[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 148 (Thursday, September 6, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6048-S6050]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            OPIOID EPIDEMIC

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I wish to speak about this issue of 
opioids and the crisis our country faces.
  Just in the last couple of weeks we have gotten reports from the 
Centers for Disease Control from last year's data on overdoses and 
deaths: 72,000 Americans lost their lives to overdoses last year from 
drugs. Most of those were from opioids. This is heroin, prescription 
drugs, and, now, these synthetic opioids--72,000 Americans.
  In the wake of that, it is encouraging to me to hear the Senate 
talking about the possibility of bringing a package of legislation to 
the floor that will help to push back against this crisis and begin to 
turn the tide. We have to do it--not just talk about it. We have to act 
because this crisis is upon us and is very real.
  These new efforts that we should move forward on would build on what 
this Senate has already done with regard to the Comprehensive Addiction 
and Recovery Act, or the CARA legislation, which is now being 
implemented in my State of Ohio and around the country. There is also 
the Cures legislation, or the 21st Century Cures Act. It has some 
additional provisions that allow States to take funding and use it to 
fight this opioid addiction. That is smart. There are smart ways for us 
to fight this opioid epidemic. We know that, and we are beginning to do 
that.
  At the Federal level we can play a role in this, among other things, 
by taking better practices from around the country and ensuring they 
are being used back home in our States. I have seen this firsthand 
because I have been around the State of Ohio a lot since this 
legislation actually passed. I have actually visited more than a dozen 
grant recipients of CARA and Cures grants to see what they are doing 
and then spreading that around to other communities--maybe communities 
that haven't been able to get the grants but want to see something 
innovative to be able to push back.
  Last Friday I visited Hope Village Recovery Center in Portage County, 
OH. They received more than $500,000 in CARA funding to expand a badly 
needed medication-assisted treatment program. They decided to look at 
this in a very comprehensive way, and it is working. They are getting 
people who normally wouldn't step up for treatment to come for 
treatment, and their success rate for getting people through treatment 
and not relapsing is relatively high. That is so important right now, 
because if you don't get people into treatment with an addiction, which 
is a disease, you are not going to be able to solve this problem.
  The comprehensive approach includes treatment, counseling, outpatient 
treatment, aftercare services, peer support--and these are coaches who 
are in recovery themselves, and that is very effective--and 
transportation services to get people back and forth. This holistic 
approach is what we need to help people begin to heal, get over their 
addiction, get back to their families, back to work, and back to 
achieving their God-given purpose in life, which is not to be an addict 
using these drugs.
  Last week I also visited CommQuest Recovery Services in Stark County, 
OH, to see their new program, an innovative program called the ``mom 
and me program.'' These are moms who want to help to get over their 
addiction. They are struggling. This program allows them to come on 
board to this facility that I got to see, to be able to have some of 
the loving support and care from people around them, but also to have 
their kids come with them. This is very unusual. Very few treatment 
centers in the country allow children to come into the treatment 
program. We have found through evidence-based programs looking at this 
that, in fact, if you allow the kids in there and there is proper 
supervision, it helps. It helps the mothers heal. It helps the kids to 
be able to heal.
  So this is an innovative program that I think is going to end up with 
great results. They are just getting started on it, but it is going to 
foster the kind of success that we want to see.
  Programs like these are working. Yet the epidemic seems to be getting

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worse. Why is that? Well, because we need to do more of this evidence-
based stuff. We need to be sure that every community has the 
opportunity to provide treatment because a lot of people still can't 
get treatment. We need to encourage people not to go down this funnel 
of addiction by much more effective and stronger prevention and 
education programs. There are things we have to do.
  CARA 2.0, or the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 2.0, is how 
it was introduced. That legislation that I have introduced will ensure 
that those programs that are working get additional help so that the 
States can do even more by leveraging some of these Federal dollars to 
be able to do more with the private sector and with the States to be 
able to turn this tide of addiction.
  I talked about the 72,000 lives lost last year. That was a record 
number. Here is a map of the States. This is a map of the changes in 
overdose deaths from last year. If it is a purple or blue State, that 
means they are doing a little better. Look at this map. Almost every 
State, unfortunately, is not purple or blue. These States that are tan 
and brown, like my home State of Ohio, indicate an actual increase in 
opioid deaths last year.

  Why is this? I think one of the main reasons for this is because 
there is a new danger afoot. There is a new surge in drugs. It is very 
powerful. It is 50 times more powerful than heroin. It is very 
inexpensive. It is coming primarily from China and coming primarily 
through our U.S. Postal Service, if you can believe it. It is called 
synthetic opioids. Fentanyl is the name that most of it is called. Some 
of it is called Carfentanil and other derivatives, but this fentanyl--
this synthetic opioid--is now the biggest problem we have in our 
States. This is the growing crisis.
  Here is a chart that shows what has happened just since 2015 until 
now. It shows that, in fact, methamphetamines, other opioids, heroin, 
cocaine are all relatively flat. But look at this big increase. The big 
increase is with synthetic opioids. When you look at those 72,000 
deaths from last year, the majority of them were from opioids. Again, 
increasingly, it is from these synthetic opioids.
  What I hear on the frontlines in Ohio--whether it was at this Hope 
Village Recovery Center that I talked about or the CommQuest facility--
is that unless we combat that influx of fentanyl, we are not going to 
be able to turn the tide, because despite some of the good programs and 
the good work that is being done with these programs, we are being 
overrun with fentanyl.
  Over the past week alone, in the Columbus, OH, area, the Franklin 
County coroner has handled 18 overdose deaths, and 5 were within 24 
hours. There were 18 deaths, and 5 were within 24 hours. Imagine that. 
The cause, the coroner suspects, is fentanyl. If you look at some of 
these deaths that we talked about, the 72,000--or even deaths that 
occurred to people who thought they were taking cocaine or 
methamphetamine or something else--often it is because the fentanyl has 
been sprinkled into these drugs and the fentanyl is what is causing the 
overdoses and the deaths. It is 50 times more powerful, as I said, and 
that is the new scourge of the opioid epidemic.
  From 2013 to 2017, fentanyl overdose deaths have increased nationally 
by 850 percent.
  As coroners' reports for 2017 continue to come in throughout my home 
State of Ohio, fentanyl now appears to be involved in two-thirds of the 
deaths in Ohio. So those are record numbers, and two-thirds are from 
fentanyl. That is consistent with what I am hearing on the frontlines.
  Unbelievably, we know where it is coming from, and we are not doing 
enough to stop it. It is being made in laboratories in China, 
primarily, and in other countries and shipped into the United States 
through our own U.S. Postal Service, a government agency. We conducted 
an 18-month investigation into this issue in the subcommittee that I 
chair called the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. We did a 
thorough study. We had undercover people working with us. We went on 
the websites to find out what is happening. We found out how easy it is 
to purchase fentanyl online and have it shipped to the United States.
  Based on our undercover investigation, these drugs can be found 
through a simple Google search, and overseas sellers we accessed 
through an undercover investigator essentially told us they will 
guarantee the delivery if this poison is sent through the U.S. Postal 
Service. They will not guarantee it if it goes through a private 
carrier like UPS, FedEx, or DHL.
  Why is that? It is because the private carriers are required to 
provide law enforcement with big data, or electronic data, in advance 
as to what the packages are, where they are coming from, where they are 
going, and what is in them. Law enforcement can then use big data, use 
their algorithms, figure out which packages are suspect, and get them 
off the line. I have seen it. I have been in those facilities. I have 
seen big packages being taken off and, therefore, lives being saved. At 
a minimum, this will increase the cost on the street.
  What is the ultimate answer to this? It is prevention, education, a 
change in our hearts and in our families, better treatment so that 
people who have this disease can get the treatment just like another 
illness they might have, and dealing with this issue of longer term 
recovery, which leads to more success in treatment.
  Those are all essential, but right now we have to put a tourniquet on 
this, folks. We have to stop the fentanyl from flooding into our 
country. Look at what it is doing. There is an 850-percent increase.
  The information tells law enforcement what they need to be able to 
pull these packages off if it is provided. Yet, unbelievably, all of 
the private carriers are required to do it and have been since 9/11.

  The post office has been spared. The thought was that the post office 
should study the issue. Well, I am waiting for the report.
  Meanwhile, because of pressure from the Congress, the U.S. Postal 
Service is starting to look at some of these packages. Last year, they 
now testified before us in the subcommittee, they did receive data on 
about 36 percent of the international packages--not 100 percent as 
these other carriers have to do, but 36 percent. But that means that 
more than 318 million packages--318 million packages--are coming in 
with little or no screening at all and without this data.
  Even when the post office conducted a pilot program to screen for 
these drugs, by the way, 80 percent of the time, they testified, these 
packages that were targeted by Customs and Border Protection were able 
to be pulled off, but 20 percent of the time they did not get the 
information to law enforcement. Also, in many cases, the information 
provided was not useful to law enforcement.
  So we need to ensure it is 100 percent of these packages. We need to 
ensure that all of this information is getting to law enforcement, and 
we need to be sure that the information is useful and legible.
  The bipartisan STOP Act is actually an answer to this. The STOP Act 
is very simple. My coauthor of the STOP Act is Senator Amy Klobuchar 
from Minnesota. As we have both said, this is a simple, commonsense, 
and, quite frankly, long overdue reform. It simply says: Let's hold the 
post office to the same standard to which we hold these private 
carriers. Let's say they have to provide this data to law enforcement 
so that we can begin to address this issue and push back to keep this 
poison out of our communities.
  This bill has been approved for a floor vote on the Republican side. 
I think it is very close to being approved for a floor vote on the 
Democratic side. We are very close to a consent agreement to get this 
broader opioids package I talked about to the floor as well.
  I am very pleased that we are taking up that package this month. We 
need to ensure that whatever concerns people have, they are very frank 
about it. We have to get the politics out of this, folks. We have to be 
sure that we are moving forward, as we have been able to do on the CARA 
legislation and the CURES legislation, not just on a bipartisan basis 
but on a nonpartisan basis, because this scourge is affecting all of 
our constituents and it is one that we have to address here at the 
Federal level to help our States, to help our communities, and to help 
our families to be able to respond.
  The broader opioid package we talked about would include the STOP

[[Page S6050]]

Act, but it also would include some other important legislation. It 
will include a number of provisions from CARA 2.0, such as national 
recovery housing standards and recovery support programs for high 
school and college students struggling with addiction, which have 
worked really well in Ohio. It will include $60 million for a plan of 
safe care for babies who are born dependent on substances. These babies 
are born with what is called neonatal abstinence syndrome. These are 
innocent, small babies who are often born premature.
  I have been in neonatal units around our hospitals in Ohio, and I 
have seen these babies. It is so sad. They have to be taken through 
withdrawal as tiny babies. We need to ensure that we do a better job of 
preventing this by working with the moms as they become pregnant and by 
ensuring that these kids get the help they need.
  It also includes the CRIB Act, bipartisan legislation that would help 
newborns suffering from addiction recover in the best care setting and 
provide support for their families.
  Again, this has been bipartisan. I have worked with Members on both 
sides of the aisle on the CRIB Act. It helps to ensure that these 
babies, when they are born with this neonatal abstinence syndrome, can 
get the care they need. It is working for these organizations that are 
doing it, but they need help--specifically, Medicaid reimbursement that 
they cannot get currently.
  The bill also reauthorizes a number of other important programs that 
have a proven record of success, like the Office of National Drug 
Control Policy, drug courts, drug-free communities prevention grants, 
and the high-intensity drug trafficking areas grants, where law 
enforcement is focusing on drug interdiction in some of the worst areas 
of our country for drug use and drug addiction.
  The STOP Act must be part of that Senate bill, as well, because, 
again, anything we offer to help deal with this issue of opioids has to 
include stopping the fentanyl from coming in.
  It is time for Congress to move. This should be noncontroversial. It 
is common sense. We know where these drugs are coming from, we know 
they are devastating our communities, and we know how we can stop this 
deadly trend. Let's pass the STOP Act. Let's pass this broader opioid 
package as soon as possible.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Let's give Americans who are fighting addiction a chance 
to live up to their God-given potential.

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