[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
OVERSIGHT OF FEDERAL EFFORTS TO COMBAT
THE SPREAD OF ILLICIT FENTANYL
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 16, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-53
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
govinfo.gov/committee/house-energy
energycommerce.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
43-927 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
Chairman
BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois GREG WALDEN, Oregon
ANNA G. ESHOO, California Ranking Member
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York FRED UPTON, Michigan
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois
MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana
G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
DORIS O. MATSUI, California CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
KATHY CASTOR, Florida BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland PETE OLSON, Texas
JERRY McNERNEY, California DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
PETER WELCH, Vermont ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
PAUL TONKO, New York GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York, Vice BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
Chair BILLY LONG, Missouri
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana
KURT SCHRADER, Oregon BILL FLORES, Texas
JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana
Massachusetts MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
TONY CARDENAS, California RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina
RAUL RUIZ, California TIM WALBERG, Michigan
SCOTT H. PETERS, California EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
MARC A. VEASEY, Texas GREG GIANFORTE, Montana
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire
ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia
LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware
DARREN SOTO, Florida
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona
------
Professional Staff
JEFFREY C. CARROLL, Staff Director
TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Deputy Staff Director
MIKE BLOOMQUIST, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
Chair
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Ranking Member
Massachusetts,Vice Chair MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
RAUL RUIZ, California DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
KATHY CASTOR, Florida SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
PAUL TONKO, New York JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York GREG WALDEN, Oregon (ex officio)
SCOTT H. PETERS, California
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey (ex
officio)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hon. Diana DeGette, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Colorado, opening statement................................. 1
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Hon. Brett Guthrie, a Representative in Congress from the
Commonwealth of Kentucky, opening statement.................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the
State of New Jersey, opening statement......................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 8
Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Oregon, opening statement...................................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 11
Hon. Ann Kuster, a Representative in Congress from the State of
New Hampshire, prepared statement.............................. 100
Witnesses
Kemp L. Chester, Assistant Director of The National Opioids and
Synthetics Coordination Group White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy............................................ 13
Prepared statement........................................... 16
Answers to submitted questions............................... 114
Matthew Donahue, Regional Director North and Central Americas,
Operation Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S.
Department of Justice.......................................... 31
Prepared statement........................................... 33
Answers to submitted questions............................... 122
Thomas F. Overacker, Executive Director, Office of Field
Operations, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security.............................................. 43
Prepared statement........................................... 45
Answers to submitted questions............................... 137
Gary R. Barksdale, Chief Postal Inspector, U.S. Postal Service... 53
Prepared statement........................................... 55
Answers to submitted questions............................... 158
David A. Prince, Deputy Assistant Director, Transnational
Organized Crime, Homeland Security Investigations, Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security.. 60
Prepared statement........................................... 62
Answers to submitted questions............................... 165
Carol Cave, Director, Office of Enforcement and Import
Operations, Office of Regulatory Affairs, Food and Drug
Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services... 66
Prepared statement........................................... 68
Answers to submitted questions............................... 175
Submitted Material
Statement of Actus Foundation ``Amanda's Way'', July 16, 2018,
submitted by Ms. DeGette....................................... 101
Article of International Journal of Drug Policy, by Nicholas C.
Peiper, et al., submitted by Ms. DeGette....................... 107
OVERSIGHT OF FEDERAL EFFORTS TO COMBAT THE SPREAD OF ILLICIT FENTANYL
----------
TUESDAY, JULY 16, 2019
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in
the John D. Dingell Room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building,
Hon. Diana DeGette [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives DeGette, Schakowsky,
Kennedy, Ruiz, Kuster, Sarbanes, Tonko, Peters, Pallone (ex
officio), Guthrie (subcommittee ranking member), McKinley,
Griffith, Brooks, Mullin, Duncan, and Walden (ex officio).
Staff present: Mohammad Aslami, Counsel; Joe Banez,
Professional Staff Member; Kevin Barstow, Chief Oversight
Counsel; Jeffrey C. Carroll, Staff Director; Manmeet Dhindsa,
Counsel; Tiffany Guarascio, Deputy Staff Director; Chris
Knauer, Oversight Staff Director; Jourdan Lewis, Policy
Analyst; Kevin McAloon, Professional Staff Member; Benjamin
Tabor, Staff Assistant; Jennifer Barblan, Minority Chief
Counsel, Oversight and Investigations; Mike Bloomquist,
Minority Staff Director; Adam Buckalew, Minority Director of
Coalitions and Deputy Chief Counsel, Health; Jordan Davis,
Minority Senior Advisor; Brittany Havens, Minority Professional
Staff, Oversight and Investigations; Peter Kielty, Minority
General Counsel; Brannon Rains, Minority Legislative Clerk; and
Alan Slobodin, Minority Chief Investigative Counsel, Oversight
and Investigations.
Ms. DeGette. The Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations will now come to order. Today, the Subcommittee
on Oversight and Investigations is holding a hearing entitled
``Oversight of Federal Efforts to Combat the Spread of Illicit
Fentanyl.''
The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the increasing
threat posed by fentanyl and the Federal Government's
coordination and response.
The Chair now recognizes herself for purposes of an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANA DeGETTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO
Today, we are once again here to discuss the opioid crisis,
an epidemic that this country has been battling for years.
Previously, this committee has taken numerous actions to
investigate the origins and elements of the crisis and help
bring relief to those who are suffering.
Today's hearing will examine the growing threat of
synthetic opioids, which experts have called the third wave of
the opioid epidemic.
Our communities have already been ravaged by prescription
opioids and then heroin. Now, unfortunately, we are seeing
significant increases in overdose deaths involving synthetic
opioids like fentanyl, including in my home state of Colorado.
Fentanyl is extremely dangerous. It is 50 times more
powerful than heroin, 100 times more powerful than morphine,
and it is responsible for a number of growing overdose deaths
in America.
Fentanyl is also cheap and it's easy to produce, giving a
high return for those who seek to profit from the destruction
that it causes. Fentanyl can be used on its own or can be mixed
with other drugs.
Alarmingly, even amateur chemists can produce this highly
dangerous drug with minimal resources and experience. It is
often made overseas, likely in China, then shipped either
directly to users in the United States or through
intermediaries in other countries like Mexico.
It can be bought anonymously on the dark web, and because
it is so potent, small but deadly quantities of the drug can be
shipped in packages via the U.S. mail or in private consignment
carriers.
Today, we have before us six agencies who play important
roles in fighting the proliferation of fentanyl. Each is
responsible for a piece of this effort, from guarding the
border, to taking down drug trafficking organizations, to
protecting the legitimate drug supply.
These agencies will provide us with their assessment of how
we got here, where the fentanyl threat stands right now, and
how it has changed in recent months.
And I want to thank each one of our witnesses for coming
today.
The purpose is to examine the state of fentanyl, but also
our government's response to it. The threat is serious and
evolving, and our response must be equally committed and
adaptable.
These agencies have experience enforcing our nation's drug
laws, gathering intelligence against traffickers, and arresting
powerful criminals, and we are thankful for their efforts.
But fentanyl represents a unique problem, so these agencies
need to develop new ways of attacking it. Because we have seen
the opioid crisis evolve and take different forms, we also need
to anticipate how fentanyl trends are likely to continue to
change.
I am interested to hear all of our witnesses' perspectives
on this and how we can get ahead of the evolving threat so we
are not caught flat-footed like we have been before,
unfortunately.
I am struck by the diverse missions of this panel. It is
not every day that we have a hearing with the U.S. Postal
Service and the DEA on the same panel.
Every one of these witnesses represents just a piece of the
puzzle, which means that we cannot succeed unless everybody
comes together. The crisis is going to require a massive
coordinated effort to overcome.
We, frankly, need a national strategy on fentanyl response,
and I don't mean just a white paper document or a task force
report.
I mean we need a coherent practical plan for how we are
going to beat this problem. For example, the Office of National
Drug Control Policy is supposed to formulate a strategy, bring
all of the agencies together, and see to it that the strategy
is implemented effectively.
Are you coordinating the efforts of these agencies, and if
so, how? Your mission is now more important than ever, so we
will be looking to you for leadership and vision.
DEA, you are on the front lines and often develop important
leads for targeting drugs. Is that information being regularly
shared with CBP so that it can adequately target fentanyl
shipments when they come into the U.S.?
FDA, suddenly, you are in the middle of this fight because
fentanyl is increasingly being mixed with other drugs,
including counterfeit prescription drugs.
How are you coordinating with law enforcement to protect
the drug supply?
These are just a few of the questions we will explore
today. If we are going to solve this problem, we need better
cooperation across agencies, and we need to think differently
than we have on past drug epidemics.
Finally, this hearing is just one piece of oversight. This
subcommittee will stay on this issue and ensure progress is
being made so, as so frequently happens, unfortunately, we are
not back next year talking about the same problems.
Again, I thank the witnesses for their service on this
critical issue and for coming here today, all in one panel.
[The prepared statement of Ms. DeGette follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Diana DeGette
Today, we are here once again to discuss the opioid crisis,
an epidemic this country has been battling for years.
Previously, this Committee has taken numerous actions to
investigate the origins and elements of the crisis and help
bring relief to those who are suffering.
Today's hearing will examine the growing threat of
synthetic opioids, which experts have called the ``third wave"
of the opioid epidemic.
Our communities have already been ravaged by prescription
opioids and then heroin. Now, we are seeing significant
increases in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids such
as fentanyl, including in my home state of Colorado.
Fentanyl is exceedingly dangerous. It is 50 times more
powerful than heroin, 100 times more powerful than morphine,
and it is responsible for a growing amount of overdose deaths
in America.
Fentanyl is also cheap and easy to produce, giving a high
return for those who seek to profit from the destruction it
causes. Fentanyl can be used on its own or can be mixed with
other drugs. Alarmingly, even amateur chemists can produce this
highly dangerous drug with minimal resources and expertise.
It is often made overseas, likely in China, then shipped
either directly to users in the United States or through
intermediaries in other countries such as Mexico.
It can be bought anonymously on the Dark Web, and because
it is so potent, small but deadly quantities of the drug can be
shipped in packages via the U.S. Mail or private consignment
carriers.
Today, we have before us six agencies who play important
roles in fighting the proliferation of fentanyl. Each of them
is responsible for a piece of this effort--from guarding the
border, to taking down drug trafficking organizations, to
protecting the legitimate drug supply.
These agencies will provide us with their assessment of how
we got here, where the fentanyl threat stands now, and how it
has changed in recent months.
The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the state of
fentanyl, but also our government's response to it. The threat
is serious and evolving, and our response must be equally
committed and adaptable.
These agencies have experience enforcing our nation's drug
laws, gathering intelligence against traffickers, and arresting
powerful criminals. And we are thankful for their efforts. But
fentanyl represents a unique problem, so these agencies need to
develop new ways of attacking it.
Because we have seen the opioid crisis evolve and take
different forms, we also need to anticipate how fentanyl trends
are likely to continue to change. I am interested to hear these
witnesses' perspectives on how we can get ahead of this
evolving threat, so we are not caught flat-footed.
As I look at the witness panel, I am struck by their
diverse missions. It is not every day that we have a hearing
with the U.S. Postal Service and the DEA on the same witness
panel.
Each of you represents only a piece of this puzzle, which
means we cannot succeed unless all of you come together. This
crisis is going to require a massive, coordinated effort to
overcome.
We need a national strategy on our fentanyl response. And I
don't just mean a white paper document or a task force report.
I mean we need a coherent, practical plan for how we are going
to beat this problem.
For example, the Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP) is supposed to formulate a strategy, bring all the
agencies together, and see to it that the strategy is
implemented effectively. Are you coordinating the efforts of
these agencies, and if so, how? Your mission is now more
important than ever, so we will be looking to you for
leadership and vision.
DEA, you are on the front lines and often develop important
leads for targeting drugs. Is that information being regularly
shared with CBP so it can adequately target fentanyl shipments
when they come into the U.S.?
FDA, you are suddenly in the middle of this fight because
fentanyl is increasingly being mixed with other drugs,
including counterfeit prescription drugs. How are you
coordinating with law enforcement to protect the drug supply?
These are just a few of the questions we will explore
today. If we are going to solve this problem, we need better
cooperation across agencies, and we need to think differently
than we have on past drug epidemics.
Finally, this hearing is just one piece of our oversight.
This Subcommittee will stay on this issue and ensure progress
is being made so that we are not back here again next year
talking about the same problems.
I thank the witnesses for their service on this critical
issue, and for being here today.
Ms. DeGette. And now I recognize the ranking member of the
subcommittee, Mr. Guthrie, for five minutes for an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BRETT GUTHRIE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEATH OF KENTUCKY
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you, Chair DeGette, for holding this
important hearing.
The Energy and Commerce Committee has been steadfast in its
efforts to help combat the opioid crisis with both
investigations and legislation.
Whether it was the committee's investigations into opioid
distributors, patient brokering, or major opioid manufacturers,
we have continued to ask questions and demand answers for the
American people.
When it comes to legislation, this committee led the way on
passage of the 21st Century CURES Act, the Comprehensive
Addiction and Recovery Act, and the SUPPORT Act for patients in
communities.
I was proud to work with these three landmark bills which
are advancing treatment and recovery initiatives, improving
prevention, protecting communities, and bolstering our efforts
to fight deadly illicit synthetic drugs like fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times
stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.
For many years, pharmaceutical fentanyl has been utilized as a
powerful pain medicine to treat severe pain such as advanced
cancer pain commonly used in the form of a patch on the skin or
a lollipop.
But pharmaceutical fentanyl is not why we are here today.
We are here today because of concerns over illicit or illegally
manufactured fentanyl. The fentanyl crisis is particularly
dangerous because of its high potency, and the small amount
required to potentially cause an overdose.
It has become a powerful additive to drugs such as heroin,
cocaine, or counterfeit pills with or without the user's
knowledge.
According to the CDC, in 2017 there were more than 28,000
deaths involving synthetic opioids in the United States, which
is more deaths than from any other type of opioid.
Further, overdose death rates from synthetic opioids
increased all across all demographics, county urbanization
levels, and numerous states.
A little bit of fentanyl goes a long way, which makes it
harder for law enforcement to track where and how fentanyl is
being purchased. Fentanyl can be purchased on the internet both
in open source and on the dark web, and can be purchased pseudo
anonymously using bitcoin or crypto currency.
In addition to being smuggled across our borders, fentanyl
can be mailed in small quantities through the Postal Service or
express consignment carriers and, therefore, has a higher
likelihood of coming into the United States undetected.
These circumstances require a much different approach to
intelligence, interdiction, and law enforcement compared to
methods that may be better suited for what might be considered
a more common drug smuggling operation.
The threat is real, and it has been growing over the past
few years. According to Customs and Border Protection data, in
fiscal year 2015, 70 pounds of fentanyl were seized in the
United States.
In comparison, for fiscal year 2018, more than 2,000 pounds
of fentanyl was seized. Further, for fiscal year 2019 to date,
there have been 17,003 pounds of fentanyl seized, which is
enough fentanyl for more than 600 million lethal doses of
fentanyl, and we still have four more months of data to count
before we know the total for this year.
I want to acknowledge some of the efforts and
accomplishments of this administration, including but not
limited to HHS establishing an interdepartmental substance use
disorder coordinating committee, China pledging to add fentanyl
to its list of controlled substances, increasing shipment
tracking responsibilities and coordination among multiple
entities, and disruption efforts which has taken down an entire
online black market.
While we are already seeing new tools and resources
provided and utilized as a result of this committee and the
administration's work, the threat still exists, and our work is
not done.
I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today. I
look forward to hearing from all of you about successes we have
had in combating our nation's fentanyl threat but also how the
threat has changed, what challenges remain, and what more we in
Congress can do to be partners in this fight.
I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Guthrie follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Brett Guthrie
Thank you, Chair DeGette, for holding this important
hearing.
The Energy and Commerce Committee has been steadfast in its
efforts to help combat the opioid crisis, with both
investigations and legislation. Whether it was the Committee's
investigations into opioid distributors, patient brokering, or
the major opioid manufacturers--we've continued to ask
questions and demand answers for the American public.
When it comes to legislation, this Committee lead the way
on passage of the 21st Century Cures Act, the Comprehensive
Addiction and Recovery Act, and the SUPPORT for Patients and
Communities Act. I was proud to work on these three landmark
bills, which are advancing treatment and recovery initiatives,
improving prevention, protecting communities, and bolstering
our efforts to fight deadly illicit synthetic drugs like
fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times
stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.
For many years, pharmaceutical fentanyl has been utilized as a
powerful pain medicine to treat severe pain, such as advanced
cancer pain, commonly used in the form of a patch on the skin
or a ``lollipop." But pharmaceutical fentanyl is not why we're
here today--we're here today because of concerns over illicit,
or illegally manufactured, fentanyl.
The fentanyl crisis is particularly dangerous because of
its high potency and the small amount required to potentially
cause an overdose. It has become a powerful additive to drugs
such as heroin, cocaine, or counterfeit pills--with or without
the user's knowledge. According to the CDC, in 2017 there were
more than 28,000 deaths involving synthetic opioids in the
United States--which is more deaths than from any other type of
opioid. Further, overdose death rates from synthetic opioids
increased across all demographics, county urbanization levels,
and numerous states.
A little bit of fentanyl goes a long way--which makes it
harder for law enforcement to track where and how fentanyl is
being purchased. Fentanyl can be purchased on the internet-both
in the open source and on the dark web-and can be purchased
pseudo-anonymously using bitcoin or crypto currency.
In addition to being smuggled across our borders, fentanyl
can be mailed in small quantities through the postal service or
express consignment carriers, and therefore has a higher
likelihood of coming into the United States undetected. These
circumstances require a much different approach to
intelligence, interdiction, and law enforcement compared to
methods that may be better suited for what might be considered
a more common drug smuggling operation.
The threat is real and has been growing over the past few
years. According to Customs and Border Protection data, in
fiscal year 2015, 70 pounds of fentanyl were seized in the
United States. In comparison, for fiscal year 2018, more than
2,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized. Further, for fiscal year
2019 to date, there have been 1,703 pounds of fentanyl seized.
That is enough fentanyl for more than 600 million lethal doses
of fentanyl, and we still have four more months of data to
account for before we will know the total for this year.
I want to acknowledge some of the efforts and
accomplishments of this Administration, including but not
limited to HHS establishing an interdepartmental substance use
disorder coordinating committee; China pledging to add fentanyl
to its list of controlled substances; increasing shipment-
tracking responsibilities and coordination among multiple
entities; and disruption efforts such as taking down an entire
online black market. While we are already seeing new tools and
resources provided and utilized as a result of this Committee
and the Administration's work--the threat still exists, and our
work is not done.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here today.
I look forward to hearing from all of you about successes we
have had in combatting our nation's fentanyl threat, but also
how the threat has changed, what challenges remain, and what
more we, in Congress, can do to be partners in this fight.
Ms. DeGette. The Chair now recognizes the chairman of the
full committee, Mr. Pallone, for five minutes for purposes of
an opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, Jr., A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Madam Chair.
This committee has held many hearings on the opioid crisis
over the last several years, and with each hearing it seems the
challenge to combat the crisis grows even more daunting.
While opioid prescribing rates appears to have gone done,
overdose deaths continue to climb. Communities all around the
country are still suffering from this epidemic, now largely at
the hands of heroin, increasingly fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a deadly synthetic drug that is 50 times more
powerful than heroin. Because it's relatively easy to make and
so potent, it is tragically leading to large increases in
overdose deaths.
We have all heard the terrible numbers that tell the story.
In 2017, there were over 47,000 opioid overdose deaths. Twenty-
eight thousand of those deaths involve synthetic opioids such
as fentanyl.
My home state of New Jersey, for example, has seen a ten-
fold increase in deaths involving fentanyl in the last several
years, and fentanyl represents the third wave, as the
chairwoman said, in the opioid crisis.
After the country was inundated with prescription opioids,
prescribing rates when down. But many of those who were already
addicted then turned to heroin, and now the trend is shifting
towards synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which pose a unique
threat.
These drugs are manufactured overseas in countries like
China, oftentimes in clandestine labs. These drugs are then
shipped into the U.S. often in small quantities that are
difficult to detect.
And to make matters worse, we are now seeing fentanyl
increasingly mixed into other drugs like cocaine,
methamphetamine, and even counterfeit prescription drugs like
Oxycodone.
This means that many unsuspecting people are dying at the
hands of fentanyl when they didn't even realize they were
taking it, and this drug represents an unprecedented threat to
the U.S. and we have to do everything we can to stop this flow
into our communities.
Today, we are hearing from the key law enforcement and
regulatory agencies on the front line of this battle. Each
agency plays a critical part and has decades of experience in
this fight.
The problem, however, is that fentanyl is unlike any drug
crisis we have faced before. All of these factors point to one
conclusion. We have to think differently about how to counter
the spread of fentanyl. The old approaches simply will not
suffice.
Finally, we have repeatedly heard from experts that we
cannot arrest our way out of the opioid crisis and fentanyl is
no different. Evidence-based treatment is the best hope for
those suffering from addiction and we must support programs
that provide that help.
So today's hearing focuses on how to stop the flow in
fentanyl but this is by no means the end of the conversation. I
am committed to providing Americans suffering from opioid use
disorder access to the quality treatment they need, and this
committee will continue to shine a spotlight on this crisis to
help identify solutions including in the treatment and public
health arenas.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr.
This Committee has held many hearings on the opioid crisis
over the last several years, and with each hearing it seems the
challenge to combat the crisis grows even more daunting.
While opioid prescribing rates appear to have gone down,
overdose deaths continue to climb. Communities all around the
country are still suffering from this epidemic, now largely at
the hands of heroin and increasingly, fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a deadly synthetic drug that is 50 times more
powerful than heroin. Because it is relatively easy to make and
so potent, it is tragically leading to large increases in
overdose deaths.
We have all heard the terrible numbers that tell this
story. In 2017, there were over 47,000 opioid overdose deaths,
28,000 of those deaths involved synthetic opioids such as
fentanyl. My home state of New Jersey, for example, has seen a
tenfold increase in deaths involving fentanyl in the last
several years.
Fentanyl represents the third "wave" in the opioid crisis.
After the country was inundated with prescription opioids,
prescribing rates went down--but many of those who were already
addicted then turned to heroin.
Now the trend is shifting toward synthetic opioids like
fentanyl, which poses a unique threat. These drugs are
manufactured overseas in countries like China, oftentimes in
clandestine labs. These drugs are then shipped into the United
States, often in small quantities that are difficult to detect.
To make matters worse, we are now seeing fentanyl
increasingly mixed into other drugs like cocaine,
methamphetamine, and even counterfeit prescription drugs like
oxycodone. This means that many unsuspecting people are dying
at the hands of fentanyl when they didn't even realize they
were taking it.
This drug represents an unprecedented threat to the United
States--and we must do everything we can to stop its flow into
our communities.
Today we will hear from the key law enforcement and
regulatory agencies on the front lines of this battle. Each
agency plays a critical part and has decades of experience in
this fight. The problem, however, is that fentanyl is unlike
any drug crisis we have faced before.
Just about everything about this threat is new: how easily
it can be produced and sold, where it can be made, how it can
be trafficked into our country, how difficult it is to detect--
and of course, how deadly it is.
All of these factors point to one conclusion--we have to
think differently about how to counter the spread of fentanyl.
The old approaches simply will not suffice.
We need to hear from the agencies about how they are
adapting to this new and evolving threat, how they are thinking
of new ways to attack this problem, and especially, how they
are collaborating.
The fentanyl threat is so unprecedented, and so
challenging, that no single agency can tackle it on its own.
They must all work together.
You simply cannot let turf wars or the competition for
bringing cases stop you from cooperating with one another to
help solve this problem. The stakes are too high.
Finally, we have repeatedly heard from experts that we
cannot arrest our way out of the opioid crisis, and fentanyl is
no different. Evidence-based treatment is the best hope for
those suffering from addiction, and we must support programs
that provide that help.
Today's hearing focuses on how to stop the flow of
fentanyl, but this is by no means the end of the conversation.
I am committed to providing Americans suffering from opioid use
disorder access to the quality treatment they need. This
Committee will continue to shine a spotlight on this crisis to
help identify solutions, including in the treatment and public
health arenas.
I yield back.
Mr. Pallone.I have about two minutes left, and I'd like to
yield that now to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire, Ms.
Kuster.
Ms. Kuster. Thank you, Chairman Pallone.
We have seen the opioid crisis evolve and take many
different forms, as you described. But no community in this
country has been spared. New England and New Hampshire, in
particular, have been devastated by this crisis.
In my home state, while we have seen the rate of
prescription opioid and heroin overdose deaths decline, the
rate of fentanyl--involved overdoses has not subsided.
With the help of a coordinated approach at the local level,
the hub and spoke model ensures that every Granite Stater has
nearby access to treatment and recovery services.
But this does not solve the supply problem. We know all too
well that newer, stronger, and deadlier analogs of fentanyl
continue to proliferate and challenge our ability to prevent
needless premature deaths.
I look forward to the hearing. I look forward to your
testimony and I thank the gentlewoman chairing this
subcommittee and the chair of the committee for their attention
to this crisis.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Pallone. Thank you. I have about a minute. I don't know
if anybody else wants the time. If not, I will yield back,
Madam Chair.
Ms. DeGette. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the ranking member of the full
committee, Mr. Walden, for five minutes for purposes of an
opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON
Mr. Walden. Good morning, Madam Chair, and thank you for
holding this really, really important hearing on getting
illicit fentanyl off our streets.
As you've heard, fentanyl is so deadly a piece of it, the
size of a few grains of salt, can kill you. It reportedly led
to 49 deaths in Oregon in 2017. So, ridding our communities of
fentanyl is a key piece of combating the opioid crisis in
Oregon and across the country.
Illicit fentanyl is a tremendously difficult and dynamic
problem. It is hard to detect and is highly potent and
lucrative enough to be sent in small envelopes or packages, and
while the heroin market was monopolized by large criminal
groups, this fentanyl wave--it is harder to police.
It is coming almost entirely from the black market on the
dark web and clandestine labs in China and Mexico with many
mid-level and small operators in addition to drug smuggling
operations like the cartels.
This subcommittee last held an oversight hearing on illicit
fentanyl back in March of 2017. The need for fentanyl focused
action was clear then.
Two years later, there are numerous significant
accomplishments. Last year the committee worked in a bipartisan
way to enact the SUPPORT Act to bolster the fight against
opioids such as fentanyl. This law has helped provide advanced
electronic data of international mail shipments to help target
and intercept illicit fentanyl.
This act also provided the FDA with a new tool for
deterring imports of illicit fentanyl. As you'll recall, Dr.
Burgess went up to a mail distribution facility in New Jersey
and learned a lot and brought that back to us.
The Trump administration has spurred improved actions in
the fentanyl fight. Our nation is getting at least some
improved level of cooperation from the Chinese government on
class-based scheduling, which helps remove an incentive for
traffickers to introduce new substances in the fentanyl family
for the purpose of evading controls.
President Trump deserves credit for moving this bold
proposal based on the longstanding work of the White House
Office on National Drug Control Policy, the DEA, and the State
Department.
President Xi of China deserves some credit for agreeing to
a commitment to crack down on fentanyl as a class. We'd like to
see more there.
While it's too soon to assess the impact, early indications
are at least encouraging. And since February of 2018, DEA has
imposed emergency scheduling of fentanyl-related substances,
but we need to work with DEA and other federal agencies to find
the best approach to make this scheduling permanent.
The Stop Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogs,
or SITSA, Act, which would have given law enforcement
additional tools they need to get illicit drugs such as
fentanyl off our streets without compromising important public
health and research protections, that was included in our
House-passed version of the SUPPORT Act but, sadly, was not
included in the final package that became law.
Mr. Katko of New York, he sponsored this legislation. It
would be a good place to start again and we should make it law.
On July of 2017, the Department of Justice announced the
seizure of AlphaBay. That's the largest criminal marketplace on
the dark web and a major source of fentanyl linked to overdose
deaths.
The AlphaBay takedown was an international operation led by
the U.S. Both DEA and CBP recently made the largest seizures of
fentanyl in U.S. history and we thank you for that. Federal
agents working with local police seized 50 kilos of fentanyl
precursor in 2017.
For the first time the Justice Department announced
indictments of Chinese nationals for conspiracies to distribute
large quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs.
May of '19, a dark net drug dealer was indicted for selling
fentanyl online, thanks to Homeland Security's investigations,
a year-long nationwide undercover action, and under agreement
with the U.S. Postal Service, China Post is providing advanced
electronic data on parcels mailed to the U.S.
FDA and CBP signed an agreement in April of 2019 to
maximize inspection detection capabilities to products such as
fentanyl from entering the United States.
So, we salute these important federal workers and agencies
for their work. But we know big challenges remain. More work is
needed to get better cooperation from Mexico's law enforcement
authorities.
We need to remain vigilant with China on its fentanyl
commitment. Much more needs to be done to collect better data
on fentanyl trafficking and to improve data sharing and we want
to hear more on strategy to disrupt fentanyl trafficking.
We will be asking questions how we can strengthen our
efforts on what this committee can provide. The SUPPORT Act was
a great start, but it is not enough.
And Madam Chair, I would remind you we posted our final
oversight investigations report on the committee's Web site and
sent everybody a letter at the beginning of the year.
There were some important recommendations there I hope we
can eventually get to.
Before I conclude, I want to take a moment to recognize
Michael Gray. He is father of Amanda Beatrice Rose Gray. Amanda
died of an overdose of pure fentanyl in January of 2018--pure
fentanyl.
Michael has been a tireless advocate fighting against the
opioid epidemic and fentanyl. His efforts informed our work in
the last Congress. He was incredibly helpful in that, and let
us remember as the face of this crisis his daughter, and we
thank you for being here and we thank you for your work.
Madam Chair, in conclusion, the Actus Foundation--we have a
letter we would like entered into the record that we previewed
with you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walden follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Greg Walden
Chair DeGette, thank you for holding this hearing on
getting illicit fentanyl off our streets.
Fentanyl is so deadly that a piece the size of a few grains
of salt can kill you, and reportedly led to 49 deaths in Oregon
in 2017. Ridding our communities of fentanyl is a key piece of
combating the opioid crisis in Oregon and across the country.
Illicit fentanyl is a tremendously difficult and dynamic
problem. It is hard to detect, highly potent, and lucrative
enough to be sent in small envelopes or packages. While the
heroin market was monopolized by large criminal groups, this
fentanyl wave is harder to police. It is coming almost entirely
from the black market on the dark web and clandestine labs in
China and Mexico with many mid-level and small operators, in
addition to drug smuggling operations like the cartels.
This Subcommittee last held an oversight hearing on illicit
fentanyl in March 2017. The need then for fentanyl-focused
action was clear.
Two years later, there are numerous significant
accomplishments.
Last year, this Committee worked in a bipartisan way to
enact the SUPPORT Act to bolster the fight against opioids such
as fentanyl. This law helped provide advance electronic data of
international mail shipments to help target and intercept
illicit fentanyl. This Act also provided the FDA with a new
tool for deterring imports of illicit fentanyl.
The Trump Administration has spurred important actions in
the fentanyl fight. Our nation is getting cooperation from
China on class-based scheduling, which helps remove an
incentive for traffickers to introduce new substances in the
fentanyl family for the purpose of evading controls. President
Trump deserves credit for moving this bold proposal, based on
the longstanding work of the White House Office on National
Drug Control Policy, the DEA, and the State Department.
President Xi of China deserves credit for agreeing to a
commitment to crack down on fentanyl as a class. While it is
too soon to assess the impact, early indications seem
encouraging.
Since February 2018, DEA has imposed emergency scheduling
of fentanyl-related substances. We need to work with DEA and
other federal agencies to find the best approach to make this
scheduling permanent. The Stop the Importation & Trafficking of
Synthetic Analogues (SITSA) Act, which would have given law
enforcement additional tools they need to help get illicit
synthetic drugs, like fentanyl, off our streets without
compromising important public health and research protections
was included in the House-passed version of the SUPPORT Act,
but ultimately not included in the final package that became
law. Mr. Katko's legislation is a good place to start.
In July 2017, the Department of Justice announced the
seizure of AlphaBay, the largest criminal marketplace on the
dark web, and a major source of fentanyl linked to overdose
deaths. The AlphaBay takedown was an international operation
led by the U.S.
Both DEA and CBP recently made the largest seizures of
fentanyl in U.S. history. Federal agents working with local
police seized 50 kilos of a fentanyl precursor in May 2017,
apparently one of the largest, if not the largest, seizure of a
precursor in the U.S.
For the first time, the Justice Department announced
indictments of Chinese nationals for conspiracies to distribute
large quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs.
In May 2019, a darknet drug dealer was indicted for selling
fentanyl online, thanks to Homeland Security Investigations'
yearlong nationwide undercover actions to target vendors of
illicit goods on the dark web.
Under an agreement with the U.S. Postal Service, China Post
is providing advanced electronic data on parcels mailed to the
U.S.
FDA and CBP signed an agreement in April 2019 to maximize
inspection and detection capabilities to products such as
fentanyl from entering the U.S.
We salute the federal agencies for this work, but big
challenges remain. More work is needed to get better
cooperation from Mexico's law enforcement authorities. We need
to remain vigilant with China on its fentanyl commitment. Much
more needs to be done to collect better data on fentanyl
trafficking and to improve data-sharing. We want to hear more
on a strategy to disrupt fentanyl trafficking. We will be
asking questions on how we can strengthen our efforts, and what
help this Committee can provide.
The SUPPORT Act was a great start. Let's continue our
bipartisan legislative efforts to combat this crisis.
I look forward to the testimony and thank our witnesses for
being here today.
Ms. DeGette. Without objection, and I would add my thanks
to you, Mr. Gray, for all of your tireless work.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. DeGette. The gentleman yields back, and I now ask
unanimous consent that the Members' written opening statements
be made part of the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Ms. DeGette. I would now like to introduce our panel of
witnesses for today's hearing.
Mr. Kemp L. Chester, Assistant Director of the National
Opioids and Synthetics Coordination Group, the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy. Welcome.
Mr. Matthew Donahue, Regional Director, North and Central
Americas Operation Division, Drug Enforcement Administration at
the U.S. Department of Justice.
Mr. Thomas F. Overacker, Executive Director, Office of
Field Operations, Custom and Border Protection at the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Gary R. Barksdale, Chief Postal Inspector at the U.S.
Postal Service,
Mr. David A. Prince, Deputy Assistant Director,
Transnational Organized Crime, Homeland Security Investigation,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security.
Carol Cave, Director of the Office of Enforcement and
Import Operations, Office of Regulatory Affairs, Food and Drug
Administration at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Thank you all for appearing in front of the subcommittee
today. You are aware the committee is holding an investigative
hearing and, when doing so, has had the practice of taking
testimony under oath.
Do any of you have any objections to testifying under oath?
Let the record reflect that the witnesses have responded
no. The Chair then advises you under the rules of the House and
the rules of the committee you're entitled to be accompanied by
counsel.
Do any of you desire to be accompanied by counsel today?
Let the record reflect the witnesses have responded no. If
you would, please rise and raise your right hand so you may be
sworn in.
[Witnesses were sworn.]
Ms. DeGette. You may be seated.
Let the record reflect the witnesses have now responded
affirmatively and you are now under oath and subject to the
penalties set forth in Title 18 Section 1001 of the U.S. Code.
The Chair will now recognize the witnesses for five minutes
summary of their written statements. In front of each of you is
a microphone and a series of lights. The light turns yellow
when you have a minute left and it turns red to indicate that
your time has come to an end.
And so let's start with you, Mr. Chester. You are now
recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENTS OF KEMP CHESTER, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL
OPIOIDS AND SYNTHETICS COORDINATION GROUP, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE
OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY; MATTHEW DONAHUE, REGIONAL
DIRECTOR NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICAS, OPERATION DIVISION, DRUG
ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE; THOMAS
F. OVERACKER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF FIELD OPERATIONS,
CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY; GARY R. BARKSDALE, CHIEF POSTAL INSPECTOR, U.S.
POSTAL SERVICE; DAVID A. PRINCE, DEPUTY ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME, HOMELAND SECURITY
INVESTIGATIONS, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; CAROL CAVE, DIRECTOR, OFFICE
OF ENFORCEMENT AND IMPORT OPERATIONS, OFFICE OF REGULATORY
AFFAIRS, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND
HUMAN SERVICES
STATEMENT OF KEMP L. CHESTER
Mr. Chester. Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Member Guthrie,
members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
testify today on this critical issue.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy, under the
leadership of Director Jim Carroll, leads the development of
the administration's national drug control strategy and
oversees its implementation.
The 2019 strategy is a comprehensive plan to address the
president's top drug priority--the current opioid crisis--also
focusing on the emergence of even newer synthetic opioids and
other emerging crises such as methamphetamine use and the
increase in cocaine availability.
As part of the executive office of the president, ONDCP is
uniquely positioned and has played an integral in coordinating
a comprehensive approach to drug policy development and
implementation.
It has facilitated successful interagency collaboration,
coordination, and problem resolution on myriad drug policy
issues.
To that end, ONDCP has led countless interagency efforts
directly related to the illicit opioid problem set. ONDCP
established the National Heroin Coordination Group, recently
renamed the National Opioids and Synthetics Coordination Group,
in the fall of 2015 to apply new thinking to the heroin and
fentanyl problem and develop a novel approach to addressing it.
We worked collaboratively with the interagency in 2016 to
develop and issue the Heroin Availability Reduction Plan, or
HARP, to guide and synchronize interagency activities against
the available of heroin, fentanyl, and fentanyl analogs.
To this day, the HARP is the one document that brings
together, contextualizes, and synchronizes the Federal
Government, activities at the federal, state, local, and tribal
levels as well as in the international domain.
Ten times every month our opioids and synthetics
coordination group leads video teleconferences at all levels of
classification and nationwide webinars where departments,
agencies, state, local, and tribal officials and key embassies
share information and synchronized efforts based upon a common
understanding of the strategic trends related to the opioid
problem set.
This level of direct leadership has been instrumental in
developing a better understanding of the crisis at all levels
as well as serving as the driver for collaboration and tangible
results both domestically and with international partners.
Based upon our in-depth understanding of the opioid crisis,
key issues such as the challenges of fentanyl detection, safe
fentanyl handling, and the need for innovative public health
approaches were brought to the forefront and are currently
being addressed.
Our partnership with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has
increased interagency understanding of the international and
domestic mail flow into the United States, and U.S.
vulnerabilities in disrupting the fentanyl and synthetic opioid
supply chain.
Our collaboration with the FBI-led Joint Criminal Opioid
and Darknet Enforcement, or J-CODE, team, U.S. Customs and
Border Protection's National Targeting Center, and our
management of key international relationships with Mexico,
Canada, China, Afghanistan, and others have brought tangible
results in disrupting the flow of these dangerous drugs across
our borders.
For example, because of the interagency focus on disruptive
the fentanyl supply chain, in the spring of 2017 CBP began to
imprint odor of fentanyl on all narcotics detection K9s, and
now more than 450 dogs are trained addressing a critical
vulnerability in our detection capability.
As the fentanyl threat grew in 2016 and 2017, the lack of
good scientific information concerning the threat of fentanyl
exposure had a chilling effect on U.S. law enforcement and our
first responders.
ONDCP initiated an interagency working group to develop and
publish the fentanyl safe handling recommendations, and shortly
thereafter CBP released a companion roll call video in use
today.
ONDCP is leading an interagency process with the
Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to
schedule fentanyl analogs before the temporary action expires
while providing a framework to address the dynamic illicit drug
market in a more comprehensive manner and making all of these
substances available to the research community.
The national drug control strategy states, quote, ``While
confronting today's drug crisis to arrest its growth and reduce
its effects, we must also further develop the capability,
knowledge, and infrastructure to respond to the evolving nature
of the drug threat as we move deeper into the 21st century,''
closed quote.
The men and women of ONDCP are doing just that. I would
like to thank this committee and your House colleagues for your
foresight and leadership in addressing this critical national
security, law enforcement, and public health challenge.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Chester follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. DeGette. Thank you, Mr. Chester.
Mr. Donahue, you're now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW DONAHUE
Mr. Donahue. Good morning, Chairman DeGette, Ranking Member
Guthrie, and members of the subcommittee. It is my honor to
appear before you today to discuss the critically important
issue of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl like substances that
have had a tremendous impact on the health and safety of our
communities.
Illicit fentanyl and other fentanyl like substances are
especially dangerous drugs are often far more potent and deadly
than other drugs like heroin and cocaine.
I have had the privilege of being a DEA special agent for
almost 30 years, having worked in South America, the Caribbean,
and now North and Central American region.
When I reflect on my time with DEA, the challenge we face
with the ongoing opioid crisis, along with the sophistication,
capacity, and global reach of Mexican poly-drug cartels is what
worries me and deeply concerns me the most.
As the regional director of North and Central America
region, I see firsthand everyday the extreme lawlessness and
other atrocities committed by Mexican cartels to maintain their
dominant market share to provide illegal substances to
individuals in the United States.
The ruthlessness of these cartels, combined with their
callous greed, is devastating families and communities,
resulting in an increase of violent crime in the United States.
Dangerous and highly sophisticated cartels operating in
both Mexico and the United States have been and will continue
to be the most significant source of illicit narcotics
trafficked into and throughout the United States.
When it comes to illicit fentanyl, China is the primary
manufacturing source as well as the source of precursor
chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl outside of China.
However, I would be remiss if I didn't say that China has
taken important action to stem this manufacturing by the
extraordinary step of controlling the entire class of fentanyl-
based drugs.
History has shown that when China and the United States
have jointly controlled the drug it has drastically decreased
its importation into the United States.
However, Mexican cartels now have increasingly an important
role in the fentanyl trafficking. We have witnessed a
transition from importation of precursor chemicals for the
production of fentanyl to the manufacturing of precursor
chemicals and fentanyl within Mexico itself. This is a very
alarming development.
Fentanyl comes into the United States in three ways. It is
shipped directly to the United States through the U.S. mail
services, it is trafficked in through our northern border, and
most importantly, it is trafficked over our southern border via
Mexican cartels by various means and methods.
In many cases, fentanyl comes in the form of counterfeit
prescription pills. Oftentimes, people believe they may be
ordering Hydrocodone or Oxycodone on the internet but they're
receiving a fentanyl or a fentanyl analog, which could lead to
deadly consequences.
As a leader of DEA in Mexico, I can say confidently that we
have not been a spectator in this battle. DEA has the largest
footprint of the United States Government in Mexico. We are
addressing this threat by focussing on efforts of identifying
the supply chain and disrupting it. We are working bilaterally
and judiciously targeting and dismantling the cartels.
Through our more than 300 domestic and international field
offices, our special operations division, which works with our
interagency and international partners, we are conducting
large-scale investigations and prosecuting those who seek to
profit and are responsible for the production, transportation,
distribution, and sale of these deadly substances.
Perhaps one of the most notable examples of these efforts
is the 2016 arrest of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin Guzman
Loera, commonly known as El Chapo, who coincidentally is being
sentences tomorrow in New York City.
The DEA will continue to investigate the biggest and most
egregious organizations that are poisoning our communities. We
will continue to focus on targeting drug cartels and
significant organizations operating in and outside the United
States whose only motive is to make tremendous profits on
unsuspecting and vulnerable populations.
But there is more work to be done. On February 6, 2018, the
DEA used its authority under the Controlled Substances Act to
temporarily place all nonscheduled fentanyl like substances in
Schedule I and it has had a significant impact.
Let me reiterate that point. The temporary control of all
nonscheduled fentanyl substances has had a significant positive
impact in this fight. The class control action has
substantially slowed the rate at which new substances are
introduced to and encountered on the illicit market.
However, this temporary action expires February 2020, which
is only 206 days away. Additionally, if lawful access is not
addressed, criminals will continue to use our own laws to evade
detection and exploit members of our communities as technology
advances and law enforcement is prevented from judicial
interception and collection.
Make no mistake--no matter the challenge, DEA will never
stop aggressively pursuing the most dangerous and prolific
criminals trafficking in illicit drugs in our communities.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before your
subcommittee on this important issue and I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Donahue follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Mr. Donahue.
Mr. Overacker, you are now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS F. OVERACKER
Mr. Overacker. Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Member Guthrie,
members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to
testify before you today.
I am proud to represent the men and women of the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, our nation's unified border
agency with a vital counter narcotics mission.
On a typical day, CBP seizes more than 5,800 pounds of
narcotics that would otherwise make their way into American
communities. While today's hearing focusses on the opioid
crisis and its devastating effects, CBP is committed to
stopping all illicit drugs from crossing our borders.
For example, last month, with our partners at Homeland
Security investigations and the United States Coast Guard, CBP
seized more than 19 tons of cocaine on a container ship in
Philadelphia.
The cocaine had an estimated street value in excess of $1.3
billion and was the largest cocaine seizure in the combined
230-year history of the U.S. Customs Service and CBP.
Compared to cocaine or methamphetamine, CBP seizures of
fentanyl are relatively low. However, these seizures have
increased dramatically in recent years and that is cause for
concern.
In fiscal year 2013, CBP seized approximately two pounds of
fentanyl. Last year, we seized over 2,100 pounds. Through June
of this year, we have already seized as much as we did last
year. Most of the fentanyl coming into our country does so at
ports of entry along the Southwest border. It's brought in by
privately owned vehicles, commercial vehicles, even
pedestrians.
Less frequent is fentanyl entering through international
mail packages and express consignment environments. In those
cases, most of the shipments originate from China.
However, the fentanyl in the international mail and express
environments is far more potent and pure than the fentanyl
crossing the Southwest border. Stopping fentanyl and other
narcotics takes a collaborative effort.
Through CBP's national targeting center we work with our
partners to identify and disrupt fentanyl smuggling at ports of
entry, international mail facilities, and express consignment
carrier facilities.
Our partners include Homeland Security investigations, the
United States Postal Inspection Service, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, Health and Human Services, Food and Drug
Administration, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the
Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, and numerous other
domestic and international partners.
Based on our encounters, CBP produces intelligence products
to help identify the tactics, techniques, and flow of drug
trafficking. This enhances targeting efforts and supports
investigations.
It also provides policymakers, agency leadership, and the
intelligence community with information that can lead to drug
interdiction.
Information sharing, advanced electronic data, the
targeting of precursors and pill presses are among the many
elements that inform our actionable intelligence and allow us
to combat narcotics trafficking in a dynamic threat
environment.
In addition, CBP uses a variety of technologies and
techniques to detect and identify illicit drugs. With the
support of Congress, we are making significant investments and
improvements in these capabilities, including additional
narcotics detection K9 teams, enhanced field testing and new
nonintrusive inspection, or NII, equipment.
NII contributes to more than 98 percent of the number and
total weight of seizures. Currently, CBP scans approximately
two percent of privately-owned vehicles and 16 percent of
commercial vehicles arriving at the Southwest border ports of
entry.
To enhance our capabilities, CBP has developed a new model
port concept that prioritizes the use of drive through scanning
equipment to streamline the inspection process and increase
scanning rates, thereby increasing the probability of
interdiction.
To protect CBP personnel, who may be exposed to dangerous
substances during the course of their duties, we have deployed
more than 1,100 2-dose boxes of counter narcotic Naloxone to
train personnel in the field.
CBP was the first federal law enforcement agency to
implement such a program and we have already administered nine
lifesaving doses to members of the public.
Together, CBP and its partners are focused on enhancing
collaboration and information sharing to reduce the amounts of
illicit opioids that cross our land, air, and sea borders.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to tell our
story. I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Overacker follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much.
Mr. Barksdale, you are now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF GARY R. BARKSDALE
Mr. Barksdale. Good morning, Chair DeGette, Ranking Member
Guthrie, and members of the subcommittee.
I appreciate this opportunity to be here today to discuss
efforts to combat opioids, including fentanyl.
My name is Gary Barksdale. I am the chief postal inspector
for the United States Postal Inspection Service, the law
enforcement arm----
Ms. DeGette. Mr. Barksdale, can you move the microphone
just a little closer? Thank you.
Mr. Barksdale. Winning the battle against illicit drugs in
the mail stream is one of our top priorities. Postal inspectors
work not only to remove drugs from the mail but to investigate
and arrest individuals and disrupt drug trafficking networks
across the U.S.
Internationally, the inspection service is working
aggressively to stem the flow of illegal drugs entering the
country.
Due to the opioid crisis, nearly two years ago we created
an internal team of cross-functional subject matter experts
specifically focussed on narcotics trafficking through the
mail.
The Contraband Interdiction and Investigations team, or
CII, uses enhanced investigative methods, deploys resources as
needed, and strengthens strategic partnerships to achieve
significant improvements in our ability to seize fentanyl and
synthetic opioids from the mail.
The inspection service works closely with other law
enforcement agencies to share intelligence, coordinate cases,
and conduct joint enforcement operations to maximize our
resources and impact.
Relationships with partners such as DEA, HSI, CBP, and FDA
allow us to better advance our mission to enforce the laws that
defend the nation's mail.
Inspection Service personnel are assigned full time at
ONDCP, the DEA's Special Operations Division, the National
Fusion Center, and CBP's national targeting center.
Internationally, the Postal Inspector is now detailed at
Europol and the Hague.
We also work with state and local law enforcement to share
intelligence and conduct joint operations including several
Inspection Service sponsored task forces. These relationships
facilitate communication and data sharing that enable the
identification of drug trafficking organizations which would
not be possible without interagency cooperation.
The Inspection Service launched cyber and analytics unit to
enhance investigative techniques to better utilize data to
target parcels. Due to many illicit dark web vendors aligned
with physical delivery networks for their products, the
Inspection Service is involved with investigations into vendors
and the take down of their illicit marketplaces.
The Inspection Service has also joined DHS, CBP, and ONDCP
as a sponsor for the opioid detection challenge, which is a
global prize competition for rapid nonintrusive detection tools
that will help find illicit opioids in international mail.
Postal inspectors interdict and seize thousands of illegal
drug shipments in the mail. From fiscal year 2016 through 2018,
we achieved a thousand percent increase in international
synthetic opioid seizures and a 750 percent increase in
domestic synthetic opioid seizures.
Thus far in fiscal year 2019 we have seized 185 synthetic
opioid parcels, 153 of which were in the domestic mail stream.
Our current stats represent a decrease in international
seizures while our domestic seizures are trending up.
This shift may suggest synthetic opioids are increasingly
entering the country through means other than international
mail.
In 2018, Congress enacted the STOP Act, which requires the
Postal Service to receive advanced electronic data, or AED, on
at least 70 percent of inbound package shipments including 100
percent of shipments from the People's Republic of China by
December 2018 and 100 percent of all inbound international
shipments by December 2020.
The volume of inbound packages with AED has improved from
26 percent in October of 2017 to approximately 60 percent in
May of 2019, while the volume of packages with AED from China
has increased from 32 percent to approximately 85 percent in
May of 2019. This represents a significant improvement within a
relatively limited period of time.
The Postal Service continues to collaborate with foreign
postal operators and organizations that support international
postal operations to work towards obtained AED on 100 percent
of inbound packages and shipments.
We have significantly improved coordination with CBP and
developed processes to ensure we take action on requests to
hold packages for inspection.
The Postal Service currently has a 93 percent success rate
in the capture of CBP hold requests and they will continue to
focus on employing technology to improve interception
capability and reach 100 percent.
The Postal Service takes seriously its mission to protect
the security and sanctity of the mail and is committed to
taking all necessary actions to combat illicit drugs in the
mail.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify and I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barksdale follows:]
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Ms. DeGette. Thank you, Mr. Barksdale.
Mr. Prince, you're now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF DAVID A. PRINCE
Mr. Prince. Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Member Guthrie, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you to discuss my agency's efforts
in attacking the national opioid crisis impacting our
communities.
Homeland Security investigations is the department's
primary criminal investigative agency and is focussed on
disrupting and dismantling transnational criminal
organizations.
As the sole investigative agency with combined customs and
immigration authorities, HSI investigates and enforces more
than 400 federal criminal statutes that protect our nation's
trade, travel, financial, and immigration systems.
Today, I would like to speak about our successful efforts
in combatting the flow of illicit fentanyl into the United
States. In fiscal year 2018, HSI initiated 1,393 opioid related
criminal investigations, executed 5,262 opioid related criminal
arrests, and seized a total of 9,928 opioid--pounds of opioids,
which consisted of 2,737 pounds of fentanyl and 7,103 pounds of
heroin.
Our 2019 fiscal year statistics are set to exceed 2018
statistics in these areas. HSI has collaborated with Chinese
authorities to address the China-sourced fentanyl threat
through investigative information sharing. As of May 1st, 2019,
Chinese authorities passed legislation making all fentanyl
illegal.
However, it is still--it still remains a threat. We are now
urging general administration of China customs and China postal
services to secure its mail and express consignment industry.
Through our transnational criminal investigative units in
Mexico, HSI works to disrupt Mexico-based opioid TCOs. TCIUs
are multi-discipline units comprised of foreign law enforcement
officials who ensure that shared information and operational
activities are collaborated upon without compromise.
HSI's customs authorities extend to the virtual border of
the open internet and the dark net. HSI's Cyber Crime Center,
known as C3, provides support and assistance to global cyber
investigations targeting illicit marketplaces where fentanyl
and opioid sales proliferate.
Today, HSI has more than 700 open cyber crime
investigations and more than 200 investigations specifically
targeting criminal dark net organizations.
Many of these investigations focus on illicit opioid
suppliers. HSI is at the forefront of cyber investigations and
has been successful in developing methods to track and trace
digital crypto currency, often used as a payment system for
online opioid transactions.
In fiscal year 2018, HSI delivered its online international
opioid smuggling training course to more than 4,000 local,
state, federal, and international law enforcement partners.
This course provides law enforcement with the technical
knowledge and in-depth case briefings to assist criminal
investigations involving the dark net and crypto currency-
related crimes.
The Border Enforcement Security Task Force, known as BEST,
utilizes local, state, and federal agencies at land border sea
port, international airport, and mail facility locations to
target TCOs.
There are currently 65 BEST teams across the United States
and we have increased our presence at international mail
facilities and express consignment carrier to include JFK, LAX,
Memphis, and Louisville.
We have also established BEST teams in areas hardest hit by
the opioid epidemic such as Ohio and West Virginia. In fiscal
year 2018, BEST Memphis initiated 204 narcotic control
deliveries, executed 46 criminal arrests. It effected 149
seizures.
BEST Cleveland has initiated Operation Darkness Falls to
target top dark net vendors. Darkness Falls has led to the
disruption and dismantlement of large-scale opioid vendors to
include the largest identified fentanyl vendor with the most
verified transactions.
The National Targeting Center Investigations--NTCI--
partners with CBP and Postal Inspection Service to interdict
illicit opioids entering the United States.
Recently, NTCI assisted in an investigation where 171
pounds of fentanyl was seized from a New Jersey-based TCO
involved in the importation of opioids.
To date, this investigation is one of the largest domestic
seizures of fentanyl from China. HSI seeks to identify,
disrupt, and dismantle criminal financial networks and
leverages a multitude of investigative techniques to target
money service businesses, all cash smuggling, and crypto
currency.
In fiscal year 2019 thus far, HSI seized nearly $1.9
million in fentanyl-related digital currency and has over 268
open investigations involving the illicit use of crypto
currency.
I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you to
share HSI's efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. We will
continue our commitment to maximize our full complement of
authorities.
I thank you for the support that you provide to HSI as we
execute our mission and I look forward to any questions you
have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Prince follows:]
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Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Mr. Prince.
And Ms. Cave, you are now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF CAROL CAVE
Ms. Cave. Good morning, Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Member
Guthrie, and members of the subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to discuss
the Food and Drug Administration's role in combatting our
nation's ongoing crisis of opioid addiction, specifically
regarding fentanyl.
I am Carol Cave, the director of the Office of Enforcement
and Import Operations within FDA's Office of Regulatory
Affairs.
FDA, along with our partner government agencies, continue
to work together to consider more active and creative steps to
make inroads against this crisis.
I am pleased to be here today to discuss the work we are
doing at our nation's borders and at the international mail
facilities, or IMFs.
FDA plays an important role related to the interdiction
work that takes place in IMFs and has acted to enhance our
operations there. In the international mail environment,
Customs and Border Protection is the leading interdicting
authority for controlled substances including fentanyl and
other opioids.
As such, they examine before FDA and generally will act
against these types of shipments without forwarding for FDA for
review. FDA is focusing on inspecting and sometimes testing
products that may be counterfeit or unapproved drug products.
Last year, Congress gave FDA more tools to intercept
illicit drugs coming through our nation's IMFs by enacting the
SUPPORT Act. On behalf of FDA, I would like to thank the
members of this committee for your work on these important
authorities.
The SUPPORT Act, specifically Section 3022(d), gives the
FDA new authority to treat imported articles as drugs when they
meet certain requirements, even in the absence of certain
evidence of intended use.
This allows FDA to apply its existing authorities to
appropriately detain, refuse, and administratively destroy
these subject articles.
The implementation of this section, which began in March of
this year, has been an unquestioned success. For articles
determined to be under the 801(u) product specifically our
destruction rate is, roughly, 99 percent, thus eliminating
distribution of these products into the hands of consumers.
Additionally, on April 4th of 2019, FDA and CBP leaders
signed a letter of intent that addresses the areas of
cooperation outlined in Section 3014 of the SUPPORT Act,
including information sharing, operational coordination for
better targeting of high-risk parcels, and collaborative
strategies. FDA and CBP have actively been exploring ways to
enhance collaboration and increased efficiency of operations by
sharing existing but limited space.
As FDA is able to increase the amount of space allocated to
its activities in the IMS, FDA can further add staff, enabling
the agency to expand its admissibility review of drugs shipped
into the U.S. international mail parcels.
The letter of intent also addresses FDA's and CBP's
commitment to establish, expand its scientific presence at the
IMS considered most of risk of receiving opioids and other
illegal or dangerous drugs entering the United States.
FDA and CBP are looking at ways to develop and refine
laboratory-based methods to identify unapproved, counterfeit,
and other unlawful controlled substances.
The division of import operations managers have met several
times with their counterparts at CBP and U.S. Postal Service to
assess how our respective systems can be utilized to share data
and information on actions taken by the agencies on individual
parcels and commodities.
All three agencies are considering the most appropriate and
efficient means of using existing data streams to share IMS
specific data and investigational outcomes.
We remain committed to using our regulatory authority to
the fullest extent to address the opioid crisis including new
authorities granted by FDA--granted to FDA by the SUPPORT Act.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and I look
forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Cave follows:]
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Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Ms. Cave.
It's now time for Members to ask you questions and the
Chair will recognize herself for five minutes.
Mr. Donahue, combatting fentanyl is challenging because, as
we all know, it is cheap and easy to make. It has huge profits.
It is hard to detect in shipments and it is deadly even in
small amounts.
It's also increasingly mixed into other drugs, often
without the user's knowledge, and so that leads to more
overdoses.
Would you agree with me with that assessment of the
challenge that we are facing?
Mr. Donahue. Yes, Congresswoman. I appreciate the question
and it's not an easy one because with all the drugs and the
fentanyl and the different types of drugs coming in from other
countries we are required to have their cooperation and we
actually investigate these cartels specifically here with the
fentanyl coming in. We are concerned with China, sometimes
India, sometimes Holland where the drugs are coming in----
Ms. DeGette. Right.
Mr. Donahue [continuing]. Directly to United States and/or
to Mexico to produce it and send it up.
Ms. DeGette. But it's--because of all the things I said
it's harder to make those identifications and so working with
the other countries is even more important. Wouldn't that be
fair?
Mr. Donahue. Extremely important, and with our panel
members here as well working collectively on attacking the
people who are actually producing the drugs and shipping the
drugs and actually really the key is prosecutions.
Ms. DeGette. Right.
Mr. Donahue. We got to do something with the seizures that
we make in the United States and bring it back to the source
countries and gain their cooperation to attack the source of
the drugs.
Ms. DeGette. To do it there.
Mr. Chester, your agency has been trying to coordinate drug
control efforts for a long time. What are we doing to think
outside the box in addressing the fentanyl threat that's
different from what we've been doing with some of the previous
illicit drug control strategies?
Mr. Chester. Thank you for the question, ma'am. I think
we've done a couple of things. The first 1 is we have, through
our interagency coordination and our work with the intelligence
community and with partner nations, we are a generation ahead
of where we were before in understanding the problem first,
which I don't believe we had a good grasp on what the nature of
the problem was and we didn't have an ability----
Ms. DeGette. When was that? When was that?
Mr. Chester. This was really about the 2014-2015 time
frame, and so what this does is with this greater understanding
we can--we can look beyond the immediate actions that we take
and are better able to anticipate trafficker actions in
switching to other synthetic opioids. I think that's the first
thing.
And then I think the second thing is we look outside of the
bounds of one particular class of drugs to things like
nonsynthetic opioids and things of that nature, and our
understanding has allowed us to be able to be more--much more
anticipatory than we have been in the past.
Ms. DeGette. Do you think that the agency cooperation has
been different than it was before and if so, how?
Mr. Chester. Absolutely. I think the level of information
sharing--the first one is in the mechanisms that we have put in
place, and when I say ten times every single month all of the
members of this--of this panel and the agencies and departments
that they represent, we have mechanisms to share cooperations
at all levels of classification.
The ability to coordinate and the ability not only to shape
our own actions domestically but our approach with other
countries as well much, much better than it has been in the
past.
Ms. DeGette. Mr. Overacker, I would like to ask you, do you
agree that the agencies are doing a better job of sharing data
and working together than in the past?
Mr. Overacker. Yes, I believe so. My experience tells me
that when we can link up, you know, investigators with
operators we can do a better job of basically identifying
targets and supporting, you know, investigations in the field.
This is something we've done at our national targeting
center. It's been successful, and now with this fentanyl crisis
we've really amped up our capabilities for that purpose.
Ms. DeGette. What is it that you're doing differently now?
Obviously, we can all agree that coordination is great. But
what is it that you're doing differently?
Mr. Overacker. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say it's
different, just to say that I think what we've learned over the
years is we have to be working on this daily.
It has to--you know, it's a collaboration and it really is
something you have to work on every day and I think it's just--
the level of collaboration we have for the fentanyl crisis is
more than what we've seen for other issues in the past.
Ms. DeGette. And what can we do to help you do your job
better? Is there something--is there a better way to share data
across the agencies? Is there something that we can do to help?
Mr. Overacker. Well, you know, we certainly appreciate your
support--your continued support for CBP. As far as data
sharing, we do have, you know, data sharing arrangements with
all of these agencies, and because we work collectively at our
national targeting center we are able to share information in a
sort of rapid real-time format.
Ms. DeGette. OK. Thank you.
I yield back and recognize Mr. Guthrie for five minutes.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you very much, and I want to go down the
panel with this question, and so be mindful I got to do that in
five minutes and ask a couple of other questions, too. So, I am
going to be brief.
So, I just want each of you to say your agencies in
fentanyl, what is your biggest accomplishment the past two
years--your agencies.
I know you have done a lot, but your biggest--and then what
your biggest challenge is.
Mr. Chester. I would say that our biggest accomplishment is
the publishing of the National Drug Control Strategy, which
contextualized everything the departments and agencies are
doing in this particular regard for all drug issues, but in
this 1 specifically.
I would say that our biggest challenge is the rapidity with
which new substances appear in the United States either have
crossed our borders or are detected in post-mortem toxicology
testing.
That is--that is something that requires an enormous amount
of effort.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
Mr. Donahue?
Mr. Donahue. I would say one of our biggest accomplishment
is actually scheduling--emergency scheduling all analogs of the
fentanyl, which has really greatly helped DEA in our
investigations. One of our biggest challenges is actually
obtaining the evidence required to enter to the Grand Jury in
the United States to target these cartels that are producing
and trafficking in fentanyl in the court of law in the United
States.
We recently established our Sensitive Investigative Units
specifically for that reason to work with our counterparts to
obtain evidence in the foreign countries to utilize back in the
Grand Jury in the United States. But that's a very big
accomplishment for us that we are going to use, going forward.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
Mr. Overacker?
Mr. Overacker. From a CBP perspective, I would say one is
our detection capabilities. We now have a fully staffed 24/7
laboratory in Springfield, Virginia, dedicated exclusively to
fentanyl and we've also deployed detection equipment throughout
CBP so we can identify fentanyl in a safe way.
I would also say that our collaboration with the U.S.
Postal Inspection Service is another big success story for us
as we increased our level of effort with them. And also just
through our national targeting center the partners that we work
with there and the coordination efforts, the sort of community
of effort that we've established through the national targeting
center is important.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
Mr. Barksdale?
Mr. Barksdale. Thank you. I would say our biggest
accomplishment, as Mr. Overacker has said, is our collaboration
and data sharing, our embedded inspectors at the national
targeting center and DEA's SOD. I've seen a difference in the
type of cases we are making.
As far as challenges, I think our biggest challenge is also
one of our biggest successes is although we've improved in our
capability to attack the problem, internet sales is still a
challenge, going forward.
As good as we are taking down one site, they will quickly
stand up another site or a different marketplace so that will
be a challenge, going forward.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
Mr. Prince?
Mr. Prince. I would say some of our things that we can--we
can definitely say we've accomplished is our development of the
innovation lab, which is something we bring problem sets to to
help us expand our capability to deal with stuff like opioids
and our expansion of the BEST initiative as well, particularly
with our recent expansions, which we think are going to bear
fruit.
You know, our block chain analysis as well in the crypto
currency space is something that we are very proud of. We
continue to make inroads in that and it helps us develop much
more robust target packages on our complex conspiracy
investigations.
Obviously, China is recalcitrant when it comes to a lot of
these issues that we are dealing with that was part of our oral
testimony, and I would say that's a challenge that we continue
to deal with.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you.
Ms. Cave?
Ms. Cave. Good morning. I would say the number-one thing
for the FDA is, clearly, the 801(u) authority that was given to
us by the SUPPORT Act, which actually allows us to destroy
product when it's coming in as opposed to refusing admission
and exporting.
So thank you very much for that. In terms of challenge, I
would say it's just in the international mail facilities in
terms of the volume and the sheer volume that we are dealing
with and the advanced--you know, lack of advanced data that
comes in, for example, on addressing those issues.
Mr. Guthrie. A colleague of mine, a couple of them, have
seen different targeting centers the thing you're talking about
and just amazed at the effort that you guys are doing in
working, and then second of all, and just also amazed at the
volume you're dealing with.
So, we are mindful of that. I hope to see one of those as
well.
Mr. Donahue, I just have less than a minute left. But the
Wilson Center Mexico Institute reported that fentanyl is
entering Mexico via the Ports of Manzanilla and Lazaro
Cardenas,--we say Cardenas,, who's our colleague here--but
Cardenas,.
Do you agree with that finding and, if so, what level of
cooperation is DEA getting from Mexico law enforcement
authorities at these ports in taking and seizing fentanyl?
And when are their--I will go ahead and ask the second
question--you may answer them together. In an interview with
the Wilson Center Mexico Institute, Mexico federal forces said
that they did not believe that fentanyl was a significant part
of the Mexican drug traffickers' criminal portfolios.
In your opinion, what do you comment on that?
Mr. Donahue. They are both two big ports where we see
enormous amount of precursor chemicals coming in, not just for
fentanyl but for methamphetamine and for production of heroin
as well.
We are seeing chemicals coming in through the airports as
well from China in various forms. We are working with OFAC as
well to take those addresses that we are getting in China,
working with our offices in China to follow up to see what
laboratories they're coming from.
So you see large numbers coming in through the ports. But
we also see them coming in through the airports and other small
airports as well in Mexico.
In our assessment and active investigations and
intelligence they are synthesizing fentanyl inside of Mexico
and we've seen pill mills with industrial size pill presses
making fentanyl pills inside of Mexico, specifically on the
border, and we've had seizures in the airports of pills----
Mr. Guthrie. I didn't leave you much time to answer. My
time has expired. So, I appreciate your answer.
Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much.
The Chair now recognizes Ms. Schakowsky for five minutes.
Ms. Schakowsky. I thank the Chair and ranking member and I
thank you all for coming today to testify.
I am really glad that you all gather together to discuss
this critical issue and I believe it will require a broad
government approach to tackle the spread of illicit fentanyl
across the public health, law enforcement, and international
relations sector.
In particular, I am glad that in recent years both the
legislative and executive branches appear to have realized the
devastating failure of the previous war on drugs and have
turned to a system of helping rather than locking up drug
users, which has led to mass incarceration of hundreds of
thousands of Americans, mostly brown and black.
Recently, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar
indicated that he would be fully in support, for example, of
needle exchange programs as part of his agency's plan to combat
HIV--the HIV epidemic. But needle exchanges are also critical
responses to the opioid epidemic.
In Illinois, Lindsay Hartman of Kane County runs a van
every Saturday that provides clean needles, clean straws,
Naloxone, and everything else a drug user needs to stay alive,
and thankfully the Illinois state legislature passed a bill
last month to ensure public health vans like Lindsay's can
continue to run without fear of legal repercussions.
One important item that's on that van is--are test strips
that can detect the presence of fentanyl in drugs. A recent
study from RTI International found that, quote, ``People who
use illicitly made street opioids and tests them for fentanyl
by using fentanyl test strips are 5 times more likely to engage
in safer drug use behavior than when the test comes back
positive,'' end quote.
So you can imagine I was disappointed to learn that
Assistant Secretary of Mental Health and Substance Use Dr.
Elinore McCance-Katz has publicly come out against the use of
these test strips, and she wrote, quote, ``Is it our goal
simply to stop people from dying so they can continue a life of
'safe' heroin use or should our goal be different?'' End quote.
So Mr. Chester and Ms. Cave, and then anybody else who
would like to respond, do you believe that fentanyl testing
strips and other similar innovative measures are essential to--
for preventing death and shouldn't that be an objective in
light of the current fentanyl epidemic?
Mr. Chester. Thank you, Congresswoman. I can't speak on
behalf of anyone else. I can just----
Ms. Schakowsky. No, I am asking you.
Mr. Chester. Yes, I understand. So the approaches as we
laid out in the drug control strategy is three pillars, and two
of those three pillars are public health. One of them is to
prevent drug use before it starts and then the second one is to
provide treatment leading to long-term recovery. Those are our
main efforts, and any public health interventions, and when I
mentioned in my testimony innovative public health
interventions there are a wide range of things that we discuss
and that we consider. We look for their efficacy in the public
health space, all designed to save lives and to get people on
their path to recovery.
That is our principle concern and that is the bulk of our
efforts in the public health space specifically when it comes
to opioids.
Ms. Schakowsky. So saving lives is a goal?
Mr. Chester. Absolutely. That is the single and, as it
states in the strategy, the single criterion of success is to
save American lives and stop Americans from losing their lives
to these deadly drugs. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you.
Ms. Cave?
Ms. Cave. So to echo that, I would say I am not a scientist
or a physician either, and so I would--honestly, I would take
this back to our department and have them answer as an HHS
response in terms of what their opinion would be on this issue.
Ms. Schakowsky. OK. But it doesn't take a scientist, it
seems to me, if test strips would actually show that fentanyl
is present and prevent people--five times more people--lives
saved because of it, that that's really a values question.
Ms. Cave. Right. I would say safety, obviously, is number
one.
Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. McKinley for five minutes.
Mr. McKinley. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank
you for holding this hearing. I got to tell you, I am really
disappointed that it's taken us seven months to have another
hearing on this topic. Seven months.
It looks like we are going to get started again because we
had a hiatus from last--the last Congress. Think about it.
During the last Congress we had H.R. 6.
We had CARA, 21st Century CURES. We were having multiple
hearings on this, and then it all went silent. And I thank you
for bringing it back up again.
I think everyone has to understand during that hiatus,
during that period of time--seven months--215 people died
yesterday from substance abuse. Two hundred and fifteen people
died today. Two hundred and fifteen people are going to die
tomorrow.
In my state of West Virginia, the epicenter of this
problem, we have one person dying every eight hours from a drug
problem. I think we need to be faster with this.
So let me question, though. The theme or the concept that I
am still struggling with is that why, and I've had a
conversation with NIH.
We've had conversations with other folks. Why are--why are
Americans turning to drugs to deal with their problems? Why is
it that we have such a problem?
I've got the report here that has been filed that talks
about why America is leading the globe in the use of drugs. As
an example, in France about 350 people died two years ago from
drug overdose out of 66 million.
That's a half of a person per 100,000. In Ohio, it's 35.
Nearly 40 persons per 100,000 is dying from drugs. Why is
France not using drugs? What are they doing right in France?
Or take England, for example. England's ratio of death
overdose by drugs is 4 per 100,000. In West Virginia, it's 52.
What are we doing about--what are we actually doing?
Some of you, like Mr. Barksdale--it's not your issue with
the Postal--but I want to understand why are Americans turning
to drugs so rapidly and quickly instead of finding another way
to deal with drugs.
Because what we are dealing in this hearing right now is
the results. We want to chase the drug after it's come here. I
want to understand why our kids, adults, others, are turning to
drugs in the first place when the rest of the world isn't.
They're finding other ways to deal with this problem.
So I would like maybe each of you to tell me why is it that
you think America is using drugs at such a greater rate than
anyplace else in the world.
Start with you, Mr. Chester.
Mr. Chester. Thank you for the question, Congressman. I am
not--I am not prepared to answer why that is. I don't know just
as you don't. I think that there are a lot of--a lot of
variables as to why individuals choose to use drugs.
However, I will say that we no longer speak in terms of
supply and demand. We speak in terms of availability and use,
because we do know and our experience has shown that the
greater availability of drugs in a community the greater chance
that an individual will be able to use them for the first time
and that first use leads to chronic use very, very quickly,
particularly with opioids.
Mr. McKinley. Reclaiming my time.
Last year we had Zuckerberg in here from Facebook. We had
Dorsey in here from Twitter. And both of them were saying how--
thumping their chest they don't use--they don't sell--they
don't allow that to be sold on their platforms.
But yet, we demonstrated on both occasions that you can get
drugs without prescriptions with Facebook, Twitter, Google, all
these other accounts, and within hours each of them pulled it
back down again.
And I am here to say I am told they're back up again. So
regardless of--we took them to task. They're back out there
again.
So we talk about availability. Are our social media
platforms--are they being used and how can we structure that?
How can we in Congress do a better job to prevent Facebook,
Twitter, and others from selling drugs over the internet?
Mr. Donahue?
Mr. Donahue. Well, two things. I will get with our demand
reduction unit in our DEA headquarters because it's an
important question that you asked and I will get you our answer
and our opinion that we got with DEA why people are using
drugs.
I know one of the things we are always pushing for is the
ability to be able to judiciously intercept devices--Facebook,
other things--that we currently can't do with a judicial order
which causes a huge problem for law enforcement to infiltrate
certain organizations, not having the ability to get into
certain encrypted devices.
Mr. McKinley. Thank you. My time has expired. I yield back.
Ms. DeGette. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentle lady from New Hampshire,
Ms. Kuster.
Ms. Kuster. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you again for
holding this hearing.
As we know, the opioid epidemic continues to impact
communities across this country. This is a crisis that knows no
demographic and impacts urban and rural communities like mine
alike.
My home state of New Hampshire has been one of the hardest
hit by the country's fentanyl crisis. This is a crisis that
knows no border, no ocean deep enough, no continent broad
enough to stop the flow of deadlier and deadlier fentanyl
analogs.
As the epidemic evolves, we must evolve our approach to
combat it and if one thing having all of these agencies before
us today has shown it's that there's a greater need for an even
more coordinated approach across international, national, and
local agencies.
I want to start with you, Mr. Chester. As you have relayed,
fentanyl is the biggest driver of overdose deaths, providing
the best business model to drug traffickers, and being the
hardest to detect.
You told committee staff that enforcement has historically
been focused on interdicting 20th century drug trafficking and
that it has taken us awhile to develop the architecture and
means to combat 21st century drug trafficking.
What do you mean that fentanyl trafficking is following a
21st century architecture and what challenges do we face in
adapting our strategy to meet this new threat?
Mr. Chester. Thank you for the question, ma'am, and I do
want to be clear about one thing. We still have a 20th century
drug trafficking problem in the United States and that's
principally heroin, and New Hampshire is one of our state
partners that we hear from every single month, and we've seen
how heroin has tapered off in New Hampshire while synthetic
opioids like fentanyl and fentanyl analogs have continued--have
continued to rise.
Twentieth century drug trafficking, plant-based drugs that
are packaged, moved across the borders through a hierarchical
drug-trafficking organization, and that ends in a face-to-face
cash transaction somewhere--that's what we refer to as 20th
century drug trafficking.
Twenty-first century drug trafficking is an individual who
does not need to interface with a drug trafficker or a drug-
trafficking organization. They can get on their own laptop.
They can get on the dark web. They can go to--go to a
vendor that will sell them the drugs. They can pay for it with
bitcoin. It will be delivered directly to their house through
the mail service or through express consignment. That's what we
refer to as 21st century drug trafficking.
Unfortunately, we have both of those models that we are
dealing with right now and I will tell you that our law
enforcement community and our State Department and our other
partners have done a remarkable job in being able to take on
the 21st century drug trafficking at the same time we are still
dealing with the traditional model that we've dealt with for
30-plus years of drug policy.
Ms. Kuster. Thank you.
Mr. Prince, fentanyl poses unique challenges compared to
other drugs. Cheap to make, clandestinely produced in labs,
easily transportable and, as we know, hard to detect.
Traffickers are increasingly mixing the drug into other
narcotics as well as counterfeit prescription drugs. I ask you
what is HSI doing to tackle the fentanyl epidemic that is
uniquely different from its efforts to combatting heroin,
cocaine, and other narcotics?
Mr. Prince. Thank you for the question, ma'am.
As my colleague had illustrated the 20th century versus
21st century drug problem, I call it analog versus digital. Our
analog methodologies haven't changed in 35 years.
Surveillance, informant management, cultivation
development, cooperating defendants, execution of search and
arrest warrants, those are all our analog tools that we use
that are always going to be relevant.
They will be relevant a hundred years from now.
As far as how we deal with the digital aspect of it, we
have our innovation lab that I mentioned earlier. We have NTC
and NTCI. NTCI is placed very squarely in NTC where there's
information sharing.
Many of the people here on the panel are part of NTCI or
NTC, collaborate with us on a daily basis. We have the OCDTF
program that shepherds large-scale federal investigations in a
collaborative team effort, and the two meet.
At some point the digital crypto currency space and the
dark net activity is going to turn into something at the corner
of what I say walk and don't walk where a drug deal is done,
and that's where our ability to deal with the digital space
while at the same time dealing with the analog space is going
to bear fruit.
In my oral testimony, I mentioned just a few cases that
developed into some significant opioid and fentanyl seizures.
That's a collaboration of the digital space mingling with the
analog space and providing arrests, seizures, and significant
results.
Many of those investigations are ongoing. Some of those
investigations are over. But we are moving with the digital
transformations of the criminal enterprises. We are keeping up
with what is going on.
Ms. Kuster. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentle lady.
The Chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Walden,
for five minutes.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Madam Chair, and again, thanks to
the panel. We have two hearings going on simultaneously. So, I
am kind of bouncing between all of that.
Mr. Overacker, I was down at the Southwest border touring
some CBP facilities in Yuma, Arizona on Sunday, and I asked CBP
whether they had seen an uptick in fentanyl coming in from
Mexico in the Yuma sector.
The answer was no, they had not seen an uptick and, in
fact, drug interdictions on the whole are down across the Yuma
sector as the CBP checkpoints were shut down for months because
of the humanitarian crisis on the border, and that meant CBP
agents could not staff those checkpoints during the border
emergency, given the huge influx of people.
So, my question is the data show interdictions are down,
but with those checkpoints closed I am not sure we can rely on
those data this year.
And are there other CBP sectors being similarly impacted by
this humanitarian crisis at the border and is there anything
you can tell us about the way the cartels are using and
profiting from the humanitarian crisis to overwhelm your
agents--our agents--and then get the drugs in along the way?
What can you tell us about that?
Mr. Overacker. Thank you for the question, sir. The first
thing I would say is that what we are tracking right now is
overall our interdictions on the Southwest border are as much
as we had last year.
That includes not just what the Border Patrol does at
checkpoints. That includes our ports of entry and, roughly, 90
percent of what we seize is at a port of entry as opposed to
in--between the ports by the Border Patrol.
I understand the humanitarian crisis has impacted their
operations. They've also impacted the operations at our ports
of entry as we've redirected CBP officers to support the Border
Patrol sector.
Mr. Walden. So we were hearing.
Mr. Overacker. As a result, we've had to close lanes at
ports of entries, which has slowed the amount of traffic.
But given that 90 percent of what we seize is at a port of
entry, we are seizing just as much as we did last year overall
as an agency.
But with respect to the other Border Patrol sectors, I
would gladly take that back and get you more information on
what they are seeing as well.
Mr. Walden. You might take another look at it because some
data we were seeing over the weekend showed that it was down
considerably in some categories.
Mr. Overacker. Some categories.
Mr. Walden. And so, I just want to make sure that--you
know, we know your folks are getting overwhelmed when you go
thousands of people coming in in a given night or hundreds
where you had 10 or 20 or 30 in the past, and I know we've got
colleagues that want to get rid of CBP or get rid of ICE and
don't respect the tough conditions and what you and your folks
are doing on things like this.
But we keep hearing they're being pulled aside to do the
processing of the asylum claims. I mean, there's a lot of this
work being done. They're not out in the field doing the
interdictions.
And so, to what extent do you think this humanitarian
crisis at the border is affecting the ability to interdict
these drugs?
Mr. Overacker. Well, like I say, it has impacted not only
Border Patrol resources between the ports of entry. It is also
impacting field operations at the ports of entry in terms of
just by--just the manpower that we have to dedicate to those
traditional interceptions.
Mr. Walden. Right.
Mr. Overacker. But I think at the port of entry we've seen
things stabilize and, of course, with the apprehension numbers
declining now between the ports of entry, we think that the
situation is improving.
Mr. Walden. All right. Mr. Prince, do you have any comment
on this from your agency's view--DHS?
Mr. Prince. Most of the agents that are responding to the
border crisis are responding to human smuggling or human
trafficking events. The border crisis at some point could
create a tipping point for us in the investigative space.
At this time we are not seeing that. We are deploying
bodies, agents, to the border. Most of the agents that are
responding are already at those special agent in charge offices
along the Southwest border.
I will say that it has created some opportunities for us to
open up new portfolios in the investigative tool space, 1 of
those being DNA testing. The DNA testing is allowing us to
actually separate children who are being used in a human
trafficking scheme or a smuggling scheme.
Mr. Walden. We met with some investigators who had just
gotten that tool and said they can turn a DNA test in 90
minutes I think they told us.
Mr. Prince. Right, and the DNA testing is actually
identifying children that don't--that aren't of these
individuals that are crossing the border with them. And so we
are rescuing kids in this effort.
Mr. Walden. Yes. All right.
Madam Chair, my time has expired. Thank you all.
Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr.
Sarbanes, for five minutes.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the panel
for being here.
Obviously, we all know well the threat that fentanyl is
posing to the health and safety of our communities. We've been
hearing a lot of very strong testimony on that and the
experience in our districts clearly bears that out as well, and
it has to be a very coordinated role, which you're trying to
project here today. I appreciate that.
I did, Mr. Chester, want to focus a little bit more on the
role of ONDCP because it asserts this coordinating function
among all the various agencies that we need leaning in to
address this crisis and this threat in terms of how our federal
agencies are responding.
So tell me a little bit, to try to illustrate the
coordinating role, what would be happening if your agency did
not exist in terms of being able to pull the resources together
across these agencies.
Mr. Chester. Well, the first thing, Congressman, I think
there would be a lack of focus and a lack of direction in
advancing the administration's drug control priorities, and
that's one of the more important functions that ONDCP does is
to--is to document our priorities and lay out the lines of
effort that we are going to--that we are going to operate on. I
think that's the first thing.
I think the second thing is that the day-to-day activity of
ensuring that when departments and the agencies are doing
things in the drug control space they're doing it for a higher
purpose and they're doing it in--to get complementary effects
from other departments and agencies that are working in the
same space.
This happens all the time in government, right. You have
got three or four departments and agencies that are redundant.
They are doing the same thing.
They don't--they don't know that the other ones are
operating and that they are doing that. The third thing is when
it comes to the interface between what we are doing on the
national security and law enforcement side of the house and
what we are doing in the public health space, and we've said
from the very beginning that we can be as productive on the
front end of the supply chain of drugs coming in the country as
we want to.
But our true effectiveness has to be measured in the public
health space, and you can--you can increase seizures and
increase arrests and increase removals in the transit zone and
do all of that.
But if Americans continue to die from these drugs then
you're not being truly effective.
And ONDCP, by being an organization not only in the
executive office of the president but one that has national
security, law enforcement, and public health responsibilities,
we are the organization that can bring both of those things
together in a complementary fashion, unlike----
Mr. Sarbanes. So let me--let me follow up on that, because
that last observation in terms of the health dimension of
this--the public health dimension may be a rationale for why
some of the grant programs that you have previously
administered are being proposed to be placed in other
agencies--the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program.
Maybe I think it would go to DOJ and the drug-free
community support programs at HHS.
So maybe you could explain why that decision is being made,
and then in terms of your emphasizing the role that the--the
importance, the priority, that the administration gives to this
fight and the coordinating, sort of traffic cop role that your
agency can play in that.
I don't, frankly, understand how the administration has
come I think three years running in its proposed budget with a
proposal to cut your budget by 90 percent.
Now, we have restored in our appropriations--we recognize
the value that your agency plays and I think we even plussed it
up over prior years because we want you to play that role.
But you need to help me reconcile what you just said, which
I agree with, that this should be a priority and it should
reflect the administration's emphasis here on coordinating the
efforts of all these agencies--on the one hand, reconcile that
with the fact that the president's budget keeps coming with a
90 percent proposed cut; on the other hand, which doesn't send,
I wouldn't think, the right message in terms of the role you
want to play with respect to all of these agencies in terms of
coordination.
So I won't ask any more questions because I am out of time.
But if you could answer that I would appreciate it.
Mr. Chester. Thank you, Congressman.
The discussion about those 2 particular grant programs has
been going on for many, many years, and the Congress has
decided where those programs would be originally placed at
their inception and the Congress will decide where they go.
I will tell you that both the HIDTA and the DFC program are
critical to not only the coordination that we do across the
federal government, and we'll talk about the HIDTA program for
a second, but the integration of federal, state, local, and
tribal together is incredibly important, and to ensure that
that function is rolled into the broader efforts that ONDCP
does is working very, very well.
When we talk about preventing drug use before it starts. I
would struggle to find a program more successful than the drug-
free communities program doing just that.
And so the placement of the HIDTA program and the DFCs
together is a great example of what I talked about in bringing
our national security, law enforcement, and our public health
programs together in one place and ONDCP is glad to have those
programs.
Ms. DeGette. Thank you, Mr. Chester.
The Chair now recognizes Mr.--the gentleman from Virginia,
Mr. Griffith, for five minutes.
Mr. Griffith. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and
appreciate you calling this hearing. I know how important this
subject and other drug issues are to you, and I do appreciate
it.
Let me quickly say in response to the previous questioning
that I fully support the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
program and it's been very helpful in my district.
Mr. Chester, in May of 2017, the Drug Enforcement
Administration recovered 50 kilos of NPP. Now, I am going to
botch this up, but that's N-Phenethyl-4-piperidinone--if I got
close. But NPP is what we'll call it, a fentanyl precursor
chemical that could yield about 19 million fentanyl tablets
with a street value of more than $570 million.
The NPP was found in a storage locker in Northborough,
Massachusetts. This recovery of NPP was one of the DEA's
largest seizures of a fentanyl precursor chemical in U.S.
history.
It had been believed prior to that that fentanyl synthesis
using precursor chemicals is conducted at clandestine labs in
China or in Mexico. But this appears to call that into
question.
Prior to May 2017, do you recall any previous fentanyl
precursor seizures of this size indicating possible synthesis
occurring here in the U.S.? Yes or no.
Mr. Chester. I do not recall a seizure of that size prior
to that event. No, sir.
Mr. Griffith. And given the size of the seizure that it was
a fentanyl precursor chemical and would presumably support a
nearby fentanyl synthesis lab in the United States, would this
case be important enough to the Office of National Drug Control
Policy-ONDCP--on fentanyl issues to be notified about it and
briefed about it? Yes or no.
Mr. Chester. Yes, it would be. But when I get the chance I
would like to talk about its--NPP's relationship with fentanyl
synthesis. But please finish your questions.
Mr. Griffith. All right. Let me get--let me keep moving.
Did the DEA report or brief you--did they either report to
you or brief you or someone else at the Office of ONDCP about
this situation?
Mr. Chester. I don't remember a specific briefing. But we
get continual reports from the DEA on drug events.
Mr. Griffith. But you don't remember getting one on this
one?
Mr. Chester. This one is not particularly memorable to me.
No, sir.
Mr. Griffith. Even though it would have been a very large
size. I mean, this is--this is what it looks like and it's just
one of the precursors, and that's a picture of what they
seized. That's a fairly significant amount of precursor when
you realize it could be--back to my notes--19 million fentanyl
tablets with a street value of $570 million. I would have
thought you might remember that if you had been informed of it.
I understand you don't. That's fine.
In cases like this, do you believe sharing information
would be helpful to law enforcement?
Mr. Chester. Yes, and I will tell you that we have many,
many, many mechanisms to be able to share information and
intelligence information. In this particular case as a
precursor chemical we do know a couple of things.
The first 1 is the presence of a precursor chemical in the
United States does not necessarily mean that there's synthesis
going on nearby because precursor chemicals are shipped from
the United States to other countries.
And the second thing is about 2 months before that
particular seizure, under United States leadership the
international community placed controls on the two chemicals
related to fentanyl synthesis--NPP, which was the one that was
seized, and ANPP. So----
Mr. Griffith. OK. In this case--let's see that picture
again, if we could--on many of those boxes there are Chinese
characters. It would indicate it did not come from the United
States. It came in--the precursor came in from China to the
United States.
Mr. Chester. Absolutely, and it could be--although I don't
know this, it could be that the individual was warehousing it
for use, not turning it into someplace close by. We don't know.
Mr. Griffith. OK. And here's my problem, and Mr. Donahue, I
am going to ask you a question about whether or not your agency
notified them. Here's my problem.
If we found that precursor, it would seem to me you would
want to at least check, see who the storage locker belonged to,
do an investigation, and it would seem like to me there needed
to be a lot of coordination.
And as far as I know, that didn't happen.
Mr. Donahue, do you know if your agency briefed other
agencies and Mr. Chester's agency on this particular seizure of
a large amount of precursor?
Mr. Donahue. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to
that. The case is currently under investigation. It's coming up
to trial, which is a lot of times why stuff is not put out in
the open due to the protections of the people testifying.
We daily notify other agencies on seizures that are made.
That specific seizure was work with state and locals as well.
It's ongoing. It was built up, and it's still ongoing, and we
do these daily--these types of investigations--at our
international scale.
So you mentioned the markings that are in Chinese. They go
to our offices over in Beijing, which follow up on those
companies, whether we can task a foreign country to do certain
intel gathering for us to bring it back, to identify the source
all the way back to where the seizure is made.
So we do the follow up on those investigations. So
sometimes they take a year, sometimes six months, sometimes two
years because you're dealing with foreign countries.
Mr. Griffith. We are already on two years and it doesn't
look like we followed up.
And, look, I think we need to just do a lot better job. Mr.
Barksdale might have been liked to have known about that so he
could check those addresses out.
I think we do a better job if we are all working together
and as President Reagan said, there's no limit to the amount of
good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.
And I yield back.
Ms. DeGette. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr.
Tonko, for five minutes.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Madam Chair.
As others have stated today, the fentanyl threat is unlike
any drug problem we have seen before and it is going to take
the totality of the Federal Government's capabilities to fight
it.
Each of these agencies has unique skill sets. But they each
only see a piece of this picture. We need them to actually come
together and pool their resources, information, and expertise.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that that's happening as
much as it could. For example, committee staff visited CBP's
National Target Center and saw how CBP is able to use
algorithms to target shipments and packages likely to contain
contraband.
But that is only as good as the data that is fed into the
system, and CBP does not receive all of the data it could from
other agencies.
So how do we get past this burden, Mr. Overacker? Why is
this--why are we not getting the most that we can here? What is
holding back the progress that we need to realize?
Mr. Overacker. Well, I would say that, first of all, we do
have good levels of collaboration. We do receive data that is
required by regulation and then we fuse that data with other
information to try to identify high risk.
Mr. Tonko. But if I might, though--see, when we look at the
National Target Center visit, they're saying it's not happening
as well as it could.
What is holding that back?
Mr. Overacker. Well, there is room for improvement and I
would just say that this is an example within the law
enforcement community of where I believe that we need to have
investigators get to a comfort level where they can share their
case information with CBP, knowing that as law enforcement
officers, ourselves, that we can protect those cases.
But we can also use that information to advance those cases
by basically giving them greater feedback and greater
information.
So I just think it's a question of education of the
investigators in the field of what our capabilities are and
what value we can add to their cases.
Mr. Tonko. And what additional data would CBP like to
receive from other agencies involved in this fight to feed into
your targeting system?
Mr. Overacker. Well, like I said, I think the case-specific
information, that will allow us to pinpoint target and also
provide meaningful interdictions for those agents in the field.
Mr. Tonko. And, Mr. Donahue, I understand DEA frequently
shares data with CBP on specific cases when DEA deems it
appropriate. But what is stopping DEA from providing CBP with
more data on an automatic ongoing routine basis?
Mr. Donahue. We work with CBP daily down in Mexico City and
various other countries. We are mandated by DOJ policy to
provide all of our data into the Special Operations Division
where there's over 38 foreign and domestic agencies, both
state, local, and federal, that seize that data that can share
it and CBP actually has officers stationed in the Special
Operations Division, and we work a lot along the border with
them passing information on seizures that we need them to make
for our investigative purposes that we can use in a court of
law in United States.
So there's daily engagement.
Mr. Tonko. Why then is CBP stating that they're not
receiving all of the data that they need to?
Mr. Donahue. You know, I don't--they're not tied in
directly to SOD but they can see all of our data there because
they have representatives stationed in the Special Operations
Division that coordinate with all the other agencies there to
include people out in the field and in foreign offices.
Mr. Tonko. Well, let me give a specific example. If DEA
executes a search warrant related to fentanyl and discovers
packages containing fentanyl that include names and addresses,
can that information automatically be sent to CBP for it to
interdict all related shipments coming in?
Mr. Donahue. If they're working that investigation in
conjunction with DEA, they would have it right then and there.
We provide all that to our targeting over in SOD and they
would, in turn, share it with the CBP officer there when they
could give value add to that investigation to help identifying
the people responsible for that seizure.
Mr. Tonko. Well, Mr. Chester, this is one of ONDCP's
essential missions, to make sure that these agencies are
working together and sharing all of the information that they
can. But, clearly, there is more that can be done in terms of
ongoing information sharing and for there to be this
proclamation by some of the groups saying we are not doing as
well as we should. What are the roadblocks here?
Mr. Chester. Clearly, there are roadblocks. There is always
room for improvement in the ability----
Mr. Tonko. But what are the roadblocks?
Mr. Chester. I think some of them may be procedural. Some
of them may be technical in nature, the ability for databases
to speak with--to one another on a routine basis, and as those
issues arise we absolutely are more than happy to work with the
interagency to try and reduce them, as you pointed out.
Mr. Tonko. But why can't we link up more of these data
systems so that the agencies can help one another?
Mr. Chester. Yes, sir. We would have to take a good close
look at the reason why it's not happening and fix that problem.
We absolutely will.
Mr. Tonko. We have a crisis on our hands. Why are we not
taking that closer look?
Mr. Chester. Yes, sir.
Mr. Tonko. We could look at it. Why aren't we?
Mr. Chester. We absolutely will look at it. This particular
case that you raise we absolutely will take a look at why the
information is not routinely shared and we will reduce that
barrier and make sure that that happens.
Mr. Tonko. Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. DeGette. The Chair now recognizes the gentle lady from
Indiana, Mrs. Brooks, for five minutes.
Mrs. Brooks. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for holding this
incredibly important hearing. I am really pleased that we are
focusing in large part on law enforcement issues.
I am a former U.S. attorney from '01 to '07, and so worked
with all of your agencies. Was there when Homeland Security was
stood up, and so just want to thank you all very, very much for
your work.
I think what the frustration is is we are trying to
determine if there are any legal barriers, legal authorities,
or anything that is keeping the agencies from sharing at the
level that we all think you should be sharing at.
And so my question is to any of you, and your counsels who
might be here, are there any legal barriers that exist in law
that are keeping you from sharing information?
Discovery issues--is there anything? Mr. Donahue, anything
you know of?
Mr. Donahue. I think that depends on what the seizure is,
if it's actually in judicial processes--is it actually
protected information from other countries.
But there is no legal, you know, policy or anything
preventing us from sharing information. I could tell you what
we've done in Mexico City in our offices. We have HSI agents
and FBI agents sitting right in the office with DEA for that
deconfliction purpose and for the immediate sharing of
information.
Mrs. Brooks. OK. And do any of the other agencies know of
any legal reasons why our law enforcement agencies aren't
sharing or can't share anything? Or is it just operational?
Mr. Overacker. I am not aware of any legal restriction----
Mrs. Brooks. OK.
Mr. Overacker [continuing]. And I think our default
position always should be we have an obligation to share.
Mrs. Brooks. OK. And I assume--is that anything different?
Mr. Prince. Again, yes, I am not aware of any legal
prohibitions but I think that, you know, the size of some of
these agencies--these are large enterprises that we are talking
about.
But a lot of these gaps are closed through deconfliction
houses, case coordination such as OCDTF, HIDTA. A lot of these
things I am sure you're very much aware of, and I think it's
not--these aren't insurmountable issues. These are issues that
we collaborate on daily----
Mrs. Brooks. Right.
Mr. Prince [continuing]. With respect to the international
space----
Mrs. Brooks. OK. Just wanted to make sure there were no
legal impediments because actually Mr. Donahue talked about a
legal impediment, which I've been very concerned about for a
long time, and that's the encrypted phones, which we have not
resolved, have we, Mr. Donahue?
Mr. Donahue. No, we've been pending that issue for years
now.
Mrs. Brooks. OK. And could you very succinctly remind us
all what that is?
Mr. Donahue. So it's a law that's going to enable us to
judicially intercept a device that's signed by a judge on a
target that we can demonstrate is violating U.S. law.
Mrs. Brooks. But then the encryption is what's keeping you
from getting to the information in the phone. Is that correct?
Mr. Donahue. Correct. Certain companies don't cooperate--
aren't obligated to cooperate to give us the technology to
intercept the encryption.
Mrs. Brooks. OK. I want to talk about some of the
technology challenges, and Mr. Prince, you talked about the
dark web, and can you please share with us what--how it is that
it's more of a law enforcement challenge than, you know, other
issues that we've seen and whether the issues with cryptic
currency, and I just read that Facebook is now contemplating a
currency. Can you please talk with us about any successes or
challenges you're having on the dark web?
Mr. Prince. The successes are I mentioned in my oral
testimony. The challenges are, obviously, with respect to
crypto currency and that when we are looking at transactions
that are occurring in the dark net and the dark net is largely
where nefarious activities are occurring and transactions are
happening.
We don't necessarily know what these purchases and sales
are unless or until we arrest an individual who is engaged in
this criminal activity and perhaps commandeer their account, in
which case we can see their entire wallet and what those
transactions translate to.
If we are looking at it from the outside in what we see is
transactions that are occurring we can presume that those
transactions are in fact criminal in nature because we are in
the dark net space. But we don't know what they're selling,
what they're buying.
So those are some challenges. But we overcome those
challenges through a variety of different techniques that I
can't really get into here.
Mrs. Brooks. Right.
Mr. Prince. But, certainly, we do make an impact and we are
making inroads in that space.
Mrs. Brooks. And I would like to follow up on that further.
But one thing that I know CBP mentioned but I would also like
to ask you, Mr. Barksdale. Can we talk a little bit in my time
that I have left about the Narcan availability for--I know it's
at key facilities.
Obviously, when we are dealing with fentanyl all the law
enforcement--everyone who touches it it's of significant
concern because it could kill.
What percentage of postal and--I am curious, and I think
we'll have to do this in written form to all the agencies--what
percentage of your officers have access to Narcan?
Mr. Barksdale. Well, first, as far as postal inspectors,
every postal inspector has access to Narcan.
Mrs. Brooks. OK. Good.
Mr. Barksdale. Those on our drug teams has access to
Narcan.
On the operational side, all of our key facilities does
have Narcan distributed to them, and that would include all of
our process and in distribution centers and other large
facilities.
As far as the percentage of employees that covers, I will
have to get back to you with an exact number.
Mrs. Brooks. OK. And I will be submitting for--written
questions about the availability of Narcan, the percentage of
your employees that are all covered or have access to that
because I think this is a serious issue for law enforcement.
Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. DeGette. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, for five minutes.
Mr. Kennedy. Thank you, Madame Chair. Thank you for hosting
this incredibly important hearing. Thank you for the witnesses
to be here today and for your service to our country.
A number of complexities that--and hot issues that been
brought up over the course of the testimony today, and I
appreciate your focus on that.
I want to try to drill down on some of that, given that
Congress has the opportunity to make some changes here and some
investments here that I think are necessary, although we need
to do that right.
So, Mr. Overacker, you told us earlier that, quote, ``Most
of the illicit fentanyl entering our country by weight does so
at ports of entry along the Southwest border by private
vehicles, pedestrian, and commercial vehicles,'' and that,
quote, ``Fentanyl entering from the northern border does so by
international mail packages and express consignment courier,''
end quote.
So in your opinion, sir, would a border wall at a cost of
up to $25 billion be the most effective way to stop fentanyl
from arriving in our country through mail and ports of entry?
Mr. Overacker. Let me just say that I think when we talk
about border management you have to have a comprehensive
approach. You know, most of what we encounter is at a port of
entry and--but we are working with--working to change our
concept of operations at these ports so we can increase the
scanning rates, and when we increase those scanning rates I
think it will have an impact on the patterns of crossing and if
we deter these drugs----
Mr. Kennedy. Understood.
Mr. Overacker [continuing]. Deter them from coming to the
ports they're going to go someplace else.
Mr. Kennedy. Right. So I am going to interpret that based
upon the phrasing in which you answered that question as a no,
not the most effective way to spend the initial first $25
billion.
So if Congress was to appropriate $25 billion to the CBP to
combat fentanyl trafficking, would you choose to spend that
money on a border wall or, as you said, increase technology
focused on screening cars and pedestrians at ports of entry and
packages that are arriving through the mail?
Mr. Overacker. Well, in the 2019 appropriation we received
$570 million to improve our scanning capabilities at ports of
entry----
Mr. Kennedy. And given what you just said, we are not there
yet in terms of trying to----
Mr. Overacker. No, that's going to be a multi-year
investment. But that's our first priority right there.
Mr. Kennedy. Appreciate that, sir.
Mr. Donahue, if given $25 billion by Congress, do you
believe the most effective way to stop any arrival of illicit
drugs to the United States is a border wall?
Mr. Donahue. Again, collectively, with all different tools,
can't say, you know, it won't help. I mean, I can't say it's
the solution. But it would help. It's just another tool in our
toolbox that we can actually filter certain threats to certain
areas and we can focus on in personnel----
Mr. Kennedy. So but the most--if you had $25 billion is the
intervention that you would go with first a border wall?
Mr. Donahue. It would just be part of our comprehensive
plan on how we approach the issue.
Mr. Kennedy. Sir, you touched on the importance of
treatment and recovery options here in the United States as a
way to reduce demand.
Do you think that a $25 billion border wall would help us
increase access to care in places like Massachusetts that would
lead to reduced demand?
Mr. Donahue. I mean, again, that's part of our--we believe
in the rehabilitation. We believe in the demand reduction and
the enforcement, and the international focus on the sources of
supply. So we----
Mr. Kennedy. And so would that----
Mr. Donahue [continuing]. We'd spread that money out, look
at it collectively on the entire problem.
Mr. Kennedy. And so that $25 billion could be spent on
something like Medicaid, which is the largest payer of mental
behavior health services in the country that accounts for more
than 40 percent or nearly 40 percent of all adults with opioid
addition in the country?
Mr. Donahue. It would help that too, and our concern is to
have less drugs and less flow into the United States, have less
drugs addicts and less people dependent on those programs.
Mr. Kennedy. And so if I am understanding your answer that
that would help--expanding access to Medicaid would be a
critically important part to ensuring that people get access to
the treatment that's necessary.
Mr. Donahue. The DEA doesn't run anything on--in Medicaid.
We are targeting the cartels that are responsible for bringing
the drugs into the country.
Mr. Kennedy. Right. But as you said, if you're trying to
reduce demand, getting people treated that are affected with
addiction is probably part of that, no?
Mr. Donahue. Yes, it is.
Mr. Kennedy. OK.
Mr. Chester, on multiple occasions the administration has
opposed--has proposed gutting ONDCP by 95 percent. Do you
believe that our response to this epidemic would be improved
without a centralized agency tasked with leading that response?
Mr. Chester. As the central EOP office for advancing the
administration's drug control policy, ONDCP has been very
effective in doing that role.
Mr. Kennedy. Do you think cutting your budget by 95 percent
would make you more effective or less effective?
Mr. Chester. Well, clearly, cutting our budget by 95
percent would make us less effective.
But I will also tell you that the administration's support
for ONDCP has been very strong and they've allowed us to do our
jobs very, very well in this particular crisis over the last--
--
Mr. Kennedy. Would you characterized the proposed cut by 95
percent as being very strong support, sir?
Mr. Chester. The proposed cut by 95 percent was the
inclusion of the other two programs that were very pricey. So
it wasn't a--it wasn't 100 people from ONDCP became five
people.
But what I will tell you that the relationship that we have
with the administration they have allowed us to be able to do
our jobs at advancing the drug policy across the federal
government.
Mr. Kennedy. So why do you think they'd propose cutting
your office by 95 percent?
Mr. Chester. I think that these were all parts of budget
discussions in the past but we are all very glad that ONDCP
exists and continues to do its good work to this day.
Mr. Kennedy. Me, too. Thank you.
I yield back.
Ms. DeGette. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman
fromOklahoma, Mr. Mullin.
Mr. Mullin. Thank you, Madam Chair.
My questions are going to be for Mr. Donahue and Mr.
Overacker, if you could both kind of answer when you can.
How much fentanyl is coming directly from China?
Mr. Overacker. So the fentanyl that comes directly from
China typically we see that in mail or express, and I can tell
you that----
Mr. Mullin. How much? I mean, give me--like, how much have
we--have we stopped? How much do we estimate is entering the
country from China directly?
Mr. Overacker. Well, the numbers have dropped precipitously
this year.
Mr. Mullin. OK.
Mr. Overacker. So we are talking about only pounds of
fentanyl----
Mr. Mullin. Pounds?
Mr. Overacker [continuing]. That we have encountered so far
this year.
Mr. Mullin. Mr. Donahue?
Mr. Donahue. We couldn't give you the exact number coming
in because we only know what we know. We can give you our
seizures numbers that----
Mr. Mullin. Right. That's what I am looking for. How much
have you seized?
Mr. Donahue. So I will get those exact seizure numbers for
you.
Mr. Mullin. Thank you.
Mr. Donahue. One thing we are looking for in China is
actually the precursor chemicals coming from China actually
utilized to produce more fentanyl.
Mr. Mullin. How much is coming over our southern border
that we are apprehending?
Mr. Overacker. On the southern border, that's where,
basically, most of what we are seeing----
Mr. Mullin. Right.
Mr. Overacker [continuing]. And I think this year we are
tracking at over 1,800 pounds or----
Mr. Mullin. Eighteen hundred pounds.
Mr. Overacker [continuing]. Close to 2,000 so far. But this
is not pure fentanyl. This is fentanyl that would be either----
Mr. Mullin. It's laced. Right. I get it. Right.
Mr. Overacker [continuing]. Yes, laced or cut or however
you want to----
Mr. Mullin. I get it. Mr. Donahue, would you agree with
those numbers?
Mr. Donahue. They seem accurate, and we see a lot going up
through the corridor for Tijuana and Mexico.
Mr. Mullin. Are we grabbing most of that at the port of
entry?
Mr. Overacker. Absolutely. Ninety percent of our seizures
occur at a port of entry.
Mr. Mullin. And if I am--if I am not mistaken we are only
inspecting, roughly, 20 percent of the--of the vehicles. We are
only able to inspect 20 percent of the vehicles coming across
the port of entry. Is that correct?
Mr. Overacker. Well, currently, our scanning rates for
privately-owned vehicles coming across the southern border are
around two percent and it's, roughly, 16 percent for commercial
vehicles, and that's really a function of the volume of what's
crossing. We have----
Mr. Mullin. Well, the point I am trying to get to is my
colleague that was before me was bringing up the $25 billion
for the southern border for building the wall, and underneath
the president's proposal he also designated a significant
amount of money for the port of entry to scan 100 percent of
the vehicles as they was driving through because right now we
are only inspecting, roughly, 20 percent and we are already
catching the largest amount but through the port of entry.
To get back to what my colleague was referring to, would
the wall work. Well, what the wall would do is draw more people
to that port of entry. Is that not correct? If the wall is
there, then they would have to look for a more--a different
avenue to be able to enter the country through, which would be
the legal point of entries.
Mr. Donahue, would you like to respond to that?
Mr. Donahue. We do a lot of great work with CBP and passing
information when we can drive people or operations that we do
at the port of entry where we can focus on cars and trucks.
Mr. Mullin. It's to funnel them there to a certain point.
Mr. Donahue. Yes.
Mr. Mullin. So would the wall help funnel that?
Mr. Donahue. Absolutely would.
Mr. Mullin. Mr. Overacker, would you agree with that?
Mr. Overacker. I would say that the port of entry is a
controlled place.
Mr. Mullin. Sure. Where the--where the open border isn't,
correct?
Mr. Overacker. And so because it's a controlled place and
we have better opportunities to interdict.
Mr. Mullin. OK. So my point that I am trying to drive home
here is there's not just one thing that's going to solve this
problem.
But the amount that we can keep from flowing over our
southern border, which is where the majority of the drugs are
coming from--if we can get a better control on that and
designate dollars specifically for those and make our southern
border a harder target rather than right now being an easy
target because, as we all know, the easy target is an
opportunity for success and a harder target most criminals
aren't going to attack.
If we are able to make it a hard target, would that help us
with combatting the overdoses that are taking place and the
addiction issues that are taking place here inside the United
States?
Mr. Donahue. We look at all tools because, you know, we are
speaking about fentanyl today and we are concerned with the
enormous amount of methamphetamine that's being produced that's
coming up----
Mr. Mullin. Right.
Mr. Donahue [continuing]. The enormous amount of cocaine
and the heroin as well, which are bulky to bring in that they
need big trucks to do it.
So we are looking at every tool possible to identify and
disrupt and seize those drugs that are coming in.
Mr. Mullin. With the amount of human trafficking that's
going on in our southern border right now--the overflow that's
taking place--is it distracting your mission from being able
to--being able to look directly to drug trafficking or you have
to spend resources to the human trafficking side of it, too?
Mr. Overacker, you want to----
Mr. Overacker. Well, there's no question that the current
conditions on the Southwest border have caused us to have to
shift, you know, our personnel. So it does have some impact.
There's no question about that.
Mr. Mullin. See, what I am thinking is that the cartels are
purposely flooding our southern border so that the drug routes
can be easily accessed because they know that we having to put
resources to the human trafficking crisis that's taking place
and the humanitarian that's taking place.
So the wall, to which my colleague brought up, is to help
all the above picture, not just one single issue.
With that, I will yield back.
Ms. DeGette. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Duncan for five minutes.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thanks for
holding this hearing.
I sat here a long time listening because I am concerned
about the 28,000 deaths in the United States from synthetic
opioids like fentanyl.
And my colleague made a great point just now that cartels
are going to exploit weaknesses or crises to get their product
across. I think they are. I think walls do work and I think
they create corridors that our law enforcement can better
utilize the resources we give them within those corridors to
stop the bad guys from wanting to bring these horrendous drugs
into our cities and killing our fellow Americans.
I've been sitting here and for--sat here for several hours
listening to all the other questions. One of the benefits or
challenges being last is all the groovy questions have been
asked.
You all have been great to answer those questions. I want
to give you a chance to tell us what more we can do in
Congress. We passed the SUPPORT Act last year, the SUPPORT for
Patients and Communities Act. I want to see the implementation
of that.
But what I would like to do is just ask Mr. Overacker first
what can we do in Congress to help keep our law enforcement
officers best positioned to continue infiltrating the supply
chain. What more can we do?
Mr. Overacker. Thank you for that, Congressman.
First of all, I would just like to say that we are very
fortunate that Congress has supported us most generously over
the last two budgets with respect to our detection
capabilities, and so we are grateful for that, and we know we
have a multi-year effort to improve our scanning capabilities
on the Southwest border but also throughout CBP.
We are also grateful for the continued support we've
received with respect to improving our laboratory capabilities
and also appropriations for improving our facilities.
That's an important part, particularly what we are doing
now to improve the international mail facilities where we
process mail with the U.S. Postal Service.
So that continued support is most helpful for us. So that's
what I would say, just thank you for the support we've received
so far.
Mr. Duncan. Let me ask Mr. Donahue from the DEA standpoint.
What can we do to help you disrupt the distribution process of
opioids and what more can we do?
Mr. Donahue. I think having hearings and meetings like this
and keeping it to the forefront is really important, and
inviting DEA to these meetings. We bring something specific to
the table.
We have extraordinary amount of resources in our overseas
offices which is where the drugs come from--the cocaine, the
methamphetamine, the heroin, the fentanyl. It all comes from
international and other countries.
So bringing this to the forefront I think is really
important for the DEA and letting our message get out there,
and I think having the youth and other people seeing the damage
of the drugs that are coming in from a foreign country, just
the damage to our cultures and our communities. It's really
important not to do it every six months but to do it daily.
Mr. Duncan. I've got a--my best friend from college is a
doctor and we talked about fentanyl just this week, and we were
talking about the smuggling efforts.
And as you guys become more and more effective, my concern
is the very potent fentanyl could be put into food supplies as
part of the smuggling effort in containers and contaminate food
supply that ultimately gets in.
Not talking about drug users that are looking for that
stronger high. I am talking about fentanyl get into an area
where it contaminates food or liquids that ultimately end up on
the digestives systems of just average Americans, and then we
have a lot of other innocent deaths.
I want to ask Mr. Prince with HSI--you know, as containers
are being brought in, I know HSI is doing a great job overseas.
Is that a reality that we should think about is fentanyl
contaminating any other sort of food supply or liquids that are
coming into this country?
Mr. Prince. I think it's an abstract thought that I have
that I will share but, you know, lack of imagination is
something that we shouldn't have when it comes to fentanyl in
the same sense that when you think about 9/11 and how that
happened.
So we should have an imagination about the various ways
that fentanyl can be introduced into the United States as we
put pressure on organizations. We should be creative. We should
continue to leverage tools that we have. We should continue to
create new tools and expand our aperture within the cyber
space.
And don't forget about our, as I mentioned earlier, our
analog tool sets that allow us to also be effective.
Mr. Duncan. Madam Chairwoman, before I came to this
committee I was on the Homeland Security, and I was on the
Border and Customs Border Patrol--Border and Maritime
Subcommittee.
We went to the ports and we looked at container security,
and we looked at the screen for radioactive devices. We looked
at what drug smugglers have done.
But fentanyl being put on containers it's going to be very
difficult for these guys to detect. That's something we ought
to consider in future hearings.
And with that, I yield back.
Ms. DeGette. The gentleman is right. Fentanyl is really
difficult to detect and that's 1 of the real dangers.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for coming today. Your
participation has been very informative and helpful.
I do have a document that Ms. Schakowsky asked me to enter
into the record. It's an article from the International Journal
of Drug Policy and I would ask unanimous consent. So ordered.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Ms. DeGette. I can assure all of you, and everyone in the
audience, this committee does intend to stay on this issue.
This has been a multi-year process, a bipartisan process, and
we intend to continue to look quite closely at it, because it
is really a national crisis.
And I want to thank all of our witnesses for recognizing it
as such and for increasing your cooperation between your
agencies.
I also want to remind Members that pursuant to committee
rules they have 10 business days to submit additional questions
for the record to be answered by witnesses who have appeared
before the subcommittee.
I would just ask if all of our witnesses would agree to
respond promptly to any such questions if you receive any. I
think you will be getting some from Mrs. Brooks, for example.
And with that, the subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Annie Kuster
We have seen the opioid crisis evolve and take many
different forms. No community in this country has been spared,
but New England and New Hampshire in particular have been
devastated by this crisis.
That is why it is imperative that we anticipate how the
fentanyl crisis will continue to evolve. We need to get ahead
of this ever-changing threat, so we are not caught flat-footed.
As I look at the witness panel, I am struck by their
diverse missions. It is not every day that we have a hearing
with the U.S. Postal Service and the DEA on the same witness
panel.
We need a national strategy on our fentanyl response. And I
don't just mean a white paper document or a task force report.
I mean we need a coherent, practical plan for how we are going
to beat this problem.
For example, the Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP) is supposed to formulate a strategy, bring all the
agencies together, and see to it that the strategy is
implemented effectively.
DEA, you are on the front lines and often develop important
leads for targeting drugs. And FDA is suddenly in the middle of
this fight because fentanyl is increasingly being mixed with
other drugs, including counterfeit prescription drugs.
These are just a few of the issues we will explore today.
If we are going to solve this problem, we need better
cooperation across agencies, and we need to think differently
than we have on past drug epidemics.
Finally, this hearing is just one piece of our oversight.
This Subcommittee will stay on this issue and ensure progress
is being made so that we are not back here again next year
talking about the same problems.
I thank the witnesses for their service on this critical
issue, and for being here today.
I yield back.
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