Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Madam President, I rise today to urge the Drug Enforcement Administration to issue the final rule necessary to implement the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act of 2010. I note that year--2010--because that is the year this bipartisan bill was passed.

What it does is it provides consumers with safe and responsible ways to dispose of unused prescription medications and controlled substances.

I thank Senator Cornyn, who was the lead cosponsor on the Republican side of this legislation, as well as Senator Grassley and Senator Brown, for working with me on the legislation.

The important law expands safe disposal options for individuals and for long-item care facilities, and it promotes the development and expansion of prescription drug take-back programs.

As the Presiding Officer knows, this simply means that when you get prescription drugs and you do not use all of them--or your doctor prescribes something else--you do not just leave them in your medicine cabinet, where someone else might be taking them. Instead, you find a safe place to dispose of them, so someone else does not start taking them and potentially get hooked on the drug.

Why did I mention 2010? Well, 2010 was the year President Obama signed this bill into law. It has now been 4 years--4 years--as we have awaited the rules. I will describe why, but I think it is time to put this law into action.

The DEA issued a proposed rule in December 2012. Unfortunately, that took 2 years. There were some comments then about making sure the rules worked for our long-term care facilities--you can imagine, there are a lot of prescription drugs at long-term facilities--and the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. But these issues should be addressed in the final rule. It is time now to get this rule done so we have more options to easily and safely dispose of our prescription drugs.

I know the final rule is now at the Office of Management and Budget for their approval. I have spoken to them about this rule. I am also aware they have only had the rule for 35 days. So they are not really the ones who have been holding this up. They have 90 days to get this out, and they have pledged that they hope to get that done.

We need to get the rule done, and let me tell you why. As a former prosecutor, I have seen firsthand the devastating impact that drug addiction has on families and communities. During my 8 years as chief prosecutor in Hennepin County--the largest county in our State--drug cases made up about one-third of the caseload.

Most Americans know that we have a problem with serious drugs. But what most Americans may not know is that one of our most serious drug problems is, in fact, drugs that are in the medicine cabinet--drugs that are prescribed legally.

Within those cabinets are some of the most addictive prescription drugs out there--like pain killers and beta blockers. Prescription drugs such as these are some of the most commonly abused drugs--and people are surprised by this, but they are ahead of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines in many States.

Teenagers now abuse prescription drugs more than almost any other drug, and the majority of teens who abuse these drugs get them for free. They get them in that medicine cabinet or, more likely, a friend of theirs gets them from their mom's or dad's medicine cabinet--often without the knowledge of the person who has it.

I think we all know that many leftover drugs are lying around. You go to see the dentist for surgery, and they prescribe you something for pain. You feel OK. You only take 1 or 2, and then you have 10 left, and they are just sitting in the medicine cabinet.

We used to tell people to flush these drugs down the toilet. This is not a good idea for our water supply, and I think most people know that. Some people will tell you that the proper way to dispose of your drugs is to crush up your extra pills, then mix them with--and this is what they say--kitty litter or coffee grounds.

We need to do all we can to keep these dangerous drugs out of the hands of teens, but I am just not sure--especially if someone does not have a cat--that kitty litter is a realistic solution. Not everyone these days makes their own coffee nor has coffee grounds. We are dealing here with a very serious problem, and all we are hearing about is kitty litter and coffee grounds. That is why we passed this bill.

One option parents have is to dispose of leftover drugs at a National Take-Back Day. Listen to this. Over 3 million pounds of prescription medications have been removed from circulation through seven National Take-Back Days that have been held since 2010. I participated in one of those days in Brooklyn Park, MN, last fall.

While these events have been incredibly successful, one-day events that are held a few times each year do not fully address the problem of how we are going to dispose of our drugs safely.

For instance, let's say you heard about a Take-Back Day right after you had your dental surgery. Great, you can bring over those pills and safely dispose of them, but then you remember your kid has a soccer tournament, and you cannot make it that day to dispose of the drugs. It looks like those pills are going to stay sitting right where they are in the medicine cabinet. I doubt many people have the time right then and there to call and ask when the next Tack-Back Day might be and put it on their calendar in a red pen.

We have to be realistic. These Take-Back Days are great. In my State, especially in the metropolitan area, under the leadership of our sheriff Rich Stanek we actually have some permanent facilities in places where they can be brought permanently--the drugs--in the libraries and places like that, but we really have gone the extra step. The reason our law enforcement is such a big fan of this law is they know we could take so many more drugs in if, for instance, long-term care facilities were able to simply bring the drugs to one location each and every day.

If, for instance--and some of our drug stores have been open to this, some of these national chains--imagine how good this would be if they would just be willing to take these back and then they bring them somewhere. But to do that they need certain legal protections. They need protections about how they transport them. That is why we have been awaiting these rules.

Given the Food and Drug Administration's recent approval of some very powerful drugs, I think it is even more important that we make sure when these drugs are out there that they are able to be disposed of.

Offering more ways for people to dispose of their unneeded prescription drugs is also a crucial component of stopping the recent rise we have seen in heroin. Now, that might seem counterintuitive. You might say: Why would that help with heroin? That is not a prescription drug. How could that reduce the amount of heroin out there when we know we have seen huge increases in the amount of heroin. We have seen it in our State.

The heroin epidemic in Minnesota and all across the country is deadly. In the first half of 2013, 91 people died of opiate-related overdoses in the Twin Cities--in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties--compared to 129 for all of 2012--just to give you a sense of 6 months compared to a year. Hospital emergency department visits for heroin nearly tripled from 2004 to 2011.

In the 7,000-person community of St. Francis, MN, three young people have died of opiate overdoses since May. Another three young people have been hospitalized for heroin overdoses. One was only 15 years old.

Experts blame this rise in heroin use to, first of all, some pure heroin coming from Mexico, but, secondly, an increased use of prescription drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin. That is because, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, as many as 4 out of 5 heroin users got their start by abusing prescription drugs. That is a pretty phenomenal number.

I think people think of heroin like from the 1970s and people shooting up. Well, it is not like that anymore. They can take it by pills. They can take it different ways. What happens is, when they start with these prescription drugs, and they have access to them, they get hooked, they get addicted; and then, when they cannot get the prescription drugs--which does happen--then they turn to heroin, and heroin right now is much easier to obtain.

So the answer here--because those drugs are similar in how they make them feel--the answer is to stop them from getting addicted in the first place. I think often times, when people just see a drug in the medicine cabinet or know that it is OK to take one of these types of drugs--OxyContin and other things for pain--they actually do not intend to get addicted. These are many of the people I just had a roundtable with at Hazelden, one of the Nation's premier drug treatment centers, talking about this. A lot of times the people who end up dying from a heroin overdose actually may even be casual heroin users. They are not doing it every single day. But that is because the heroin was a replacement for the prescription drugs they started getting addicted to when they got them out of a medicine cabinet or maybe they were prescribed them.

We know this is not going to fix everything. But certainly making it easier and empowering people to dispose of these drugs will, No. 1, clearly cut down on the use of these prescription drugs, and then, we believe, lead to less heroin use in the long term.

Americans all across the country--in cities, suburbs, and small towns--need options to get rid of leftover pills before they fuel addictions and claim the lives of their loved ones.

The Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act provides these options. But we cannot take these crucial steps in the fight against drug abuse until the DEA issues its final rule.

After 4 years, it is time to make these rules official--4 years that families and long-term facilities have lost out on safe and easy options to get rid of unused prescription drugs; 4 years that those plastic amber bottles have piled up in medicine cabinets across America; 4 years that dangerous pills have been left vulnerable to misuse, potentially falling into the hands of our loved ones fighting addiction or criminals or being accidentally consumed by an innocent child.

We need the final rules. We must get them done right. But with so much at stake, we must get them done now.

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