WASHINGTON DC (May 16, 2019) — Statement for the record by Senator Charles "Chuck" Grassley of Iowa on National Prevention Week:
Mr President, the misuse of opioids is a national crisis. Every single day, more than 130 people in this country overdose on these drugs, with tragic results.
In 2017, there were more than 70,000 drug overdose-related deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. These deaths eclipsed the number that were due to guns or automobile crashes.
May 12 through 18 is National Prevention Week, which is dedicated to increasing public-awareness of substance-abuse disorders. Addiction exists everywhere. We have taken steps in the past to fight this epidemic. We passed comprehensive substance-abuse and treatment legislation in 2016, and again last year. However, the opioid epidemic continues to destroy lives and communities. We need to remain committed to defeat this crisis.
This week also marks the seventh anniversary of my investigation, with former Senator [Max] Baucus, into opioid manufacturers’ connections to medical groups and physicians who advocated for the increased use of opioids. As senior members of the Senate Finance Committee in 2012, we sought documents and financial information from three opioid makers, in a period when deaths from opioid overdoses were skyrocketing. News reports of that time suggested that opioid makers may have initiated conflicts of interest to encourage the prescribing of opioids.
More recent news reports confirm that we had very good reason to launch this oversight work. For example, yesterday, BBC News published an article concerning opioid makers’ sponsorship, in the early 2000s, of so-called educational meetings for pain specialists from the United Kingdom. The doctors, whose opioid-prescribing rates were being monitored by opioid makers, were invited to New York City, where they would stay in posh hotels and attend Broadway shows at a drug maker’s expense, BBC reported. As reportedly shared by a doctor who attended one of these trips: “I feel very ashamed… I was just a guinea pig to promote the prescribing of a class of drug.”
I remain concerned that opioid-related deaths over the last decade may have been fueled by misinformation and marketing practices embraced by drug-makers and the medical organizations to which they donated. What I said seven years ago remains true today: “Doctors and patients should know if the medical literature and groups that guide [opioids’] use are paid for by the drugs’ manufacturers and if so, [by] how much.” As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I intend to continue my oversight work in this area, including by convening a congressional hearing later this summer.
I also believe that we need to do more to ensure that Americans have access to effective recovery treatment options. The recent arrests in multiple states of those who operated sham treatment facilities for desperate addicts point to a problem. Moreover, we have reason to be concerned about the lack of information available to the public about the most promising treatment options available.
A related issue has been the lack of adequate, national standards of care in the addiction-treatment field. That’s why I joined several of my colleagues in sponsoring bipartisan legislation that calls for the development of new quality measures to improve treatment for Americans battling opioid and substance addiction. This measure directs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to work with a coalition of health-care providers to identify quality measures to be used to assess the effectiveness of substance-use disorder treatment-programs.
In 2016, I also supported the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA. This bipartisan measure was enacted after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved it during my tenure as chairman. It includes a number of provisions I authored.
Mr President, the causes of the opioid epidemic are complicated and its effects are widespread. It’s impossible to solve this national crisis overnight. We must continue our efforts at the local, state, and federal level to break the cycle of addiction.
