[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 67 (Wednesday, April 25, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H3565-H3567]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     OPIOID ABUSE ACROSS THE NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous material on the topic of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson).
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman 
and my chairman from the House Education and the Workforce Committee 
for hosting this Special Order tonight on an issue that is impacting 
every ZIP Code in America.
  The gentlewoman's poster says it all. This is close to home: Life 
beyond opioids, and stability, health, and healing.
  The opioid epidemic is considered by many to be the worst public 
health crisis of our generation and, according to the National 
Institutes of Health, more than 115 people in the United States die 
every day from an opioid overdose.
  This epidemic is not an urban problem and it is not a rural problem. 
It is a national problem. No ZIP Code, as I said, in the country is 
immune from this crisis. This is an epidemic that transcends all 
socioeconomic classes, and all of America's people, all of America's 
diversity of families is at risk.
  Heroin and pain pill addiction doesn't discriminate on age, race, 
gender, or socioeconomic status. Your neighbor could be using heroin 
and so could their high honors high school student.
  Unfortunately, the people of Pennsylvania have seen some of the 
worst. Last year, the crisis surged when Pennsylvania experienced a 44 
percent increase in opioid overdoses. It is just tragic what this does 
to families and how it steals lives and futures.
  Addressing this unprecedented rate of opioid-related death means that 
we must focus on nearly 2.2 million Americans who currently struggle 
with opioid addiction. No one person can beat addiction alone, and 
overcoming this epidemic will not only take a communitywide effort, but 
a nationwide effort.
  The breadth of this epidemic requires us to respond with a 
multifaceted approach. Congress has engaged many agencies, including 
the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration, 
National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and 
Customs and Border Protection, just to name a few, to help combat 
opioid abuse.
  This crisis has torn apart families. It has weakened our workforce 
and overextended our healthcare system. As a nation, we must act with a 
unified urgency to help those who have fallen victim to addiction in 
every corner of the country, and we must not forget their families who 
have seen firsthand the crippling effects of this disease day

[[Page H3566]]

in and day out. I know we are not only prepared to do so, but we are 
prepared to win this fight.
  I have had the opportunity to convene opioid crisis community 
roundtables throughout my congressional districts to hear firsthand 
from families, from healthcare providers, from law enforcement, from 
emergency medical services, from those who are involved in the 
treatment community, and the impact is just so significant.
  After coming away from these, I have also come to the conclusion, 
what is important to focus on really is the substance abuse behaviors. 
In one community in Clarion County, the issue at one time was opioids, 
and then it went to heroin. But when the heroin started to be mixed 
with other really deadly drugs and components, and so many people died 
within the user community, they moved on to the new--they went actually 
back to--they want to Suboxone, which is what we use to treat opioid 
and heroin abuse. And when the Suboxone--those who were dispensing that 
as treatment tightened that, the community found that they now had a 
crisis, they went to meth.
  So it is so important, as we work on this, we keep a broader 
perspective of dealing with the substance abuse behaviors, because the 
drug of choice will change, based on economics, based on availability; 
but this, our goal should be to increase awareness. Our goal should be, 
acknowledge there is a problem, and I think we have done that.
  In my work in healthcare and, specifically, I worked in acute 
psychiatric services for a period of time, I know that until you 
acknowledge you have a problem, you can't really deal with it. I think, 
across the board, in your communities, our States, at a local, a State, 
and national level, we acknowledge we have a problem, and that is an 
important first step.

  I am proud of what we have done here in Washington, legislatively and 
providing funding, but this is an all-hands-on-deck problem. It 
requires prevention. That is where education is so important. 
Prevention, education, treatment.
  We have to equip our youngest generation with decisionmaking skills, 
with discernment, so they have the filters to make better decisions 
when they are exposed to access, when they are approached by others, 
when they are preyed upon in terms of those who push drugs.
  We certainly need to equip our medical professionals to improve how 
they prescribe, how they dispense medications, and increase their 
utilization of alternative pain management.
  As a former rehabilitation professional, there are some great tools 
out there to help deal with managing pain. One of the things that, 
culturally, we have come to the point where we try to eliminate pain, 
and I think that is what has pushed us with the opioids into the 
situation that we are in today.
  And we need to equip our communities with evidence-based treatment, 
something closer to home. And so I do very, very much appreciate 
Chairwoman Foxx's leadership on education and workforce issues, and 
really appreciate her putting this Special Order together this evening 
and leading us as we address what truly is the public health crisis of 
our generation.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. We 
all know and appreciate his background and his experience in healthcare 
and the wonderful wisdom that he brings to us on the Education and the 
Workforce Committee, not only on this issue, but on so many issues 
facing Americans today.
  As the gentleman pointed out, the health and stability of our 
communities are in serious trouble because of opioid abuse across the 
Nation.
  Since 1999, the opioid death toll has quadrupled. There are many 
estimates of how many Americans die in a single day because of opioids, 
and we are so sorry to hear of any deaths from opioids.

                              {time}  1730

  It is heartbreaking that all of those estimates are in the hundreds. 
These people were fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, neighbors, 
coworkers, and friends. They were real people in our communities.
  I have had families from the Fifth District come to see me to share 
their heartbreaking stories of family members, often adult children, 
who have died from opioids. My own heart breaks for them and the pain 
they are feeling for their tragic loss.
  There are newspaper stories and obituaries in newspapers reporting on 
opioid abuse and deaths and its devastating impact every day.
  As opioids continue to claim the lives of Americans in cities and 
towns across the Nation, it is our responsibility to work together to 
find solutions that will bring relief to American communities.
  The Committee on Education and the Workforce has recently held two 
hearings on opioids, and we have learned from employers, educators, 
local leaders, and addiction experts about how chronic and rising rates 
of opioid misuse and abuse are impacting families, schools, workplaces, 
and communities as a whole. We have heard about how the epidemic's 
societal burden on households and the private sector exceeded $46 
billion in 2016.
  In schools, many principals attribute a recent decline in attendance 
to parents not getting up and having their students attend school 
because the parents are using drugs and they are not able to either 
take the children to school or have them ready to ride a bus.
  I am pleased to share the floor tonight with my colleagues from the 
Education and the Workforce Committee, who have not only had hard 
conversations with their constituents about the toll opioid abuse has 
taken on their communities, but they have been having productive and 
helpful conversations with each other about possible solutions.
  There is no single answer to solving the opioid problem, but if we 
are to bring this deadly chapter to an early close, we will need 
collaboration across the aisle, ingenuity, and a uniting commitment to 
bringing peace and healing to our communities.
  I will once again yield to my colleague Mr. Thompson for any closing 
comments he would like to make.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the 
gentlewoman's leadership on this.
  The fact that we had two great hearings, which were on top of a lot 
of the work that we have been doing as a Congress, this really is an 
all-hands-on-deck public health crisis, and we know that because of the 
work that we are doing in Education and the Workforce.
  This transcends education. It impacts the workforce in a significant 
way at a time when we have an estimated somewhere between 5 and 6 
million jobs available in this country; and we have increasing job 
growth, and we have an aging workforce which is retiring, a significant 
number each and every year.
  This is an issue that impacts our national security because it takes 
individuals out of the workforce not able to pass that drug test, not 
able to be able to qualify.
  This is obviously an all-hands-on-deck because we see so many 
different committees and their members across both sides of the aisle 
who have been working on this, the amount of legislation going back.
  One of the more memorable ones is the CARA Act, the Comprehensive 
Addiction and Recovery Act, that was like 16 individual bills--16 or 
18, I don't remember exactly how many--that we debated on this floor 
and we passed on this floor. We rolled it into one package, and it was 
actually passed by the Senate, and the President signed it.
  It dealt with things from little unborn babies who were born 
addicted, a terrible situation with the suffering of those new babies 
because they were born to moms who were active addicts, to veterans 
that VA physicians--and there are some really great VA physicians. I 
don't want to paint them with a broad brush. But there were some that 
were referred to as the candy man because they dispensed the pills like 
Skittles is what it looked like, and their solution to everything was 
to medicate, and everything in between.
  Also, providing resources to our local communities so our local 
communities could engage in this, great programs that have been around 
for very long time like the Drug-Free Communities moneys that are used 
by parents and kids and teachers and community leaders who come 
together to deal with and confront this epidemic in their communities.
  I have a community up in Erie County, Iroquois School District, and 
it is a

[[Page H3567]]

school district that has been devastated with overdoses. Most of the 
children in that school, a middle school--and it was heartbreaking--
either had a family member or knew someone who had died of an overdose.
  Some of the stories you hear, and one that really stands out with me 
because I have talked with this mom who was in my congressional 
district, her son, unfortunately, had a disease, Crohn's disease, and 
had to go through some surgery as a small child and endured that rather 
well. It worked out well. But when this young man turned about 16, 17, 
18 years old, he had to go back and do surgery as a result, and this 
time, the painkillers they gave him he used basically one time and his 
life spiraled out of control.
  This was an athlete. This was a kid who did so well in school, but 
his life just went into almost a death spiral, and he wound up being 
incarcerated--and all because he wasn't wired to be able to handle 
these painkillers.
  That is a part of this battle. We need better science. We need better 
medicine so we can determine who can tolerate certain medications and 
who cannot, whose life would be transformed in such a negative way by 
using a painkiller one time. But that certainly is all a part of this 
battle.
  Mr. Speaker, once again, I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership 
on this and thank her for hosting this Special Order tonight.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Thompson, and I know the 
people of his district are well served by him. I thank him for his 
service on our committee, on the Agriculture Committee, and all that he 
does to help us write good legislation and pass good legislation.

  As Congressman Thompson said, unfortunately, this problem with 
opioids affects people at all ages and in all walks of life, at every 
income level, every category of people--male, female, old, young--but 
we particularly grieve over the young people.
  We have heard about babies becoming addicted because their mothers 
were addicted and of the work that is done to help those babies become 
free from opioid addiction.
  We have heard about the veterans who become addicted because of the 
treatment that they have received. We know nobody is attempting to get 
anyone addicted to opioids or anything else, for that matter, but we 
realize that over the years, we have had stronger use of these drugs 
than we probably should have had used.
  There are many ways to approach pain relief and pain management, and, 
unfortunately, in the past, too often it has been the path of least 
resistance.
  We do hear over and over the stories about young people who suddenly 
get addicted because of surgery or an injury, and it happens sometimes 
very, very quickly.
  As Representative Thompson has said, it has a huge impact on jobs. We 
have, right now, 6 million unfilled jobs in this country, and the 
reasons are very many; but some of the reason is because we have so 
many people addicted to opioids and other drugs, and they are simply 
unable to pass drug tests.
  We hoped, by this graphic here, to illustrate that the problem with 
opioids is very close to all of us at home, very close to us; and what 
we are hoping for is to find ways at the Federal level to get beyond 
opioids, to help people who are addicted have some stability, regain 
their health, be healed of their addiction.
  But this cannot all be done at the Federal level, and we know that. 
In fact, too many people look first to the Federal Government for an 
answer. The Federal Government usually is the worst place to come for 
an answer. It usually has to be done at the local level, then at the 
State level, and, last, the Federal level.
  But I know, as Representative Thompson has pointed out, many 
Members--in fact, I believe all Members of Congress now--are concerned 
about this problem we are facing with opioids, and we will answer the 
call to do something. My only hope is that we put everything into 
perspective.
  As we have learned from our hearings and talking to other people, 
much of this work needs to be done in the family to start with, in the 
medical communities, and once people become addicted, then in the local 
communities as people collaborate, work together to help people not 
become addicted to opioids, and once they do get off of the addiction, 
to get back to a normal life.
  I know that all of us pray for those who are addicted and pray that 
they will find a suitable program to help them become free from opioid 
addiction, and for those who have never become addicted, to be in a 
great environment so they never seek out drugs as an answer, because 
they are not an answer.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for being here tonight, I thank the 
staff, and I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________