Following his seven-city tour of Ohio highlighting his recently signed-into-law Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act (CARA), Senator Portman is again working to raise awareness about the heroin and prescription drug epidemic. Portman, who conducted countless interviews and delivered remarks on the Senate floor 13 weeks in a row leading up to CARA’s enactment, continues his effort to break the stigma of addiction and get people the help they need.

In a radio interview with Akron’s Jasen Sokol this week, Portman discussed the heroin epidemic, his CARA legislation, and the need for everyone to get involved in the effort to fight addiction:

Akron-WAKR

“It’s unbelievable what’s going on. As you know, I was in Akron at the end of July, I think it was July 28^th, at that point we had had 103 overdoses in ten days. Now there have been even more. Remember this is what they call a fentanyl analogue, which is a synthetic form of heroin, actually like the tranquilizers used for large animals mixed into heroin. Horrible stuff. It continues.

“I just spent a week, as you know, going all around the state meeting with people in treatment centers, going to drug courts, talking to people. I’ve talked to more than 100 recovering addicts in the last month alone in Ohio about how they got into this situation and what’s going on. Sadly, it’s getting worse not better. Our legislation was signed into law in July called CARA, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, you and I have talked about it a lot. It’s already helping in some regards because remember it said that we can provide more treatment for people, allowing physicians assistants and nurse practitioners to provide treatment, for instance, which is expanding some of the treatment options which is important. Some of it requires the administration to implement new programs. They’re starting to do that. We’re of course keeping pressure on them. Some of these programs will take a little while. We’re hoping that as we get into September we’re going to see these programs go into place so that folks can apply for grants, for prevention, education, treatment, recovery, law enforcement officials can be provided more of this life saving drug called narcan to help people avoid overdoses. So, I think we’re making progress…

“We have more funding in the pipeline for this year … we have a big increase for this year. We also have a proposed big increase for next year through the Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate already. You’ll see more than a doubling of funding for opiates in a two year period. More than a doubling. So that funding is in the pipeline and that should move this forward. However, I’d like to see even more as you know. I voted on the Senate floor for funding… I’m hopeful that we can get those numbers even higher. And not just fully fund CARA, which is something we can do with the funding available for this year, but let’s do even more. This is a crisis. This is something that requires immediate action…

“This legislation will help. Ultimately, this is going to be solved in our communities… We’ve all got a role to play.”

CARA was signed into law by President Obama on July 22, 2016. As Portman said in a video released after the signing, “help is now on the way.” 

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