On the recordDecember 21, 2017
I thank the Senator for yielding, and I thank the Senator from Ohio for talking about this very important issue. Fentanyl is a killer that is descending upon every single community in the United States. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine. Fentanyl is the Godzilla of opioids. Senator Brown represents Ohio; I represent Massachusetts. The fentanyl epidemic has a bull's-eye on Ohio and a bull's-eye on Massachusetts. The deaths from fentanyl are skyrocketing. In 2016, upwards of 70 to 75 percent of all of the opioid deaths in Massachusetts were because of fentanyl. Fentanyl was found in the blood system of those people who died. Last year, 2,000 people in Massachusetts died of overdoses. Three-quarters of them had fentanyl. If the epidemic had been hitting the rest of the country at the same rate that it has been hitting Massachusetts, last year 75,000 people would have died with fentanyl in their blood systems. Last night, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released shocking new numbers on drug overdose deaths in the United States. These numbers show the spike in deaths caused by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Here are the new numbers nationwide. More than 42,000 Americans died from an opioid overdose last year. That is a 27-percent increase over the number of Americans who died from an opioid overdose in 2015. It went up 27 percent from 2015 to 2016.…
