Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Madam President, I rise to speak in favor of amendment No. 3354. I filed this amendment with my colleague from West Virginia, Senator Capito, who has been a leader in our fight against opioid addiction. The opioid addiction problem in our country is severe. It is growing, and it is not going to end unless Congress comes together to pass a law that targets the root causes of this epidemic. The stakes are simply too high to ignore.
Last year alone, in communities all across our country, including many in New York, 1.4 million more Americans started abusing opioids. Every day, 44 more people are killed by an overdose. We have seen enough data to know that our opioid addiction problem is spiraling out of control. Opioid addiction is destroying too many lives in our cities, too many families in our rural communities, and too many young men and women in our suburbs.
I wish to tell the story of one of my constituents whose name is Sean Murdick. Sean was a really special and gifted young man. He was cocaptain of his high school football team and had that rare ability to bring people together and connect with anyone. Sean didn't care if you were on the football team or had a disability, he was always the first one there to help you when you needed it.
After high school, Sean loved working with his hands, so he got a good job as a construction worker. One day Sean broke his arm. Sean's doctor gave him a prescription for oxycodone, a powerful opioid to mask his pain. By the time his prescription ran out, Sean was already addicted. He couldn't shake the addiction no matter how hard he tried. He started using heroin and tried to quit many times, but the system failed. The system failed him nearly every step of the way, and last fall Sean overdosed and died.
I would like to tell you Sean's story from the perspective of his parents. My hometown paper, the Times Union, did an incredible story about his life. I can imagine the pain they suffer because I have two young sons. The Murdicks had many questions but very few answers, and they have been lost in a fog of grief since their son's death 2 months ago.
The Times Union wrote:
They want to speak out in Sean's memory, to reclaim what heroin stole from them in the hope that it might help other parents struggling with a child's addiction.
``Sean did not die in vain,'' his father said, choking back tears.
``We tried our best to save him. It wasn't enough,'' his older brother said, his voice cracking. . . . His mother walked over, embraced her son and spoke soothing words into his ear. The father buried his head in his hands. It was a tableau of sorrow.
We have seen this happen far too often. When their son spiraled down into addiction--
His parents could see something was wrong with Sean. He lost a lot of weight and seemed distant and fidgety. He nodded off at the dinner table.
His father found a syringe in the bathroom and confronted Sean.
``Dad, I'm sick. I need help,'' he said. ``This is not me. I don't want to be like this.''
The parents told their story to our paper. The paper says:
It was a revolving door of failure: detox, intensive outpatient care, relapse. He did not qualify for the most intensive and costliest level of care, inpatient residential treatment. They denied him because he was not homicidal or suicidal and had a stable home environment. ``It was a never- ending battle with the insurance companies,'' his mother said. ``They treated him like the scum of the Earth.''
Now imagine being a parent and going through this with your son-- going from treatment center to treatment center.
When Sean finally died, he had the best care. He was in a treatment center. When he called his mother, he said:
``Mom, I've gotta go. My steak's ready,'' he said. ``Love you, mom.''
He went into the bathroom, and he overdosed.
Sean left his parents a final solace. Not long before he died, he thanked them for their unconditional love and how they supported him through a long road of misery.
``You did everything right,'' he told them.
I don't know how a parent can hear those words and think they did everything right, but I can tell you as a Senator that the U.S. Congress is not doing everything right.
Too many parents are telling these stories about their children who have died and too many patients are being prescribed opioids, such as Percocet, Vicodin, and OxyContin for acute pain. This medication is prescribed to patients for a broken wrist or when they have a wisdom tooth pulled--medication that they may need for only 2 or 3 days. Why in Heaven's name are they sent home with a dose of 30 oxycodone pills? What happens to those pills? Are they given to kids at a party? Are they sold to addicts?
We know there is a huge issue with how prescriptions are being made, how much medicine is being given to patients for this acute care, and right now there are no guidelines--no guidelines--given to doctors.
I have a bill to create that guideline. We need a guideline for the CDC. Our amendment is very simple. It would require the CDC to issue clear guidelines to our medical community for when it is appropriate to prescribe opioids instead of something nonaddictive, such as Extra Strength Tylenol.
Our amendment simply requires the CDC to issue these clear guidelines for how much opioid medication our medical professionals can prescribe without putting a patient at high risk for addiction. These guidelines are already being done for chronic pain, so they should also do them for acute pain.
We need to do something. As Members of Congress, we need to respond to the suffering of so many of our constituents. It is truly an epidemic, and it needs a response.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source