[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 65 (Wednesday, April 19, 2023)] [Senate] [Pages S1227-S1236] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Date: 2023-04-19
Chamber: SENATE
Mr. LEE: I would like to talk about fentanyl. It is cheap, it is highly addictive, and it is deadly. It is responsible for more overdose deaths in America than any other drug. Last year alone, 110,000 Americans died from fentanyl poisoning in America. I recently joined a U.S. delegation to Mexico focused on stopping illicit drug trafficking, curbing illegal immigration at the U.S.- Mexico border, and addressing China's role in providing precursor chemicals for fentanyl production and laundering money for the cartels. I can say that the drug crisis spilling into our country is apparent to anyone willing to travel to the border and witness it for themselves. It is becoming more and more apparent every day. In fact, it is becoming more apparent even within Mexico. During my recent visit with President Lopez Obrador in Mexico, I heard him talk about the fact that, although in many instances, with many other drugs, drug production in Mexico has often been sending drugs just to the United States, at least far more than it has to Mexico, but with fentanyl, we are seeing something different. We are seeing that fentanyl is now spilling into the Mexican market, and many Mexican citizens are starting to die from fentanyl poisoning. So he, too, is concerned about it and is looking for ways he can make sure that China keeps closer track of the precursor chemicals and that the Government of Mexico is notified when those shipments of large- scale containers of these precursor chemicals arrive in Mexico, presumably for the production of fentanyl inside of Mexico. Yet, notwithstanding all these developments and 110,000 Americans dying in the last year alone from fentanyl, the Biden administration has utterly failed to stop this massive influx of fentanyl flowing across our southern border. In fact, fentanyl is one of the only commodities to see a price decrease since Biden took office. We have seen rampant inflation everywhere else but not with fentanyl. So despite this historic inflation that we have been experiencing ever since January 21, 2021, street prices for this deadly drug have fallen, indicating supply is meeting demand without significant impediment,bringing down the price. For example, in Arizona, users were paying $20 per pill in early 2021, but by early 2022, the price had plummeted to $5. In Ohio, the cost of fentanyl went from $75,000 per kilogram in 2017 to $50,000 in 2019 and then to $36,000 in 2021. This is the last of the places where we want to see the opposite of inflation. We wish that our consumer products at grocery stores and everywhere else were going down, not the price of illegal, deadly fentanyl. To put these numbers in perspective, we have been talking about the price per kilo--$75,000 per kilo a few years ago; and then 50,000 in 2019; and then 36,000 in 2021. To put it in perspective, each of those kilos--just 1 kilo of fentanyl contains half a million lethal doses. That is to say, 1 kilogram could wipe out the entire city of Atlanta, GA; and 1 kilo could essentially wipe out the entire population of the State of Wyoming. And 2 kilos could kill the entire State of Delaware. The DEA recently announced the seizure of more than 50 million fentanyl-laced pills and more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, just in 2022 alone. These seizures--that no doubt just represent a fraction of all fentanyl that made its way into the United States without detection and seizure--represented a staggering 379 million lethal doses, far more than enough to kill every man, every woman, and every child in the United States. Fentanyl is a killer. It is more powerful than morphine and has a potency that is measured in micrograms. Even a tiny amount can be lethal. Just 2 milligrams can kill an adult. That is why, when you measure this out, 2 milligrams--or 2,000 micrograms--going into a kilogram is going to get you to half a million lethal doses in 1 kilo. It is just unconscionable for this administration to turn a blind eye to the problem of fentanyl trafficking across the border. In the face of such a lethal threat, we need to have bold and decisive action, not empty rhetoric, because the drug cartels really don't care about party politics. They only care about making money. And that money is coming from the pockets of our fellow Americans suffering from addiction. This isn't just a problem for border States like Texas and Arizona. It is a threat to every community in America. It is sold on street corners in small towns and in big cities. It is killing our friends, our neighbors, and our loved ones. We must secure our borders to disrupt the drug cartels. We cannot tacitly allow fentanyl and other deadly drugs to continue flowing into our communities and destroying the lives of our everyday citizens. Now, yes, it is true, they are working to seize the stuff; and our law enforcement agents have seized a lot of it. But with millions of people crossing into our border--our southern border--over the last slightly more than 2 years--millions of people pouring in--it is making it worse, especially when you consider those same people are being trafficked into the United States, earning billions of dollars--the extortionate rates that they charge--to smuggle human traffic into the United States. It would be folly to assume, as the Secretary of Homeland Security recently suggested at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, that that doesn't play a very significant role in fentanyl making its way into the United States. He insisted that nearly all of the fentanyl comes in by way of vehicles--trucks and passenger vehicles--at points of entry. I don't know how he can possibly know that. In fact, it is impossible he could know that, because when you have 5 million people coming into the United States illegally through our southern border in slightly more than 2 years, it would be folly to assume that those people being trafficked by the drug traffickers wouldn't also be used to carry fentanyl. In short, every pill of fentanyl is a potential killer. Every shipment of fentanyl is a ticking time bomb, if not a weapon of mass destruction. And every life lost to fentanyl is a tragedy. We owe it to ourselves, our families, and our communities to tackle this problem and to do everything in our power to stamp out the scourge of this drug in American communities.