Securing the International Mail Against Opioids Act of 2018

Floor Speech

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Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Pascrell for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record two documents. One is an article from the Chicago Sun Times of today, ``A 4-Block Radius on the West Side Is at the Heart of Chicago's Opioid Epidemic,'' and ``The Opioid Crisis in Illinois'' by the Illinois Department of Human Services. [From the Chicago Sun Times, June 14, 2018] A 4-Block Radius on the West Side Is at the Heart of Chicago's Opioid Epidemic (By Tanveer Ali and Sam Charles)

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Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the STOP Act is to address the influx of synthetic opioids arriving through international mail. Given the growing harm to our communities from substance abuse, I, too, want to thank and commend the Ways and Means Committee for its hard work on developing this legislation. Especially, I want to point out the efforts of Mr. Pascrell and Mr. Bishop.

I am strongly committed to preventing the shipments of dangerous and illegal opioids into the United States. I support the intent of this bill to limit illegal trafficking of drugs, and I voted in support of this bill in the Ways and Means Committee.

However, after the last-minute changes made to this bill in the Rules Committee, I, unfortunately, cannot support H.R. 5788. The Republican leadership insisted on last-minute changes to impose civil penalties on the Postal Service for any accepted shipment lacking advance electronic data without allowing enough time to fully vet the impact of the changes with critical stakeholders.

I am concerned about the fairness of imposing civil penalties for individual shipments lacking electronic data when the Postal Service lacks direct control over whether foreign postal operators provide this data. I am concerned that having one executive branch entity impose penalties on another would set up an adversarial relationship in addressing illegal drug trafficking rather than a collaborative relationship. I am also concerned that penalties are imposed based on individual shipments rather than systematic violations.

I appreciate the work of my Democratic colleagues to mitigate the negative effects of these civil penalties; however, due to the concerns of the U.S. Postal Service and the postal unions about the negative impact of these last-minute changes by Republican leadership, I cannot support this bill at this time. I am committed to stopping the shipment of dangerous drugs and to working to resolve these problems as this legislation continues to move forward.

I urge that we continue to work to improve it and make it the very best that it can be without threatening in any way the viability of postal operations.

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