2. Well hear from representatives from u. S. Postal service, state department, dea and customs. This hearing will come to order. Thank you all for being here. Todays hearing continues subcommittee on investigations work to combat the Opioid Epidemic gripping our communities across the country. A bipartisan report on opioid related fraud, abuse and part d medical program. Subcommittee held a hearing on buying elicit opioids over the internet and shipping them to the United States through the mail. The Opioid Crisis, sadly, continues to get worse, not better. Last month, the center for Disease Control reported that more than 63,000 americans died in 2016 from Drug Overdoses. Indications are that number increased in 2017. These Overdose Deaths are shocking. The number of deaths continue to grow. My own home state of ohio, we were told recently is now second in the country in terms of Overdose Deaths. Its heartbreaking. And increasingly, these overdoses are due to a synthetic heroin, illegal versions of fentanyl, a drug that is 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin. In fact, in ohio, fentanyl and its variations were involved in 60 of the Overdose Deaths last year. So, its become the number one killer in ohio. The vast majority of illegal fentanyl is purchased online from labs in china and then shipped to the United States through the mail. Well hear from the Drug Enforcement agency today about that. But i think its shocking to people when they find out that this is coming through our u. S. Mail system. Last night, the subcommittee released its bipartisan report. I hope you all have seen it, how criminals exploit vulnerabilities in International Mail and use the u. S. Postal service to ship illicit opioids into our country. Without objection, i would move that the subcommittees report be read into the record. After our initial 2017 hearing, we set out to find out how easy it is to purchase fentanyl online. And how it was shipped to the United States. What we discovered, of course, was it was shockingly easy to do so. All you had to do was search fentanyl for sale. That simple search returned hundreds of websites, many affiliated with chinese labs, all openly advertising Illegal Drugs. The field was narrowed to just six websites, and we sent emails asking basic questions about how to purchase and ship fentanyl to the United States. These Online Sellers were quick to respond, unafraid of getting caught, apparently, and ready to make a deal. Youll see that in the report. They offered discounts for bulk purchases, even tried to upsell us to a more powerful synthetic heroin that is so strong its used as an elephant tranquilizer. Ordering these drugs was as easy as buying any other product online. I must note our subcommittee never completed a purchase of drugs online. It was just too dangerous to risk exposing someone to deadly fentanyl during delivery, but we did use the Online SellersPayment Information to determine if others were buying. And of course, we found out they were. Just from these six websites alone, we identified more than 500 payments to Online Sellers by more than 300 americans, totaling 230,000, most of which occurred over the last two years. So this is just a small sample. Only six websites, and then frankly, we used just one Payment System to be able to identify some of these buyers. The 300 people, by the way, were located in 43 different states with individuals in my home state of ohio, pennsylvania, and florida sending the most money to Online Sellers. The map that we have back here behind us shows the concentration of where most of the purchases were made. Thats also in the report. We also asked how the Online Sellers would ship the drugs to us. Every single one of them preferred to use the u. S. Postal service. They didnt want to use the private carriers like dhl, fedex, u. P. S. They wanted to use the Postal Service. They told us they use the Postal Service because the chances of the drugs getting seized were so insignificant that delivery was essentially guaranteed. We were also able to track hundreds of packages related to these online purchases. We identified seven people out of the 300 who died from fentanylrelated overdoses after sending money to and receiving packages from these Online Sellers. One of these individuals who died was a 49yearold ohioan from the cleveland area who sent about 2,500 to an online seller, received 15 packages through the Postal Service over a 10month period. His autopsy confirmed that he died from acute fentanyl intoxication just weeks after he received a package from this online seller. By analyzing more than 2 million lines of shipment data obtained in our investigation, we located 3 individuals in the United States who were likely distributing these drugs. We identified more than 120 instances of different people sending a payment to an online seller in china and then a day or two later receiving a package from one single pennsylvania address. The person at this pennsylvania address, by the way, was working with the online seller to domestically transship drug purchases. Shipping data reviewed during the course of the investigation also indicated other individuals who purchased items to make pills, including pill presses, chemical bonding agents and empty pill casings. Its not surprising that people are ordering fentanyl online to sell. The Profit Margins are just staggering. Based on dea estimates, the street value of the Online Transactions from just the six websites the subcommittee investigated translates to about 670 million in fentanyl pills to sell on the streets of our communities. Were already working with Law Enforcement authorities to make sure these drug dealers will be brought to justice and will continue to do this after this hearing. But our findings today show the crucial role advanced electronic data can play in protecting our country and fighting the Opioid Epidemic. We also need some legislative changes. Last year, the Postal Service only received advance electronic data on about 36 of the more than 498 Million International packages coming into our country. So, about 500 million packages a year and only about 36 of them have the advanced electronic data that allows Law Enforcement to identify these suspicious packages. This means that about 318 Million International packages came here with no data, therefore no ability for customs and Border Protection or other Law Enforcement well hear from today to target these packages for screening. We didnt know with regard to 318 million packages, who sent it, where it was going, what was in it. And this is a massive loophole thats undermining the safety and security of our country. In addition, the data we do get from foreign post that we review during our investigation appears to be of questionable quality. So, its only 36 , but even much of that data is not helpful. At times, the data was nothing more than illogical lines of letters and characters entered by someone who didnt understand how to construct a standard american address. When we have the data, the Postal Service fails to locate it about 20 of the time. So again, electronic data, 36 , much of that datas not very helpful, and even when Law Enforcement says, aha, weve got a package here that looks like its suspicious, wed like to look at it, 20 of the time, they cant find the package. It gets through. What we are left with is a federal government whose policies and procedures are wholly inadequate to prevent the use of International Mail to ship illegal synthetic opioids into the United States. In contrast, our Postal Service provides data on about 90 of the packages that it ships to foreign post. So, about 90 of what we send out, we do provide that electronic data to foreign governments. After september 11th, 2001, the terrorist attacks on that day, collecting advance electronic data was identified as a national priority. For all the right reasons. In 2002, in fact, congress required private carriers to collect this data, so u. P. S. , fedex, dhl, others were required to collect it. It was left up to the discretion of the postmaster general and the Treasury Department with regard to the Postal Service. They were encouraged to do it, encouraged to study it, but it was left up to their discretion. For more than a dozen years, nothing happened, essentially, leaving customs and Border Protection to manually inspect target packages which is the equivalent, of course, of finding a needle in a haystack. Again, 500 million packages, then, it wasnt that many but hundreds of millions of packages. To their credit, the Postal Service and pcb started a Pilot Program in late 2015 to target suspicious packages from china using advanced electronic data, but our investigation found a lack of planning, the Different Missions of the agencies, and personality conflicts hampered the success, even of the Pilot Program that was started in 2015. That Pilot Program, by the way, started at jfk and our investigators were able to see that in action. Despite these problems, the Postal Service is head of global trade compliance wrote that Pilot Programs allowed them to put a positive spin on stopping opioids. While both cpb and Postal Service agreed the Pilot Program should be rolled out to all postal facilities, they only started that after the may 2017 hearing. Were glad they did it. We learned that this process was conveniently completed just days in advance of this hearing. So, earlier this week, again, i think, this hearing probably motivated some action, which is good, but it should have been a priority without having to hold this hearing. It shouldnt take a congressional investigation into the Postal Service and whats happening with International Mail to get our government to do its job. One part of the solution is more data. And thats why weve introduced this synthetic trafficking and Overdose Prevention act or the s. T. O. P. Act, which would require data on packages shipped through the Postal Service. We have 29 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle and i know this report and hearing will put pressure on us here in the senate to finally take some action. I really want to thank senator carper and his staff for working with us so closely on this investigation. Theres a lot more to be done to turn the tide of the opioid addiction, clearly, but stopping these deadly drugs from ever reaching our streets is certainly a good start. As the coauthor of the comprehensive Addiction Recovery act, i focused most of my career, actually over the last 20some years on prevention, treatment, longerterm recovery. Thats all important. But to keep this poison from coming into our communities is something we can do and should do. Just in the past week, near toledo, ohio, five individuals overdosed and three died. Fentanylrelated overdoses. Its so bad that officials issued an opioid advisory warning to the public, begging them to stay away from what was clearly a, quote, bad batch of opioids in northwest ohio. How many more people have to die before this poison stops coming into our communities . Before we take the steps the simple steps to at least understand where the suspicious packages are, how to get them offline, and not delivered to a p. O. Box here in america. How many people have to die before this happens . Yes, the Postal Service is in desperate need of comprehensive reform, and nobody has been more involved with that than senator carper. But its shocking that we are still so unprepared to police the mail arriving into our country. Again, i want to thank senator carper and his staff for working so closely with us. Chairman of the full committee has now joined us. Senator johnson. Im going to ask him if he has any brief opening remarks and i turn it over to the Ranking Member. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for your ongoing leadership on what is really a tough issue, an important issue and challenge facing our nation. Delighted to be joined by our full Committee Chairman today too. I want to thank our staffs, democrat and republican staffs, you know, fair amount of discussion of late about how we dont Work Together on this issue, we Work Together. We are one. And theres no space between us on this issue. Frankly, on a lot of others. I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today, for the work that you do, for the work that is done by the people who are your colleagues. Its an oversight hearing. This is also the result of an investigation. A big part of our job on full committee is to do oversight. Broadly over the federal government. This is oversight and investigation on something that we all care deeply, deeply about. No state has been immune from the damage that these drugs have caused. Including my home state of delaware. Im an ohio state native. I used to think delaware was a little town north of columbus, but it turned out to be a whole state and ive been fortunate to represent them for a while. But whether its delaware, ohio or the state of delaware, this is an enormous challenge that we face and its an all hands on deck moment and requires an all of the above strategy and its not enough just to deal with the symptoms of the problems, and well be talking about that today, but also the root cause of these problems. Weve got to do both. According to the division of Forensic Science in my state, more and more delarwarians are dying from opioids every year. 2014, we lost 222 people. 2015, we lost 228 people. 2016, we lost 308 people. Theyre not just numbers. They are mothers and fathers, they are brothers and sisters, they are sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, all of the above. Just last month, it was reported that Emergency Responders in our largest county we only have three but our largest county, where my wife and i live, Newcastle County were dispatched to a reported Drug Overdose every 80 minutes. By early november of last year, paramedics there had administered naloxone, a drug that can reverse an overdose, to nearly 600 patients. All told, opioids are now the leading cause of drug Overdose Deaths, killing more than 42,000 people nationwide in 2016. Last year, our subcommittee set out to learn what the federal government is doing to stop these drugs from entering our country. In may, we heard testimony from officials from the Postal Service, from customs and Border Patrol, from the state department in addition to several experts and First Responders on the ground in ohio, delaware and elsewhere who grapple every day with the impact opioids are having on our communities. They told us how opioids are getting into our communities through the mail and how theyre working together to stop that. Unfortunately, i left that hearing very concerned that the federal response was proving to be insufficient. Our investigation shows that progress has been made, but also that we have much, much more to do. In fact, their findings are, in a word, alarming. We found that fentanyl and other Even Stronger synthetic opioids are openly available for sale, as the chairman has said, on the internet, accessible to anyone who knows how to shop online. And once purchased, these drugs arrive primarily from china through the International Mail system. While sellers often prefer the Postal Service, they often offer shipment through private carriers like dhl, fedex, and u. P. S. Through our work, we obtained key payments and shipping data that enabled staff to link Online Sellers to fentanylrelated deaths and drugrelated arrests all over the country. We even found what appears to be a major opioid distributor in pennsylvania, where delawareans reportedly get most of t