here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cMr. President, I rise today to talk about this issue of opioids, heroin, prescription drugs, now fentanyl coming into our communities. It\u2019s at epidemic levels. We have worked on this issue over the last year in a bipartisan way and have made progress, but I come to the floor today to report bad news and also to report something that Congress could do to help address a new problem. There was a report recently that came out by the U.S.-China Commission that was very disturbing. It said that there is a new influx of what\u2019s called fentanyl coming in from China. This is a synthetic form of heroin. It can be up to 50 times more powerful than heroin. Think about that. The report says, and I quote, \u2018The majority of fentanyl products found in the United States originate in China. Chinese law enforcement officials have struggled to adequately regulate the thousands of chemical and pharmaceutical facilities operating legally and illegally in the country leading to increased production and export of illicit chemicals and drugs. Chinese chemical exporters covertly ship these drugs to the western hemisphere.\u2019 So, that comes from an official report from this Commission on U.S.-China. And it\u2019s confirmed, unfortunately, back home.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cSo I was home this week meeting with law enforcement on Monday, and they told me, \u2018Rob, the top issue in our community is now not heroin, it\u2019s fentanyl. It\u2019s this synthetic form of heroin that is far more powerful.\u2019 And at least in their minds, they think that it is also more effective at making people addicted because it is less expensive and the trafficking of it is more aggressive. So this is a big concern because we were finally, I thought, making some progress on the prescription drugs and the heroin and now this fentanyl, carfentanil, U-4\u2014it goes by various names depending on the chemical compounds\u2014are coming into our communities.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s truly scary. The consequences are, I hope, obvious to everybody now.\u00a0 We\u2019re losing one American every 12 minutes. This speech will be about 12 minutes. We\u2019ll lose another American to an overdose. But, it\u2019s getting worse, not better. And, by the way, it\u2019s everywhere. Last year, in 2016, every single state in the union had at least one forensic lab test positive for fentanyl. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of positive forensic tests for fentanyl in the United States doubled, in fact, from 2014 to 2015. We believe it\u2019s worse\u2014we know it\u2019s worse\u2014for 2016 from the information we have. And, unfortunately, even this year, this month-and-a-half, we have seen more and more evidence of fentanyl coming into our communities.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to the U.S.-China commission\u2019s report the top designation for Chinese fentanyl, by the way, is my home state of Ohio. We have more positive tests for fentanyl than any other state. By the way, Massachusetts, to my colleague who has been involved in this issue and worked on this issue and helped to try to stop the overprescribing of prescription drugs, Massachusetts was number two. And we\u2019re talking 3,800 positive tests for fentanyl in Ohio alone. I do believe that this is something that\u2019s being confirmed at the local level, not just because of my meeting on Monday, but because of what I\u2019m hearing from around the state. Just two days after the commission\u2019s report came out in Butler County, Ohio police seized $180,000 in fentanyl-laced heroin after suspected fentanyl overdoses killed five people in just two days. Drug overdoses in Butler County, by the way, have nearly tripled since 2012.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was in Dayton, I met with the Dayton R.A.N.G.E., which is a task force, a law enforcement task force, Regional Agencies Narcotics and Gun Enforcement task force. They told me that this is now their biggest problem and they said because it\u2019s stronger there are more overdoses and more deaths than there are with a similar amount of heroin or number of people using heroin. They said that just over a two-week period they had seized more than 40 pounds of drugs off the streets, including six pounds of fentanyl last week. Now, six pounds of fentanyl, as I do the math, is at least 20,000 doses. 20,000 doses in one town in Ohio. I want to thank Montgomery County Sheriff Plummer, the task force and all our law enforcement for their work in getting this poison off the streets, but they need our help. They need some additional tools.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cThey told me about a 14-year-old girl who had tried fentanyl for the first time. She had never tried apparently any other drug, and she snorted it. The people she was with had snorted drugs before. She had not. Which is one reason she not only overdosed, she died immediately. And at 14 years old, her promising life was cut short. It was in the Dayton suburb of Enon a little more than a week ago, that a five-year-old boy was seen running down the streets yelling \u2018Mom and Dad are dead! Mom and Dad are dead!\u2019 A driver saw the boy, called the police; they went to his house, found his parents. They weren\u2019t dead, fortunately, but they were unconscious. Mom was on the kitchen floor; his dad on the living room floor. His skin had already turned blue which is a sign of someone who overdoses and is close to death. The first responders heroically saved both of them using Narcan, Naloxone, this miracle drug that reverses the effects of an overdose. By the way, it took six doses of Naloxone to revive the boy\u2019s father\u2014a good sign, according to law enforcement, that this was not heroin, but it was heroin laced with fentanyl, something far stronger than the normal heroine. Six doses.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw a 37 percent increase in drug overdose deaths last year in Dayton, Ohio. Victims as old as 87 and as young as two years old. Drug overdose deaths in Dayton are now on pace this year to be even more dramatic. 54 deaths already in the last month-and-a-half, which is more than any month-and-a-half last year. 235 people have had their lives saved with Naloxone. The Dayton Fire Department\u2019s call volume went up 17 percent compared to last January already. So again, not getting better; getting worse.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just Dayton.\u00a0It\u2019s not just cities.\u00a0This addiction knows no zip\u00a0code: suburbs, rural areas, inner\u00a0cities, it\u2019s everywhere, and, by the way, all demographics.\u00a0In Medina County in Northeast Ohio, their\u00a0overdoses doubled from\u00a02015 to 2016.\u00a0In Darke County, north of Dayton in a rural\u00a0county, they are on pace to\u00a0quadruple last year\u2019s number of\u00a0drug overdoses already this\u00a0year.\u00a0So why are these increases\u00a0happening?\u00a0One of the reasons is because of\u00a0the increasing potency of these\u00a0drugs on the street,\u00a0particularly again this move\u00a0from heroin to synthetic heroin\u00a0that\u2019s more powerful.\u00a0Dayton paramedic David Gerstner\u00a0puts it this way: \u2018I don\u2019t want to say our overdose rate has increased dramatically\u2014because that doesn\u2019t even come close to covering it\u2026The potency of the drugs has increased [to the point that i]nstead of [patients needing] two milligrams [of naloxone] or four milligrams of naloxone, we\u2019ve had patients who needed 20 milligrams or more.\u2019 Again, many doses of Narcan, also called naloxone, to\u00a0be able to save these lives.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cIn Darke County, which again is north of\u00a0Dayton, the Rescue Chief Brian\u00a0Phillips says: \u2018with the introduction of new illegally made synthetic opiates [like] fentanyl and Carfentanil, heroin users are overdosing at a rapid rate. These derivatives are much more potent and deadlier. The majority of our overdoses are not breathing and in some cases are in complete cardiac arrest. We are also finding ourselves using more Narcan to resuscitate these patients.So this is the word from those who\u00a0are in the trenches dealing with\u00a0this every day.\u00a0It\u2019s not good news.\u00a0In just the first week\u00a0of February, by the way, in\u00a0his department in Darke County,\u00a0Ohio, they had 12 overdose\u00a0calls in the first week of\u00a0February.\u00a0This is a town of 13,000 people.\u00a0So it\u2019s clear that these drugs\u00a0are getting on the street that\u00a0are stronger, more addictive,\u00a0more dangerous.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cHeroin is already addictive\u00a0enough.\u00a0And relatively inexpensive\u00a0compared to prescription drugs,\u00a0which is why many people move\u00a0from prescription drugs to\u00a0heroin. Probably four out of five heroin\u00a0addicts in Ohio started with\u00a0prescription drugs according to\u00a0the experts.\u00a0Now it is being laced with this\u00a0more powerful synthetic drug.\u00a0The Ohio Bureau of Criminal\u00a0Investigation tested 34 cases of\u00a0fentanyl in 2010.\u00a0In 2015 they tested 1,100, a 30-fold\u00a0increase.\u00a0Last year that number doubled\u00a0again to 2,400 cases and again\u00a0they have already tested for a\u00a0record-breaking number this year\u00a0in the last month and a half.\u00a0According to the Ohio Substance\u00a0Abuse Monitoring Network, you\u00a0can buy small doses of heroin\u00a0and fentanyl for as little as $5\u00a0to $10 now in southwest Ohio.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of parents and family\u00a0members of those struggling with\u00a0addiction are worried about this\u00a0and it\u2019s very easy to see why.\u00a0As the coroner in Butler County\u00a0said, \u2018buying heroin\u00a0today is like playing Russian\u00a0roulette.\u00a0People don\u2019t know what\u2019s in the\u00a0product they\u2019re going to use and\u00a0it may not be the same from one\u00a0use to the next.\u2019\u00a0The coroner of my hometown of Cincinnati, Lakshmi Sammarco put it like this: \u2018if you\u00a0buy heroin you may be gambling\u00a0with your life,\u2019 because it\u2019s more\u00a0dangerous than ever. We\u2019ve got to get that message\u00a0out there.\u00a0We\u2019ve not done a good job of\u00a0communicating this basic message that you are gambling with your life.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cDr. Richard Marsh, Clark County\u00a0Coroner, says \u2018<\/i>we\u2019re seeing a lot more fentanyl than heroin. It started about the middle of 2015\u2026There are all kinds of labs producing it now and a lot of people think they\u2019re buying heroin when in fact they\u2019re getting fentanyl, which is 50 times as powerful.\u2019 By the way, how powerful is that?\u00a0 Let me give you an example. According to the D.E.A., Drug\u00a0Enforcement Administration, it\u00a0takes only two milligrams of\u00a0fentanyl\u2014about the same as a\u00a0pinch of salt\u2014think about that, to kill you.\u00a0That\u2019s how powerful it is.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cSo again, going back to this\u00a0U.S.-China commission report, they\u00a0say most of these synthetic\u00a0drugs are being made in labs in\u00a0China and being shipped to the\u00a0western hemisphere, to our\u00a0country, to our communities.\u00a0How is it coming in?\u00a0People are surprised to learn\u00a0that it\u2019s coming in through the\u00a0mail system.\u00a0These deadly poisons are coming\u00a0in through the mail system.\u00a0So, unlike heroin which primarily\u00a0goes over land, primarily from\u00a0Mexico, these drugs are\u00a0actually coming in from Asia,\u00a0from China and India, through the\u00a0mail system.\u00a0Unlike the private mail carriers\u00a0like UPS or FedEx, our mail\u00a0system does not require that\u00a0people say where the package is\u00a0coming from, what\u2019s in it or\u00a0where it\u2019s going.\u00a0I think people are kind of\u00a0surprised to hear that, too.\u00a0That of course makes it easier\u00a0for the traffickers and much\u00a0harder for our law enforcement\u00a0to be able to deal with this\u00a0problem.\u00a0They can\u2019t scan these packages\u00a0that are suspect for drugs like\u00a0fentanyl or other smuggled\u00a0products because there\u2019s just\u00a0too many packages, millions of\u00a0packages.\u00a0But if they had that\u00a0information\u2014if that was\u00a0required on every package,\u00a0electronically in advance,\u00a0digitally, this data, where\u00a0it\u2019s coming from, what\u2019s in\u00a0it, where it\u2019s going\u2014our law\u00a0enforcement officials tell us\u00a0they\u2019d have a better shot at\u00a0being able to stop this poison,\u00a0to be able to identify those\u00a0packages.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cI applaud my\u00a0colleagues because with the\u00a0CURES Act that passed at the end of\u00a0last year, we provided much\u00a0more funding to our community,\u00a0particularly to our states, $500\u00a0million going out to our states to\u00a0be able to deal with the issue\u00a0of drug treatment and recovery\u00a0services.\u00a0That\u2019s very important.\u00a0That $500 million, by the way,\u00a0is this year and next year.\u00a0That\u2019s really important to fight\u00a0the epidemic.\u00a0I also of course applaud my\u00a0colleagues with regard to the\u00a0legislation called CARA,\u00a0Comprehensive Addiction and\u00a0Recovery Act.\u00a0This provides us with not\u00a0just more funding but better\u00a0practices with regard to\u00a0prevention, education,\u00a0treatment and recovery and\u00a0providing the police with Narcan\u00a0training and more Narcan\u00a0resources to our first\u00a0responders we talked about.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cSo again, in the last year Congress has\u00a0taken some important steps\u00a0forward and I commend the House\u00a0and Senate for that.\u00a0By the way, it was bipartisan\u00a0from the start.\u00a0And I think that\u2019s beginning to\u00a0make a difference.\u00a0I wish the programs in the\u00a0Comprehensive Addiction and\u00a0Recovery Act could be implemented more\u00a0quickly.\u00a0Unfortunately, there\u2019s still five more CARA\u00a0grant programs that have yet to be\u00a0implemented. Many of us\u00a0pushed the last administration; now we\u2019re pushing this\u00a0administration to move quickly\u00a0on that because this crisis is out there in our communities now.\u00a0We need the help but we\u2019re\u00a0getting that in place and it\u2019s\u00a0important.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cBut we now need to build on those\u00a0efforts because of this\u00a0synthetic heroin coming in.\u00a0And an obvious step to me would be\u00a0to simply say that the Postal\u00a0Service has to require what the\u00a0private carriers require so\u00a0these traffickers aren\u2019t\u00a0favoring the Postal Service and\u00a0so we can begin to stop some of\u00a0this dangerous synthetic drug\u00a0from coming into our\u00a0communities, but also so that\u00a0we can give law enforcement a\u00a0tool to be able to target and so\u00a0that, at a minimum, we can\u00a0increase the cost of this poison\u00a0coming into our communities.\u00a0It seems common sense to me.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cThis week Senators Klobuchar,\u00a0Hassan, Rubio and I introduced\u00a0legislation called the Synthetic\u00a0Trafficking and Overdose\u00a0Prevention Act, or STOP Act.\u00a0We just introduced it two days\u00a0ago.\u00a0It simply closes the loophole\u00a0and requires the Postal Service\u00a0to obtain advance electronic\u00a0data along the lines I talked\u00a0about: where it\u2019s from, what\u2019s in it, where it\u2019s\u00a0going.\u00a0In the House, by the way, there\u2019s companion\u00a0legislation which makes it\u00a0easier to get this done because\u00a0the House also understands this\u00a0problem.\u00a0My colleague, Congressman Pat Tiberi from Ohio is one of the\u00a0people who is focused on this,\u00a0he\u2019s one of the cosponsors.\u00a0The other one is from\u00a0Massachusetts \u2013 Richie Neal.\u00a0Their companion legislation will\u00a0make it easier to get this job done.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cThis bill is totally bipartisan.\u00a0In fact, I\u2019d call it nonpartisan.\u00a0It is based on expert testimony\u00a0we had before our Homeland\u00a0Security Committee where we\u00a0heard directly from law\u00a0enforcement.\u00a0It is a simple change that would\u00a0make it much easier for them to\u00a0detect these packages, and\u00a0particularly those from these Chinese\u00a0labs that the commission report\u00a0talked about.\u00a0It is not a silver\u00a0bullet.\u00a0No one has that silver bullet.\u00a0But our bill will take away a key took of drug traffickers and help restrict\u00a0the supply of these drugs, this\u00a0poison in our community, again making\u00a0their prices higher and making them harder to\u00a0get.\u00a0With the threat of synthetic heroin\u00a0getting worse and worse every day, there is an urgency to this. So today, I\u00a0would urge my colleagues to join\u00a0us.\u00a0Join us in this legislation,\u00a0cosponsor it and let\u2019s get this thing\u00a0through the committees, the\u00a0Finance Committee would be\u00a0taking up this legislation.\u00a0I\u2019m on that committee.\u00a0I hope they will move very\u00a0quickly to mark it up, to get it\u00a0to the floor, to pass the\u00a0legislation here in the United\u00a0States Senate, combine it with\u00a0the legislation that\u2019s working\u00a0through the House, get it to the\u00a0president to his desk for\u00a0signature, and to begin to\u00a0provide some relief to our\u00a0communities from this influx of\u00a0these synthetic heroins that are\u00a0continuing to tear our families apart, devastate our communities, and ruin\u00a0lives.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cThis is about ensuring that\u00a0young people, like the young\u00a0people who are with us today,\u00a0the pages on the floor, have\u00a0the opportunity to pursue their\u00a0dream, whatever it is.\u00a0This is about ensuring that we\u00a0are stepping up as the United\u00a0States Congress to deal with a\u00a0global problem.\u00a0It\u2019s coming in from overseas. It\u2019s an international problem.\u00a0Certainly this is one where the\u00a0United States Congress ought to\u00a0act to ensure that our United\u00a0States Postal Service does the\u00a0right thing to help law\u00a0enforcement be able to better\u00a0protect our communities.\u00a0I thank you, Mr. President, for the time and I yield back.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bipartisan Bill Will Help Stop the Influx of Deadly Synthetic Drugs Like Fentanyl WASHINGTON, D.C.\u00a0\u2013 After\u00a0\u00a0the bipartisan\u00a0Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act\u00a0earlier this week, U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) delivered remarks on the Senate floor today to urge his colleagues to take action. \u00a0Portman, who delivered\u00a029 speeches\u00a0on the Senate floor last year urging action […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18293,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18291\/revisions\/18293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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