Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act.

I offer my thanks to Chairman Pallone and Ranking Member Rodgers and their staffs for their tireless work on this bill. It is yet another example of the profound good our committee can produce when we work together in a collaborative and bipartisan fashion.

This strongly bipartisan legislation will take several steps to improve mental health and substance use care.

Importantly, H.R. 7666 includes my Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act, which will eliminate outdated barriers that prevent more people in need from having access to buprenorphine, a lifesaving drug. I have worked on this legislation for years and was pleased to see it advance out of committee with a strong bipartisan majority.

By passing this legislation, we will vastly expand access to addiction medicine and move us toward a system of treatment on demand for those struggling with addiction.

It is not hyperbole to say this is one of the most meaningful steps that Congress has taken to date to address the opioid epidemic. It will save countless lives, and I am indeed grateful for the bipartisan push here to get it over the finish line.

H.R. 7666 also includes a bill that I authored to reauthorize and strengthen the Substance Use Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, which serves as the foundation for State's substance use prevention and treatment programs.

We made important improvements to the block grant, including clarifying that recovery support services are eligible for funding through this program.

We are going to keep working to increase funding levels and hopefully implement a recovery set-aside, ensuring that all States invest in critical recovery services.

Taken together, the pieces of the Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act will truly make a difference to families and communities struggling with mental health and substance use challenges.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support this critically important legislation that delivers hope to our communities, delivers hope to the doorstep of our families.

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Mr. TONKO. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the Griffith amendment. Not only does this amendment needlessly delay the implementation of the MAT Act by another year, it does so with the intent of encouraging States to enact more restrictions on buprenorphine in the interim, running directly contrary to the intent of the underlying bill.

Let's remember the facts here. We are in the middle of an unprecedented crisis. Last year alone, 107,000 were taken from us too early by drug overdoses. One all-too-common theme in these deaths is a lack of access to treatment. Despite being recognized as the gold standard of care that can cut the risk of overdose in half, only about 1 in 10 individuals with opioid use disorder received medications like buprenorphine to treat their addiction. That is a glaring systemic failure.

H.R. 7666 takes a strong step to address that failure by expanding access to safe and effective addiction treatment through eliminating the outdated and redundant requirement that healthcare providers obtain a special waiver from the DEA to prescribe buprenorphine for the treatment of addiction.

Despite the lifesaving potential this legislation can bring, this amendment raises concerns about the impact the MAT Act will have on safety, abuse, and diversion, and I would take a moment to directly address these concerns.

Let's start with the basic facts on safety.

Unlike heroin and fentanyl that are causing overdose deaths, buprenorphine is a safe medication that is highly effective at protecting people from overdose.

Due to its ceiling effect, buprenorphine does not cause people to feel high and is unlikely to result in substance use disorder or be a cause of overdose deaths.

With regard to diversion and abuse, the DEA, which is responsible for policing illicit diversion, has specifically looked at this issue and found that the primary reason for buprenorphine diversion is the failure to access legitimate treatment, and that increasing, not limiting, buprenorphine treatment may be an effective response to diversion.

Indeed, as buprenorphine access has increased over the last 5 years through legislation passed by this Congress, misuse of the medication has decreased.

So I would say that it is important for us to be responsible here. We are in the midst of a pandemic, an epidemic that is causing great pain, great suffering, great death, every day, every week. Every moment we circumvent our responsibilities, someone is paying the price for that.

Madam Speaker, I strongly oppose this amendment.

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