- [Narrator] Ladies and gentlemen,
the First Lady of the United States,
Mrs. Melania Trump.
(audience applauds)
- Good afternoon.
Thank you all for being here today.
I want to be here to personally tell each of you
that what I do today, it matters.
Everyone in this room knows that our country is
in the middle of the opiod crisis.
And I'm so proud of the work that this administration
has already done to combat this epidemic.
We all know there is still much work to be done,
which is why you're all here today.
I know one panel will focus on the supply side
of this crisis, and the other panel will focus
on the prevention, treatment, and recovery.
Our unified goal is that of helping all
who have been affected by drug addiction,
and for me, that means focusing on babies and young mothers,
which is something I have been often seen in my travels.
I want to read some of a letter I received
from a woman named Betsy Henderson,
a mother who lost her son to drugs.
She wrote this letter to me,
just one month after her son passed away.
Miss Henderson is here with us today.
Betty, please join me.
(audience applauds)
Dear Mrs. Trump.
On September 22, 2017, a needle took the life
of my 29-year-old son, Billy.
The day after my son's death,
I had to go to the medical examiner's office
to claim his body.
No mother should ever have to claim their child's body.
I'm sure that you, as a mother, would have
some understanding of the depths of despair
that I experienced on that day.
Mrs. Trump, I'm asking for you help
in claiming these lost souls
before drugs take them from this Earth.
I pray that we give peace to families
in knowing that they told their loved ones
how much they are treasured.
Betty, thank you for having the strength
to reach out in the midst of your grief.
Your story touched me,
and I know it has now touched everyone in this room.
Just as you said in your letter to me,
let us all take a moment now and celebrate
your son's life.
Thank you very much.
(audience applauds)
Let's all keep Betty and her son, Billy,
in mind today as you're working through some
of the issues related to the opioid epidemic.
Sadly, she's not alone in her grief,
and we need to change that.
Thank you, again, for your hard work
and commitment to this topic.
You're all making a real difference,
and I look forward to hearing the important action items
that everyone will take away from today's summit.
Thank you all, God bless you,
and God bless the United States of America.
(audience applauds)
- [Narrator] Ladies and gentlemen,
Ms. Kellyanne Conway.
(audience applauds)
As you can see, the First Lady joins her husband,
the President of the United States,
and the entire administration in their commitment
to combating the opioid crisis and the drug demand,
drug supply epidemic roiling our country.
On October 26, 2017,
on this very platform, in this very room,
the President and the First Lady delivered
a joint policy address about this topic.
That same day, the acting director of the health
and human services, the acting secretary, pardon me,
he declared a public health emergency,
and the President deployed and directed
his entire administration to do their respective parts
in helping to bend the curve on the eye-popping numbers,
and grief and loss that is roiling this nation.
Since then, the administration has made great progress,
and the purpose of today's summit is so that
we can go to the very top of each cabinet
and department and agency represented here today,
and learn what front-line activities are happening,
and also to learn the plan and vision
for the future from each of those departments
and agencies.
I really would like to welcome you again
to the White House today, each and every one of you.
We have a lot of headliners and decision-makers among us,
but I really want to recognize with great distinction
and gratitude for being here,
those courageous family members who have suffered loss,
and those individuals who currently are
either struggling and/or are recovering.
We see you.
We hear you, and we support you.
This president and his administration are focused
on law-enforcement interdiction,
treatment and recovery,
education and prevention.
I believe now, we are going to show you
some video footage of a project
that is in its nascent stages here at the White House,
where we call opioids, the crisis next door,
meant to represent, indeed,
that no state has been spared
and no demographic group has been untouched.
We'd like to, I think, dim the lights,
and show this, and then we'll start our first panel today.
Thank you.
- I'm Eric Boeing, I'm a television personality,
and a bestselling author,
and I'm here to talk about the opioid crisis
and how it affected my family.
My son was a very, very social high schooler,
grew up in New Jersey just outside New York City.
He liked to have fun.
He was a normal kid, loved baseball, loved his car.
He went to the University of Colorado.
He had a fantastic freshman year at University of Colorado.
So my wife and I are out to dinner,
having a very, very normal dinner.
On the way home, my wife was driving, and my phone rang.
It was about 10:30 at night.
My phone rang, cell phone,
and it was a young man who was panicked.
He said, "Mr. Boeing, call Kayla right now."
I said, "What's going on?"
He said, "Just call Kayla right now."
She answered her phone, and she was crying.
I said, "Kayla," for some reason,
my mind went right to this as a parent,
I said, "Kayla, is he alive?"
And she said, "No."
There was a detective in his apartment.
The first week into his sophomore year,
Eric Chase died of an opioid overdose.
At the moment, my wife, who was in the driver's seat,
we had pulled over to the side of the road,
literally fell into the road.
I had to gather her up,
and we sat on the curb for about an hour,
crying, talking, trying to figure out what just happened.
We never saw it coming.
We never thought this, we would get that call.
Every parent doesn't want it.
We got it.
Sorry.
So afterwards, um, your mind tries to figure out
what happened, what went wrong.
Is it something we did?
Um, and then it's also coupled with
what are people going to think?
What are our neighbors going to think?
What are our friends going to think?
I mean, it sounds shallow, but that really is
some of the things that go through your mind.
I didn't know where to go.
I had no support system,
and so I went to Twitter and I said,
"Look, this happened."
I was overwhelmed by the amount and number
of people who opioids are affecting.
What I have done since then is to
talk about the stories of people who are worried
about a loved one, worried about a child,
a brother, a sister, a mother,
a coworker, a friend.
It helps to talk about it.
It helps to find resources for that help.
There's one underlying issue that I think
parents need to understand.
It is very, very important to have.
I've seen it over the last few months
since Erik's passed,
Not-My-Kid Syndrome.
Not-My-Kid Syndrome is terrible.
Not-My-Kid Syndrome is a killer,
cause you just don't know.
It could very well be your kid.
So do us all a favor.
Do yourself a favor.
Do your family a favor.
Do your children a favor.
Have the discussion with them,
and do it again and again.
Get involved in your kids' lives.
Find out who they're talking to,
who they're hanging around with.
Keep an eye on what they're spending,
where they're spending it.
It matters.
You can save someone.
^- The crisis is terrible, heartbreaking.
^It's probably the worst thing I've seen.
I never thought, as fire chief,
that I would be spending so much time
on this opiate crisis,
but I think, in many way, this is kind of
a natural thing for the fire departments out there,
cause we're a place that you come to for help.
January of 2015,
we went from maybe 20 overdoses a month,
to 75 overdoses a month,
and that occurred with the influx of synthetic opiates.
Last year, we went to 884 overdoses
in the city of Manchester.
That doesn't include the overdoses for methamphetamines.
Those are just opiates.
In May of 2016, we started a program called Safe Stations.
First day I was promoted to chief,
I opened up all my fire stations to anybody seeking
treatment or seeking help for substance abuse disorder.
If it's at two o'clock in the morning,
if it's during the day, we're always there.
We're in all the neighborhoods,
and we welcome people in.
We treat these people, you know, who are addicted
with just a very nonjudgmental.
We'll help you.
We'll get you into treatment.
If you want treatment, we'll give you a shot
of treatment 100% of the time.
No one agency can do this themselves.
My Safe Station program in the City of Manchester is
just a small piece of this.
We've seen a 30% reduction in our overdose death rate
last year alone.
So we went from 90 overdoses
to about 64 overdoses.
So it's, we know we're saving lives.
^We're saving lives every single day we go out there.
^- I'm a physician.
^I have a Master's degree in Public Health.
^I'm the United States Surgeon General,
and my family is suffering from Substance Use Disorder.
My brother Phillip is in prison due to crimes
he committed to support his addiction.
His illness has affected my entire family,
emotionally, medically, and financially.
As a trauma anesthesiologist,
I've seen things that would make the average person cringe,
but nothing has shaken me quite like seeing
the barbed wire and the thick metal bars
when I first visited my little brother in state prison.
It was all the more agonizing,
because despite my knowledge and my experience,
I couldn't prevent or fix his illness.
I'm hopeful that by sharing my story,
it will help people understand that addiction
touches every community, and that they are not alone.
That's why I'm asking everyone to partner with me
in this fight for a healthier country,
because for me, and for all too many Americans,
stopping the opioid epidemic is not only pressing,
it's personal.
I encourage you to share your story,
along with mine, so that we can break the stigma.
(audience applauds)
- Not working?
- I've seen one or two.
Ladies and gentlemen, our first panel is
on prevention, treatment, and recovery.
It's my great pleasure and privilege
to welcome to the stage Secretary Azar,
Secretary Carson, Secretary Shulkin.
Secretary Azar, if you would begin
with your opening comments, thank you.
- Kellyanne, is it on, or is it,
Kellyanne.
Great.
Thanks to the First Lady for those important
and personal remarks to kick this off,
and Kellyanne, thank you for that wonderful video
with those personal stories.
I think it's so important to have that message out there
of not my kid, because this can impact
and hit just anybody.
I want to thank President Trump, also,
for making the opioid crisis such a priority.
I can assure you that in my discussions with him,
it's a constant, constant point of focus for him
of insuring that we're taking bold enough action
and devoting enough resources to the challenges ahead.
It's a pleasure to be joined here
by Secretary Shulkin and Secretary Carson, also,
as we really work together as an administration
to tackle this crisis.
I want to start off with an important statement.
At HHS and across this administration,
we know that we need to treat addiction,
as a medical challenge, not as a moral failing.
That informs HHS's work across all three areas
that we're here to talk about today:
prevention, treatment, and recovery.
And it's why the President has directed HHS
to consider the Declaration of the Public Health emergency
last fall, and why we declared such an emergency
on October 26, 2017.
This emergency declaration has brought a new level
of focus and coordination and cooperation
to our work across the federal government as an entirety.
And so I want to give you just some examples
of what has happened and what we've accomplished since then.
First, we know it's essential to prevent people
from getting addicted to opioids in the first place.
We've seen promising news on appropriate opioid prescribing.
Prescribing is down noticeably from 2010 to 2015,
but it's still three times what it was in 1999.
Just one example of our work on this front,
in December as part of a broader reform initiative
to use data better across HHS,
we held an Opioids Codeathon.
I had to learn that word, codeathon,
where we brought in top data scientists
from schools like Yale, Stanford, and Hopkins,
and top tech companies.
And what they did, as the programmers spent
the day coming up with new tools for prevention,
like apps that use existing datasets
to monitor risky opioid prescribing,
and help providers assess their own prescribing levels
to see if they were out of the norm,
and needed focus on their own habits.
We also know treatment, including evidence-based methods
like medication-assisted treatment is essential
to this fight.
Shortly after the public health emergency declaration,
we announced a streamlined process for states
to get waivers that could support substance abuse treatment,
and we've approved five of these wavers so far.
This weekend at the National Governors Association,
I actually berated the governors, saying,
"Why have I only gotten five of these so far?"
I told them we're eager to work with them.
We have a streamlined process for considering them,
and I want more.
At the NGA, we also highlighted two forthcoming
Food and Drug Administration guidances that will expand
and accelerate medication-assisted treatment.
One of them will help the development of long-acting
depo formulations, like the monthly shot
that was approved this past fall,
and one that will open up new ways of assessing
medically-assisted treatment effectiveness,
by looking at metrics besides just achieving abstinence,
complete abstinence, so alterative endpoints.
On recovery, this year and last, we're issuing
$500 million per year in targeted response grants
to state governments, which cover prevention
and treatment, but also recovery supports.
These supports are a key piece of successful treatment,
including medically-assisted treatment.
To support that grant program, we announced
a new method of technical assistance in November
to use more local experts and expertise
to provide technical assistance to states and grantees,
rather than a traditional one-size-fits-all approach
from Washington.
The goal is also to emphasize truly effective
evidence-based policies.
The President's budget also proposes doubling
these state grants to one billion dollars a year,
as part of a historic $13 billion package
in proposed funding for this crisis.
That's just a small sample of the work that we're doing,
and all of it requires the contributions
and cooperation of our partners on the front lines,
which includes many of you here in this room.
That's why the President's holding this event today,
so we can share our work with you,
and so we can solicit your input
on what we need to do further.
So thank you for joining us here today,
and we in all of our partners across the federal government
look forward to working with you as we tackle
the scourge of this opioid crisis.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
- Secretary Carson, thank you.
Secretary Azar, thank you so much for those remarks.
- First of all, thank you, Kellyanne,
for leading out in this endeavor.
I'm grateful for the leadership of the President
and the First Lady, and my fellow cabinet secretaries,
as well as the surgeon general,
for bringing this to the level of attention
that it should have.
It is affecting virtually every part of our society,
and the very fabric of our society,
and I'm also grateful to all of you who've come here
to show your interest and support for what's going on.
Everybody has a sphere of influence,
and together, we can really take this important issue
to where it needs to be.
At the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
the human cost of opioids is
all too familiar to all of us.
For us, drug addictions lands at an intersection
of health, housing, and economic opportunity.
It is especially dangerous to the communities
that HUD serves.
So we're being especially vigilant in our efforts
to address this epidemic and all of its consequences.
In fiscal year 2017, 76,000,
or approximately 25%,
of those served at HUD-funded Continuum of Care
reported substance abuse issues.
That's a lot of folks.
Moving forward, we have convened senior leadership
from all program offices,
working collaboratively to recommend near-term actions
to impact both awareness and treatment.
We've also convened all program officers
to think through the strategic changes to rules
and guidance that will support the efforts
of law enforcement to tackle drug traffickers,
and drug use prevention and treatment
for those struggling with addiction.
We are continuing to study local success stories
across the country, identifying good models and data
to be integrated into HUD's notices of funding availability,
that have proven to be effective,
and are promising in addressing substance abuse.
And that is really a key factor
when it comes to making progress.
If you look at the turn of the century before this past one,
the average age of death in America was under 50,
and at the most recent turn of the century,
we're approaching 80.
How did that happen?
It was because the medical profession began
to make its policies, its recommendations based
on evidence.
And that makes all the difference in the world.
These conversations with public officials,
private foundations from San Diego to New York,
are on ongoing.
Our new Envision Center initiative will have
community health and wellness,
as one of its core missions.
The Envision Centers will work to improve access
to health services, including drug treatment
and prevention for those struggling
with drug addiction, including opioids.
But it is important to note that the scourge of opioids
in America is not simply a crisis of health,
it's also a crisis of hope.
The Envision Centers will also leverage public,
private partnerships to promote long-term,
economic, educational, and employment opportunities
in our communities, all things which bring hope.
Once more, Americans will have the tools
to build a brighter future and fewer of them will
try to escape their current realities through drugs.
This is a challenge that will take our combined resources
and ingenuity to solve, but together, we can solve it
and save thousands of lives in the process.
I look forward to further collaborations
with my fellow agency heads,
and all of you in the coming year.
(audience applauds)
- Secretary and Dr. Carson, thank you.
Secretary and Dr. Shulkin, you're on.
- Thank you, thank you very much.
You know, as I look around the audience,
there's just such amazing expertise
and personal experience with this issue,
and whenever I go to an event,
I always have a goal of taking away a message
or meeting somebody that's gonna help me.
So thank you all so much for being here,
and I hope that you, too, will meet people in this room,
learn something and take away something to help contribute.
I really want to also thank the President and the First Lady
for giving us all this opportunity to be here,
and I have three points I wanted to share with you,
in the hope that you'll take something away, as well.
The first is that I do believe, I'm optimistic,
that we can make a difference,
that we can really help save lives.
At the Department of Veteran Affairs, as you know,
we're the largest health system in the country,
we began to see this problem in opioid addiction
and crisis before maybe other health systems.
We started focusing on this in 2011,
and in 2012, we launched the Opioid Safety Initiative
that has put in over $300 million
into prevention and treatment.
Since 2012, we've reduced the number of opioids used
in the VA by 41%.
And in the way, if you take a look at that figure
of a 41% reduction, it's come through a 90% reduction
in the start of new opioids.
So by looking at alternatives,
instead of just reaching for the prescription pad,
as probably Dr. Carson and I learned when we were
in medical school, we've had a 90% reduction.
So there is hope out there,
and we can do better and save lives.
Second point is, is that as we begin to share
best practices, we have a lot to learn from each other.
Kellyanne, and thanks to her leadership,
and Governor Christie, who helped lead our commission
that I had a chance to participate in,
we went around the country and visited places
that were really doing this well.
The Department of Veteran Affairs took an unusual step
about two months ago, and we now publish,
publicly, all of our opioid-prescribing rates
for every VA Medical Center across the country.
Now, we're the only health system
in the country that does this.
There is nobody else doing it,
but we did it to try to encourage others
to follow the lead.
If you take a look at data.va.gov,
you'll see all of our prescribing rates.
You'll see the highest in country is in Roseburg, Oregon,
at 20% of all prescriptions,
to the lowest in the country in Cleveland,
at 3% where Kellyanne and I went to visit.
So by sharing these practices,
we know that we can help each other learn,
and I encourage the rest of the country to help participate,
and the VA is there to help teach.
The third and final point, I just wanted to share
the way that we've gotten this 41% reduction
and this 90% reduction in new opioids.
At VA, I quickly learned, if you have something important,
you better develop an acronym,
because there is no initiative at VA
that doesn't have an acronym.
So I actually made this one up.
It's called STOP PAIN.
So the S, in STOP PAIN, is for stepped-care model.
Instead of reaching for opioids initially,
we have a stepped approach towards pain management,
where opioids is at the end, not at the beginning.
The T is for treatment alternatives,
and we've really focused on integrative medicine,
and non-medicinal aspects, as well as,
as Secretary Azar talked about, the medication-approved
treatments that offer alternatives when people are addicted.
The O in STOP, the O is for ongoing monitoring and usage.
So we actually use data to identify
where there are problems, where there are bumps
in high usage rates, so that we can go
and effectively intervene.
The P is for practice guidelines.
I'm proud that the Department of the Defense,
the Department of Veteran Affairs, the CDC
have all jointly published pain management
practice guidelines, available in the public domain,
that we teach our clinicians.
The P for PAIN is for prescription monitoring.
We participate in the state data prescription
monitoring programs, which are really important
in the state, so that we as doctors.
I'm still a practicing internist.
I go to these state practitioner databases
to see if other doctors have prescribed medication.
The A for PAIN, the A is for academic detailing.
We send our pharmacists out to train our doctors
into how the appropriately prescribe opioids.
The I is for informed consent.
We have our patients sign informed consents
before they use opioids,
because they have a shared responsibility in this.
And the N is for Naloxone distribution.
At the Department of Veteran Affairs,
we've distributed over 100,000 naloxone kits
to our first responders and to veterans themselves,
and we know that that saves lives.
So I hope maybe you'll pick up one of those,
and continue to share your experience,
and together, I know we can make a difference.
Thank you very much.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you very much, Secretary Shulkin.
Now we'll take some questions from the audience.
The first question comes from Carla Strunk,
from Richmond, Kentucky.
Hi Carla.
- I'm, as you said, my name is Carla Strunk.
I am from Richmond, Kentucky,
and I would like to just say that I'm here,
because I lost my only son to the opioid epidemic.
I would like to share, this is his picture,
and I did that because I made a promise to him
when I lost him that I would fight.
So I'm here today, not only for myself,
but for everyone that's lost their child
or their loved one to the epidemic.
My question for the panel is that since this happened
with my son, I've had the opportunity to go out
in my community, be part of the US Attorney's
HEAT program, and go into the schools,
because my son's addiction, like most,
started at a very young age.
So my question is, is there a plan to put something
like a prevention program into the schools nationwide?
I've seen the effect that being able to go in
and talk to these young kids who don't understand
that your first time using,
probably could be your last time.
It's very effective.
Thank you.
- First of all, what was your son's name?
- [Carla] Brendan.
- Brendan.
Well, I mean, thank you for sharing that story.
Does anybody have any particular thoughts about schools?
Okay.
- Thank you very much for being here, Carla,
and I, with everyone am telling you
how sorry we are for your loss,
and how moved we are by your courage to channel
your grief into something positive
for other families and other students.
The First Lady and the President and Secretary Devos
and other stakeholders and decision-makers are
very invested in making sure that we communicate
a message of prevention and education,
particularly to our youth,
and that the First Lady's very committed
to the well-being of children overall,
and this would be a part of that.
We, I think, to begin just by educating each other,
not just on the harrowing statistics, but on the basics.
I would imagine most of America suffers
from information underload when it comes
to Fentanyl, for example,
which took the lives of 20,000 Americans last year.
And if 20,000 Americans were dying every single year
from almost anything, we would stop and turn
our attention to that immediately.
So I think what the President and others are urging is
let's stop and at least turn part of our attention to that.
So getting into the schools,
making this part of the curriculum is a goal.
I've had occasion with my colleagues in colleagues
inside the White House and across the administration
to learn all the great work that's being done
in the private sector and the non-profit community.
And I invite others to come forward
and tell us what they're working on,
so we can see their best practices,
but there are a lot of folks out there
who've developed great ways of communicating with youth.
And it's not just youth.
If we can tell people the way the President told them
on October 26 that the last Saturday
of every October and every April,
we have the DEA runs, it's called Take Back Day.
Why not make Take Back Day every day, somehow?
If we can work with the pharmacies,
if we can work with the local first responders,
to the extent that it doesn't overtax them,
but to the extent that we can tell people,
"You don't have to wait for twice a year.
There's a way to safely dispose this."
Some of the private sector businesses are
working on this, as well,
but we have to get to youth, whether it's after school,
community messaging, and that is a big part.
This is why the President is committed
to education and prevention.
He's also committed to interdiction law enforcement,
of course, treatment and recovery.
I would also note that the President's commission
on combating the opioid crisis and drug demand
had 56 recommendations at the issue.
The commission did great work.
The President has accepted all 56 of those recommendations.
It's a public document, and this is covered there as well.
Our next question comes from Ryan Hampton
from Pasadena, California.
Ryan, hi, Ryan.
There's a mic coming.
- My name is Ryan Hampton.
I'm a person in sustained recovery
from a substance abuse disorder,
and what that means to me is that
I haven't felt it necessary to have a drink
or a drug, most importantly to me, heroin or opioids,
since February 2, 2015.
Thank you. (audience applauds)
And I know how incredibly lucky I am
to have made it out of this crisis alive,
but I also know that recovery and access to recovery
and recovery support should never be about luck.
And in 2015, when I got out of treatment
for the last time, I was able to access
stable recovery housing and recovery supports
that came with that, and I know that
if it weren't for those 18 months of that stable housing,
I probably wouldn't be here today.
Also, in the last two years, I've probably lost
way over a dozen friends, people that I care about,
people that I love, people in my community,
to accidental opioid overdoses.
The majority of them were not able to access
the full continuum of care that included
stable recovery housing.
So my question to the panel, the whole panel,
would be, since we know that the first five years
of someone's recovery is most important,
how can we support people through that full continuum,
specifically when it comes to stable, qualified
and ethical recovery housing and residences?
Thank you.
- Thank you for that question.
As I mentioned in my opening,
there is a true nexus between opioid abuse,
drug abuse, and housing.
And that's why it's so incredibly important,
and that's why one of the reasons that, you know,
housing and urban development has coupled
with the VA for the HUD BASH program,
various ways of making sure that our veterans
actually have a secure place from which to recover,
but it spreads far beyond that.
It's all aspects of our society,
and we have continuum of care programs.
We've devoted a significant amount of money
to that very issue of providing the kind
of recovery that's necessary.
I think it's critical that people understand
that people who are addicted to opioids are
not like them, and then there's us.
I mean, it's all of us.
It can be any of us at any time.
It is so easy to get addicted,
and it has nothing to do with socio-economic class
or anything else, and we need to recognize
that in our society right now,
it permeates to the extent that probably
anybody that you talk to knows somebody
or has a family member who has been affected.
If you talk to manufacturers,
they will tell you that it is very difficult
to find people to work who can pass a drug screening.
So that gives you some idea of the pervasiveness
of this in our society.
And that's the reason that, you know,
we have an interagency corporation working with HHS,
all of us recognizing what an incredible scourge
on our society this is and how it impacts
virtually every portion of us,
but as you have very correctly stated,
we do understand that providing the kind of place
where they feel secure and stable is the first step.
And when you're talking about recovering from opioids,
you're not talking about a few weeks.
You're generally talking about 18 months.
So it's a long-term commitment,
and as a society, we have to recognize that
until it becomes as easy to get treatment
as it is to get the drugs, we're not gonna win the battle.
- And you know, the issue raised, Ryan,
about that kind of support in the recovery period,
that's why the President's doubled the amount
of state treatment and response funding grant program
from half a billion to a billion.
We already put out more money to states and localities
last year than ever before in history,
and now that's gonna more than double,
doubling in just that type of grant to a billion,
that can be used to help with these kinds of programs.
And then we're putting out $75 million of naloxone funding,
so that the first responders can have access
to adequate supplies in a lock zone at a good cost.
We're also working to create $150 million grant program
for rural treatment, so that not just in Pasadena,
but also in more remote, rural parts of our country,
where folks really do have, are in underserved areas
from a treatment perspective,
that we can provide more support,
another almost half a billion dollars
for community health centers,
which provide such a vital safety net for folks,
for treatment, response, and ongoing recovery.
So it is, I'd say, even beyond the 18 months,
as I mentioned in my opening,
I think of it as a lifelong process for folks.
- Thank you very much, and thank you, Ryan.
The First Lady of North Dakota is Kathryn Burgum.
She's been an inspiration to many people
who have heard her story,
and today, she'd like to talk to us
about destigmatization and something the President's talked
about breaking through the silence and the stigma.
Kathryn.
- Thanks, Kellyanne.
I am so grateful to the administration
for bringing together these stakeholders
and decision-makers for this important conversation
about ending the opioid crisis.
I have been in long-term recovery for 16 years.
(audience applauds)
Thank you.
And I know from personal experience,
how stigma prevents people from reaching out
for help and talking about the disease of addiction.
I did not seek real help for almost 20 years
because I was ashamed.
Stigma puts up walls.
It is socially constructed, based in fear,
and usually contains inaccurate information.
If we can begin to normalize the conversation
around the chronic brain disease of addiction
and talk about it like we talk about
other chronic disease like diabetes and heart disease,
we can end the stigma.
We can change cultures from misinterpretation
to empathy, cultures in our communities.
It's so great the administration has created
this website for people to share their addiction
and recovery stories, because that's gonna go
a long way to breaking down the barrier of stigma.
In North Dakota, we've launched a multi-year,
multimedia communications campaign designed
to inform about the disease of addiction
and eliminate stigma.
We call the campaign, Our Dream Again Campaign.
So my question is, has the administration considered
a communications campaign that promotes
understanding and empathy towards those struggling
with the disease of addiction?
And just know, I stand ready to help
this administration in any way I can
to eliminate the opioid crisis and the stigma of addiction.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
- So we do anticipate launching a mass
and multimedia campaign, not just to educate people
about the dangers of addiction,
that fact that, just the risk,
the fact that it can come to anybody, to any family.
And as part of that, I do think the destigmatization
of substance use disorder is critical.
We have to get people willing to seek out treatment.
You know, it's one of the reasons part of our program is
to support drug courts also, to just allow diversion
for people so that it's not about just going.
It's facing criminal consequences,
but can we get people into appropriate substance
use treatment programs, which is the help
that they often really need,
and so our multimedia campaign, I think.
I'm glad to get this feedback from you
about destigmatization so that as Kellyanne and I
and others work on this, we can ensure
that those messages are part of the campaign also.
Thank you.
- The education is absolutely critical,
and it's one of the components of the Envision Centers,
that will be populating places throughout the country.
It comes from a Bible verse that says,
"Without a vision, the people perish,"
but we call it Envision Centers
because we don't want people to think
they were going to get glasses, but uh.
(audience laughs)
But there's a strong educational component.
And prevention is a key portion
of that educational component, also.
So coupling with many of the nonprofits
and philanthropic organizations that are already
in our various communities, bringing them together,
with the need, putting them in just the position,
I think, will have a very good impact.
- Thank you, Gary Tennis, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Gary, welcome.
- Thank you so much, and thank you for pulling
all of this together.
I am president of the National Alliance
for Model State Drug Laws, before that was
Secretary for the Pennsylvania Department
of Drug and Alcohol Programs,
and most of my career was a prosecutor
in the Philadelphia District Attorney's office
for 26 years.
During those 26 years, I saw a parade of individuals
of criminal defendants going before me
with untreated or undertreated addiction.
Most of the problems we were trying to solve
in the criminal justice system were a consequence
of a failed healthcare policy
of not providing enough treatment, as you all have said.
The resources have never been there.
I would say, probably, this is a multi-prong problem.
There are many aspects to the solution.
I've been looking at this problem now for 30 years.
The biggest single blow that this administration could deal
in terms of ensuring more people get treatment is
to make clear that the IMD Exclusion,
which was meant to stop the warehousing of the mentally ill
is no longer applied in the area
of drug and alcohol addiction treatment.
It never meant, was meant for that.
There was never a problem with warehousing the mentally ill,
or warehousing people with drug and alcohol,
so I would just ask you, I know you're looking
at the waiver process, which is time-consuming.
It has various idiosyncrasies.
Would the President or the administration consider
just dealing a single, strong, powerful blow
by saying the IMD was for mental illness?
It does not apply to drug and alcohol addiction treatment.
(audience applauds)
- So Gary, we agree about the IMD Exclusion.
This is a provision that, as Gary mentioned,
was intended decades ago, well-meaning,
to prevent the warehousing of people with mental illness,
into these giant state institutions,
you know, sort of the stereotypical thing.
And it was a provision that said that Medicaid funds
cannot be used for facilities that have
more than 15 beds.
And so, what President Trump did is
actually create this streamlined waiver process,
so that states can come in and for substance use disorder,
exactly the issues Gary talked about,
grant that permission, so that we can, indeed,
at the state and federal level, reimburse
for inpatient treatment for substance use disorder.
It is a very streamlined process.
In fact, this was the issue that I was raising
with the governors this weekend is oftentimes,
governors will come in with a whole package
of requests around their Medicaid program,
to do a whole restructuring of Medicaid.
That presents unbelievably complex financial
and statutory and legal issues,
and I told them just separate your waiver request
for the IMD Exclusion, and we'll handle those
as a separate, streamlined, fast thing.
Let's not let them be slowed down
by the broader reforms you're trying to do
in your Medicaid program.
And so, in fact, we did that right here
in the Red Room with the governors.
And so I'm hopeful that we will see a faster clip.
We can handle those quite quickly.
Those waivers are very easy to do.
It is a statue, and the President's budget has proposed
changing the statute.
As long as the statute is there, however,
I've got to use my waiver authority,
but we're open for business on them.
I made that very clear to all the governors,
and we will process them very quickly.
- Gary, let me just say, thank you for sharing
your experience.
In the Department of Veteran Affairs,
I'm sure you're aware, we have Veteran Courts
throughout the country,
and they're set up to do exactly
what you're talking about to allow judges
to understand that, rather than sending people to prison,
for substance abuse and other mental health issues,
get them right into treatment.
We do this around the country with thousands of veterans,
and we have a 80% reduction in one-year recidivism
back to prisons.
We're getting people that help.
So I think it's exactly your experience,
and I know Secretary Azar, through the waiver process
and the statute change, is gonna allow us to do that
for more Americans.
So thank you.
- CeeCee Brown, a woman I've come to know,
and who we rely upon for, CeeCee, are you here?
There you are.
CeeCee, thank you for being here today.
If you have a question.
- Yes, I do.
First, I want to tell you the reason I'm here.
It's because we lost our son, Ryan, to a heroin overdose.
He died in a very public place.
He died of a heroin overdose in Macy's bathroom.
And at that time, when the detectives came
to tell me, tell us what had happened,
we said we didn't want this to happen to one more person.
And that's exactly why we're here.
And these two individuals that have had the courage
to speak up, that gives me hope,
and I hope it does to you as well.
I'm so grateful for you,
what you're doing, the focus on the opioid epidemic,
but Ryan was on a white list
for two programs when he died.
And what he said to me, I was walking down the hall,
and I saw him sitting in his bedroom.
And he looked at me and he said,
"Mom, I'm trying, I'm trying."
And of course, he met someone at the mall unexpectedly,
and there it happened.
He hadn't been using, but that's my concern.
We started Ryan's Hope, an organization
to raise awareness about addiction and overdose,
and also to advocate for recovery.
The reason we named it that is I said to Ryan,
"Another day is a day of hope."
And if people don't have the opportunity,
opportunity is everything.
And that's what this whole thing is about for me.
It's about people, and it's about saving lives,
so we don't have any other parents to go through this.
So we don't lose another son or a daughter.
I get a little passionate,
but I think it's so important.
So this leads me to my question.
Of the $6 billion dollars that is budgeted
for the opioid epidemic, can you tell me
what is targeted for prevention and treatment?
Reason being is that I think we need to get ahead of it.
We sent Ryan to college,
and that's where it all started.
I went to a training session on how to talk to kids
about drugs, and guess what?
I sat there and just checked each one off.
I'd done it, I'd done it.
So something was not right.
Something was not.
So I do think we need to look at things differently
with prevention and put a face on it, you know,
in the schools or wherever, whether it's in church.
Ryan actually helped with the sound system at church,
and so, and had a scholarship.
So that's what I wanted to know is,
what's going to be dedicated treatment and prevention,
cause that's just critical for me?
Thank you.
- Thank you, Mrs. and Mr. Brown.
- That's a very important question.
I can't give you percentages, but I can tell you,
a few weeks ago, I was in Kentucky.
And they have Hope Centers there
for the purpose of treating people who've been addicted.
And these are all public-private partnerships,
so of the $6 billion, through the various agencies,
a lot of it is going to be used in conjunction
with state and local programs.
And that's where the real impetus comes.
It's not necessarily from a federal bureaucrat,
but it's from the people in the neighborhoods,
who are right there with boots on the ground.
And there's so much compassion in our country,
and there's so much philanthropy in our country,
so what the government actually provides
in these private-public partnerships is probably
the minority of funding and the minority of attention.
It's gonna really come locally,
and it's something that really needs to be encouraged.
- And CeeCee, I would say, within how the Department
of Health and Human Services will spend
its portion of its money, essentially,
all of it is prevention, treatment, response.
Some of it longer-term treatment, so for instance,
in 2019, we would be dedicating over $750 million
of our funding to the National Institute of Health
to develop the next generation, non-opioid pain treatment,
so that we can hopefully stop people from even beginning
and getting into the system through legal opioid use
for pain, through alternative therapies that are
non-opioid for pain treatment,
in addition to studying alternative therapies
to deal with pain beyond the pill.
And so that's something else HHS is funding.
So I say longer-term prevention there,
the rest much more what you would think
of as traditional prevention, treatment,
response, recovery programs.
I spoke this weekend how one-third
of our treatment facilities in America have
medically-assisted therapy.
That's unacceptable.
We need, it's proven, evidence-based approach.
There are many approaches to addiction treatment.
We know this one works, though,
and one-third is not enough,
and we need to use this funding we're getting
to build up more medically-assisted treatment facilities.
- Thank you very much.
We have two more questions.
Dr. John Rosa, Darnestown, Maryland.
- We on?
There we go.
Thank you, first I want to thank the President,
First Lady, administration, panel, participants.
We have a lot of experts and families
that have been affected, so thank you very much
for being able to put something like this together.
My name's Dr. John Rosa.
I have 14 integrative medicine clinics in the DMV,
which incorporate medicine, chiropractic, physical therapy,
acupuncture, yoga therapy, mindfulness, nutrition,
supplement treatment for pain.
Many of the government agencies and some organizations
like the CDC, FDA, the VA, American College of Physicians,
joint commissions have suggested
and/or required physicians to use
these alternative treatments as a first line
of care in lieu of medication.
You know, 90% of the consumption of opioids comes
from this country, and we're 5% of the world's population.
So the other parts of the world have obviously
been using these type of alternative therapies
to combat pain before that prescription's written.
And that's, just to let it sink in,
over 90% of the opioids produced are consumed
by the United States of America,
and I also treat professional athletes.
So if we get an MBA player who gets hurt,
hurts his back, we have four or five experts
on this guy immediately.
There's a chiropractor.
There's a therapist.
There's an orthopedic surgeon.
There's the trainer.
He's treated three times a day,
until he's okay to practice.
When he practices, we videotape what he's doing,
so we know that his motion's okay.
He gets to be cleared to play ball
when he is in pre-injury status,
same guy gets hurt, same exact condition
goes to the medical office, gets an opioid,
gets sent home for rest.
Where does the breakdown occur when we know
that these researched methods of treating people
and that are, you know, scientifically proven
and used in professional sports not good enough
for the average person?
We're creating a society of chronic pain patients,
cause when they go home with that first script,
and they're not treated right away,
the propensity for this to be a reoccurring condition
in the future goes higher every time
that episode occurs.
So going way upstream in prevention is to stop
that script from ever get written.
We've touched on it a bit,
but you know, part of my, one of my clinics
out of 14 is a free clinic in Maryland.
And in that free clinic, it's in a very busy
medical practice, primary care,
and within a year's time, we've reduced the script writing
by 70% for opioids in that clinic.
Now I went, we had our meeting, and I said,
"You got to tell me what happened, 70%."
10% you write a paper.
70% you call somebody.
And the answer was, well, you're here.
Can it be that easy?
That if it's available,
you're not gonna have that process take place?
So my question with all that emotion,
cause I you know, obviously head into this,
the question would be, how do we instill
the proper referral for and the insurance reimbursement
of these known evidence-based alternatives for treatment?
And I am at your disposal at any time,
because I've been doing it for so long.
So feel free to call me when needed.
- That, Dr., that's exactly the issue I was mentioning
to CeeCee a second ago, which is the investment
that we're making at the National Institutes of Health,
around alternative pain management,
to build the evidence base to support reimbursement.
We also, it's a fair point,
we need to look at our reimbursement systems,
which were really built in the 1960s
around siloed ways of paying for a drug,
paying for a device, paying for a procedure,
and set in statute in a very concrete way
that isn't always as adapted and adaptable
to evolutions in non-traditional forms of treatment.
So we, in fairness, we need to look at that,
and we need to do so from an evidence base,
working with our National Institutes of Health
and the Food and Drug administration.
So we've got that charge, and that is part of our focus.
- I think about, I think about what you're trying to do
with four different approaches,
and Secretary just mentioned two of them.
You have to have the providers in your network,
if you have an insurance plan,
that has access to them.
You have to be able to pay the providers
for those types of alternative or integrative therapies,
but there's two other things that we've learned
in the Department of Veteran Affairs.
One is we encourage team-based approaches to care,
and I think that's what you're doing in your clinics.
Instead of it being a solo provider,
we have teams of nurses, doctors, physical therapists,
pharmacists, social workers, all of whom
then can suggest alternative approaches.
And finally, what we're doubling down on in the
Department of Veteran Affairs now, is teaching the patient,
in our case, the veterans, self-care,
and letting them know, how do they take care
of themselves and what alternatives should
they be thinking about, rather than just listening
to what a provider says to them,
so that they're an active participant.
So I think when you take those four things,
we can see more of what you have been able to experience.
- Our last question is from Greg DeLaney of Ohio.
Hi, Greg.
- It is such an honor to be here with you folks,
much like my sister and my brother here,
I'm in long-term recovery myself,
ten years in July, so it's wonderful to be with others.
(audience applauds)
I nearly lost my life to addiction,
and yet, while I was coming through recovery,
it was the work of a pastor that really made
all the difference for me.
And so what I wanted to kind of talk about is
that since that time of intervention from him,
we've had the wonderful opportunity in Ohio
to try to mobilize our church and faith community
to being a part of this solution in this particular crisis.
And we've had wonderful relationships
with our attorney general, Mike DeWine.
We've expanded those, then, with attorney general Morrissey
in West Virginia, probably done 60, 65 forums
with faith leaders, trying to help them find their lane.
Many of them have found their lane,
but what they have found is that to navigate funding
for their lane has been intensely difficult
because of their faith-based nature.
So my question on behalf of all of them today,
and myself as a pastor, who buried about 12 folks
in this challenge,
how can we eliminate some of the perceived
or real barriers to some of this funding
for those that are doing great grassroots work
at the faith-based level.
Thank you.
- Well, glad you brought that up.
(audience applauds)
You know, the faith-based community is
one of the real foundations of American values,
and have taken on the responsibility of helping those,
particularly those who are helpless,
or who, as the book of James says,
"the fatherless and the widows,"
the people who need our help the most.
That certainly includes those who are addicted,
which affects their behavior,
which frequently puts them in a very vulnerable position.
At HUD, we have grown our faith-based component,
and I think that's been the case
in several other agencies.
The President and the White House has made
a very significant effort to make sure
that we protect the faith-based community
and religious freedom, while at the same time,
respecting everybody's beliefs.
That's really the key.
So I think you will find this effort
that we're putting forth will very nicely encompass
the faith-based community.
- Please grab me afterwards.
I want to, we each have faith-based offices.
Our job is to remove barriers to faith-based providers
or services who may be unfairly discriminated against
in the provision of critical care to our people.
So at HHS, I'd like to know if we're getting
in the way of that or there are things that we can do
to be better, so thank you.
- Thank you.
Please join me in thanking Secretary Azar,
Secretary Carson, Secretary Shulkin.
Thank you very much. (audience applauds)
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I'd like to call to the stage Jim Carroll.
He's the acting director of ONDCP,
and he'd like to make a few remarks.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you.
Thank you, Kellyanne.
It's an honor to be here, today,
and I greatly appreciate the trust
the President has placed in me to work
with you all on this issue.
Since I just started about a week ago,
I have not had the opportunity to meet
with many of you quite yet,
but I'm looking forward to doing that
in the coming months and years.
This is one of the President's greatest priorities,
and it is an honor to be here with you today.
In addition to the many families that are here,
I also want to recognize that we have
about 12 police chiefs from across the country,
who came to hear this message,
and to share their stories with us.
Like so many of us, law enforcement families are
not immune from this epidemic.
(audience applauds)
I wanted to tell you a little bit about myself,
like Dr. Collins, I started my career as a state prosecutor,
where I spent the vast majority of my time
prosecuting drug cases,
but I just didn't spend my time inside a courtroom,
I also was out there on the streets
with my colleagues, the law enforcement officers out there,
to actually understand what they were going through.
So I've seen how this tears families apart.
I went on to the private sector,
at a large corporation, was the global director
of compliance, and so I became involved and aware of
the importance of a strong employee assistance program
to help our employees through this,
because this becomes an economic issue, as well.
Here at the White House, as deputy chief of staff,
I got the opportunity to work behind the scenes
with Kellyanne as the leader in this effort,
and work with many of my colleagues here on the stage today.
Since I started last week, I did have the opportunity
to meet with Tony Luke, who runs a chain
of cheesesteak restaurants in Philly.
Congratulations to the Eagles this year.
(he laughs)
Tragically, as many of you know, he lost his son,
as well, last year.
Yesterday I met with this beautiful, kind-hearted woman,
who is raising her granddaughter,
as her own daughter fights this challenge.
So many families have been affected by this.
When I met with the First Lady of North Dakota,
who is here and shared her story with me,
she mentioned that in North Dakota,
I think it's one out of seven either has a family member,
a friend, or a neighbor who's been impacted by this.
For their first time, publicly,
I want to tell you that I am that one in seven,
that I have a family member who has been touched
by this, and last year I was in the rehab center
with my family member, holding that person's hand,
helping them through this,
and trying to be that support system.
And so, it's a great honor for me to take this on.
This is a professional and a personal challenge for me,
for the President, and every member of this administration.
The last thing that I want to close with is
that sadly, at the office of national drug control policy,
we have a collection of prayer cards from the funerals
of so many young people.
Pastor, you talked about that,
how many funerals you've been to,
and so we have a collection of the prayer cards.
And one I keep on my desk is for a young man named Archie.
And it reads, "God of love,
graciously ease our burdens from this epidemic.
Calm our anxieties and strengthen our faith."
I look forward to working with you all
on this great epidemic.
Thank you, Kellyanne.
Thank you, everyone.
(audience applauds)
- Jim Carroll, thank you,
obviously the President made an excellent choice.
We're now going to take a very brief break,
and bring up our law enforcement interdiction panel
in about five minutes.
Thank you.
- How good to be with you,
and we're at a point where we are going
to make some progress in America.
I am convinced.
We know that prices for illegal drugs are down.
The availability is up,
and the purity is up.
And the addiction is up, and the death is up,
and the danger of the drugs,
particularly the Fentanyl and heroin combinations
we're seeing, are just extraordinary.
I was involved in the early '80s
as a United States attorney, working on these issues,
and we never saw anything like the deaths
that we're seeing today.
This is totally unprecedented
in the history of this country.
It cannot continue.
It will not continue.
The President has made it clear,
we're going to be resolute.
The entire administration is going to respond
to his declaration of an emergency,
and we're going to make a difference.
I'll just tell you.
I believe it, I can sense it already
in some of the policies that are ongoing out there.
We announced in July, the largest medical takedown
in the history of our country.
We had over 120 professionals, nurses, and doctors
who had been, out of 400, I believe, arrestees
that were involved in illegal prescription drugs.
And we know that as much as 80% of addictions today
start with prescription drugs.
Now that's an extraordinary number,
and we'll continue to research it,
but that's the numbers that we have,
and I have no doubt, it's an extraordinary high amount,
starts as prescription drugs.
We also had, a week later, the shutdown of AlphaBay.
This is important.
It's a dark website in which had 220,000 sites
where people could order directly through the mail
illegal drugs.
And of course, Fentanyl and for example is so small,
so compact and such a little bit is so powerful,
that it's easy to ship these kind of drugs
through the mail.
The FBI has doubled its resources to identify earlier.
We're not going to let those sites get that big
again in the future.
That's certainly our goal,
and we're going to continue the work on that.
We've 3,000 defendants for distributing drugs
in 2017, and we have created the opioid fraud,
abuse, and detection network,
which is a data analytics system,
that's well within the existing computer systems
of the drug enforcement administration,
so we can easily determine what physicians,
pharmacies, and other distributors are moving
prescription drugs.
Some of them are extraordinary outliers.
They give us indications of where fraud
and abuse is occurring, and we can move quickly on that.
That's not been really done before,
target packages are being sent out right now
to investigators and cases are being made.
One associate United States attorney said,
"I didn't think too much about it,
but when I looked at what happened,
we knew there was six professionals, mostly physicians,
in Pittsburgh, every one of those were on this list.
And so it made me a believer."
And a lot more on the list that he didn't know about.
We sent out 12 special experienced assistant
United States attorneys to hotspots around the country
to focus on that.
We've indicted two Chinese nationals
for the first time on Fentanyl charges,
most of that is coming from China, as you know,
often through Mexico, sometimes directly through the mail
to our communities.
We established a new program called J-Code,
that is the FBI's program with DEA to identify
through the dark net and actually purchase undercover,
drugs in that way and to target those groups.
And we announced the prescription intervention
and litigation task force
that would utilize our civil department
to file civil lawsuits.
We believe we can get an injunction to stop
a physician or a pharmacy immediately
from prescribing drugs because they have to comply
with the law, and we can get a civil injunction
and then continue, if need be, a criminal investigation.
I'm excited about that,
and we've also filed litigation in support,
I believe it'll be filed today.
We've announced our intention to file
a statement of interest with the multi-district litigation
effort by a lot of the attorneys general
around the country on that.
Thank you.
(audience laughs)
I think, okay, good.
So I'll just end there to say,
this is what we're doing in our department.
You see it, and the people you saw earlier,
in the first panel.
I believe if we do these things effectively,
we can reduce the amount of deaths, addiction,
and destruction that these drugs are causing today.
It's just unacceptable in this great country,
and we'll do our part,
and Kellyanne, I know, I have to say,
Kellyanne's leadership is going to be so important
in this, because we do want prevention.
We do need to educate people,
and the President has used a phrase, "Just don't start."
If you don't start, like he never started,
and you don't get addicted.
So we need to be cautious about,
encourage people not to do that.
Kellyanne knows how to communicate well,
and will be a great asset to us.
So Kellyanne, thank you.
- Thank you very much, Mr. Attorney General.
Thank you. (audience applauds)
I was there on Tuesday when you had the press conference
with the state attorneys general and the acting director
of the DA and others, and was really struck
by the bipartisan approach that the attorneys general had
towards your prescription, that's right,
intervention litigation announcement.
Going on to Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen
of the Department of Homeland Security.
So many aspects of the interdiction law enforcement front
in waging the battle against this crisis,
Secretary Nielsen, falls under DHS.
So we're most curious to hear the progress report,
and also the vision for the future.
Thank you.
- I'm gonna, oh, I did it.
I was (mumbles) enough to pass it to you.
Well, good afternoon, everyone.
I really appreciate the opportunity to join you today.
This truly is a shared fight.
I'm sure you've heard before and will continue to hear
for the rest of today, how we must do this
in partnership.
I'm particularly honored to be joined by leadership
from the Department of Homeland Security.
We've got ICE and CBP here, Kevin McAleenan and Tom Homan.
They do this work every day, day in and day out
to protect our borders from all threats,
and our interior from all threats,
but that increasingly, unfortunately, includes opioids.
So the President, when he declared an opioid crisis
as a public health emergency,
he really sent a very strong statement.
And the statement to us as America is fighting back.
And we will continue to do that
with all the tools that we have at our disposal
at the Department of Homeland Security,
in conjunction with our partners,
the Department of Justice and the Department of State,
amongst many others.
Since October, we at DHS have proactively assessed
the current threat, determined where we might have gaps,
and what else we can throw at it, if you will.
So this has allowed us to leverage our investigative
and intelligence efforts.
You may or may not know, DHS is a law-enforcement agency.
We have 60,000 on CBP alone,
but we have multiple agents throughout the department
that play a role in this,
through leveraging their investigative
and intelligence efforts.
We also do interdiction operations
with our international partners,
and we've had great success on that front,
particularly with our friends and close partners
in Mexico, and we continue to look for new partners,
because, as we know, this dreaded drug,
Fentanyl, continues, as the attorney general mentioned,
to come in packages of all sorts and sizes,
and then get in the hands of TCOs
that otherwise use it in the drug flow.
So we look at this sort of two ways.
We look at within our borders,
and then we look at stopping across our borders,
if you will.
So to prevent entry, we do work with DOJ and State,
and our law-enforcement counterparts in Mexico,
South and Central America, and China, as well,
to prevent the flow, but also, most importantly,
to share the information.
The sharing of information really has two main purposes:
one is to hopefully stop the drugs
before they come into our country,
but the other is to help us as partners dismantle
TCOs themselves that are the force behind the epidemic.
So this information sharing helps us to stop the flow,
facilitates the dismantlement,
and it also provides clear roles and responsibilities
amongst all partners to bring all that we have to bear.
So I just wanted to use one example.
We have border enforcement security task forces,
which luckily enough has one of those good acronyms, BEST.
Some of our acronyms at DHS are not so well done.
And these are CBP and ICE's primary platform
to investigate opiod smuggling domestically.
So ICE has BEST in 58 locations
throughout the United States,
leverages more than 1,000 federal, state,
local law enforcement officials,
and it represents over 100 law enforcement agencies.
CBP also has officers in hundreds of ports of entry,
as you know, and they not only check billions of dollars
of cargo each day and millions of passengers a day,
but they are particularly focused recently on Fentanyl.
DBP seizures of Fentanyl have significantly increased
over the last three years.
We had about only two pounds in 2013.
We had 1,485 pounds in 2017, and remember,
this drug in extraordinarily small quantities, is lethal.
So 1,485 pounds is substantial, that is an epidemic.
So to confront this explosion,
they've expanded the use of canines,
and we're happy to report that all CBP canines,
working in the international mail and express consignment
environment now have the ability to detect drugs,
and Fentanyl in particular.
While we don't see yet a significant amount
of the opioids being trafficked by sea,
US Coastguard Maritime interdictions of other narcotics,
are increasing, and of course, that deprives
the funds from the TCOs, who are then able to otherwise
use the funds to traffic in the opioids and Fentanyl.
So to prevent the sale, I'll just talk
about that for a minute.
We're also committed to not only preventing them
at their source, but then of course,
preventing their movement into and sale within our country.
The attorney general mentioned the dark web.
We support his efforts.
Our United States Secret Service has extensive
cyber capability on the investigation side,
and they also contribute to this fight.
And so does ICE at Homeland Security Investigations.
Again, DHS has a broad mission set,
but we do, at all times, work to bring everything
we have to bear.
The dark net, I would just add one comment
to what the attorney general said,
it's anonymous.
So it makes it that much more difficult
to track who is doing what on the dark net
in terms of buying and selling,
but with our partners at justice and FBI
and within DHS, we are doing just that.
So the job doesn't end there.
We also work to support the apprehension
and prosecution, again, we work closely
with our law-enforcement brethren.
What I would say in closing is the sheer magnitude
of this means that we have to partner.
As I've said many times today, actually,
in other forum, there's not one entity that has
all of the authorities, capabilities and capacities
to fight this alone, so we greatly appreciate
everyone in this room.
Your interest, your support, your partnership,
we can't do it without you.
We thank the President and the Vice President
for their continued leadership,
and certainly Kellyanne for her,
all off the yeoman work that you've been doing
to bring us all together.
- Thank you very much, Secretary Nielsen, thank you.
(audience applauds)
It's been really terrific to have
the State department involved in this effort, as well,
and today I'm very happy to present to you,
for his remarks, the Deputy Secretary of State,
Mr. Sullivan.
- Thank you, Kellyanne.
It's an honor to be here,
delighted to see everyone here.
Thank you for your leadership,
and to General Sessions and Secretary Nielsen.
You might wonder why the State department is here.
Well, this is a whole of government effort.
The President has made this a top priority
for his administration.
The State department's involved because the problem
we confront is not really a domestic problem.
The opioids that are killing American citizens today
are produced overseas,
and they're trafficked by criminals
and criminal organizations that operate transnationally.
The State Department's role is to stop
transnational criminal organizations,
so-called TCOs, and the networks of criminal activity
they perpetuate in trafficking drugs,
and destroying the lives of our loved ones.
Addressing the opioid crisis, as I say,
is a whole of government effort,
and the State Department's role is to apply
its resources abroad with our partners, allies, and others,
to support all the work the Department of Justice,
the Department of Homeland Security,
and the other cabinet departments are doing
to address this problem and this enormous scourge,
and to enlist the support of our allies and partners
and neighbors in Mexico, in particular.
It's our highest, at the State department,
this is our highest drug control priority.
The bulk of the State department's counter-narcotics work
is focused on countries where opioids originate.
Opium harvested in Mexico is the root of over 90%
of the US supply of heroin.
The TCOs that smuggle it across our border,
to be sold by dealers throughout the country,
are the targets that DHS and the Department of Justice
are working to stop.
We're strengthening cooperation with Mexico,
through the Merida Initiative,
to interdict illegal transports,
find and punish criminals involved in these organizations,
and cut off their sources of funding.
In December of last year,
Secretary Tillerson and I, along with General Sessions
and Secretary Nielsen, continued the strategic dialogue
we have with Mexico on disrupting
transnational criminal organizations.
We're working with out Mexican counterparts
to find new ways to disrupt the revenue streams
of TCOs that are responsible for trafficking heroin
and other illicit drugs into the United States.
We're also working with Mexico to more aggressively
eradicate poppy crops, train law enforcement,
enhance border security, and bring drug traffickers
to justice.
Over 100 of Mexico's most wanted, high-value targets,
like Chapo Guzmán, have been arrested, killed,
or extradited to the United States.
We support Mexico's efforts to find, investigate,
and destroy clandestine drug labs.
Since 2014, the Department of State has funded
DEA training of over 300 Mexican counterparts
in special tactics to go after those labs.
Since 2008, the United States has donated
and supported training of more than 500 canines,
who were assigned to Mexican and federal and state
law enforcement agencies.
We sponsored training for canines and handling teams
to detect weapons, cash, and drugs.
This includes, for the very first time,
Fentanyl-specific detection training,
through cooperation with our neighbor to the north, Canada.
Last fall, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs put
new international controls on the two primary ingredients
that are used to produce Fentanyl.
This action was taken at the request of the United States,
and such measures are already producing results.
Due to this change and other efforts,
DEA has seen a decline in the presence of these chemicals
in the illicit drug market.
And in two weeks, again, at our request,
the UN Commission will address controls
on five other synthetic opioids,
including the deadly opioid, Carfentanil.
The State department is also building partnerships
to more effectively stop the traffic
of synthetic drugs sent through international mail
and courier systems, which General Sessions mentioned.
These efforts allow for law enforcement to more easily
interdict any packages that may contain illicit Fentanyl.
China is a growing area of focus
in the fight against opioids.
Energized by President Trump's visit to China last November,
the United States and China have forged
a productive counter-narcotics relationship.
As a result of our cooperation,
China has established domestic restrictions
on the production and sale of 143 substances,
including a number of Fentanyl-related compounds.
China's tightening of regulations has significantly
contributed to the reduction of these substances
on the streets of the United States.
Unfortunately, we're beginning to see a new trend
of rogue Chinese chemists, who are manufacturing
illicit opioids, selling them online to drug traffickers
and users, and shipping them in small quantities
through the mail.
As Secretary Nielsen mentioned,
the amount of Fentanyl that's necessary
to convey a lethal dose is extremely small.
We're talking about small quantities
of these illicit substances.
In response, we're working closely with China
to improve coordination and screening of mail packages
between our two countries.
We're on an aggressive time table to get all packages
coming from China tagged, with advanced electronic data.
And we're gonna continue that close cooperation
with China in other countries that are sources
of these chemicals and illicit opioids.
Collaboration is the only we can tackle a problem
that has no regard for international borders.
The State Department will continue to aggressively
pursue this fight against opioids,
in partnerships with all other nations.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you so much, Deputy Secretary Sullivan.
That's a lot of information.
I think it strikes America as brand-new information,
in many way, so we very much appreciate
all the efforts that the State Department
by Secretary Tillerson and you and your vast team.
So we're going to open it up for questions.
First will be from New York City, Dr. Jeanette Nashua.
Hi.
- Good afternoon, everyone.
It's great to be here today,
to discuss such a critical issue facing our country.
Again, my name is Jeanette Nashua,
and I'm a family and emergency medicine doctor.
And I've witnessed firsthand, with my patients,
how devastating and how horrific it is,
not just for drug, for the user,
but for their families as well.
It can really have a detrimental impact
on families and tear families apart.
And I will never forget resuscitating
a young teenage boy who was found unconscious
by his friends, and the worst part,
one of the worst parts about that experience is
having to tell his family, having to tell his mom.
It was heart-wrenching,
and I hope and I pray that I will never have to do
that again, and so I thank you, Kellyanne, all of you,
and our President Trump for elevating this issue,
this critical issue.
It's a real issue affecting families
and many Americans here in this country,
and you know, what I would like to know is
what message, what advice does our President have
for healthcare providers who are on the front line
facing this crisis?
- Any of you are welcome to answer that.
I know there's a real nexus between law enforcement now
and healthcare providers.
We hear that from law enforcement.
In some jurisdictions, a fire station is three times,
three to four times more likely to respond to an overdose
than a fire.
So we know there's a nexus, if you like to respond.
- Yes, there's no doubt about it.
One of the ways, from many decades,
we've analyzed how serious the drug problem is,
is emergency room admissions.
I don't think we've ever seen anything like
the admissions we're seeing now,
and so many of those turn out to be fatal.
So I do think that connection is important.
I would say to you that most of us know somebody
who's also suffered in that way,
has been hospitalized or homeless even,
and lost their jobs, lost their families,
and the grassroots communication of the danger
of these drugs is the long-term solution,
the best solution that we can have.
I really do believe that.
I think it worked previously against
the whole cocaine epidemic, and I believe it will work now.
It'll be the most successful thing.
When you can speak out like you're talking about,
to your community about the disaster of young lives
being lost, that would be important.
We were in New Hampshire, not too many months ago,
with the governor, 9,000 high school students,
50 mothers stood before them holding large photographs
of their children who had died of a drug overdose.
It was a powerful thing to see,
and I hope we'll all be touched by it.
- Just to add, you know, we always ask
for your partnership, because it's through the information
you provide, that we can really get after the supply chains.
So we need to at all times understand where it's going,
where it's come from, and who it's affecting.
That helps us really target, if you will,
our enforcement activities.
So we thank you for everything you do.
- I will say that Secretary Tillerson once shared
with me and a few others that he believes
patients should be told more,
that they don't need to take all the pain medication.
Part of the prescribing as pain management need
not mean pain medication.
I know you heard that from Secretaries Azar and Carson,
and especially Secretary Shulkin earlier,
but it just tells you how much everyone is thinking
of how intertwined the issue is for many.
So we appreciate very much that question.
Our next question comes from Princeton, West Virginia,
and Greg Puckett.
You're here, Greg.
Last week, the USDA issued some guidance
on opioids in rural America,
and I think your question has
something to do with that as well.
- It certainly does.
Thank you so much.
I want to thank the administration,
the panel, Kellyanne, everybody else,
or allowing us to come and be with you today.
So I do have a couple of prepared remarks
to preclude my question.
My name is Greg Puckett.
I am a commissioner in Mercer County, West Virginia.
I've been a commissioner for three years,
but I've been active in primary prevention strategies
through local community-based coalitions
for the last 17 years.
So I know prevention actually works on the front end.
I would also like to say that I want to give you
a quick snapshot of what it's like to live
in rural America.
When we started this back in 1998, with OxyContin,
when it first came down,
it was designated hillbilly heroin for Appalachia.
We saw it, excuse me, we saw this coming,
but it also has harm that is not only to the individual,
but to society as a whole.
In the last 19 years, this social service system
that we have seen has become overloaded,
employment rates have risen to record levels,
and I can tell you that, from 2005 to 2012,
the amount of pills that came, the amount of opioids
that came to my community was over 16 million
in a county of 61,000.
West Virginia has declared a state of emergency
for hepatitis C, and seven counties, including mine,
are at risk of an HIV outbreak, the likes we've never seen.
As 220 counties out of 3,060 in the United States.
According to the CDC, 78 people die of overdoses every day,
and in West Virginia, we have that one out
of every 10 minutes, I'm sorry, 10 hours.
If you're looking at, from an incarceration perspective,
in Mercer County, our jail bill is $1.7 million.
That's 20% of our annual budget.
We spend more in one month of our jail bill
than we spend on economic development
and our health department combined for one month.
We need funds in rural communities that look
at primary prevention and treatment strategies
that have a true impact, and not necessarily focus
on higher population levels as around the United States,
which does lead to my question.
With the ongoing exponential problems associated
with opioids in predominately rural America,
where geographic terrain
and economic disadvantage areas are, like Appalachia,
is the administration willing to send additional resources
to fix these areas first, where they are the greatest?
- Well, we are,
and I appreciate your comments
because it is extraordinary how much impact
that our rural areas are,
and you see it maybe, no place in America worse
than West Virginia.
We have the DEA, as we organized its, Rob Patterson,
here in the front row, DEA, acting administrator.
They've reorganized so that they've got a new section,
a team that will be focused on Kentucky,
Tennessee and West Virginia,
where we've got some of the highest problems there ever.
DEA also has six special teams they've deployed,
and I believe four of those six are going to rural areas.
We have designated every United States attorney's office,
a specialist on opioid cases,
and they're supposed to coordinate our efforts,
and I know they'll be identifying the rural areas are
some of the worst hot spots.
So it's a remarkable to me, how this addiction,
these opioids have impacted our rural areas,
and some of the information and data
that you just shared from West Virginia is shocking, indeed.
Also, the new data analytics situation in numbers,
I think would've identified some of the problems
you've had in West Virginia, many years before
it ever reached the epidemic level that it did.
- I just add, yes, just to add, we recognize
that this doesn't know any specific geographic boundaries,
so at the Department of Homeland Security,
we utilize our national targeting center
to really try to find out where the risk is,
and then put the resources there.
It also brings back to the mail.
The mail makes all areas equal, right?
Unfortunately, we all receive mail.
So working with the United States Post Office,
working with DEA, with DOJ, CBP is really working
to get after that part of the flow.
- Thank you.
Kevin Mirra, from Hamilton, New Jersey,
where we're talking about maps,
and identifying spikes in need.
Sir.
- Thank you very much.
Happy St. Patrick's month to everybody here today.
I want to thank the President, First Lady,
and everyone over at ONDCP who's never said no
to the parents.
My name is Kevin Mirra,
and my wife Maryanne and I volunteer
for a small mom-and-pop no-profit in New Jersey.
All volunteers, and we don't have any federal grants
or state grants.
So my question is, one second, I forgot.
Kellyanne, my wife said that the only way I could retire,
is if I work with you on the opioid epidemic.
So since you're both Jersey girls,
I figure maybe you could work it out with her, but.
- [Kellyanne] Got it.
- Thank you very much.
So I'm not a professional.
I'm just a dad who buried his son.
Casey was 24 when we lost him.
I can't believe, it's just hard to fathom
that my journey has taken us from his bedroom
where we lost him to the East Room of the White House.
But actually, with all due respect, I'd trade it,
all of this, just for five more minutes with him,
just five.
So City of Angels, although it's a small,
mom-and-pop non-profit, we think we do some big things
on the leading edge to a curve,
and what I mean by that is we started sending
volunteers into hospitals and into emergency rooms,
and into the police departments back in 2008.
Now they call them recovery coaches
and hope and angel programs, so on, so to speak.
But my question centers around OD map,
another leading edge thing,
and we found this down at the Baltimore DC (mumbles).
It's actually an app for your phone,
where the first responders, police officers,
and emergency medical technicians responding to an overdose,
can actually sign on and send information,
and the overdoses would be tracked real time,
which would also go to help identify spikes.
And so, we're hoping that if there's a possibility,
that this could be done as a national model,
and introduced as such.
And I'm just going to close by saying, I look at your chair,
your empty chair, there, Kelly.
5,394, 5,394 from today, March 1 to April 1 Easter Sunday,
that's how many chairs will be empty at Easter tables
because we're losing 174 to overdoses every day.
And I'll just close by saying,
thank you very much, Secretaries.
You want to know me for what I've learned
over the last ten years, you don't want to be me,
for what Eric and these other parents have gone through.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you so much, Kevin, for sharing your story,
and making a difference for others.
Also we will keep you in our prayers.
I know, Mr. Attorney General, you talked
about data sharing and analytics,
and of course, Mr. Mirra was talking
about the use and the ability to have better
data sharing by tracking overdoses
and identifying spikes.
And anything in the data analytics
that you want to talk about?
- Yes, the HIDTA program, I think,
started in early 2017, last year.
A lot of places are looking at that around the country.
I know a number, I think three or more counties were
in the initial project.
It's proving apparently successful in being adopted.
I would just say every area of the country,
when you deal with this,
we all know there's not one single thing
that's going to fix it,
but a series of actions, even if it reduces the problem
one, two, three, five percent, helps us
to be more effective will add up over time,
begin to reverse this trend.
And we also know and was told that New Hampshire,
when I was there for the first time,
but overheard it, repeatedly, that you would think,
when a powerful Fentanyl supply starts killing people,
that people would flee from it,
but the DEA tells us that people, some people come,
particularly the addicts, and they want more
of the more powerful drug.
So this kind of early identification can help deal
with a spike in extremely dangerous levels of Fentanyl.
- Thank you very much.
Another father who's been able to take that resolve
and action forward, and we saw him on tape earlier,
is my old friend, Eric Boeing,
along with his wife, Adrianne,
has a story to tell about their son, Eric Chase.
Eric, I think today, you have a question
for this particular panel about interdiction
that you'd like to pose.
- Thank you.
First of all, I'd like to say thank you
to President Trump, First Lady, Kellyanne Conway,
and all the secretaries, the deputy secretary,
and the general, General Sessions and General Adams,
thank you guys so much.
Law enforcement, we needed to thank them a little bit more.
They're doing, they're on the front line.
They've been amazing, and that's a tough job.
I got to tell you, some of the things that they see,
you wouldn't wish on anyone,
and finally, thank the parents who came here.
This is, you know, we didn't sign up for this.
I certainly didn't sign up for it.
None of us signed up for this,
and it's been very, very difficult.
A quick story, my question was on the Fentanyl
and Chinese, the illegal Chinese Fentanyl,
and I think you guys have hit it,
and it sounds like you're on top of it.
And I think it was very important.
My son died of an accidental overdose
when he bought a pill on campus.
He was a college sophomore.
He bought a Xanax.
He thought it was a Xanax.
It happened to be not a prescriptive Xanax,
but one that was purchased from someone on campus,
and it was laced with Fentanyl,
and he died in his sleep that night.
What I'd like to just mention here,
he passed on September 8 of this past year.
September 9 we flew up to Colorado,
and we're sitting our doctor.
We're about to go over to the coroner,
and it's just something no parent should ever want to do.
My phone rang, and it was President Trump,
and he said, "Eric, I don't know how you're doing.
I just want you to know you're
in my thoughts and my prayers."
Okay, a few weeks later, it was Thanksgiving,
the first holiday after his passing,
and we were talking, we're about to sit down,
small group of people, six or so of our family members,
and there's that empty chair.
And I know it's about to happen.
We're going to sit down.
We're going to see the chair.
We're gonna fall apart.
As, literally, the turkey is on the table,
we're walking over to the table, phone rings again.
And it's President Trump, saying,
"Eric, this is very difficult.
It's your first holiday without your son.
I don't know how you're doing it.
If you need anything, let me know."
And I said, Kellyanne, I said,
"Mr. President, thank you.
You're gonna help this whole family,
but can I talk to you about this crisis
that's killing so many of our young people?"
He said absolutely, and that's how I started
talking to him, Kellyanne, and others
about, in this administration, about the opioid crisis.
I got involved, but I'm getting involved as a father.
I'm not getting involved, as, I have no issue.
I have no website.
I have nothing other than I don't want
anyone else to feel the depths of despair
that you feel when you lose a child.
I'm representing you guys, the families who are here,
who've lost loved ones.
That's all it's about.
It's you, it's you. (audience applauds)
It's not me.
General Sessions, thank you for being strong
on enforcement, we appreciate that.
Secretary Nielsen, thank you, I hope we get
that southern border with a wall up
so that we can stop some of this stuff
that's coming through the southern and northern borders.
And also, Mr. Sullivan, thank you very much
for what you're doing.
I think China, you just need to lean on them
as hard as you possibly can.
My question was answered, but thank you guys all so much.
(audience applauds)
- I just want to, first of all,
please accept my condolences for everyone in this room
who has lost someone.
We all need to work together to prevent
other families from feeling that pain,
but that doesn't in any way, I know,
limit the pain that you feel.
So thank you for sharing with us, each and every one of you.
I did want to pick up on just one thing you said,
which is when it comes to border security,
it's not and it should not be,
as I said earlier today, a political football.
It's real.
The threat is real.
The drugs coming across our border are real.
The traffickers and TCOs coming across
and utilizing loopholes in our border are real.
So I hope that we can also all work together
on bipartisan legislation that will give
the men and women of DHS the tools they need
to secure our borders.
That will help, not only with this threat,
but with many others.
But truly, we owe it to each other,
to give it a good shot at trying to stop
the drugs from getting into our country.
So thank you for raising that.
- Yeah, and I'd just add on China,
we work very closely with the Chinese government.
They have listed proscribed, as I mentioned in my remarks,
143 chemicals which are now banned under Chinese law.
So their law enforcement now can go to work.
We're working to identify other chemicals
and analogs of the opiates that also need to be addressed,
but there are three aspects of it
One is identifying the substances
that need to be controlled and declared illegal,
then once that happens, working with law enforcement
in other countries and Mexico, for example,
so that their law enforcement, with support from us,
the Department of State, Department of Justice,
can go after the drug labs,
go after the transnational criminal organizations.
And then finally, one thing that gets,
that may be overlooked, and I mentioned it on my remarks.
I think both General Sessions and Secretary Nielsen
mentioned it, is the use of the mail.
We've really got to focus on that,
because the amount of substance that is dangerous
that can be sent by mail is really very small.
We've got to work on tracking, detection, and so forth,
working with international postal authorities,
universal postal union.
So a lot of varies for us to work on
at the State Department, and it's a priority for us,
as Kellyanne said, for Secretary Tillerson
and of course, for the President.
So thank you.
- Thank you very much, Mr. Deputy Secretary.
All the way from Anchorage, Alaska, Jay Butler.
- Thank you.
I have the privilege of being the Chief Medical Officer
for the great state of Alaska.
So I'm here to tell you that no part
of our country is too remote,
no part off our country is immune from the threat
of this epidemic.
I also have the privilege of being the
incident commander for Governor Walker's
unified command response, where we've brought together
nine departments of state government to work together
in this response.
And I want to thank the President,
and thank all of you for being together today.
I see at least six departments of the federal government
together here today, maybe more.
I also want to thank you for the support
that we receive from the federal government,
particularly in terms of funding,
because working together and with adequate funding,
we can make a difference.
And the good news is we're already seeing some progress.
In Alaska, we are seeing declines in overdose deaths
related to prescription opioids.
The bad news is that progress is literally being obliterated
by the influx of Fentanyl,
with huge increases in the number of deaths
related to Fentanyl,
even in some of our most remote villages.
So Fentanyl is powerful.
It's cheap, as the General was saying earlier,
and it's easily transported.
We feel like much of the transport,
within the 50 states and certainly within our state,
is related to transport on commercial air carriers.
So my question is how can we improve screening
for illicit drugs, Fentanyl, and also should mention
methamphetamine, which we're seeing more of, also,
on commercial air carriers, particularly in checked baggage,
carry-on, and in shipped packages,
and even more particularly,
how can we help assure that law enforcement
and drug dogs have access into areas controlled
by the commercial carriers?
Thank you.
- Thank, and thank you for that question.
You know, today we are celebrating 15 years
of creation of the Department of Homeland Security,
which is both a happy day and a sad day.
Sad, because we have to have a Department
of Homeland Security, but we talked a lot this morning
about our standing mission space,
and certainly part of it is with respect to drugs.
So as you know, traditionally in aviation,
we think of thongs.
We think of unruly, criminally-minded passengers,
but drugs, more and more, are pop of mind.
So TSA employees are rolled domestically,
with checked baggage,
but CBP is actually our premier component
within DHS that looks at the foreign travel
of passengers, identifying not only high risk passengers,
but those parcels and checked baggage
that might contain drugs.
Dogs, as you mentioned, are very important asset.
We love our dogs.
They do incredible work.
They put themselves in danger each day,
as we know, and protected.
If a dog sniffs a very small amount of Fentanyl,
it will die.
So we use the dogs.
We use them with caution.
We protect our officers,
but the targeting becomes very important,
and that's where I echo the Attorney General
and the Secretary Sullivan's comments,
because it's only through that information sharing
that we can really target.
Otherwise, we couldn't possibly go through
everyone's piece of luggage, for example.
So we do it in a risk-based way.
The last thing I would just mention is technology.
We continue to look at technology,
both at our ports of entry, as well as our airports,
to ensure that we can get down to a level
where we can identify and interdict
even small amounts of drugs.
So thank you for that.
That's definitely something we need to continue to work on.
- Thank you very much, Mr. Butler.
Thanks for being here from Alaska.
Attorney General Sessions, we heard a comment earlier
from Princeton, West Virginia that you touched upon,
but I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind telling us
a little bit about anything the Department of Justice
may be able to do to crack down on the pill mills
and fraudulent prescriptions,
knowing that there are tens and millions of Americans
who suffer from chronic pain,
and need those medications.
We're talking about the pill mills
and the fraudulent prescriptions,
like the amount of pills we heard from West Virginia.
- Yes, it definitely would have to be looked at.
We are, as a nation, an outlier.
We consume extraordinarily more pain medications
by prescription than any other country in the world,
by far, that is resulting in addiction.
A substantial percentage of addicts started with pain pills,
and drug enforcement administration,
I'm sending him a directive on request today,
to look at their regulatory capabilities
that we can perhaps reduce the number of drugs
being prescribed in America.
It is my goal, two goals, about prescription drugs
in particular, we want the death rate down,
and we'd like to see the amount of drugs prescribed down.
If we are an outlier, and we're way above the right limit,
and we have Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and private insurance
paying for these drugs to make people sick,
it makes no sense whatsoever, actually killing people.
So we've got to tighten that up.
I think we are above the right, the right level now,
and we're taking a number of steps.
DEA can pull a license, for somebody they identify
as a improper prescriber, or a drugstore
that's improperly selling,
even before a criminal case is made.
So we think we need to get better about shutting them down,
and we can't wait a year for a criminal case to be made,
and they continue to prescribe drugs.
We do that through civil lawsuits,
and we also, as I indicated, looking to civilly join
with our states in some of the litigation
that they're filing,
and we're looking to see if there's additional
civil litigation that Department of Justice can take
independently of the state lawsuits.
- Thank you very much, Mr. Attorney General.
Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. Sullivan,
Secretary of Homeland Security, Ms. Nielsen,
and our Attorney General, Jeff Sessions.
Please join me in thanking them for this panel.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
Thank you very much.
So we've had two panels,
the first one was about treatment
and prevention and recovery, education,
and now this panel on law enforcement and interdiction.
This is a president who is committed to all three fronts.
Education and prevention, interdiction,
and law enforcement, of course, treatment and recovery.
Every great movement, to bend the curve
in the right direction has wonderful people
who are marshaling their efforts on the ground,
has a terrific administration of cabinet members
and sub-cabinet members and senior staff,
and I want to say again with great distinction
and great gratitude from each and every one of us,
the biggest stars of the show today are
those families and those who are affected
who have the courage to come here,
and we pray for you, and we thank you very much
for coming forward and helping us on this crisis next door.
But every great movement has a leader,
and our leader is the President of the United States,
and it gives me great honor and pleasure
to introduce him to you now,
the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
(audience applauds)
- Well, thank you very much, Kellyanne.
And it's an honor to be with you.
I just said I was going to stop over,
say hello to some of the great families and some friends,
some friends that have had some incredible difficulty.
I know what you're going through.
Melania is here someplace.
Where is our First Lady?
Where is she?
Where's Melania?
Hello, darling.
So she feels so strongly about it.
Kellyanne feels so strongly about it.
And I do.
And a friend of mine, Steve Witkoff,
who is a great developer in New York City.
Stand up, Steve.
I didn't know you were going to be here.
Steve had some big difficulty.
He went through, Steve, come on up here.
Steve has been one of my great friends over the years.
A tremendously successful man.
And would you want to just discuss this?
Because we're all among friends here.
You know, it's a tough thing to discuss, right?
- It is, it is.
- But I was there when he was going through something
with a very special boy, right?
Go ahead.
- I remember the hug you gave me when the world was,
when I felt all was lost.
I listened to Eric's story.
I lost my son in 2011.
And he didn't buy drugs on the Darknet.
He bought drugs on the Internet,
a website owned by three of the largest U.S. corporations
in the country today.
So it's not just the Darknet.
But he was a great kid,
and he detoxed the first night with me.
So he was my special child.
So if I lost him,
I always felt hopeless before you were elected.
And I've never lobbied my friend about anything.
I've just supported you because I so believe in you,
but if my son knew that you were going
to take up this battle, oh, my gosh,
he must be upstairs applauding every single day.
So I am so grateful.
Thank you.
- Thank you, Steve.
You take care of yourself.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
And Steve went through something
where he thought everything was perfect.
He thought everything was fine.
And his boy was recovered.
And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere,
he got some very bad news.
So I fully understand what you're going through.
The administration is going to be rolling out
policy over the next three weeks,
and it will be very, very strong.
I've also spoken with Jeff about bringing
a lawsuit against some of these opioid companies.
I mean, what they're doing and the way, the distribution.
And you have people that go to the hospital
with a broken arm, and they come out and they're addicted.
They're addicted to painkillers,
and they don't even know what happened.
They go in for something minor,
and they come out and they're in serious shape.
So we're going to very much, you know,
as you know, I think we've been involved
more than any administration, by far.
It's a problem that's growing.
And drugs are a similar but different problem,
in the sense that we have pushers
and we have drug dealers that don't,
I mean, they kill hundreds and hundreds of people,
and most of them don't even go to jail.
You know, if you shoot one person, they give you life,
they give you the death penalty.
These people can kill 2,000, 3,000 people
and nothing happens to them.
And we need strength with respect to the pushers
and to the drug dealers.
And if we don't do that,
you're never going to solve the problem.
If you want to be weak and you want to talk
about just Blue Ribbon Committees, that's not the answer.
The answer is you have to have strength
and you have to have toughness.
The drug dealers, the drug pushers are,
they're really doing damage.
They're really doing damage.
Some countries have a very, very tough penalty,
the ultimate penalty.
And, by the way, they have much less of a drug problem
than we do.
So we're going to have to be very strong on penalties.
Hopefully, we can do some litigation
against the opioid companies.
I think it's very important because a lot
of states are doing it, but I keep saying,
if the states are doing it,
why isn't the federal government doing it?
(audience applauds)
So that will happen.
In the meantime, I just want to pay my respects
to everybody.
Some of you have gone through a lot.
Many of you in this room have gone through a lot,
more than anyone can imagine.
We're with you a hundred percent.
We're fighting for you, and we're going to win.
We're going to win.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, everybody.
(audience applauds)