Deirdre Shesgreen

dshesgreen@usatoday.com

WASHINGTON — “Please, please do something to help our children.”

That plea came from an Ohio mother, Tonda DaRe, who fought back tears as she begged Congress Wednesday to respond more aggressively and urgently to the heroin epidemic that has ravaged communities across her state and the country.

Speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee, DaRe described in heart-breaking detail how she found her daughter’s body, limp from a heroin overdose, and tried unsuccessfully to bring her back to life.

“When you find your 21-year-old on the floor blue, with bruises already on her forehead and her nose from slamming into the sink because she died so fast, that sticks with you for the rest of your life,” said the Carrollton resident. “We have to put a face to this. We have to help these kids.”

DaRe’s testimony came after the committee heard from top federal drug enforcement officials, addiction experts, and key lawmakers — a high-profile lineup that reflects a growing consensus in Washington that policymakers need to tackle the opioid and heroin epidemic in a more comprehensive way.

Committee members and witnesses alike said the federal government needs to increase federal spending on addiction treatment and prevention, curb easy access to potent prescription opioids, and crack down on heroin traffickers, among other steps.

“This epidemic is striking very close to home,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who testified in favor of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA. That bill, sponsored by Portman, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and others, would:

•provide grants to states, local governments, and nonprofit groups for education and prevention efforts to combat opioid and heroin abuse;

•provide federal funding for alternatives to incarceration for those with substance abuse problems;

•expand first responders’ access to naloxone, a medication that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose; and

•launch a demonstration program using medication-assisted treatment, a highly effective regimen for opioid addicts.

“It’s a bipartisan bill that addresses this issue head on,” Portman said, “and does so in a comprehensive way.”

But even as that legislation appeared to gain traction, lawmakers also seemed split over what is driving the heroin epidemic and how to tackle its root cause.

Several lawmakers, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the Obama administration needed to do more to stop Mexican cartels from smuggling heroin into the U.S.

The accidental addiction doctor

“Why has cheap heroin begun flooding into our communities?” Grassley said. “… Because the administration hasn’t secured the border.”

But others said the problem started closer to home — with doctors who over-prescribe highly addictive opioid painkillers, such as OxyContin, and the Food and Drug Administration, which has approved more and stronger opioid medications. Witnesses noted that widespread use of these drugs paved the way for the heroin epidemic, as patients turned to that cheaper street drug to feed addictions that started in a doctor's office.

“We simply pass out painkillers like candy in America,” said Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat. He recounted a story about a college sophomore who received 40 painkillers after having her molars taken out, while another person told her she had received 60 opioid pills after a recent surgery.

“It isn’t coincidence that our irrational exuberance around painkillers are matched” by an escalating heroin crisis, Shumlin said.

Several members of the committee echoed that argument, pointing the finger at the pharmaceutical industry for aggressively marketing such drugs, and the medical profession for doling them out without enough consideration.

“The FDA, the PHARMA industry, the dirty docs. … We don’t have to go to the border to see the source of opioids,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “What are we doing to encourage the (medical) profession to clean itself up and to police the ranks so they’re held accountable in a very public way?”

If there was any consensus from the 3 ½-hour committee session, it was that the crisis requires a broad response with many elements — from more federal funding for treatment to better interdiction at the border to stronger curbs on opioid prescribing.

DaRe, the Ohio mother, said Congress needs to enact an all-of-the-above solution.

“I agreed with pretty much everything that I heard,” she said. “This is such a multifaceted issue. All of those different areas do need to be addressed.”

Whether Congress will be able to pass such a comprehensive solution is not clear. But DaRe said the hearing gave her “a little bit of hope.” And if lawmakers don’t act, she said, “we’ll keep screaming.”

Washington offers little help in curbing heroin epidemic