[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 14, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S181-S183]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            OPIOID EPIDEMIC

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, one area where this Senate and the 
Congress, in general, along with the administration, have made 
significant progress is combating the ongoing drug addiction crisis in 
America that has affected so many families represented by all of us in 
this Chamber.
  In my home State of Ohio, we have been on the frontline of this 
crisis for years. Opioids, in particular, have taken a heavy toll in 
our communities. In fact, in 2017, our opioid overdose rate in Ohio was 
almost three times the national average, with nearly a dozen Ohioans 
dying from these dangerous drugs every single day, making it the No. 1 
cause of death in Ohio, surpassing car accidents.
  Since 2017, we have begun to make progress, finally, to be able to 
turn the tide on opioids. In 2018, after a decade of increased overdose 
deaths every year for the previous dozen years, we finally had a 
reduction, a 22-percent reduction in overdose deaths. By the way, that 
led the Nation in terms of the percent decrease. It is still way too 
high--unacceptably high--but we are starting to make progress.
  A lot of it goes back to what is being done here at the Federal 
level, but also the State level and local level, to address this 
problem. We have dramatically increased funding here for treatment for 
recovery, including providing Narcan as a way to save people's lives. 
It is a miracle drug that reverses the effects of an overdose. We have 
done some things that are very important. More recently, we have sent 
these resources through legislation that the President signed into law 
just last year. There are resources also provided by the State opioid 
response grants and also by our bipartisan Comprehensive Addiction and 
Recovery Act, or CARA, helping our first responders to be able

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to use innovative and new approaches to ensure that individuals whose 
overdoses are reversed go into treatment rather than just overdosing 
again and again.
  The good news is that at the end of the year, the spending bill that 
Congress passed secured a record $658 million in funding for these 
Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act grants, or CARA grants. I was 
the author of that legislation, initially, along with Sheldon 
Whitehouse on the other side of the aisle. We started off with closer 
to $200 million. Now, we are at $658 million. Why? Because it is 
working.
  I have been back home, going from place to place, seeing how it 
works. I have watched some of these first responders in action with 
social workers and treatment providers who are going into people's 
homes and getting people into treatment who previously were not. We 
can't rest on our laurels because we have to do a lot more to address 
all forms of addiction that are increasingly becoming a problem.
  We have seen in Ohio and around the country that psychostimulants 
have now come back with a vengeance. This would be crystal meth from 
Mexico and cocaine. It is surging in communities across our State. 
According to our deputy attorney general in Ohio, law enforcement 
officials in 2018 tested double the amount of methamphetamine samples 
as they had in 2017 and triple the amount from 2016. In other words, 
crystal meth is growing. Higher and higher amounts of it are coming in 
and more and more people are being affected by this. I heard this at 
roundtable discussions around the State.
  I was in Knox County last year, learning that the prosecutor's office 
estimates that 80 to 90 percent of all drug incidents included crystal 
meth. Opioids used to be their biggest problem in Knox County, as it 
has been in all 80 counties in Ohio until recently. Now it is pure 
crystal meth coming in from Mexico.
  I am pleased that the spending bill at the end of last year that we 
passed just last month changed the way in which our funding is 
delivered in the fight against addiction. Specifically, included in 
that is my Combating Meth and Cocaine Act. This is an important bill 
that allows States the flexibility to use the roughly $1.5 billion in 
grant funds allocated specifically to combat opioids. The 21st Century 
Cures grants, now called the State response grants, can all be used for 
the treatment and recovery services for new threats like crystal meth 
and cocaine.
  Giving our local communities that flexibility is incredibly 
important. I have heard it constantly when I am back home. We have now 
done that. We have been able to help even further to try to reverse the 
effects, not just of the opioid crisis but of the drug crisis and all 
forms of addiction.
  We have made significant strides in ensuring that we can respond to 
this ever-changing addiction crisis. I am proud we are able to do it. 
As I said at the beginning of this speech, this is a pretty divisive 
time in Washington, to say the least. No one can deny that. What I 
hoped to show by highlighting these achievements over the past year is 
that even in a highly partisan environment, it is possible to bring 
people together to get things done and pass laws that make a 
fundamental improvement to the lives of the people we represent.
  While lots of time finding that common ground takes more work, it is 
worth it. The extra effort goes a long way. Fortunately, we are coming 
into this new session of Congress having already laid the groundwork 
that we need to do to continue to fight this addiction crisis.
  Critical right now to that fight is passing bipartisan legislation 
that will help us to push back against a particular kind of opioid, the 
synthetic opioid called fentanyl. Fentanyl came on the scene 5 or 6 
years ago with a vengeance. Just as we were making progress on reducing 
the use of heroin and prescription drugs, suddenly, this fentanyl 
arrives. It is a synthetic opioid. It is 50 times more powerful on 
average than heroin. It is now the No. 1 killer. It has been the last 
few years. In States like mine, Ohio, when you look at the numbers over 
the past few years, although we are making progress on other opioids, 
we are not making progress on fentanyl. Why? Because it is being mixed 
into all kinds of other drugs, including crystal meth, including 
opioids, including all street drugs. The improvements we have seen are 
significant, but fentanyl continues to be the No. 1 killer.
  Fentanyl, unfortunately, knows no ZIP Code and is devastating 
individuals and families all across the country. According to the most 
recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention, there were 72,000 drug-related deaths in the United States 
in 2017, and 40 percent of those deaths were involving fentanyl. That 
data showed that the overdose deaths due to fentanyl had increased at a 
rate of 88 percent per year, on average, since 2013.
  It is a real threat to our States. In 2017 alone, we had a record 
3,500 overdose deaths in Ohio that were attributable to fentanyl. Last 
fall, our Narcotics and Gun Enforcement Task Force seized 45 pounds of 
fentanyl in a single bust in Montgomery County, in Dayton, OH. There 
was enough of the drug to kill the entire population of Ohio.
  That is why the Drug Enforcement Agency made the right call in 2018 
to make fentanyl-related substances illegal to possess, transport, or 
manufacture. This means they have been scheduled. Thanks to that 
designation, our law enforcement officials have been able to better 
protect our communities by seizing and destroying large amounts of 
these fentanyl-related substances, which are the analogs to fentanyl. 
So that is good.
  Unfortunately, due to Federal law, the DEA was only able to make 
these dangerous substances illegal on a temporary basis. Think about 
that. You have this deadly drug that is 50 times more powerful than 
heroin. Back in 2018, we were able to finally make not just fentanyl 
but all of its analogs--fentanyl-related substances--illegal. Law 
enforcement was using that to begin to push back, and now we find it 
was only temporary. Guess what. We are fast approaching the end of that 
designation. Next month, on February 6, which is 3 weeks from this 
Thursday, fentanyl-related substances will once again be legal, and it 
will be much harder to keep vulnerable communities safe from these 
deadly substances. We cannot let that happen.
  I met earlier today with former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who is 
now our Ambassador to China. For years, many of us have been pushing 
China to do more to crack down on fentanyl because most of the fentanyl 
that comes to this country and kills individuals in our communities 
comes from China. Most of it has been coming through our mail system. 
We have done a lot to stop that. We have passed the STOP Act, which 
tightens up the post office's screening process, which has worked very 
well over the last year. We have also provided more money under the 
INTERDICT Act in order to provide better equipment not just to our 
Postal Service but also to the private carriers like DHL and FedEx.
  What has happened is, China has also done a better job of making 
fentanyl illegal and scheduling the precursors and analogs to fentanyl, 
and we have pushed them very hard on that. I have myself been to China 
and have personally done that, and I know Ambassador Branstad has 
pushed China hard on this. Finally, China has begun to start addressing 
this rampant production in its country.
  Terry Branstad told me today--and I agree with him--that the 
credibility of the United States to continue to provide pressure to 
China to do the right thing will be eroded dramatically if we don't 
continue to schedule fentanyl. As we are asking China to do it, we 
cannot let this designation lapse here. Obviously, what is most 
important is that we not let it lapse because it is the wrong thing to 
do and because it will affect all of our communities and all of our 
families who have been affected by this dangerous drug.
  We can't let it happen. That is why, last fall, Senator Joe Manchin 
and I introduced a bill called FIGHT Fentanyl, which codifies the Drug 
Enforcement Agency's precedent to permanently schedule fentanyl-related 
substances. So forget these temporary designations that have caused 
these issues; let's permanently schedule these fentanyl-related 
substances.
  It has very strong bipartisan support. In fact, as of a couple of 
weeks ago,

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every single U.S. State's and territory's attorney general has now 
endorsed our bill. That is all 50 States and 6 territories. That 
doesn't happen very often. This is a bipartisan group of law 
enforcement officials who has said: We support this legislation, the 
FIGHT Fentanyl Act, that we introduced last fall. I am confident we can 
get it passed if it comes to the floor for a vote. There are other 
approaches to it as well that are slightly different than ours. I 
support those as well.
  The point is, we need to pass legislation to ensure that February 6 
doesn't come and go without our scheduling these fentanyl analogs. It 
is a good example of the need to continue working across the aisle on 
this issue. We have done a good job with it so far. As I have said, 
even in these contentious times, we have to do it again, and we have to 
do it soon. I am told that during impeachment, it is impossible or at 
least very difficult to legislate on any other topic without having 
unanimous consent. So we need to get this done before next week, before 
we get the Articles of Impeachment and before the U.S. Senate begins 
the impeachment trial.
  I urge all of our colleagues to focus today on this issue. Join us in 
this commonsense, lifesaving legislation. Let's work together. The 
Committee on the Judiciary has been working on this, and others have 
worked on this. We have legislation at the desk to be able to solve it. 
I hope we can do it by unanimous consent, but we have to do it. This is 
lifesaving legislation to keep fentanyl from spreading its poison even 
further.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.

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