Prepared Floor
Remarks by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Today,
roughly 175 Americans will die from fentanyl poisoning. Many of them won’t even
know they’ve taken fentanyl. They’ll think they’ve taken a Xanax for anxiety or
an Oxycodone for pain.
That’s
what Devin Anderson of Shelby, Iowa thought when he took a fentanyl pill marked
like an oxy. Devin had fought hard for his sobriety—he’d enrolled in treatment
and moved back home—but he was struggling with anxiety. To cope, he took a pill
from a friend.
Devin’s
co-worker came to pick him up for work in the early morning of February 24,
2022. Devin wasn’t ready. So, his co-worker called him. When Devin didn’t
answer, he called again. Devin’s 14-year-old brother heard the phone ringing.
He went downstairs to investigate and found Devin unresponsive.
Devin
was 23-years-old when he died. His mom wants you to know that Devin was kind
and he loved his friends.
In
2021, fentanyl killed more Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 than any
other cause
— more than COVID-19, cancer and car
accidents.
Six
months ago, I stood on this floor and asked for a permanent solution for fentanyl
scheduling. Today, we’re no closer to a permanent solution than we were back
then. And while Congress has been waiting to take action, the cartels have not.
They’ve
rebranded; coloring fentanyl like candy to addict America’s children.
Fentanyl
is in our schools. Like in Blackwood, New Jersey, where a 12-year-old overdosed
on a school bus after his uncle made him clean a fentanyl trap house. Or,
Chipman Junior High, California, where a thirteen-year-old brought 150 fake
Percocet pills laced with fentanyl, with four out of every ten fake pills
containing a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.
Both
of these schools are hours away from the Mexican border. But despite CBP’s
efforts, fentanyl has reached our children’s hands. So, when the vice president
tells the press that our border is secure, that’s just plain wrong and
irresponsible.
In
the federal government’s absence, parents, like Arletha and Robert Gilliam,
have been forced to fill the void. Their daughter Ciara died last month because
of fentanyl. By all accounts, Ciara had a big heart. As her dad puts it: if you
were in a bad mood, Ciara would make sure it didn’t last long.
And
even though she’d graduated Iowa’s Ankeny Centennial High School and lived on
her own, she still FaceTimed her mom every day. But on August 23, 2022, no one
could get ahold of Ciara. So, her grandparents drove by her house. Her car was
in the driveway. Ciara’s grandparents knocked on her doors and her windows. No
response. Finally, Ciara’s grandpa crawled through her bedroom window. There,
he found her dead on her bedroom floor. Fentanyl
shut down her organs and she went to sleep. She never woke up again. She was
only 22-years-old.
Ciara’s
parents are now searching for answers they never should have had to find.
They’ve offered a $50,000 award to locate the dealer who supplied the fake pill
that would kill their daughter. They deserve better than that. They deserve congressional
action, and they deserved it in 2017 when the DEA first scheduled fentanyl.
Grieving
parents are the unsung heroes of the fight against fentanyl. Time after time,
they push through their heartbreak to share their stories and demand action so
that more kids don’t die. It’s time to match their efforts. The Department of
Justice has been clear—“the permanent scheduling of FRS is critical to the
safety and health of our communities and class-wide scheduling provides a vital
tool to combat overdose deaths in the United States.”
For
those that we’ve lost, like Ciara and Devin, and for the countless lives we
will save, it’s time we gave them that tool.
