[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 12, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6119-S6121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Opioid Epidemic
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, late this week or early next week, we will
vote on a bill called the Opioid Crisis Response Act.
This is a powerful piece of legislation for which our colleague
Chairman Lamar Alexander deserves great credit for shepherding through
the process, but he was, by no means, alone in doing so. This bill, as
he will tell you, represents the contribution of more than 70 different
Senators and 5 different standing committees of the U.S. Senate. That
takes a lot of careful work and a lot of determination. The bill is
bipartisan, as one would expect, and that, of course, would not have
happened without there having been intense collaboration. For those who
like to say that bipartisanship is dead in the U.S. Senate, this bill
and other bipartisan work we have done and will do is evidence that
that is simply false.
In 2017, President Trump declared the opioid crisis a national public
health emergency. Since then, we have seen 116 Americans die from
opioid-related overdoses daily, and in places like New Hampshire, that
death rate has been double the national average. In some places,
coroners have asked local funeral homes to help because there has just
not been enough room to store the bodies at the morgues. Let that sink
in for just a minute. Coroners are asking funeral homes to help store
the bodies because there is not enough room at the morgues because of
the 116 Americans who lose their lives to opioid addiction each day.
People of all races and ethnicities--regardless of gender--are dying.
Drugs, of course, do not discriminate. Even when people survive
overdoses, they often come back only to return to the prisons of their
addictions. Sometimes they rob, steal, or sell themselves in order to
get their fixes for oxycodone, hydrocodone, heroin, or fentanyl--all
opioids. Meanwhile, for the rest of their lives, their relationships,
their families crumble. Maybe they are looking for escape. Maybe they
are looking for some sort of meaning. Maybe they are veterans who are
self-medicating or they have mental diagnoses that simply go
undiscovered, and, thus, they try to medicate by resorting to alcohol
or, in this case, to opioids. Yet the result is always the same. Their
bodies can't handle the poison, and their minds' cravings can never be
wholly satisfied. That is how the breakdown begins.
Drug addiction and the carnage associated with it is, of course,
nothing new in our country. What is new are the types of drugs that are
being created by those who tinker with chemical formulas in order to
evade our current laws. What is also new is the extent of the tragedy.
Overdoses are going up in many places--so high, in fact, that the
average life expectancy for adult males in the United States has
fallen. As Christopher Caldwell wrote in ``First Things'' last year,
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``The death toll far eclipses those of all previous drug crises.''
The bill we will be voting on is our honest attempt to look this
crisis in the eye, not to shy away from the ugly reality. The
legislation tries, in several mutually reinforcing ways, to end what
Caldwell calls the ``artificial hell'' of those who are addicted. It
will supply States with critical funding. It will ensure that research
is expedited and that patients will have access to substance abuse
treatment. It will also improve detection and interdiction measures to
reduce the supplies of illicit drugs that are being funneled across our
southern border. I will return to the border in a moment and our
neighbor Mexico's role in this.
Part of the opioids package involves legislation I introduced with
the senior Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, called the
Substance Abuse Prevention Act. It is one of the critical pieces of
this broader bill we will be voting on. In addition to reauthorizing
lifesaving programs, it is aimed at reducing demand. Of course, supply
increases to meet the increasing demand, and we have to do something
about the demand side in order to deal with this problem.
It does this first by reauthorizing the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, which oversees the executive branch's efforts on
narcotics control by developing a national drug control strategy and
coordinating efforts with the States.
Second, it reauthorizes one of our Nation's most important programs
for preventing youth substance abuse and keeping drugs out of our
neighborhoods, the Drug-Free Communities Program.
Third, the legislation expands opioid and heroin awareness. Of
course, heroin is just one type of opioid. It also improves substance
abuse treatment and will hopefully result in prescribers of controlled
substances being better trained and educated on the potential harmful
effects of the drugs they are prescribing.
Finally, under our legislation, Senator Feinstein's and mine, the
Attorney General can also make grants available that focus on substance
use disorders. Some of these grants will be used to determine the
effectiveness of programs that pair social workers with families who
struggle with substance use disorders. We need to invest in programs
that actually work, that make a quantifiable, measurable difference. So
these grants will help.
Like the rest of the country, my State is no stranger when it comes
to opioid addiction. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Texas deaths from heroin and fentanyl--its wicked cousin--have been
steadily increasing since 2010. These are real people we have lost, who
have real families and real lives. Cash Owen, from Austin, TX, was only
22 years old. When he went to Westlake High School in Austin, where my
daughters attended, he liked to cook for a hobby. He later overdosed on
heroin. His is just one example of another life lost to this terrible
scourge.
Obviously, I come from a border State and realize, when it comes to
stemming addiction, it is a two-way street. We need to do our part to
try to deal with the demand side and to also prevent illicit substances
from crossing our borders.
ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--deserves a lot of credit
when it comes to fighting the opioid crisis in America. Despite some
politicians' bizarre and irresponsible calls to abolish the agency, it
continues to make great strides in protecting public health and public
safety. For example, ICE initiated 3,900 cases for human smuggling just
last year. It has arrested more than 4,700 members of transnational
gangs who moved people and drugs across our border into the United
States. It has seized more than 980,000 pounds of narcotics, including
drugs such as fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. As I said, it is a two-way
street.
Actually, fentanyl is worth dwelling on because it shows just how
implicated Mexico is in all of this.
Fentanyl was first developed as a synthetic painkiller and
anesthetic. It is 100 times more potent than morphine and up to 50
times stronger than heroin. What is happening is that enterprising drug
traffickers and designers are taking pure fentanyl and cutting it with
other substances--sometimes heroin, sometimes cocaine, and sometimes
methamphetamine. But sometimes amateurs use cheaper fillers and less
professional equipment, which makes the doses even more dangerous and
the people who take it more likely to overdose.
There remains a debate on just how much fentanyl comes to the United
States via Mexico. We know that some comes directly from places like
China through our national Postal Service, but a sizable percentage is
certainly snuck across our border, along with other illegal drugs, from
Mexico.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Customs and Border Patrol
seized 355 kilograms of fentanyl at the San Diego ports of entry alone
in 2017. By the way, a kilogram is 2.2 pounds. They seized 355
kilograms of fentanyl at the San Diego ports of entry alone in 2017.
There are fentanyl routes that run through Mexican cartel strongholds
and head north across the border into the United States. They funnel an
estimated 80 percent of the drug across the border.
All this is to say that we here in the United States are not alone
because the Mexican Government has its hands full as well. Fentanyl
seizures inside Mexico have risen sharply, with just under a kilogram
seized in 2013 to more than 100 kilograms seized inside of Mexico last
year. According to government data obtained by InSight Crime, in the
first 6 months of this year, 2018, Mexican authorities seized 114
kilograms.
Of course, it is not just problems with fentanyl that we share; our
heroin problem in the United States is also tied directly to Mexico.
U.S. officials estimate that 90 percent of the heroin used in the
United States is produced and trafficked from Mexico.
From all the news regarding the opioid crisis, we know what the
results are in our country, but what about Mexico? Is this a problem
just for the United States, or is this a problem for Mexico as well?
In Juarez, right across the El Paso border, a rehab center treats
nearly 300 patients a day, including many heroin addicts. In Tijuana,
where drug use reportedly starts as early as middle school, we know
they also have a big problem. We know that all across Mexico,
adolescent consumption is on the rise, particularly with regard to
drugs like marijuana. But it is not just marijuana, it is
methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin--you name it. In fact, according to a
recent survey, the percentage of Mexican men and women between the ages
of 12 and 65 who admit to using illegal drugs has roughly doubled since
2011.
Here is my point: American and Mexican carnage is related. It is
actually interrelated. That is why in recent years, through programs
like the Merida Initiative, we have worked together with the Mexican
Government to combat this multiheaded monster. But our two governments
will have to work even closer in the months and days ahead because
gangs, cartels, and drug runners are all adapting, diversifying, and
evolving based on new circumstances, and we need to make sure we keep
up with their innovations.
In Mexico, since 2007, roughly 200,000 people have died as a result
of drug-related violence. That is more than all the deaths in the war
zones in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. In Mexico, 200,000 people have
died as a result of drug-related violence in the last 10 years.
Now the cartels have diversified. As someone put it, they are
commodity agnostic--they will do anything for money. They will ship
people from Central America across the border--adults with children, or
so-called family units, or unaccompanied children. They will move
drugs. Now they are involved in the fuel theft business as well. Black
market gasoline is now a $1 billion industry in Mexico. They are also
involved in mining, port operations, and other industries. They have
multiple income streams. As I said, they are diversifying.
Meanwhile, the bloodshed continues unabated. The most violent year in
Mexico's recorded history was 2017. The armed conflict between the
cartels and Mexico's military, which started 12 years ago under
President Felipe Calderon, now ranks as perhaps the deadliest war in
the world apart from Syria. Mexico is second only to Syria as the
deadliest war zone on the planet.
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As that war continues--and by the way, we support Mexico's waging
it--we may think that the United States has been mostly spared, but
that really depends on your perspective. Fortunately, we have been
spared the most gruesome acts of public violence by and large, although
there are certainly notable exceptions.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that
more than 72,000 Americans died from a drug overdose last year. I
wonder why we don't read about this in the newspapers or hear about it
on TV. We have somehow become numb or anesthetized to the fact that
tens of thousands of Americans have taken their own lives accidentally
through a drug overdose. Of those 72,000 people who died as a result of
a drug overdose last year, 49,000 were associated with opioids, which
include substances such as fentanyl and heroin.
The annual numbers continue to rise, with the death toll for 2017
nearly 10 percent higher than a year earlier. This problem is getting
worse, not better. Experts believe the rise is attributable to opioids
becoming more readily available and more potent than recent versions of
the drug.
So here in the United States, we are losing lives as well. That is
why the vote later this week or earlier next week on this bill is so
important--it is how we will attempt to make some progress in dealing
with this crisis. That is also why our partnership with Mexico must
consistently be strengthened and reinforced.
Our drug problem--and ultimately the associated violence and
criminality--is Mexico's, and Mexico's is ours.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner).
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.