Epidemic of Overdose Deaths

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, next to me is a map of the United States which shows the sickening increase in overdose deaths in this country due to heroin and opioid use over the last decade or so.

The first map is a map from the Centers for Disease Control statistics in 2004, when roughly 7,000 Americans lost their lives to opioid overdose. Again, the red color shows the intensity of regions where deaths occurred in excess of 20 per 100,000. The blue is 10 per 100,000 or less.

In 2014, over 28,000 Americans lost their lives to heroin and opioid overdose deaths. As you can see, the red portions of the country are increasing at an alarming rate. We have not gotten the 2015 statistics yet from the Centers for Disease Control, but by all indication from State numbers that are coming out, this map is actually going to get worse for the 2015 numbers.

Mr. Speaker, we have an epidemic in this country which far surpasses any challenge that is presented by any natural disaster. If we had an attack on the homeland that took the number of lives that these maps represent, this Congress would be on fire in terms of trying to move resources and help to communities all across the country.

Again, it is indiscriminate. It hits rural America, it hits suburban America, it hits urban America, and it hits age groups and ethnic groups across the board.

Today we are going to be taking up some legislation, H.R. 4641 and H.R. 5046. The first bill has 2 cosponsors; the second has 10 cosponsors. The first provides for establishment of an interagency task force to talk about pain medication, and the second is to authorize, not appropriate, different programs for heroin and opioid reduction. They are benign bills. It would be impossible for anyone to object to them.

But to be very clear, there is not a penny in either of these measures to help law enforcement. The police and fire who are responding to these crises day in and day out back home in eastern Connecticut are burning out because of the frequency of these calls. There is not a penny in these measures for treatment beds, for detox, or for long-term care treatment. In the State of Connecticut, it takes 4 to 6 months to get treatment.

These are addicts who are at points in their lives where to talk about a 4- to 6-month time span is to talk about an eternity. If you talk to the families who are dealing with their loved ones who are ensnared in these addictions, 4 to 6 months is really basically being told that there is no treatment available.

There is not a penny for prevention and education. If we go upstream, that is how we solve this problem in terms of better practices for opioid and heroin prescription.

It is not a coincidence that the White House last night issued a statement on this legislation, which basically points out the fact that they ``do little to help the thousands of Americans struggling with addiction.''

The statement goes on to say that these alarming trends which are represented on this map ``will not change by simply authorizing new grant programs, studies and reports. Congressional action is needed to fund the tools communities need to confront this epidemic and accelerate important policies like training health care providers on appropriate opioid prescribing, an essential component of this effort.''

The President submitted a budget with $1 billion of new funding paid for offset for 2017 that would put money into those three buckets: prevention and education, law enforcement, and treatment, again, no action by the majority in terms of dealing with actual funding to help people out there desperate for help.

There is a bill also to provide emergency supplemental funding of $600 million for this year to get that help out now. We presented it to the Rules Committee last night, and it was rejected.

If we had a hurricane or a tornado or a forest fire that was ravaging parts of this country or an attack on the homeland, this place would not hesitate about getting resources out there to help the folks that would respond to that type of a crisis; yet, somehow we have turned a blind eye to the thousands of Americans who are suffering from addiction and to the thousands of law enforcement fire and police who are responding to these calls literally as we are sitting here today.

There are hundreds of people per day who are dying because of this problem, and we, again, are providing no resources about better opioid prescription practices and getting better education, particularly to our young people, that clearly this map shows we must do if we are going to get our arms around this conflict and this problem.

Today there will be votes. There will be a lot of self-congratulatory rhetoric about the fact that we are moving on this. But, remember, there is not a penny for law enforcement, for treatment, or for prevention and education. Until we do that, we are kidding ourselves that we are going to turn this alarming, disturbing trend around.

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