fentanyl, perhaps carfentanil, because after two, 
three, four, five, six, seven doses of naxolone, she still could not be 
revived. Fortunately, the police rushed her to the hospital, where they 
were finally able to bring her back.
  Again, this is what police officers are facing every day in my home 
State of Ohio, in your State, in your community.
  After this incident, the Middletown Police said on Facebook:

       It has to stop. Please get help before it's too late. Not 
     only to save yourself, but to save your kids. Give these kids 
     a chance by getting help. If you or someone you love has a 
     drug problem, please seek help right now.

  This is a cry from our police officers saying that this can't 
continue.
  Talk to the firefighters and police officers who have administered 
naloxone to the same individual time and time again, overdose after 
overdose. These brave officers and police officers around the country 
are feeling overwhelmed.
  Drug overdoses are now the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the 
United States of America. It has now surpassed car accidents. It has 
way surpassed gun violence. In the last 3 years, more Americans have 
died of drug overdoses than died in the Vietnam war. More Americans are 
dying of drug overdoses now than died of AIDS at the peak of the AIDS 
epidemic in 1995. This year, 2017, more people will die from overdoses 
from opioids than died from AIDS at the peak in 1995--another tragedy. 
According to an article in the New

[[Page S3057]]

York Times, more than four times as many people are dying every day 
from this epidemic than were dying of drug overdoses at the peak of the 
crack cocaine epidemic. When I say it is the worst drug crisis we have 
faced in this country and that it is an epidemic, that is not 
overstating it.
  The Fraternal Order of Police and the Major County Sheriffs of 
America are actually focused on this issue, and they want better tools 
to be able to at least try to stop some of this poison--the fentanyl 
and the carfentanil--from coming into our communities.
  I mentioned earlier the fact that this actually comes by the mail 
system. Unbelievable. It doesn't come by all mail systems. It comes 
through the U.S. mail system, as opposed to the private carriers, such 
as FedEx, UPS, DHL, or others. One reason is because our mail system in 
the United States does not require the kind of advanced notice of where 
the package is from, what is in it, and where it is going that the 
private carriers require. So where do the traffickers go? They go to 
our mail service, the U.S. Postal Service, and the postal service in 
the country that interacts with and connects with our postal service.
  This is why the Fraternal Order of Police, the Major County Sheriffs 
of America, and other law enforcement are saying: Help us by passing 
legislation called the STOP Act. The STOP Act is to help stop 
traffickers from bringing these deadly poisons into our communities, 
the kind of stuff that caused Officer Green to overdose.
  Fentanyl and these other synthetic drugs are not just coming in from 
overseas; they are coming in through our mail system. What we are 
saying in the STOP Act is, let's close the loophole. Let's say that the 
mail system in the United States has to say the same thing that other 
private carriers say, which is, if you want to ship something through 
our system, that is fine, but you have to tell us what is in it. You 
have to tell us where it is from and where it is going. Otherwise, they 
can't effectively stop these packages. It is like finding a needle in a 
haystack.
  I talked earlier about the difficulty of detecting it and how 
poisonous it is, and sniffing dogs can't be used because of the 
potential of them overdosing and dying. It is also very difficult for 
our officers to find these packages without some information. Expert 
testimony, including that from the Secretary of Homeland Security, 
General Kelly, from Customs and Border Protection, and from the folks 
at DEA all reach the same conclusion, which is that this policy change 
would make it easier for law enforcement to detect suspicious packages 
of fentanyl, carfentanil, and other synthetic drugs and help keep this 
poison out of our country.
  Support for this legislation is bipartisan, and it is growing. We now 
have 16 cosponsors in the Senate--8 Democrats and 8 Republicans. 
Completely bipartisan. In the House, Congressman Pat Tiberi of Ohio and 
Richard Neal of Massachusetts--a Republican and a Democrat--have 
introduced bipartisan companion legislation. They now have 128 
cosponsors. Support is building. It is an obvious way to help push 
back. Is it the silver bullet? No. There is not one silver bullet. We 
need to do more in terms of prevention, treatment, and recovery, and 
help our law enforcement more to make sure they have naloxone to be 
able to save lives.
  At least, let's stop some of this poison from coming in, and let's at 
least increase the cost of the fentanyl because one reason you see this 
big increase in overdoses from fentanyl and carfentanil and traffickers 
using more of it is because of the cost. At the very least, by helping 
our law enforcement, giving them the tools they need, we can stop some 
of it and increase the cost on the street.

  I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the STOP Act. We have a 
hearing on this legislation on Thursday of this week in the Permanent 
Subcommittee on Investigations. We have experts coming in--law 
enforcement officers who care a lot about their colleagues. They talk 
about what a danger this is to them, what a danger this is to our 
communities. It is time for us in the U.S. Senate to stand up and take 
this important step, not the silver bullet but the important step to be 
able to help save lives and make our communities safer.
  Thank you, Madam President.
  Mr. NELSON. Madam President, will the Senator from Ohio yield for a 
question?
  Mr. PORTMAN. Absolutely.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Thank you, Madam President.
  I say to the Senator, I appreciate what he is doing. I am a supporter 
and one of the cosponsors of his bill. This fentanyl problem is just 
devastating communities all over the country, including in my State of 
Florida.
  What was surprising to me to find out was that fentanyl is so much 
more addictive and so much more lethal than so many others of these 
drugs that ultimately lead to a person becoming addicted so badly that 
they just crave fentanyl.
  I appreciate very much what he has spoken about and given leadership 
to. I just want him to know there are a lot of us who are trying to 
raise the flags of awareness of this situation before it is too late.
  Mr. PORTMAN. I thank my colleague from Florida. He has been a 
stalwart on this issue. We have never made this a partisan issue, have 
we. We always kept this a bipartisan issue because this is a danger to 
our country, our communities--all Americans. The Senator is absolutely 
right. It is 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin. A flew flakes 
can kill you, as you see here.
  It is absolutely necessary we figure out a way together, as 
Republicans and Democrats. With the recovery efforts the Senator 
supported and the Cures Act he already supported, this is the next 
logical step to deal with the new threat, which is this synthetic 
heroin coming to our country.
  I thank my colleague from Florida.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moran). The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. In passing, I would say to the Senator from Ohio, what 
was so surprising to me was, just a few grains of this deadly drug, 
just by being touched by someone, is absorbed into the system through 
the skin, and it can be lethal--just that innocent act of touching a 
few grains. So, indeed, we have to get our arms around this problem.