Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. I thank my colleague from Indiana.

Mr. President, the bill before us is the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. It is one of the few bills on which we find so much bipartisanship. It really is an issue that all of us understand back home is a major problem, wherever home may be. In my State of Illinois, there is no town too small and no suburb too wealthy to avoid the challenge of this heroin crisis.

Here is what is happening. Over the last 10 years, we have seen the pharmaceutical industry dramatically increase the number of painkiller pills for sale. One classification of those opioids includes OxyContin, hydrocodone, and other names that are pretty familiar to us. It turns out that there have been so many of these pills produced that they have now created an industry of their own--an illicit industry where people are buying and selling them to get high. When they reached a point where they can't find these pills or they are too expensive, they switch, in the same category of narcotics, to heroin. Of course, heroin can kill you if you have an overdose.

We now have more people dying from overdoses of heroin across the United States than people who are dying in traffic accidents. To give you an idea of the volume of this challenge, I have been all across my State, from one end to the other, from Southern Illinois all the way up to Chicago and the suburbs and towns in between. There is hardly a single town that has been spared where some teenager wasn't found dead because of a heroin overdose. There are things we are doing to try to resolve this, but we are not doing enough and not doing it fast enough.

So the bill that is on the floor, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, is an attempt to find new ways for prevention, education, and treatment of substance abuse. There is an amendment offered by Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire. It is really a test. All of us can agree on the goals. Senator Shaheen says that is not enough. That is an empty promise unless you pay to achieve the goals. We have to put the money into substance abuse treatment. We have to put the money into efforts with law enforcement to reduce the likelihood of these drugs coming into the United States. That is why I support her amendment.

I will offer another amendment too. What we are finding is that there are not enough treatment facilities for this huge growth in people who are addicted to heroin and other narcotics. There just aren't enough. So my bill takes a look at Medicaid. That is the health insurance plan for people in low-income categories. A few years ago, we changed this law and said you can't treat people for substance abuse if you have any more than 16 beds in your facility--16. Can you imagine in the city of Chicago what that means?

Well, I went to Haymarket, which is a wonderful operation started by Monsignor Ignatius McDermott decades ago, which treats people for alcoholism and substance abuse. They have empty beds now that can treat people who are addicted to heroin and help them to break away from this habit. But if they are under Medicaid, they can't offer these beds to these individuals. This isn't a runaway number. It is a manageable number, and it is a realistic number. If we are going to deal with heroin addiction, we have to deal with it in an honest fashion.

Let me give an example of what I consider to be one of the more effective approaches. In Gloucester, MA, the chief of police decided to try something new. They were having too many heroin overdose deaths, so he made the decision and announced that if you came to his police department or sheriff's office and announced your addiction, they wouldn't arrest you. They would put you into treatment. What happened was a number of people came forward and went into treatment. It was a good outcome for them and for the community.

I have a similar story from the town of Dixon in Illinois. They had too many scary instances where people were either close to a heroin overdose or actually passed away. They tried the same thing as Gloucester, MA, and offered that if you came in and confessed your need for help and treatment, they wouldn't arrest you. They would take you into treatment. It worked. Over 20 local teenagers showed up because of their addiction and they were put into treatment.

Of course, the problem is there aren't enough treatment facilities. So this amendment I have would expand the opportunities for treatment, and we have to do that.

The good news about this, if there is a good part of this, is that we are finally dealing with addiction in reality. It is no longer viewed just as a moral failing or characterized as some omission of conscience. It is being viewed as a disease--a medical condition that should and can be treated--and that is why we are making a step in the right direction.

We also--I think it bears repeating--we also changed the law in this Chamber not that many years ago, a law which was brought to the floor originally by Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, and that bill required that health insurance policies in the United States, in the future, would cover mental health counseling and substance abuse treatment. So, now, because that became the law, the health insurance plans we buy cover our families for those needs. Many families who never dreamed they would need substance abuse treatment for their kids, thank goodness, can turn to their health insurance plan for that kind of help. We have to protect that. Those who talk about repealing the Affordable Care Act would be repealing this very protection that families are using now for substance abuse treatment. That isn't the answer. The answer is to have more treatment facilities available so people can rid themselves of this addiction and get on with their lives.

I have met so many of these people in my roundtables, including law enforcement and doctors, but the ones I remember the most are the young people addicted in high school who finally were able to break the habit. They have a chance now for real life, but it is because there was treatment there when they needed it.

I hope my colleagues will consider this amendment. It will not come up today, but it will soon.

This is a good bill. I hope they will vote for the Shaheen amendment because it pays for the services we are promising. I don't want to end up making an empty promise to America as we face this heroin crisis.

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