[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 71 (Thursday, April 27, 2023)] [Senate] [Pages S1407-S1408] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Date: 2023-04-27
Chamber: SENATE
Mr. CORNYN: as everyone in America knows, fentanyl is ravaging communities across the country. It is killing more than 70,000 people a year in the United States alone, making it the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 49. The fentanyl epidemic does not discriminate. It kills old people, young people, rich people, poor people, people from major urban areas, and people from the countryside. One of the most alarming trends of what we are seeing is the rise of fentanyl-related deaths among teenagers. In 2021, 77 percent of all teenage overdose deaths involved fentanyl, the synthetic opioid. We continue to hear and read of heartbreaking stories of teens who overdosed in their bedrooms or in a car or at school. Sadly, this is a recurring nightmare in communities across Texas which have experienced a wave of overdoses among teens. Last fall, I sat down with a number of people in Dallas to learn more about the community-wide effort to fight fentanyl. I heard from parents who lost their children, as well as law enforcement officials, local elected leaders, healthcare professionals, and school administrators. I learned that most of the time, these teenagers think they are buying something that is relatively innocuous--Xanax or Percocet--only to find out that it is a counterfeit pill made to look like a prescription drug that is laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl. And it doesn't take much. If you look at the end of your pencil, the piece of lead sticking out of the end of your pencil, that amount of fentanyl can kill you. People will frequently refer to these not necessarily as overdoses but poisonings, because in most cases, the victims have no idea that they are taking a lethal dose of fentanyl. That was the case for Patricia Hammad's daughter, Cassandra, who died from a fentanyl overdose 2 years ago. Patricia told me that Cassandra took the pill because she thought it was a Xanax, but, actually, it contained a lethal dose of fentanyl. I heard a similar story from parents in Hays County when I visited there in February at a high school. Darren and Shannon McConville lost their son Kevin to fentanyl last summer. Darren told me that Kevin took a pill to help him sleep at night, and that that pill cost him his life. Earlier this week, I heard more heartbreaking stories from folks in Carrollton, TX, outside of Dallas. Lilia Astudillo told me about her 14-year-old son Jose, who loved playing sports and spending time with his brothers and sisters. One night, Jose took a pill that he thought would help him calm down before he went to bed. When Lilia went to wake her son up for school the next morning, it was too late. Her happy and talented son had died. I also heard from another brave parent, Ryan Vaughn, who told me about his 16-year-old daughter Sienna. She was a cheerleader at Plano High School, and she loved going to concerts and thrift shopping. Sienna's father told me that he talked to her about the danger of drugs many times. Had she been offered fentanyl, he knows she would have said no. But when her friend came over for a family get-together and gave her what seemed to be an innocuous pill, she had no idea and she said yes. Later that evening, the Vaughns found their daughter and her friend overdosing. They were able to save her friend using Narcan. But for Sienna, it was too late. These families in their communities have experienced every emotion in the book, including shock, fear, devastation, and anger; and they have channeled their grief and fury into action. On Monday, I was at R.L. Turner High School and heard from Saniyah Rodriguez, who heard the telltale noise of somebody overdosing in the bathroom and saved that student's life using the lessons she learned on a video at school. She said it took weeks before she could even go back into that bathroom having witnessed what she did--the gurgling noise of a fellow classmate overdosing was emblazoned upon her memory. Despite being traumatized by her experience, she was adamant that students cannot keep quiet about fentanyl. They must speak out and they must get help when a classmate needs it. All around the school, in bathrooms and the hallways, there were signs in English and Spanish about the dangers of fentanyl. Communities across Texas are doing the best they can to fight fentanyl head-on, and I am grateful for the work they have done to protect and educate our children. But that is only one piece of the puzzle. Law enforcement works around the block to take deadly drugs like fentanyl off the streets. And, fortunately, those responsible for dealing fentanyl-laced pills to students in Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD have been arrested and charged. But, again, this is just one other piece of the puzzle. When I spoke with the grieving parents in Hays County, which is in San Marcos right outside of Austin, TX, where I live, they stressed the importance of securing the border and preventing fentanyl from ever getting across the border into their communities in the first place. Shannon McConville, who lost her son Kevin, was especially adamant about the need to do more to stop fentanyl from getting into the country in the first place. She said, when it comes to the border, the Biden administration is failing.  I completely agree. The Biden administration has simply abdicated its responsibility at the border in the name of a humane response to the border crisis, but there is nothing humane about what is happening. We are losing more than 70,000 Americans a year to fentanyl, and given the rate that fentanyl is coming into the country, I fear the worst is still to come. The most crucial step at this moment is to stop the poison from coming into the country in the first place, but it is all about money. The cartels continue to get rich. They care nothing about the deaths of these parents' children, and they care nothing about the devastation that they are bringing to our communities across Texas and across the country. The most crucial step is to stop it before it gets here. Until that happens, the situation will only get worse. More fentanyl will come across the border and seep into our communities. More of our children, more of our neighbors, more of our friends, more of our loved ones will die from fentanyl poisoning, and the cartels and criminal organizations will continue to get rich from the suffering that they cause because they don't care about our suffering. They don't care about our grieving. They don't care about the deaths of these young people and the potential that has been snuffed out at an early age. All they care about is the money. I appreciate everyone who joined me in Carrollton, on Monday, to talk about this crisis. I am especially grateful, as I said, to Saniyah Rodriguez and the families of Jose and Sienna, who had the courage to tell their stories. It has got to be incredibly painful to tell the stories about your sons or daughters losing their lives to this drug. This is not something that they look forward to doing, but they are driven to do it by the conviction that maybe, just maybe, the losses of their children's lives will not be in vain; that the Federal Government will step up and do its job to stop the poison from entering the country in the first place; and that maybe, as a result of their telling their stories and getting visibility on this issue, that it will save another life. There is nothing that can prepare you for the pain a parent feels from losing a child, especially in such a cruel, unexpected, and unnecessary way. These are, admittedly, emotional and difficult conversations, but theyare important. As Jose's mother told me, we cannot let overdose deaths become faceless statistics. People need to remember that these are not just data points. These are bright, young, loving people who were stolen from their families and from this world. They are our children, our grandchildren, brothers, sisters, friends, and classmates. Until the Biden administration steps up and does its duty to secure the border and takes action to stop this fentanyl from entering the southern border in the first place, there will continue to be more and more victims and more and more grieving parents and families and friends like I heard from at the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District this last week. I yield the floor.