Combating the Heroin and Opioid Epidemic

Floor Speech

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Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Hampshire and all of my colleagues who have taken this approach to comprehensive discussion on what we can do with legislation to deal with the issue of not just heroin abuse, but the opioids that are now a precursor.

I would suggest that just about everybody who has come to this floor comes with a personal story. Mine is very personal as well.

The name of the act that I am sponsoring that is part of this comprehensive package is the John Thomas Decker Act.

John was an athlete of great talent. He was one of the record holders for more than a decade as a receiver who went on to Cornell as part of a program in which he was a lacrosse player, a program that won a national championship during his time there.

But John, like so many student athletes, suffered from a knee injury that impacted his ability to play, and like so many, he played through the pain. And one of the things that he used in order to deal with that pain was opioids, opioids that in the beginning were prescribed, and then subsequently were used by him without a prescription.

But that should not surprise you, because one of the things that we look at with respect to college athletes is that 23 percent of college athletes, according to one NCAA study, have been prescribed pain medications during the course of the year. Another 6 percent, on top of that, self-prescribe with opioids.

So as a result, we have almost 1 in 4--more than 1 in 4 dealing with opioids. The problem being that that leads, oftentimes, to an addiction. There is a misunderstanding, a belief among many that it is a much safer drug because it has been prescribed, but not a recognition that it can lead, in weeks and even days with daily use, to a psychological dependency, which can lead toward the addiction.

Many people think that because they have been able to get it under control, they will return to it at some time later at a dosage that they used before, and because of the concentration being higher, they will return, and oftentimes it can lead, as it did in John Thomas Decker's situation, to an overdose.

The John Tomas Decker Act is designed to enable, at the high school level, the Centers for Disease Control to reach out, study the impact of opioid use among high school athletes and better arm those who engage with them to monitor the use of those who have been prescribed it, to screen for history of current drug use, depression, other kinds of things that can lead to addiction, and begin to educate not just those student athletes, but those who are in charge of those student athletes about the great concern of opioid abuse, which can lead to heroin addiction and, ultimately, death.

I'm grateful for the leadership of my colleague from New Hampshire and her counterpart across the aisle for their work in this important area. I urge my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to support the John Thomas Decker Act, and I know that all of us will be committed to doing everything we can to stay ahead of this very, very challenging issue for our Nation.

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