[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 155 (Tuesday, September 18, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6215-S6217]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       OPIOID CRISIS RESPONSE ACT

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, on another matter, last night we voted on 
a very important piece of legislation called the Opioid Crisis Response 
Act, which came to us from the HELP Committee; that is, the Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
  Thanks to Chairman Alexander, the chairman of the HELP Committee, and 
as a result of his hard work and the contributions of 70 Senators and 5 
standing committees, we were able to come up with a package that had 
overwhelming support. I believe it was 99 to 1, if I am not mistaken.
  The House has already passed its version of this legislation, so it 
was important that we do the same and get the bill to the President 
soon. I am happy to report that we have now done that.
  Included in this Opioid Crisis Response Act was something called the 
STOP Act, which is a bipartisan piece of legislation that imposes new 
requirements on the U.S. Postal Service and Customs and Border 
Protection. It will close loopholes that are currently being exploited 
by drug traffickers to evade detection when shipping synthetic opioids, 
like fentanyl, because so few of those postal packages are actually 
inspected to find out whether they include drugs like fentanyl.
  The package we voted on also includes a bill I sponsored with the 
senior Senator from California called the Substance Abuse Prevention 
Act, believing that we need to do something, not only about the supply 
side of the problem but the demand side as well. This piece of 
legislation is important because it will reauthorize the Office of 
National Drug Control Policy. We need a strategy, and we need an Office 
of National Drug Control Policy, not only to articulate but also to 
help execute that strategy.
  This bill will also seek to reduce demand for illegal drugs in a 
variety of ways: education for medical providers, expanding drug 
awareness campaigns, and funding drug courts and nonprofits that 
provide interventions to people struggling with addiction.
  I have seen drug courts in action, and they actually work. People who 
commit offenses involving illegal drugs can actually be monitored and 
given wraparound care and support not only to help them deal with their 
addiction but also to help them reenter a productive society.
  Unfortunately, Texas is no stranger when it comes to illegal drugs. 
In fact, one in three Texans responded to a recent poll saying that 
they knew somebody addicted to painkillers. One in three said they knew 
somebody addicted to painkillers. Last year, close to 3,000 Texans died 
from drug overdoses. That is nearly triple the number in 2000. That is 
simply unacceptable. Eighteen years have passed, and the number is 
three times higher.
  Experts have said it is estimated to rise again by 6 percent this 
year. Those numbers are about real human beings and are a tragedy. 
Clearly, something is not working.
  That suspicion is confirmed by the researchers who are saying that 
overdoses are now the leading cause of maternal deaths in my State. In 
Texas, emergency room personnel have said that they are seeing younger 
and younger children gaining access to these addictive opioids, and 
patients

[[Page S6216]]

are making violent threats when they are not given the prescriptions 
they need to address their addiction.
  I wish I could say that this was just some bad movie or an episode of 
``Breaking Bad'' and that we could turn it off or change the channel, 
but we simply can't.
  This spike in drug use has occurred across the entire Nation, and it 
has multiple causes. There are enterprising drug entrepreneurs, some of 
them in China with new equipment and labs and marketing schemes and 
sales platforms.
  Then there is the role of the drug cartels, primarily south of the 
border. These drug cartels' operations are increasingly sophisticated, 
and their income streams have become diversified, including fuel theft. 
In the words of one person with knowledge of this matter, they are 
commodity agnostics. These cartels will ship drugs; they will ship 
people; and they will traffic children for sex. They will do anything 
to make money, and they care nothing about their victims.
  Then we know there is also the social isolation and breakdown in 
American communities that help contribute to this crisis. There are 
those men and women who, for their own reasons, turn to drugs for 
relief, either unaware of the dangers they pose or naively thinking 
that perhaps they are strong enough to avoid the attraction of 
addiction.
  In many places, illegal drugs are now resulting in more deaths than 
criminal homicides, car crashes, or HIV. We know we have a jaw-
dropping, society-wide problem on our hands. According to the Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention, 72,000 Americans died last year as 
a result of drug overdoses--72,000. It is incumbent on us to do 
everything we can, including passing this opioid legislation and 
working in tandem with State and local governments, as well as 
nonprofit groups and religious ministries.
  In the Texas capital of Austin, where I live, one of these groups is 
called Bridge of Angels. Every Sunday, it meets under an overpass right 
where Interstate Highway 35 cuts through the heart of Austin. Drug 
users and others struggling go there, and they find people who will 
listen and people who will help. But if you stay on Interstate Highway 
35 and, instead of exiting, head south for 3\1/2\ hours, eventually you 
will hit Mexico. I-35 proceeds all the way to Laredo and, of course, 
Nuevo Laredo, all the way on the other side of the border. 
Unfortunately, that interstate and others are some of the conduits used 
to transport drugs from Mexico right to America's doorstep.

  U.S. Customs and Border Protection, led by leaders like my friend, 
Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Manny Padilla, and the new, very 
impressive Border Patrol Chief, Carla Provost, whom I met with last 
week, do everything in their power to detect these poisons before they 
can make it over to the U.S. side. Many times, they are successful, but 
the smugglers are cunning, and they are driven by a ruthless profit 
motive. They hide drugs inside of food and drink containers, luggage, 
metal panels and equipment, and their cars and trucks. They are quite 
clever about when and how they cross the border, so sometimes these 
drugs get through, and then they spread.
  As Chief Provost testified recently, one of the ways drugs make their 
way across the border is that the cartels, who are moving people from 
Central America, both unaccompanied minors and family units--because 
they know that it is such a labor-intensive job to process these 
children and these family units at the border because they require 
special procedures, many times the drug cartels will use that as a 
diversionary tactic to move drugs through another part of the border. 
So we are more vulnerable than I think perhaps most of our people 
recognize.
  Of course, we know these drugs are hawked to children, to teenagers, 
and they are sold and distributed all across the country. What starts 
south of the border doesn't stay south of the border; it ends up in our 
neighborhoods, our schools, our hospitals, and, unfortunately, in our 
funeral parlors.
  The point I want to make is the point I tried to emphasize last week, 
which is that our War on Drugs is Mexico's War on Drugs too.
  I was in Mexico City about 3 weeks ago. Many of our outstanding 
professionals at the American Embassy say that many of the people in 
Mexico regard the drug and the immigration problem as our problem, not 
their problem. Well, it is their problem when more people have died of 
violence in Mexico--drug-related cartel violence--from 2007 to today 
than have died in Afghanistan and Iraq combined, and it is getting 
worse. To me, that is not just an American problem; that is a Mexican 
and American problem.
  In 2006, Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico, initiated an armed 
response to the cartels that were wreaking havoc in his country and, 
based on some estimates, now control more than a third of the country's 
geographical territory. Let me pause and reemphasize that. Now, 
according to some estimates, the drug cartels control a third or more 
of Mexico itself--a country of 125 million people, with a 1,200-mile 
common border with the United States of America, and that is just the 
Texas portion. Because of their success in displacing traditional 
authorities and usurping the role of law enforcement and government in 
many parts of the country, these cartels have sometimes created what 
has been referred to as a ``parallel state'' in Mexico--ungoverned by 
anyone except for the drug cartels. As a matter of fact, law 
enforcement can't even get into these areas for fear of being wiped 
out.
  The Mexican legal system tries to keep up, and certainly the country 
has developed laws and institutions that certainly I in no way want to 
denigrate, but because of corruption and these powerful criminal 
organizations, a genuine rule of law is missing in many large swaths of 
the country and has been for generations.
  Again, our Mexican friends say: Well, if it weren't for the demand 
for these drugs in the United States, it wouldn't fuel these cartels 
and the violence that goes along with it. They have a very important 
point. But this is not just an American problem; this is, as I said, a 
Mexican and an American problem.
  I hope that I have been able to sketch how difficult these deep-
seated drug-related problems are for us to resolve, but we can't--we 
don't have the luxury of ignoring them or pretending they don't exist. 
They are real, and they are taking the lives of Americans on a daily, 
hourly, minute-by-minute basis, and they affect all segments of our 
society.
  Thankfully, the United States has partnered with Mexico in recent 
years through programs like the Merida Initiative and directed funds 
toward strengthening communities and empowering the Mexican criminal 
justice system and judicial system so that a culture of impunity no 
longer exists. What I mean by that is if criminals feel that they can 
commit crimes, including murder, and that they will never be charged 
and convicted and imprisoned, then there is no deterrence, and so the 
killings continue. We have also collaborated on intelligence matters 
and have cooperated in a variety of ways on providing security.
  But we have to do even more, I believe, together, on our side of the 
border--the drug demand--and on the Mexican side. At least based on the 
criminal violence last year rising to perhaps its highest levels ever 
before seen, our investments aren't paying off, and we need to double 
down, working with our Mexican partners in the commitment not only to 
provide the rule of law and eliminate impunity but to slow down and 
hopefully ultimately stop the flow of these illegal drugs that are 
killing so many Americans.
  The consumption of these drugs in Mexico, at least, is not as high as 
it is in our country, but it is growing. Their people are suffering 
severe harm in that country--harm due to cartel violence and criminals 
targeting politicians, the clergy, journalists, and innocent civilians, 
in addition to the addictions. In the United States, as I mentioned, 
overdose levels have skyrocketed.
  My point is that the opioids package we have now passed is one way we 
show our commitment to address these developments. It is how we say 
enough is enough. Again, I wish I could be confident that our efforts 
will stop and fix this problem once and for all, but they do represent 
a significant step in the right direction.
  With this legislation, we will reduce the use and supply of illicit 
drugs and encourage recovery of those suffering

[[Page S6217]]

from addiction. We will support caregivers, and we will drive 
innovation and long-term solutions. It is a powerful first step as we 
continue, with our friends in Mexico, to work together hand in hand to 
fight this terrible scourge.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill 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 (Mr. Lee). Without objection, it is so ordered.

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