[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 122 (Thursday, July 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5101-S5103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            OPIOID EPIDEMIC

  Mr. PORTMAN. We have made good progress on the issue of sex 
trafficking, but it is so related to the issue of opioid abuse. 
Specifically, as I said, these often go hand in hand. Often, 
traffickers find people who are addicted. They are vulnerable, they 
crave the drug, and the trafficker can provide it. But in my home State 
of Ohio, I have met with survivors, and many times we have found that 
they find vulnerable people who are not addicted but then make them 
addicted so they become dependent on the trafficker.
  This is an issue that relates to so many things, doesn't it? It 
relates to our workplace because people who are addicted to opioids are 
not coming into the workforce. One reason we have such high levels of 
unemployment--people are outside the workforce altogether, not showing 
up on the unemployment numbers because they aren't even looking for 
work. The labor force participation rate, as economists call it, is so 
low right now largely, in my view, because of this opioid issue. Our 
courts are jammed, our jails are jammed, and our hospitals and 
emergency rooms are jammed. We have to do more to get at this issue for 
so many reasons.
  The driving force in my home State of Ohio and around the country now 
is this synthetic form of heroin or opioids called fentanyl. It is 50 
times more powerful than heroin. There are other drugs--carfentanil is 
an example--that are even more powerful. These synthetic forms of 
opioids are causing most of the deaths now in my State of Ohio and 
around the country.
  The Centers for Disease Control, CDC, recently issued a report that 
showed this increase in overdose deaths involving fentanyl. The report 
analyzed overdose deaths in 10 States hit hardest by the epidemic, 
including Ohio. They found that fentanyl overdose deaths in those 
States nearly doubled from the last 6 months of 2016 to the first 6 
months of 2017. Of course, 2017 is the last year for which they have 
good records. It is unbelievable.
  This synthetic form of heroin is the new scourge of the opioid 
epidemic, and it is being spread into every other drug too. When I do 
roundtables back home, as I do regularly, I hear about it being spread 
into crystal meth, cocaine, and heroin, of course.
  Twice in roundtable discussions I have had with community leaders, I 
have heard--once from a police chief and once from a sheriff--very 
similar stories about a young man who wakes up from an overdose after 
being saved through Narcan, which is a miracle drug that reverses the 
effects of an overdose. When the young man comes to, he says: I was 
just smoking pot. How did I overdose?
  In both cases, based on the forensics and the information they were 
able to get from the labs, they found out that of course it wasn't just 
marijuana; it was marijuana laced with fentanyl. No street drug is 
safe. They can all kill you.

  As I have met with these first responders, community leaders, and 
those in recovery across Ohio--I just did recently with a group called 
PreventionFIRST!--I have heard what is often brought up by those on the 
frontlines; that is, that we would be making so much more progress 
right now on this war against opioids--we have been successful here in 
this Congress in passing more money for prevention, treatment, and 
recovery, and those funds are starting to be used back home, and I see 
it; I see the results, and there are some really exciting things going 
on--but for the fentanyl. In other words, just as we were finally 
making progress on prescription drugs and, then, on heroin, now this 
fentanyl comes in and is creating even more problems. It is so 
inexpensive, and it is so pervasive.
  Recently, in Ohio, there were two busts where they were able to 
apprehend people who were selling fentanyl and find this cache of 
fentanyl they had. In both cases, it was a massive amount combined. 
Just these two busts alone, there was enough fentanyl to kill half the 
people in my State of Ohio. That is how bad it is.
  Just last week, there was an autopsy that revealed that the death of 
an Ohio police chief from Kirkersville, in the Columbus area, who was 
caused by fentanyl. The report said: ``acute intoxication by 
fentanyl.'' It was an accidental overdose.
  I have told the story before of the police officer who brushed a 
couple of flakes off his shirt after a bust. He didn't know it was 
fentanyl. The flakes were the drug. It got into his skin through his 
fingers, and he dropped to the ground unconscious and had an overdose. 
It took several doses of Narcan to save his life.

[[Page S5102]]

  Our first responders are in much more danger with fentanyl than they 
have ever been, even with heroin, prescription drugs, and other 
opioids. Addiction has taken too many lives in Ohio. Again, fentanyl is 
the deadliest drug in this epidemic.
  There was a recent estimation by a group called the Ohio Alliance for 
Innovation in Population Health, which suggested that opioids are 
responsible for more than 500,000 years of life expectancy lost in Ohio 
between 2010 and 2016. Think about that: 500,000 years of lost life due 
to opioids in Ohio, just in the 6 years between 2010 and 2016.
  Often, these are lives of young people who had great promise ahead of 
them and had become involved in this opioid epidemic, and the addiction 
takes over, and it is more important than anything. It is more 
important than their family, more important than their friends, more 
important than their jobs, more important than their faith, and more 
important than taking care of themselves. They end up, sadly, losing 
their lives and all that opportunity and all the purpose God had for 
them in their lives.
  We need to turn the tide in this opioid epidemic. We can't do it, in 
my view, unless we get at this issue of fentanyl because that is the 
new scourge. We need to look at how it is coming, why it is coming, and 
why it is so cheap.
  Here is what is very interesting, and it might be surprising to some 
people. It is not coming across the border from Mexico, or if it is, it 
is very little of it. That is where the heroin is coming from, 90 
percent of it. It is more pure than ever, more dangerous than ever. The 
deadly fentanyl is mostly coming through the mail system. It is being 
mailed into the United States of America, mostly from overseas, mostly 
from China.
  There are some evil scientists somewhere in China making this 
fentanyl and then shipping it into your community. It is the No. 1 
killer right now. By the way, opioid overdose and death is the No. 1 
cause of death in my home State of Ohio. Nationally, it is now the No. 
1 cause of death of people under 50 years old. It surpassed car 
accidents. It is an epidemic. How could that be? What can we do about 
it?
  There is something we can do about it. We have to be sure that the 
post office helps law enforcement to find these packages as they are 
coming in and get these packages out of circulation so they don't come 
into our communities and poison our families, our children, and our 
neighbors. We have legislation to do that. It is called the STOP Act.
  One-third of the Members of this Senate have now cosponsored that 
legislation. We have now had it reported out of the Finance Committee 
of the Senate. We need to get it to the floor and get it to a vote. It 
is very simple. It is legislation that Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat of 
Minnesota, on that side of the aisle, and I have come up with that says 
the post office should have to do what any other carrier would have to 
do--FedEx, UPS, DHL. Under law, they have to tell law enforcement in 
advance what packages are coming in, where it is coming from, what is 
in it, and where it is going. You have to provide that electronically 
so you can use big data to sift through the millions of packages that 
come in and to be able to find ones that are suspect and then 
immediately use sophisticated equipment to scan and screen those and 
pull out of circulation the ones that have fentanyl in them.
  I have been to these distribution centers for these private carrier 
companies. I have seen how they do it. I have seen the dangerous work 
the Customs and Border Protection men and women are doing, using a room 
that has significant ventilation. They have to have masks on and 
gloves. They have to be very careful about it. Thank God, they are 
there, because they are saving lives. If you send it through the mail 
system, that very rarely happens.
  We did a yearlong study of this in our Permanent Subcommittee on 
Investigations, which I talked about earlier. We found a number of 
things that were very troubling. One is just how easy it is to buy 
fentanyl online. The second is the fact that when these drugs come in 
through the post office, it is guaranteed delivery. The traffickers 
will say if you send it by FedEx or another private carrier--UPS, DHL, 
and others--it is not guaranteed. If you send it through the government 
agency, no problem. That is not the way it should be.
  By the way, letter carriers--the mail carriers in my community and 
your community--want this fixed, too, because they care what comes into 
their communities. They care about the people whom they serve, and they 
want to be sure they are not delivering poison. They also are at risk, 
just like anybody else is who is anywhere in that train.
  I talked about the law enforcement officers. Think about the other 
first responders who are using Narcan to revive people. They sometimes 
get exposed to it. We have too many stories of little kids dying from 
being accidentally exposed to fentanyl in a home where somebody is 
using it. It is dangerous stuff. We have to fix this.
  The information as to where it is from, where it is going, and what 
is in it, when it is put into a digital format and can be analyzed 
quickly through incredible intelligence that our Customs and Border 
Protection people have, to be able to determine whether that package is 
suspect or not, will make a huge difference in taking this offline and 
keeping this poison from coming into our communities and ensuring that 
we can, in fact, begin to stop some of the poison but, at a minimum, it 
will raise the price by reducing the supply.
  The post office, frankly, because of the pressure they have gotten 
from Congress on this over the last few years have begun to start to 
look at some of this. They have begun to provide some of the electronic 
data. Based on testimony they provided for our subcommittee just 
recently, they are now receiving data on about 36 percent of 
international packages they transport into the country. Unfortunately, 
of that 36 percent, just over one-third, about 80 percent of those 
packages, are presented to law enforcement, and 20 percent get lost and 
end up going into the system, into our communities, even though we know 
they are suspect.
  It is very inefficient right now. It is not working well. Plus, some 
of the data is not decipherable. We have a long way to go. Even if all 
36 percent were being delivered to law enforcement, that would mean 
that 318 million international packages each year were coming in 
without any screening--318 million packages.
  The STOP Act is very simple. It holds the post office to the same 
standard as private carriers--100 percent screenings. It requires that 
by 2020 they get all this data on all the international packages 
entering the United States.
  It is a commonsense solution. It has already passed the House of 
Representatives recently with a broad bipartisan vote. Our committee 
has reported it out. We need to get it to the floor and get it voted 
on. If we do so, by the way, it will be signed because the 
administration has already issued a statement of administration policy 
on it, which supports the legislation. It was actually a recommendation 
of the President's commission on opioids. It is part of the solution.
  Is it the whole solution? No, but it is a critical part to try to 
stop some of this new poison, fentanyl, from coming into our 
communities--the No. 1 killer--so that we can, through treatment and 
recovery and better prevention efforts and better other law enforcement 
efforts, truly begin to turn the tide on this opioid epidemic. It is 
critical that we do so for so many reasons we have talked about this 
afternoon.
  My hope is that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will come 
together, at least on this issue, on the STOP Act, and say yes, we can 
do something to help those in our community who are suffering, those 
who are dying from overdoses, those families who are looking to us and 
saying: What can you do to help? I run into them all the time.
  Today, I am heading back to Ohio, and I know this weekend I will be 
talking to people in Cleveland and Cincinnati, where I will be, and in 
Columbus, and they will be telling me about it.
  This week, I was walking down the hall back to my office on Tuesday, 
and a young man came up to me and said: I want to talk to you about 
something.
  I figured he was with the media and wanted to ask me a question. I 
asked him what he wanted.

[[Page S5103]]

  He said: I want to tell you thank you.
  He started to well up, and I knew what he was talking about. He was 
talking about a family member of his who had overdosed and died. He was 
talking about the fact that he appreciates that Congress is finally 
beginning to respond to this issue, as we have.
  In the last year and after, we have passed legislation that is 
historic to deal with this issue, but there is still so much more to 
do. Let's make the next step getting the STOP Act enacted into law and, 
therefore, be able to save lives and help people to live their God-
given purpose in life.
  I yield back my time.

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