[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 99 (Thursday, June 14, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3945-S3947]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            OPIOID EPIDEMIC

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I come back to the floor of the 
Senate to talk again about the opioid crisis that has gripped the 
country and my State of Ohio.
  I want to focus on the issue of fentanyl. This is the most deadly of 
the drugs now. It is a drug that is causing the most overdoses at a 
time in which we have unprecedented numbers of overdoses.
  Fentanyl is a synthetic form of heroin and opioids. It is coming 
through the mail. It is coming mostly from one country--China. It is 
the poison that has contributed more in the last few years to the rise 
in opioid use than anything else.
  Over the past week, we have made some significant progress in pushing 
back against fentanyl, and I want to report on that today.
  As I am talking today, the U.S. House of Representatives is going to 
take up legislation called the STOP Act, which we have been working on 
here in the Senate for a couple of years. I am very pleased about that. 
I suspect the vote today will be bipartisan. I suspect it will pass the 
House.
  I also want to report that here in the Senate we have had a 
breakthrough in the last week. Not only have we negotiated something 
with the House that is, in my view, an improvement from the legislation 
that passed the House Ways and Means committee a couple of weeks ago, 
but also, in the Senate Finance Committee this week, we had a markup 
and got a commitment from the chairman and ranking member that the 
Finance Committee will also mark up the same legislation--identical 
legislation--as is likely to pass the House of Representatives today.
  I thank Chairman Orrin Hatch and Ranking Member Ron Wyden for working 
with us to ensure we could get this legislation marked up in committee 
and onto the floor of the U.S. Senate as part of whatever we do in 
terms of the opioid crisis here in the coming days and weeks.
  Of course, I also commend my House colleagues for the vote today and 
for the work they have done on this, particularly the Ways and Means 
Committee chairman, Kevin Brady, Representatives  Mike Bishop, Dave

[[Page S3946]]

Reichert, Bill Pascrell, and  John Faso for their efforts on this bill 
to combat the opioid crisis. Again, my hope is the bill that passes the 
House today will be identical to the bill we will take up here on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate, so we can ensure we can get this bill to the 
President for his signature as soon as possible.
  This is an urgent issue. This is not just an important issue; it is 
an urgent issue. We need to push back, and we need to push back hard.
  The drug fentanyl is so dangerous that a couple milligrams of it, a 
few flecks of it, can kill you. Again, it is something that is causing 
the most overdoses right now. It is not just affecting those who are 
overdosing on it; it is affecting all of us, including our first 
responders, including young children who come in contact with it. The 
stories of kids exposed to fentanyl are really heartbreaking, perhaps 
because someone left it behind at a party, perhaps because their 
parents or other family members left it behind, and these young 
children are overdosing and dying. This is happening in my State. This 
is happening around the country.
  First responders are being affected. I hear stories about it when I 
am home, whether it is a firefighter, someone in the healthcare 
industry, or someone who is in law enforcement. A story, which I have 
mentioned before, is about an East Liverpool, OH, police officer. He 
pulls over two suspects, notices they are spreading white powder inside 
the car, trying to hide it. Wisely, he puts on gloves and a mask. He 
makes the arrest. When he is back at the police station booking these 
individuals--not for the traffic violation so much as for the 
fentanyl--he looks at his shirt and notices a couple of flecks of 
something white on his shirt, and brushes it off like that. His fingers 
are exposed to the fentanyl. Immediately, he falls to the ground 
unconscious and has to be revived by Narcan, not once, not twice, but 
for Chris Green, a big guy--6 feet 2 inches, 200-some pounds, in great 
shape--four doses of Narcan were necessary to save his life and keep 
him alive.
  As his police chief said, if they weren't right there with him, what 
would have happened? What would have happened if he had gone home, had 
those flecks on his shoulder, and hugged his kids? This is an 
incredibly dangerous substance, and we have to deal with it.
  Last year, law enforcement officials in Massachusetts said that with 
two doses of Narcan, they revived a man who said he had been smoking 
only marijuana. How could this be? It was because fentanyl was mixed 
with that marijuana.
  I was in Lorain, OH, last week for a meeting with folks involved in 
pushing back against this substance abuse problem--law enforcement, 
social workers, treatment providers. Law enforcement told us a story 
that was very much the same--a young man who had to be revived by using 
Narcan. He said: I was just smoking dope.
  It couldn't be. Sure enough, when they checked, they found out the 
marijuana had been laced with fentanyl. It is also going into cocaine. 
It is also going into crystal meth. In fact, crystal meth now is 
becoming a bigger problem in my home State of Ohio, and we know for a 
fact that this is a bigger problem in part because it is being mixed 
with fentanyl.
  The Dayton area recently released its county overdose report. The 
Dayton area experienced three times as many crystal meth-related 
overdose deaths in 2017 as compared to 2016. Again, they believe 
fentanyl mixed into these drugs is the contributing factor.
  The county coroner from Cincinnati said that she has now seen 
fentanyl mixed with cocaine and marijuana, as well as a number of 
street drugs. Fentanyl and its variants are now the deadliest drugs of 
the opioid epidemic.
  One of the takeaways I have had from my meetings around the State, 
talking to people about how we push back on fentanyl, is a growing 
consensus that we need to make much more progress in keeping the 
fentanyl from coming into our communities in the first place. Again, we 
know this is what is causing the big increase in overdoses and deaths 
at a time when we are doing more at home to address the opioid crisis. 
If not for fentanyl, I strongly believe we would be making progress. We 
would be seeing a reduction in overdoses.
  This body has passed the CARA legislation--the Comprehensive 
Addiction and Recovery Act; it has also passed the 21st Century Cures 
Act. I have been at different places in the State in the last few weeks 
where they have been using that funding well, to do things like quick 
response teams--when somebody is revived with Narcan, the miracle drug 
that reverses the effects of the overdose, then, be sure you are 
getting that person treatment by working with law enforcement, 
treatment providers, and social workers together. It is working.
  In one case where they are using funding from the CARA legislation, 
80 percent of the people whom they are coming into contact with are 
going into treatment. That is a tremendous improvement from, 
unfortunately, what is generally happening, which is that very few 
people are actually going from the Narcan overdose saving the person's 
life into treatment. We have to deal with that gap.
  So we are making progress, yet the fentanyl is overwhelming the 
system. So it is time for us to figure this out, and push back harder.
  In 2013, in my home city of Cincinnati, we experienced a 1,000-
percent increase in fentanyl deaths. In the first 5 months of this 
year, more than 90 percent of the drugs seized by the Hamilton County 
crime lab contained fentanyl--more than 90 percent.
  Most of the drugs we talk about pushing back against--think of 
cocaine, heroin, even crystal meth--come in overland, mostly across the 
southern border from Mexico. What law enforcement tells us and what the 
intelligence community tells us is that fentanyl comes in primarily by 
the U.S. mail system. So instead of coming overland--and the need for 
helping to secure our southern border is clear partly because of that--
here we have a situation where this drug is coming in through our own 
Federal agency, the U.S. mail service. They tell us it comes primarily 
from one country--China. It is made in a laboratory in China, and it is 
shipped over here.
  We spent about 18 months studying this issue. We went undercover and 
contacted a lot of different websites, and they all told us the same 
thing, which is this: If you are going to buy from us, ship it by U.S. 
mail. If it comes by U.S. mail, we guarantee delivery. If you don't 
send it by U.S. mail, we are not so sure we can guarantee it.
  Why is that? Because 16 years ago, this body and the U.S. House of 
Representatives, after the tragic incidents of 9/11, decided we were 
going to tighten up on packages coming into our country and the law 
enforcement screening of those packages. So we required all the private 
carriers--FedEx, UPS, DHL, and others--to provide law enforcement data 
about those packages, where they were from, what was in them, where 
they were going. They had to provide that data electronically and in 
advance so that law enforcement could use big data and use analytics to 
determine what packages were suspect to be able to pull them offline.
  I have been to those facilities where this happens. It is very 
impressive. It is also very dangerous. These packages, once identified, 
have to be taken into a room where there is adequate ventilation and 
other precautions taken--gloves and masks and so on--because of the 
danger of fentanyl.
  But the U.S. Post Office was not required 16 years ago to provide 
that information. Instead, the legislation said that the post office 
needed to study the issue, leaving it clear in legislative history that 
Congress considered it a problem but wanted to give the post office 
time to look into it. Specifically, they asked the Postmaster General 
and Department of Homeland Security to come up with a report. It never 
happened.
  So here we are, 16 years later. The post office doesn't have that 
requirement, and these other ways you can send packages mailed into the 
United States do have that requirement. So guess where the traffickers 
go.
  The post office in the last year or so has begun to step up its 
efforts, and I am happy about that. I believe they did it because of 
our hearings and because of the pressure from Congress and because of 
this legislation called the

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STOP Act. They now say that they are screening about 36 percent of 
their packages. Again, that is a big improvement. However, there are 
about 900 million packages a year. That means about 315 million 
packages are being looked at, and this is a big improvement, but we 
still have so many hundreds of millions of packages not receiving that 
kind of screening.
  In addition, we learned through our hearings and investigation that 
20 percent of the time, when law enforcement had identified a Postal 
Service package that was suspect, it was not presented to law 
enforcement. In other words, it went into the community anyway.
  Clearly, we have a big problem. We are not screening adequately, we 
are not providing the information for enough packages, and we are not 
giving law enforcement the tools they need to do their job. By the way, 
with regard to the private carriers, it is 100 percent required.
  So the legislation we are proposing is to tell the post office: This 
poison has to be stopped in every way we possibly can. This is a 
crisis. This is not just important; it is urgent. It is something we 
want you to address.
  So it says that by 2020 we have to have 100 percent of packages 
screened, and we have to give law enforcement the tools they need. Law 
enforcement, of course, is desperate to get this information. If they 
have the information, they can help. They can help to keep these 
packages out of our country. They can also help to raise the price.
  Some packages that are stopped, of course, would otherwise have gone 
to a post office box or someone's home or an abandoned house and been 
distributed. Packages that could have poisoned hundreds of thousands of 
people and killed hundreds of thousands of people have been seized in 
the State of Ohio. There was a package found recently in Nebraska that 
could have killed millions of people. In a relatively small quantity, 
this is incredibly powerful, dangerous stuff.
  Now, with this legislation, we will be able to identify more of these 
packages and get them offline and, again, at a minimum, be able to 
raise the cost.
  One of the reasons fentanyl has taken over and pushed out other 
drugs--by the way, it is 50 times more powerful than heroin. One reason 
is that it is relatively inexpensive. This will raise the price and 
reduce the volume and help to save lives.
  We now have over one-third of the U.S. Senate as cosponsors of this 
legislation, including Senator Hatch and Senator Wyden. Again, I 
appreciate their support and their work on this. We also have about 
half of the House of Representatives who have supported the STOP Act in 
the other Chamber.
  It is time for us to take the next step: pass this legislation, get 
it in place, and immediately tell countries like China, if you want to 
send packages to us, you have to provide this information.
  We have done everything we can in other ways to encourage China to 
crack down on these labs, the evil scientists who are continuing to 
make this product. We are taking other steps, of course, to do that. We 
are taking other steps to deal with this issue in terms of increased 
prevention and education efforts. That is in the CARA legislation. 
There is $10 million right now available for the administration to come 
up with a national media campaign that I would strongly support. They 
have already started a smaller media campaign with the private sector. 
I support that as well. We need to push back every way we can, letting 
people know the dangers, including the fact that any street drugs you 
take now potentially can have deadly consequences, including fentanyl.
  We need to do more in terms of getting people into treatment. This is 
a disease, and it needs to be treated as such. We are not going to be 
able to make progress unless we take people who are already addicted 
and get them into the treatment and longer term recovery they need. 
Longer term recovery is funded by CARA and Cures. This is the first 
time Congress has done this. It is very important because if you get 
people into longer term recovery programs--sober housing and group 
discussions, helping to support them--you have a much higher likelihood 
of somebody getting clean, being successful, being able to get back on 
track, getting back with their family, getting back to their job.
  Finally, we have to do more in terms of helping law enforcement. 
Again, that is partly what we are doing here, giving them the tools to 
be able to stop some of this poison from coming in, in the first place.
  I am encouraged with the progress we made just in the last week. We 
now have a House bill that is being voted on, as I speak. We now have a 
Senate bill that has been agreed to be reported out of committee coming 
onto the floor. They are identical. They both do the job. They both 
tell the post office we have to change behavior.
  By the way, in terms of the post office, someone told me today that 
the postal union was concerned about this legislation. I encourage you 
to talk to rank-and-file mail carriers, postal carriers, and ask them 
what they think. They don't want to be carrying this poison into our 
communities. They don't want to be potentially exposed to this poison, 
should a package leak, because of the danger of it.
  The people I talk to agree, we absolutely have to crack down on this. 
We are not asking the post office to do it alone. We are providing 
funding to Customs and Border Protection to be there with them. The 
postal inspectors, the folks who are actually local law enforcement, 
are desperate to ensure that we can do this because they are tired of 
it. They are tired of seeing this stuff come in, like an avalanche 
coming into our country, and creating all these problems across the 
board in our communities, every sector of our community being affected. 
People are desperate for solutions because they acknowledge the 
problem.
  I had a tele-townhall meeting last week in Washington where I called 
in and spoke to thousands of Ohioans at once. We do this on a monthly 
basis. For the last few years, we have been asking questions about 
opioids in our survey. It is a very simple question. It says: Have you 
been directly affected? Has anybody you know been directly affected by 
this opioid crisis?
  Unbelievably, we have gotten typically about 50 percent of the people 
who called--again, these are thousands of people randomly selected--
saying: Yes, my family or someone I know has been directly affected by 
opioids.
  At the call last week, two-thirds of the people on the call said they 
have been directly affected or someone they know has been directly 
affected. That is why people are desperate for a solution because it is 
affecting them. It is affecting their lives. It is affecting their 
families. It is affecting our communities. It is affecting every single 
aspect of our community--the healthcare system, the foster care system, 
the prison system, the court system. It is time for us to step up and 
do more. Yes, prevention, treatment, longer term recovery but also 
helping law enforcement to be able to push back and stop some of this 
poison from coming into our communities in the first place.
  Let's pass the STOP Act to give law enforcement the tools they need 
against this new scourge of this epidemic, and by doing so, we will 
save lives.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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