Opioid Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I wish to open my remarks with a congratulations to the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative based in Gloucester, MA.

Since it began less than 11 months ago, this program is now partnering with more than 100 police departments in 24 States around the country to help people with opioid addiction to get the treatment they need. The program's approach is simple, but it is also revolutionary: having law enforcement work with those suffering from the disease of addiction by removing the stigma surrounding it and placing them into treatment instead of behind bars.

I thank the founders of this program--Gloucester police chief Leonard Campanello and John Rosenthal--for their leadership and compassion, and I urge everyone to learn more about this national model for combating the opioid crisis.

It is that crisis that I am here to talk about this afternoon. Today, I wish to call attention to a serious issue facing Massachusetts and soon to face every single community in the United States of America. Illicit fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin. Let me say that again. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine. It is responsible for the largest increase in drug overdose deaths in recent years.

More than 700 deaths in the United States were attributable to fentanyl and its components between 2013 and 2014. In Massachusetts alone, 336 people died from fentanyl-related overdoses between 2014 and 2015. More recently, among the 1,319 opioid-related deaths in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 2015 for which a blood test was available, more than half--754--tested positive for fentanyl. That is an astounding number for one State. That is an astounding increase in the impact that fentanyl is having in deaths in the State of Massachusetts.

But it is not just isolated to Massachusetts, because fentanyl is the Godzilla of opioids, and it will overrun communities and lay them to waste unless we take action now to stop it.

For those who may not know about this new scourge, Mexico and China are the primary foreign sources for illicit fentanyl, for the chemicals and building blocks from which it is made, and for other illicit substances very similar to fentanyl--called fentanyl analogs--and which are trafficked into the United States from outside of our borders. Fentanyl powder is often mixed with other illicit drugs like heroin or is disguised in pill form to resemble an opioid painkiller like OxyContin.

Many drug users overdose on fentanyl because they have no idea that it is mixed into whatever substance they are injecting or whatever pills they are swallowing, and they do not realize just how deadly it is until it is too late.

But capturing a total and accurate number of drug overdoses caused by fentanyl has been very challenging. Coroners and medical examiners do not usually test for the drug unless they are asked to, and they are often unaware that an overdose has a fentanyl link when an individual tests positive for a different substance such as heroin.

Even more troubling, the men and the women who first respond to the scene of an overdose may not know how to identify fentanyl or how to handle the drug. This makes local and State first responders very vulnerable to the drug's harmful effects, because if the fentanyl powder is absorbed into the skin or accidentally inhaled, it can be deadly. In fact, a dose of just three salt-sized grains of fentanyl can be lethal.

So think about that. You are a first responder. You are going into a home or a business thinking that you are responding to an opioid overdose situation when, in fact, you might be exposing yourself to the fentanyl in the air or to something which gets on your skin. That is how deadly this new substance is that is creating this epidemic across our country.

Recently, DEA agents in Seattle raided a suspected fentanyl lab wearing HAZMAT suits and protective gear to make sure they did not inadvertently breathe in or touch the fentanyl. The DEA has told me that they sometimes cannot use dogs to sniff packages coming in from overseas suspected of containing fentanyl because these drug-detection dogs may die if they even inhale it.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is so concerned about this synthetic opioid that in March of 2015 it issued a nationwide alert highlighting fentanyl as a threat to health and public safety.

Fentanyl is a very real problem in my home State of Massachusetts. Lawrence, MA, which is about half an hour north of Boston, is a hotspot for fentanyl trafficking. From Lawrence, the drug ends up being processed and sold all over New England.

There are efforts already in place to address the spread of fentanyl. Mexico and China are its primary foreign sources and have been the focus of diplomatic efforts to curb fentanyl trafficking. We need to make sure that those countries are living up to their promises to combat the flow of this deadly drug and other synthetic opioids into the United States.

We know naloxone, sometimes called Narcan, is an effective antidote against an opioid overdose. But a single dose of naloxone is typically not enough to combat an overdose that includes fentanyl.

That is why earlier today I called on the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of State to outline our domestic and international strategy against the trafficking of illicit fentanyl into America. As we await their responses, I know there are several critical steps that we must take in order to save lives.

We must educate the public about the existence of illicit fentanyl and the harm it can do.

We must educate first responders--our firefighters, our EMTs, our sheriffs, our health care workers--so that they can protect against injury to themselves as they are trying to identify a fentanyl overdose and so that they can protect themselves from the harmful effects of that drug.

Identifying a fentanyl overdose could mean the difference between administering multiple lifesaving doses of naloxone or death.

We should invest in programs that ensure that naloxone--Narcan--is readily available and accessible to those most likely to witness an overdose. We need to make sure that there are no shortages or unnecessary price increases for this lifesaving treatment.

We should issue guidance to States regarding the protocol for fentanyl testing in order to obtain a more accurate picture of fentanyl's deadly impact.

Illicit fentanyl is different from other opioids. It is difficult to detect and has deadly consequences for those who unknowingly come within its path. We cannot let another day pass without taking the necessary steps to educate our communities about fentanyl, to develop a national strategy, and to collaborate with our international partners-- the Mexicans and the Chinese, especially--so that we can keep this illicit drug out of the cities and towns all over our country.

American lives depend on a solution to the latest opioid crisis. It is going to be something that people look back at and say: How can something have been worse than the heroin epidemic? How can something have caused more deaths than the heroin epidemic? That is where fentanyl is already in the State of Massachusetts. It is something that is going to come to each and every State in our country.

We have to take action now. We have to ensure that we protect our borders from it entering, but then we have to make sure that we give the proper training and protections and put them in place for every State and every city and town to be able to protect against this infecting our communities.

So I thank the Chair for giving me the opportunity to address the Chamber today.

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