[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1819-1821]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               MENTAL HEALTH AND PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague and friend from 
Louisiana.
  I want to talk a little bit about the work of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee because we have had a pretty extraordinary week this week in 
the committee under the leadership of the Senator from Iowa, Mr. 
Grassley. We have been focusing our efforts on our criminal justice 
system and how it has been transformed in recent years because instead 
of just being law-and-order courts, our criminal justice system is 
dealing with everything from heroin addiction to opioid addiction, 
mental health challenges, and the recognition that eventually many of 
the people who are in our prisons will get out of prison, and we have 
become more focused on what we can do to help those who are willing to 
accept some help to be better prepared for a life on the outside and 
not reengage in this turnstile that sometimes our criminal justice 
system has become, where they get in jail or in prison, they get out, 
and then they automatically end up back in prison. That is not good for 
society, for public safety. It is not good for the taxpayer who has to 
pay for it, and it really is a squandering of human capital when some 
people--indeed, a significant number of people--are willing to accept 
that help to deal with their drug or alcohol issues, to learn a skill, 
and to turn their lives around.
  We had a hearing yesterday that I want to make particular note of on 
a piece of legislation I have introduced called the Mental Health and 
Safe Communities Act. The Presiding Officer is well familiar with this 
and is sponsoring some important comprehensive mental health 
legislation himself, and we are working together to try to find common 
ground on that, but my legislation is designed specifically to address 
how do we equip law enforcement with the additional tools they

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need in order to address the mental illness crises they find in their 
daily work and in our criminal justice system.
  We made good progress, but the fact is I think most of us were 
shocked to realize our jails and prisons have become the de facto 
treatment centers for people with mental illness, and actually in most 
instances it is not diagnosed and not treated. People self-medicate 
with drugs or alcohol, exacerbating their problems, and we couldn't 
have had two better witnesses. One was the sheriff, Susan Pamerleau, 
from Bexar County, TX, San Antonio--my hometown--which has created a 
model program of how to divert people for treatment and to get them out 
of the criminal justice system and back on their feet but also to save 
tax dollars and make sure our jails and our criminal justice system is 
reserved for people who are bad actors and not just people who are 
suffering from a mental health crisis.
  Today we considered and passed a bill called the Comprehensive 
Addiction and Recovery Act, known as CARA. This is another example of 
bipartisan work being done in the Senate, which is back doing the 
people's work with some notable accomplishments.
  More importantly, it addresses a real crisis in the country because 
we have all come to be aware of the fact that America is facing an 
epidemic of drug addiction, ranging from prescription drug painkillers 
to heroin, addiction that is ruining lives of Americans and taking the 
lives of far too many.
  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 47,000-
plus Americans died from drug overdoses in 2014--47,055 Americans died 
from drug overdoses in 2014, more than any previous year on record and 
more than double the mortality record from the year 2000. That 
statistic cries out for further investigation and action. These 47,000-
plus drug overdoses represent 150 percent more deaths than those caused 
by motor vehicles. I know we spend a lot of resources and a lot of time 
trying to improve safety for people on our highways driving cars down 
the road, but more than 150 percent more people died from drug 
overdoses than motor vehicles, and 61 percent of those deaths involved 
some type of opioid, including heroin.
  Fortunately, this legislation begins to establish a strategy to 
address this problem head-on. The bill would expand prevention and 
education efforts to help people learn the dangers of becoming addicted 
to prescription medication and the dangers of even experimenting with a 
drug as powerful and addictive as heroin.
  It would also reauthorize and expand Federal anti-heroin and anti-
methamphetamine task forces, which are on the frontlines in the battle 
against drug trafficking organizations, many of whom operate south of 
the Texas-Mexico border and import their poison into the United States.
  This legislation would also promote treatment and recovery options 
for those struggling with deadly addictions and provide law enforcement 
and first responders the tools they need to help reverse overdoses as 
fast as possible by giving medication, which will actually restore 
people to health rather than see them die because of their overdoses.
  This legislation is another example of the fight that I think we all 
share in common without regard to partisan affiliation. I want to 
particularly point out the leadership of the Senator from New 
Hampshire, Ms. Ayotte, and the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Portman, together 
with Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island, who have been leading the 
effort to make opioid addiction a national priority.
  I hope there are other ways in the future we can consider 
strengthening the hand of those fighting on the supply side of the drug 
addiction battle. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 
primarily deals with the demand side, people who have become addicted 
to prescription drugs and heroin, but as I indicated a few moments ago, 
we have tons of heroin, methamphetamine, and other drugs being imported 
into the United States by transnational criminal organizations, 
otherwise known as cartels.
  Earlier this week, the Director of National Intelligence, James 
Clapper, testified before the Armed Services Committee. He touched on 
how significant this problem is in Latin America and where many of the 
drugs sold in the United States are grown or manufactured. Director 
Clapper noted that the production of heroin in Mexico has been 
increasing steadily in response to U.S. demand. Other illicit 
substances, such as cocaine, have been increasing in volume as well, 
but while the production and importation through illicit networks into 
the United States has been growing, our efforts to interdict or 
intercept these drugs and keep them from landing on our shores has not 
been keeping up.
  In 2014 alone, drug cartels successfully smuggled more than 250,000 
pounds of heroin across our borders at a street value of about $25 
billion. We need to have a real conversation about the budget 
shortfalls that allow this to happen and how it is impeding our ability 
to choke off the flow of these illicit drugs coming into our country.
  We have to do more to resource our military, particularly the 
Southern Command, which has as its area of responsibility Mexico and to 
the south, where many of these drugs transit. We need to provide those 
on the frontlines with the tools they need in order to combat and 
prevail over these transnational criminal organizations.
  Let me give you a quick snapshot. U.S. Southern Command, which I 
mentioned a moment ago, is our geographic combatant command that has 
responsibility for this region, but it has been given zero ships needed 
to conduct countertrafficking missions in the Caribbean. Why is that?
  Unfortunately, the Navy fleet is too small, and the Navy doesn't have 
enough ships to commit to this region in light of the growing array of 
national security threats around the globe. Even though the U.S. Coast 
Guard has stepped up and provided a variety of ships, their fleet also 
has limitations. It is aging and small.
  Other nations have noticed our hands-off approach in this region and 
around the world. Just like the Middle East, our adversaries, like 
Russia, are happy to fill the power vacuum left by an America that they 
see in retreat. At least four times last year Russia had more naval 
ships in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility than we did--four times. 
That is our backyard. What were those Russian ships doing there? Most 
likely they were conducting intelligence collection missions. This is 
simply unacceptable and an invitation to even further confrontation and 
perhaps even conflict. We have obvious national interests in this part 
of the world, and they include putting a stop to the trafficking of 
illegal drugs that end up poisoning and often killing Americans.
  If we can't even accurately patrol the Caribbean with our own 
vessels, we clearly have a problem. Let me be clear. We are not asking 
or talking about multibillion-dollar aircraft carriers or ballistic 
missile submarines but rather smaller ships that can help launch and 
recover helicopters to help interdict the growing shipment of drugs in 
the region.
  SOUTHCOM simply needs to be better resourced if it is going to make a 
dent in the rampant trafficking of drugs that ruin American lives once 
they reach our border. General Kelly, the former head of the Southern 
Command, has testified previously that too often his troops have to 
simply sit and watch the drugs come into the United States across the 
Caribbean because they simply don't have the resources to interdict it 
and to stop it.
  While the men and women of SOUTHCOM's Joint Interagency Task Force 
South are doing yeoman's work in this area, they can't fully succeed in 
taking down the trafficking networks if we don't give them the 
resources to do so.
  As we continue to work hard for the American people, I hope we will 
take a serious look at the shortfall in our military budgets for 
countertrafficking missions. We can't just look at the devastation 
wrought by heroin and prescription opioid abuse in the Northeast 
without looking at the supply of the

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very heroin that is killing Americans and addicting them to a miserable 
existence, one that threatens not only their life and their families 
but our communities. We need to focus on the supply side and better 
equip the men and women tasked with the difficult job of protecting our 
country and our people from these transnational threats.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The Senator from Washington.

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