Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. KING. Mr. President, this week, this body is talking about one of the most serious problems facing our country. The word ``epidemic'' really isn't strong enough to represent what we are seeing in terms of drug addiction--opioids and heroin, in particular. The bipartisan support for the bill that is on the floor this week is an indication of the belief of Members of both parties, of all parties of all parts of the country, that this is a critically important question.
We have heard the appalling figures in committees and caucuses and on the floor. In the State of Maine, there are 200 deaths a year from overdoses. This is an eightfold increase in the last 3 years. The figure that got my attention most dramatically was that a year ago in Maine, we had 12,000 babies born, and of that number over 950 were addicted to a substance. That is almost 1 in 12 babies born in my State.
Nationally, the figures are just as shocking and as bad. In my neighboring State of New Hampshire, the number of overdose deaths is now over 380 a year. It is more than one a day. Nationally, there are 47,000 overdose deaths--more deaths than are caused by automobiles.
If this were Ebola or ISIS or any other kind of national crisis, we would be in 24-hour session to find a solution. We would be doing everything the equivalent of the Manhattan Project to deal with something that is killing so many of our citizens, particularly our young people.
Like any other problem that gets to this body, this is complicated. There isn't any single solution. It involves law enforcement. It involves national security--stopping drugs at the border. It involves treatment of mental illness. It involves treatment of drug addiction and figuring out what works. It involves figuring out prevention. It involves dealing with the overwhelming number of opioid prescription drugs that we now know lead to heroin and other addictions.
It is a very complex problem. There is no single answer, but there are some things we do know about this problem:
The first thing we know is that law enforcement alone isn't enough. Essentially, we have tried that for 25 years. Law enforcement alone isn't enough. It is important. It is a critical part of our defense against the scourge, but it is not the entire answer.
The second thing we know is that this epidemic is directly related to the dramatic rise of prescription painkillers based upon opioids. The data is that four out of five new heroin users started with prescription drugs. This is something we need to discuss. We need to discuss it with the medical community. We need to discuss it with the educational community, and we need to understand that when these drugs are prescribed, there are risks--serious, undeniable, dangerous risks that are taking an enormous toll on our society.
Four out of five new heroin users started with prescription drugs. I met a young man in Maine who was in treatment, who was trying to recover, who had become an addict. He got there starting with a high school sports injury, and he was prescribed opioid treatment--opioid pills--and he ended up in the drug culture that was destroying his life.
That is the second thing we know. We know that law enforcement isn't enough. We know that a big part of our focus has to be on opioids and prescription drugs.
The third thing we know is, there are some treatments that appear to work. We don't know for sure. One of the things that I think we need to do in this body is to provide for the research and the data sharing and the data collection from around the country so we can find out what works. It appears that medication and counseling together are something that works, but we need more research and more data.
The fourth thing we know is that treatment resources are grossly inadequate. This epidemic has exploded in the last few years, but the resources in terms of treatment have, in some cases, actually diminished. There are fewer beds today than there were 3 years ago because of budget cuts, because of policy changes, and we end up with young people and people generally that have this terrible problem eating up their lives with no place to go.
The greatest tragedy is when we have someone who is suffering from addiction and wants treatment and is ready to take the step and say ``I need it,'' and there is no place to go. The estimates are that among teenagers who are caught in this trap, only 20 percent have treatment available to them.
All these numbers and statistics and policy prescriptions aren't really my subject today. I don't want to talk about politics or even policy. I want to talk about people. In particular, I want to talk about this little boy. This picture is of a young man from Maine named Garrett Brown. There was an extraordinary story about Garrett in the Bangor Daily News late last week. A reporter, Erin Rhoda, an editor at the Bangor Daily News--one of our great newspapers--got to know this young man named Garrett Brown and spent a lot of time interacting with him over the last 3 years and recounted it in this extraordinary piece of journalism. It is the story of this young man's attempts to survive and what happened in his life.
This isn't politics. It isn't policy. It is people. In reading this story as I sat in my darkened office late last week--as my staff went home, they thought there was something wrong with me. The lights were dimmed, the sun was setting, and I read this story. It was like reading the story of the Titanic or of the Lincoln assassination. You knew how it was going to come out, but you hoped it wouldn't happen. You kept seeing moments when it could have been avoided; the tragic end could have been avoided, but it didn't happen. That was what was so gripping to me about this story. It was so real, and it was so close to home.
I have four boys of my own. I venture to say that every family in America that has a son has a picture like it or just like it somewhere in their family scrapbooks or stored on their telephone or in their computer. This is a wonderful Maine kid--a smiling 8-year-old, happy, and ready to go to school with his backpack. Then, about 15 years later, he is with his mom, and he is on his way out. He had a mom who loved him, but he had a system that failed him.
He took responsibility, by the way. He said: It's not that my mom or my stepdad didn't care. They tried. My grandparents tried everything they could. They were devout Christians. There was nothing they would have done to change it.
He took responsibility. But when he took responsibility, we didn't provide the means for him to effectuate that and save his own life. He had to want to beat it, but he also had to have the means, the resources to take that step.
The Bangor Daily News quite accurately laid out the issue: ``Opioid addiction like Garrett's requires treatment.'' We have this idea in our society that it is just a choice. You make the choice; you don't have to take that pill. Well, the way these drugs work on your brain, they hijack the very parts of your brain that enable you to make that decision. They actually go to the parts of the brain that deal with executive function, decisionmaking, and fear, and derail those parts of the brain. It requires treatment. I am sure that occasionally there are people who can do this by themselves, but that is very rare. Most people require treatment, and odds are that those with an addiction to drugs or alcohol won't get any treatment at all. As I mentioned, only one out of five teenagers who needs treatment has it available to them. If they do go through treatment, they are likely to get the wrong treatment. There is a world of different theories on treatments options, and that is why I say we need to have the research so we can understand what works and put our resources into the things that will actually bring results. Often it means they die, and that is what happened to young Garrett.
Between 2010 and 2014, the number of overdose deaths in Maine involving heroin overdose increased eightfold. This is Maine. This could have been any State in the country. It seems to be striking rural States now as strongly or even worse than urban areas of the country.
I didn't know Garrett Brown, but he was a brave kid. I could tell by his conversations with Erin Rhoda and by his conversations with us. He knew he was talking to us. He knew this was going to be public. He knew he was communicating with us, and here is what he said:
If this changes one kid's life, saves one kid from being in jail, saves his family the pain of seeing him go through it--
This is a guy with an addiction saying this. It is extraordinary.
He continued:
If this . . . saves one kid from overdosing and dying, then all that I've done hasn't been in vain. I guess that's why I keep doing this with you?
This is a tragedy. It is not a tragedy of numbers. It is a tragedy of real people. It is a tragedy of young lives lost, of treasures squandered, and of hearts broken. I have never in my adult life seen a problem like this that is facing my State and every State in this country. We can't solve it all at once. There is no magic wand. But if we find young people like Garrett who are ready to take a step toward a cure--if not a cure, at least have an ongoing recovery--we need to meet them halfway. We need to meet them halfway through the support of treatment, the support of creating options that are available, by understanding the relationship between addiction and the criminal justice system, and ultimately by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
People sometimes ask me: What is so special about Maine? I tell them Maine is a small town with very long streets. We know each other, care about each other, think about each other, and we try to help each other. I think this country can also be a community--should be a community where we think about and care about each other.
Young lives lost, treasures squandered, and hearts broken. I hope we can start to change that tragic trajectory that is breaking so many hearts in this country this week so we can make a difference, not for Garrett but for the young people to whom he was desperately sending this message. We can, we should, and we shall.
I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
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Mr. KING. Mr. President, I rise in disappointment, surprise, and some confusion that we have this bill. We spent a week--I went to the Judiciary Committee. The bill came out of the committee unanimously. There is tremendous interest in this subject. When I have talked about it at home, I have said to my people in Maine, this is something we are going to be able to do because every Member of this body is being affected by this tragedy that is engulfing our country. This is something we are going to be able to do together and indeed we have done a lot together. We have a good bill. We have passed some good amendments. One of the President's amendments was in the bill that we passed this afternoon. This is important work, but it has to be funded--the old saying in Maine, and I suspect everywhere else, put your money where your mouth is.
I was on a teleconference with some folks in Maine just 2 hours ago talking about this, and one of the chiefs of police said: It is time to move from talking about being interested in this to investing in it. We cannot solve this problem without money. It would be nice if we could. There is a drastic and dramatic shortage of treatment facilities in this country, and the only way we are going to be able to do it is to pay for it.
We had a point of order on the budget. I have to tell you I am confused because I stood here less than 3 months ago when we passed the budget bill and $680 billion of tax extenders. Where was the point of order then? It wasn't funded. A dime of it wasn't funded. Maybe there was a point of order, but it was rejected and overwritten so fast that none of us noticed it. It was the speed of light.
My mother used to say we strain at gnats and swallow camels. We swallowed $680 billion of entirely unfunded tax extenders, and we cannot solve it and bring it into our hearts to save lives for one one- thousandth of that amount, $500 million--one one-thousandth of the amount that we passed in a matter of minutes last December. I am confused by this. I don't understand it.
By the way, 47,000 people, that sounds like a lot, but this is what really sounds like a lot. Since this debate started at 2 o'clock this afternoon, 10 people have died; 10 people have died in the last 2 hours; 47,000 people is 5 people every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. We are not talking about abstractions here, we are talking about people's lives. We are talking about what I consider one of the most serious problems I have ever seen in my State. We talk about Ebola. We talk about ISIS. We talk about all of these challenges we have. Yet this is something that is killing five people an hour, and we are not willing to put the funds in to do it. It is a false promise.
I believe this bill is going to do a lot of good, but it is not going to meet the promise we are making to the American people by all of this drama this week about drug abuse and that we are going to do something about it. We are not going to do enough about it because in order to deal with this problem--and this is true everywhere--it is going to take money to provide treatment for people who need it.
As I talked about this morning, the tragedy is when someone is ready to change their life and ready to try to defeat this awful disease--and they cannot find any place to give them treatment. I was at a detox center in Portland just last week. They are turning away 100 people a month from a detox center--not even a treatment center but a detox center--because they do not have the beds.
I am delighted we are working on this bill. I am delighted we are passing it. I think there is a lot of good in it, and it is, in fact, a bipartisan bill. But to venture up to the edge of this problem and then step away because we are not willing to pay for what, in my mind, is one of the most serious emergencies we have faced since I have been in public life is disappointing, surprising, and it is a great missed opportunity for the country.
I join my colleagues in regretting the decision that was just made. I think it was an opportunity where we could have spoken as one to realistically attack this scourge that is devastating our people. We are losing lives, we are squandering treasure, and we are breaking hearts. The only way we are going to be able to solve this problem or at least make a dent in it is to provide the wherewithal to the programs throughout the country that are struggling manfully and mightily to confront the problem and defeat it.
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