Kaine Examines Links Between Mexican Drug Cartels and the U.S. Opioid Epidemic

Press Release

In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing today on the links between the dramatic increase in U.S. heroin use and opioid addiction and the rise in poppy cultivation and heroin production in Mexico, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine, a member of the committee, discussed the opioid epidemic in Virginia as well as the importance of working with other countries to stem the "black market" availability of heroin. As witnesses pointed out, an addiction that starts with a medically prescribed opioid can often shift to heroin, a more widely available and cheaper option that largely originates from Mexican drug cartels.

"If we don't get a hold of the culture of overprescription of opioid-based drugs, then we are just hollowing out communities that are rural, urban, suburban, rich and poor," Kaine said. "This is an addiction that came out of the medicine cabinet. … Just as this problem doesn't have demographic borders, it also doesn't have national borders. … When it comes to other nations like Mexico and China, we've got to build those partnerships internationally."

Kaine has met with families, health care providers and law enforcement officers across Virginia impacted by prescription drug and heroin abuse and has pushed for changes at the federal level to end the opioid epidemic that caused more deaths in the Commonwealth than vehicle accidents in 2014. In March, the Senate passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, bipartisan legislation that would address the heroin and opioid abuse epidemic.

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