Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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By Mr. WHITEHOUSE (for himself, Mr. PORTMAN, Ms. KLOBUCHAR, Ms. AYOTTE, and Mr. LEAHY):

S. 2839. A bill to authorize the Attorney General to award grants to address the national epidemics of prescription opioid abuse and heroin use; to the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleague from Rhode Island to talk a little bit about a very important piece of legislation we are introducing. It is called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2014. I think it is fair to say that Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island and I do not agree on everything in this body that comes up--all the policy issues. But on this one we agree that it is necessary to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to deal with this heroin epidemic that is sweeping across our country.

He has been an unwavering ally in trying to find common ground on this legislation. I appreciate him. Again, I think this is an area where we can find common ground on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol to move legislation forward that can help to deal with this growing issue in our States.

I do not think we can afford to wait. Every day, unfortunately, the number of people who die from heroin overdoses grows. Every day more mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters are lost to this horrible scourge. By the time this year is out, I am told that more than 19,000 Ohioans will have overdosed on heroin or other opiates. The deaths from heroin overdoses this year will be the No. 1 cause of death in the State of Ohio, exceeding traffic accidents.

Elected officials around the country, medical professionals, and grass roots volunteers are dealing with this issue. They are fighting back. They are doing everything in their power to try to save lives and to try to stem this epidemic. But they need help. The challenge we all face is serious. To address it we need a comprehensive effort, marshaling the resources of communities, grass roots organizations, local, State, and, yes, the Federal Government. That is where we come in here, in the Congress.

I think only together can we make progress here and prevent new victims from falling into the grips of addiction. Only together can we help those who are already struggling with heroin to rebuild their lives. I think this bipartisan legislation we have introduced today is the important first step in that. It lays out a broad spectrum response to the epidemic of heroin and opiate addiction.

It starts with prevention and education. Why? Because we know that approach can work. Obviously, it is the most effective way to deal with this, to keep you from getting into the addiction in the first place. Nearly 20 years ago I joined with leaders around southwest Ohio to form what is called the Coalition for a Drug Free Greater Cincinnati. I was here in the Congress on the House side. A constituent came to me and said her son had just died from an overdose of smoking marijuana and huffing gasoline. I was ready for her. I had all the statistics as to what we were doing at the Federal level in terms of eradicating crops in places like Colombia, interdicting drugs, prosecuting people, trying to stop the flow of drugs into this country.

She kind of looked at me and said: How is that going to help me and my community? How would that have helped my kid? How does that help me deal with our church, where people are in denial and will not even talk about it, or our school, where the principal said: It is not a problem here.

So we came up with this notion of these community coalitions. There were a few around the country, and they seemed to be working. Ours in greater Cincinnati has worked well. It is still working well. By working together with grass roots organizations across the spectrum--teachers and parents, law enforcement, religious leaders, the media, business--we pulled together a group. That coalition led to this greater effort that we started in the House, and there is legislation that I authored called the Drug-Free Communities Act, which has now provided funding, by the way, and therefore helped to create thousands of other community coalitions. It has provided funding to over 2,000 community coalitions around the country. There are now about 5,000, I think, around the country. Those have worked. But they are not adequate to deal with this heroin epidemic.

But we start there. We start with this notion that there is a way, through a grass roots program, for more focus on prevention and education to be able to help stem this growing problem; that is, stopping addiction before it even starts. That, of course, again, is the most effective way. It saves money, saves lives. We also, though, have to do more to incentivize new innovative treatment programs for those who have become addicted to try to break the cycle and break the addiction.

We do that in this legislation by encouraging diversion programs like drug courts that provide treatment alternatives to incarceration. We do it by funding evidence-based heroin treatment pilot programs. There are some exciting new medications out there that we think are worth a try, including some new medications that actually block the urge, the craving. We are funding evidence-based treatment programs, but at the same time encouraging the use of emergency medications to stop overdoses.

This is something we have seen in all of our States. It expands the availability of Naloxone, which is an overdose inhibitor that the law enforcement agencies and other first responders have access to in order to be able to keep people not from overdosing--which is happening--but from dying from that overdose.

We know that there have been many lives saved, even over the last couple of years through the use of that medication. We offer more resources to promptly identify and treat incarcerated individuals suffering from addiction disorders by collaborating with criminal justice stakeholders and, again, providing evidence-based treatment. This revolving door in the criminal justice system of people who are drug users getting into prison, getting out again--and within 2 or 3 years over two-thirds of them are back in the system--we are all paying for that. The communities are paying for it with increased crime. The families are paying for it. The taxpayers are also paying for it--$25,000, $30,000 a year for incarcerating individuals, who, if you can get them into a drug treatment program, in part through these drug courts, in part through other programs that are proven to work, they can then not just get over their addiction and not be committing crimes but become productive citizens and taxpayers themselves.

We have seen this lap around the country. We have to be encouraging that and supporting that at the Federal level. I saw a model of this kind of approach when I visited the CompDrug treatment center recently in Columbus, OH. I met with several nurses and counselors who are there on the front lines in the battle against addiction. They used medication-assisted treatment, but they also use a lot of counseling to help men and women get on this path to recovery. So it is not just the medication, but it has to be a more comprehensive plan. They do this in both a public health capacity but also in connection with a prisoner reentry program.

So, again, it is people coming out of the criminal justice system who have a history of addiction and to get them into this program so they can get not just the treatment they need to get over their addiction but the job training they also need to be able to get back into the workforce to become productive citizens.

We do not stop here in this legislation. If there is one thing I have learned over the last couple of decades working in this area, it is that the best solutions on this are not going to come from Washington. They are going to be developed at the grass roots, on the ground.

What we can do is support those efforts on the ground and provide States with more flexibility to be able to use these resources that are already coming from Washington, so our legislation does that as well.

Our bill offers States that are proactive at enacting proven policies the ability to benefit from support under State incentive grants. These grants will reward States such as Ohio that are improving access to drug-abuse services for specific at-risk individuals and that are working to reach 100-percent compliance with programs such as the prescription drug monitoring program that tracks prescription drugs.

Some States such as Ohio--where we have a big prescription drug problem--there is also southern Ohio with adjoining States West Virginia and Kentucky that have this issue and without a sufficient monitoring program. Some people are getting prescription drugs filled in Ohio and then going across the river to Kentucky and getting them filled. There is no way to monitor that without an effective program. We want to encourage all States to adopt this kind of a program so we know who is getting prescription drugs, who needs them and who is abusing the process.

We also talk about this issue in the abstract. I have done that today talking about numbers--19,000 overdoses. But what does that mean? It is a shockingly high number. We sometimes forget that every one of those overdoses represents a person, a family member, someone who has hopes and dreams, someone who at some point made a mistake, and now that mistake threatens those dreams and often devastates their family, as I have seen and I am sure you have seen. Sometimes it can even result in that person's death. As we talk about overdoses this year, it will be the No. 1 cause of death in my State of Ohio.

I want to share a couple stories briefly before I close, people I have met in Ohio, people in communities in my State who are struggling with the weight of addiction.

I recently met a guy about my age. His name is Paul. Paul came to a roundtable discussion and has been engaged in this issue because his son died of a heroin overdose. He was 19 years old. He died of an overdose 2 days after getting out of rehab. Sadly, that is not an uncommon story. People go into rehab to turn their lives around and many are successful, but many aren't. For some of them when they get out, the temptation is too great and unfortunately their body no longer has the tolerance for the drug it once did and sometimes they overdose. His son was one of those.

This man has been in a lot of pain, I could tell. He is still in a lot of pain. But where he has channeled his grief and his pain is helping others to overcome addiction and to bring this discussion out of the dark, to talk about it.

It is not a comfortable topic for a lot of people to talk about, but he has been willing to do it, to talk about his family situation and talk about the fact that every family around the kitchen table ought to be talking about this subject. We ought to be talking about it in the classrooms. We ought to be sure that people understand the incredible risk and danger our young people face today.

Earlier this year I met a young woman named Sarah. Sarah has been struggling to overcome her own addiction. She has been successful, and I applaud her. She told me: Addiction starts in treatment, Rob, but it also happens in the community. You have to have a surrounding that supports you and encourages you.

She is fighting her own battle, but she is also doing something interesting at Ohio State University. She has started a student-led recovery program, kind of a support network among students.

Again, often this is in the shadows. She has been the one to step forward and say: Hey, I have an issue. I am a recovering addict, and I want other recovering addicts to come and join me and feel support so they don't do what Paul's son did.

Then there is Bill. Bill is in recovery from a heroin addiction that he told me used to cost him $2,000 a week at its height. It cost him his freedom too. He ended up in prison. When he got out of prison, he was able to take advantage of some of these programs we talked about today, some of these prisoner re-entry programs and treatment options. Bill turned his life around. Interestingly, he now works at the very corrections facility where he once served.

As he joked with me, he said: I used to be behind bars. Now I hold the keys to the cells and I am spreading a message.

I imagine he is a very credible spokesperson for that message. He is working with inmates to help build relationships and re-entry programs, not just in the prison behind the walls, but also in his community in Canton, OH.

He encourages employers to give people a second chance, to give them a shot. His quote to me was: Don't give them the keys to the safe on the first day, but give them a shot. It worked for me. It can work for others.

This battle against addiction will not be an easy one, we know that, but we also know it is well worth the fight. We have to take the fight.

When we see the number of overdoses drop, and we see statistics showing that fewer kids are using drugs and more people are breaking free of the addiction that once held them, we will know it paid off. It is not only about dollars and cents. Yes, we can save taxpayer money, we can be sure that more people are productively employed, and that our society is more efficient and communities are safer, but ultimately this is about our young people and what kind of future they are going to have.

It is about our children and our grandchildren. Will they have a better shot at their dream, a better shot at getting through school, getting an education, a better shot at getting a decent job and being able to hold it, and a better shot at being able to take care of their own families and having the dignity and self-respect that comes with that? That is ultimately what this legislation is about.

I thank Senator Whitehouse for joining with me to craft this legislation. I also thank Senator Leahy, who I understand has recently agreed to become an original cosponsor of this bill.

I encourage other Members to take a look at it. It is a good way for us to come together as Republicans and Democrats to focus on an issue that is affecting every single State represented in this body.

Sometimes people are in denial about this subject, but the reality is it affects all of us as Americans.

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