[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. YOUNG: we are entering graduation season; 17- and 18-year-olds should be attending their senior prom, preparing to finish high school, and looking forward to their futures, as my oldest daughter is right now. They should not be in the obituaries of our local newspaper. Their high school lockers should not be makeshift memorials covered in flowers. And yet all over America, they are. Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45-- the leading cause of death. A rapidly increasing number of the dead are teenagers. And the rate of teen overdoses since the pandemic have more than doubled compared to the decade before. Between 2019 and 2021, the number of deaths caused by fentanyl among 10- to 19-year-olds increased by 182 percent. And this is due almost entirely to the fentanyl found in counterfeit pills, many of which are sold via social media--platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. The drug is incredibly lethal. Two milligrams, the equivalent of 10 grains of salt, can kill. It is inexpensive to produce and exponentially more dangerous than heroin or morphine. Even the overdose rate of children 5 and under is growing. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying, so many of our kids among them. How can we be so powerless to prevent this? To all the families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl, we grieve with you. We share your anger, and we vow--we vow--not to let your loved one's death be in vain. It is past time we took the fight to the monsters who traffic in this poison, who profit from our loss. I know the Presiding Officer feels the way I do about this issue. First, we know that the majority of fentanyl is making its way into our communities through Mexico. To President Biden and his administration: Secure the border now. Second, let's give the frontline soldiers in this fight the tools that they need to keep fentanyl off our streets. The HALT Act, which my colleagues and I recently introduced, would do this. It would permanently classify fentanyl-related drugs as schedule I, meaning they would be deemed dangerously addictive with no medical value, and holds those who deal in this poison liable to civil and criminal punishment. This legislation would enable our law enforcement officials to better fight the impact of this deadly drug. Lastly, we need to cut off the dealers' back channels to our children. We know that pushers prey on teenagers across social media platforms, embedding advertisements with emojis or codes. Social media companies must work with the Federal Government to shut down these one- stop digital drug shops--shut them down. Another recently introduced bill, the Cooper Davis Act, would require social media companies to play their part in this fight and duly report drug trafficking across their platforms. To accomplish this, our bill would create a standardized reporting system with the Federal Government, modeled after the existing reporting system for child sexual abuse material on social media platforms. It has worked there. It will work here as well. The Cooper Davis Act is a bipartisan proposal reflecting the scale of devastation caused by the drug crisis across all of the 50 States. In fact, this crisis knows no region, no class, no party. No American family is immune from it. By securing the border, by passing the HALT Act, and by passing the Cooper Davis Act, we can start--we can start--to rally a true national response to this crisis. We cannot let the deaths of so many young Americans be for naught. Enough is enough. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.