Establishing Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force

Floor Speech

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Ms. CLARK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, a special thanks to Congresswoman Brooks, Congressman Kennedy, and Congressman Pallone for introducing this important bipartisan bill to address a devastating public health crisis.

The opioid epidemic is a scourge on this country. In my district alone, 400 people have died in the last 4 years as a direct result. As we all know, there is no silver bullet to fix this problem. But what we can do and what we must do is find every possible way to help those people already affected and stop it from reaching more victims.

When substance use disorder starts in adolescence, it affects key development and societal changes in young people's lives. It can interfere with the brain's ability to mature properly and have potentially lifelong consequences.

We know that a large majority of adults in substance abuse treatment start using prior to the age of 18, and we need to make sure that the voices of adolescents and young adults are heard in this conversation.

The underlying bill establishes a pain management task force that will include many different stakeholders and experts. This amendment would add an expert in adolescent and young adult addiction and a person in recovery from addiction to medication for chronic pain that began in adolescence or young adulthood to the bill's list of experts.

This amendment would also call on the task force to consider the distinct needs of adolescents and young adults as it develops best practices for pain management and medication.

Mr. Chairman, this is a commonsense amendment to help our young people dealing with this epidemic. I urge its passage.

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Ms. CLARK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Ms. CLARK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is simple. It directs the task force to consider any potential benefits from increasing the electronic prescribing of opioids.

We know that, with the increasing sophistication of health information technology, we have an opportunity to use that information for the benefit of our public health. We also know that paper prescriptions are subject to being stolen, copied, and misused.

While that is a fact, 67 percent of prescriptions nationally are ordered electronically, but the rate for controlled substances is less than 1 percent.

Electronic prescribing of opioids has the potential to provide data to help us identify problems, whether from a user or a prescriber, and focus our interventions on saving lives and preventing addiction.

Back home in my district, Cambridge Health Alliance has adopted electronic prescriptions for controlled substances and have found it reduces fraud and allows administrators to track prescription patterns and detect overprescribing. Electronic prescriptions can be a key tool in fighting this epidemic. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.
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Ms. CLARK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would direct the task force to consider the programs and research relative to adolescents and young adults.

We know that addiction and recovery often start early, and we need to focus research on how to address the unique needs of our adolescents and young adults.

We need to understand how years of opioid abuse can affect the development of the brain, how it affects the development of coping skills, and how we can best support our kids in long-term recovery.

Most importantly, there are many gaps in research on this subject, and we need to know the status of the current research and where we need to focus our resources.

Recently, I met a constituent named Ryan. In seventh grade, he started taking drugs. When he did, he told me he felt like he finally fit in, like he had found the answers to the problems he felt and the pain he felt.

By the time he was 13, he started drinking, taking pills, and stealing money from his family. His mother was panicked. The minute he walked out of the house he had to get high. He also felt powerless.

At 15, he became convinced he was a bad person. He felt ashamed that he couldn't change, not even for his mother.

The last time he relapsed, his mom told him he couldn't see friends anymore, and he threw a piece of glass at her.

She looked him in the eyes and said: I don't know who you are anymore.

He went into treatment for three additional months, and that treatment is what changed his life. He said that it saved him. One day at the sober house he remembers sincerely laughing for the first time, and he thought: There's hope for me.

All these little things he forgot about himself, like humor, kindness and empathy. He said: I no longer felt like the shell of a person.

He asked for our leadership for two things: the people in recovery need not to be ashamed. It is not what defines them, even when their addiction starts very young; and that we need to come up with funding for treatment.

Ryan is an inspiration to me, and we owe it to the young victims of this epidemic to focus on the unique impact of this public health crisis on adolescents and young adults.

I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment.

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Ms. CLARK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, again, I just want to thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for all her leadership and advocacy, and my good friend and colleague from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy) for his as well. This bill and their work will make an incredible difference to families across the country.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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