[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 7 (Tuesday, January 11, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H37-H39]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE FENTANYL CRISIS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Ryan) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. RYAN. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to come to the 
floor this afternoon about a topic I wish we didn't have to address. 
This is the plague in our country of fentanyl and fentanyl overdoses 
that so many families throughout this country have had to deal with.
  Coming from Ohio, we have, unfortunately, been on the front-end of 
the opiate crisis. We have been on the front-end of the heroin crisis. 
And now we are on the front-end of the fentanyl crisis.
  I have a picture here of Rachel, who is from Akron, Ohio, who died at 
17

[[Page H38]]

years old. Her life was tragically cut short because she took a fatal 
overdose of cocaine that was unknowingly laced with the synthetic 
opioid carfentanil.
  Carfentanil, for those of you who haven't been paying close enough 
attention to all of these issues, is 100 times more potent than 
fentanyl and 10,000 times more potent than morphine.
  So we have young, talented, beautiful people--in this case, a high 
school student--who had so much promise, so much life, so much 
personality. I speak with her mom often and listen to stories about and 
see pictures of this beautiful young woman.
  Now, her mom, Cindy, carries on her daughter's legacy, providing 
peer-to-peer programming at local schools and in the local community.
  We failed Rachel. This country failed Rachel and her mom and her 
family and all of the families across this country.
  We thought we had at one point enough attention on the issue of 
opioids, on the issue of heroin, now on the issue of fentanyl. Then the 
pandemic came, and this issue has been on the back burner.
  My remarks here today on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives, one of the greatest deliberative bodies in the entire 
world, are to try to bring attention to this issue, to try to scream 
from the rafters so that we don't have any more Rachels, we don't have 
any more families that have to experience the heartache, the tragedy, 
the gut-wrenching experiences that so many families have had over the 
past few years.
  This is something that we can do. Think about this: 80 percent of the 
overdoses in Ohio are from fentanyl.
  The fentanyl starts in China, it goes to Mexico to get processed, and 
then it comes over the border. So as a country, we have to focus--and I 
will give the Biden administration a credit. We have seen progress in 
this regard. We have seen progress. We have seen an increase in people 
getting busted at the border, which is appropriate, but we have a long, 
long way to go.
  We need an awareness campaign across the country so that young kids, 
who otherwise would make a simple mistake and now it ends their life, 
that they know, that their peers know, that their schools know. There 
is not a corner of Ohio, Madam Speaker, that I can go to that I won't 
meet families who have experienced this kind of tragedy.
  It is incumbent upon us. As one of the co-chairs of the Addiction, 
Treatment and Recovery Caucus, we have been dealing with this in a 
bipartisan way. We passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, 
the CARA Act, in a bipartisan way.
  We know that there are so many issues we can fight about. There are 
so many issues we can argue about here in this body. But I hope and 
pray that one of them isn't this issue that we need to address 
collectively here in the United States Congress.
  We need to, I think, begin by going back to the opiate issue, going 
back to the Sackler family, going back to all the profits that were 
made off of getting so many millions of Americans hooked on opiates, 
hooked on painkillers, and merge that in with a broken economy where 
there is so much hopelessness in so many quarters of the United States, 
where so many communities have been disinvested in, deindustrialized, 
left to rot. Then you have families that are knowingly increasing the 
amount of opiates, playing with the FDA, going through the loopholes, 
which is what the Sackler family has done. They need to be punished to 
the point where they don't get the right to the deal that they want, 
Madam Speaker; they don't get the right to the deal that they want, 
because that is how it has been in the United States.
  If you are a wealthy corporation, you can get away with just about 
anything. If you are a rich person in the United States, it almost 
doesn't matter what crime you commit; you are going to get away with 
it.
  But, meanwhile, in Youngstown, Ohio; Steubenville, Ohio; Portsmouth, 
Ohio; or Akron, Ohio, it trickles down. It has been those communities 
who have suffered greatly, including Dayton, Ohio, because of this 
epidemic.
  Over the holidays, my wife and I were able to watch an amazing 
documentary on Hulu called ``Dopesick,'' with Michael Keaton, Rosario 
Dawson, and others, that went through the Sackler family approach to 
painkillers. It was set in Virginia. Michael Keaton is from western PA 
and a graduate of Kent State in Ohio. They were highlighting Virginia, 
but this is an issue everywhere, where these good and honest and decent 
people found themselves getting hooked because of the wealth and 
profits that one family wanted to earn on the backs of the American 
people.
  So here we are today. We need to make sure that the Sackler families 
of the world are punished and put out of business, quite frankly, and 
we need to also make sure that we begin to take the bold steps we need 
to take to make sure that the Rachels and the other kids and the other 
people across this country, to the tune of a 100,000 deaths last year, 
because of fentanyl.
  So I believe we need to take a firmer stance. While I support what 
the Biden administration has done, we need to go a hell of a lot 
further. I believe we need to start having a conversation in this 
country, knowing that China knows that they are sending fentanyl to 
Mexico that makes its way into the United States, that they need to be 
punished with tariffs. They need to be punished. They are killing our 
kids. This is killing our kids.
  We can't just stand around. We need to take the money from the 
tariffs, support our border, support the cops who are on the beat in 
these different communities. We need to put that money towards 
addiction treatment, to make sure everybody can get better if they have 
got some issue, and we need to grow the economy in these communities.

                              {time}  1545

  But we can't just stand by and hope this problem goes away, because 
it is not. It will get worse, and there will be more families, more 
destruction, more hopelessness, more ruined lives.
  As we are trying to compete against China economically, we need to 
make sure that Rachel and these other young, bright minds are on the 
economic field playing for the United States of America. That is what 
this is all about.
  So we have to have a whole-of-government approach. We have a whole-
of-government approach when it comes to the pandemic, right? The only 
way you can have any success is when you have a whole-of-government 
approach. This means Federal, State, and local coordination. This means 
coordination with nonprofits. This means coordination with law 
enforcement. This means coordination with the Border Patrol.
  This is about us all coming together. You can't tell me we don't have 
the imagination in the United States to figure this out. This is about 
making it a priority.
  What I am doing here tonight, and what many activists across the 
country are doing, is trying to get this back on the front burner 
because other than a few articles in the paper, it has been on the back 
burner.
  We need to make sure we increase the resources necessary to keep this 
garbage out of our country or to know who has it the second they bring 
it in here. We have to make sure all of our kids are aware that this 
could be put in cocaine or meth or something else and that if you have 
an issue with drugs, you can actually get the treatment that you need 
and that no one is priced out of the market so that they can get better 
and get healthy and become self-sufficient and become good citizens and 
members of society and off to the races we go to try to outcompete 
China because we care about our citizens. That is what this is all 
about.
  You are going to be hearing a lot from me in the coming weeks and 
months. We are building a coalition of the families around Ohio and 
across the country who want to begin to move this issue forward.
  I do want to take a minute or two to talk about the power of 
fentanyl. I mentioned carfentanil. But 1 kilogram of fentanyl--1 
kilogram; 1--has the potential to kill 500,000 people.
  The money that is being made off of this substance will blow your 
mind, which is why it continues to come over the border from China, 
from Mexico. Much of the fentanyl comes through the southern border 
that is being looked at by the cartels. A lot of the China-sourced 
fentanyl comes through the international mail, and some comes from 
China through Canada.

[[Page H39]]

  As I said, fentanyl is responsible for 80 percent of Ohio's overdose 
deaths. Roughly 79 percent of meth, cocaine, psychostimulant overdose 
deaths in Ohio were from supplies contaminated with fentanyl. The 
pervasiveness of fentanyl contaminating other drugs has made overall 
fatality rates for all drugs much higher than before, and we are seeing 
it across the board.
  We have the STOP Fentanyl Act. We have legislation with Annie Kuster 
and others. There is a Manchin-Portman bill in the Senate, which 
permanently makes fentanyl-related substances a schedule I controlled 
substance. This is something that we have to address, and we have to 
address it in a bipartisan manner.
  I would just like to say, lastly, Madam Speaker, that these parents 
have been through the ultimate tragedy. Having to put one of your own 
kids to rest, there is no greater heartbreak. There is nothing worse 
that could happen to a parent.
  So I am pledging, and I know other Members are pledging, to keep up 
the fight because, as some of these parents have told me, there is 
nothing left to lose for them. These parents have had their hearts 
ripped out of their bodies. They live with the pain every day. They 
wake up in the middle of the night and open their eyes and hope it was 
a nightmare, open their eyes in the morning and hope it didn't really 
happen, that they could walk down the hall and their kid would still be 
lying in their bed.
  There is nothing more inspiring than seeing these giants, these 
parents who are taking their pain, taking their experience, taking 
their heartache and are saying: We have to fight. We can't let this 
happen to another parent, to another brother or sister, to another 
family member.
  People like Cindy started Rachel's Angels, which is a group back in 
Akron, Ohio, and there are so many groups across the country that have 
sprung up because of these tragedies. We want to unite these groups. We 
want to take the fight to the American people, to Congress, here in the 
House and in the Senate, and get the resources we need to make sure 
that these overdose deaths stop, that the companies producing these 
kinds of drugs get punished, that the people peddling this stuff get 
punished, and that we get the resources we need to keep this garbage 
out of our country.
  While this may be the first time this year that I stand up and speak 
on this topic, it will not be the last. We are encouraging everybody, 
Madam Speaker, to reach out to their Members of Congress, whether they 
are Democrats or Republicans, and let's get this issue of fentanyl 
deaths back on the front burner of the agenda here in the United States 
Congress.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________