OVERSIGHT OF FEDERAL EFFORTS TO COMBAT

THE SPREAD OF ILLICIT FENTANYL

HEARING
BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND

INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND

COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION

JULY 16, 2019

Serial No. 116–53

(
Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
govinfo.gov/committee/house-energy
energycommerce.house.gov

U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE

43–927 PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
 COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey
Chairman
BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois GREG WALDEN, Oregon
ANNA G. ESHOO, California Ranking Member
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York FRED UPTON, Michigan
DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois
MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana
G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
DORIS O. MATSUI, California CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
KATHY CASTOR, Florida BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland PETE OLSON, Texas
JERRY MCNERNEY, California DAVID B. MCKINLEY, West Virginia
PETER WELCH, Vermont ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
BEN RAY LUJÁN, New Mexico H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
PAUL TONKO, New York GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York, Vice Chair BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa BILLY LONG, Missouri
KURT SCHRADER, Oregon LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana
JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Massachusetts BILL FLORES, Texas
TONY CÁRDENAS, California SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana
RAUL RUIZ, California MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
SCOTT H. PETERS, California RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina
DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan TIM WALBERG, Michigan
MARC A. VEASEY, Texas EARL L. ‘‘BUDDY’’ CARTER, Georgia
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois GREG GIANFORTE, Montana
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGÁN, California
A. DONALD MCEACHIN, Virginia
LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware
DARREN SOTO, Florida
TOM O’HALLERAN, Arizona

PROFESSIONAL STAFF
JEFFREY C. CARROLL, Staff Director
TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Deputy Staff Director
MIKE BLOOMQUIST, Minority Staff Director

(II)
 SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado
Chair
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, Ranking Member
Massachusetts,Vice Chair MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
RAUL RUIZ, California DAVID B. MCKINLEY, West Virginia
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
KATHY CASTOR, Florida SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
PAUL TONKO, New York JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York GREG WALDEN, Oregon (ex officio)
SCOTT H. PETERS, California
FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey (ex
officio)

(III)
 C O N T E N T S

Page
Hon. Diana DeGette, a Representative in Congress from the State of Colo-
rado, opening statement ...................................................................................... 1
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 3
Hon. Brett Guthrie, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth
of Kentucky, opening statement ......................................................................... 4
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6
Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the State of
New Jersey, opening statement .......................................................................... 7
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 8
Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oregon,
opening statement ................................................................................................ 9
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11
Hon. Ann Kuster, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Hamp-
shire, prepared statement ................................................................................... 100

WITNESSES
Kemp L. Chester, Assistant Director of The National Opioids and Synthetics
Coordination Group White House Office of National Drug Control Policy ..... 13
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 16
Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 114
Matthew Donahue, Regional Director North and Central Americas, Operation
Division, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Department of Justice ..... 31
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 33
Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 122
Thomas F. Overacker, Executive Director, Office of Field Operations, Customs
and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Homeland Security ..................... 43
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 45
Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 137
Gary R. Barksdale, Chief Postal Inspector, U.S. Postal Service ......................... 53
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 55
Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 158
David A. Prince, Deputy Assistant Director, Transnational Organized Crime,
Homeland Security Investigations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
U.S. Department of Homeland Security ............................................................. 60
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 62
Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 165
Carol Cave, Director, Office of Enforcement and Import Operations, Office
of Regulatory Affairs, Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services ........................................................................... 66
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 68
Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 175

SUBMITTED MATERIAL
Statement of Actus Foundation ‘‘Amanda’s Way’’, July 16, 2018, submitted
by Ms. DeGette ..................................................................................................... 101
Article of International Journal of Drug Policy, by Nicholas C. Peiper, et
al., submitted by Ms. DeGette ............................................................................ 107

(V)
 OVERSIGHT OF FEDERAL EFFORTS TO
COMBAT THE SPREAD OF ILLICIT FENTANYL

TUESDAY, JULY 16, 2019

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS,
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in the
John D. Dingell Room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon.
Diana DeGette [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives DeGette, Schakowsky, Ken-
nedy, Ruiz, Kuster, Sarbanes, Tonko, Peters, Pallone (ex officio),
Guthrie (subcommittee ranking member), McKinley, Griffith,
Brooks, Mullin, Duncan, and Walden (ex officio).
Staff present: Mohammad Aslami, Counsel; Joe Banez, Profes-
sional Staff Member; Kevin Barstow, Chief Oversight Counsel; Jef-
frey C. Carroll, Staff Director; Manmeet Dhindsa, Counsel; Tiffany
Guarascio, Deputy Staff Director; Chris Knauer, Oversight Staff
Director; Jourdan Lewis, Policy Analyst; Kevin McAloon, Profes-
sional Staff Member; Benjamin Tabor, Staff Assistant; Jennifer
Barblan, Minority Chief Counsel, Oversight and Investigations;
Mike Bloomquist, Minority Staff Director; Adam Buckalew, Minor-
ity Director of Coalitions and Deputy Chief Counsel, Health; Jor-
dan Davis, Minority Senior Advisor; Brittany Havens, Minority
Professional Staff, Oversight and Investigations; Peter Kielty, Mi-
nority General Counsel; Brannon Rains, Minority Legislative
Clerk; and Alan Slobodin, Minority Chief Investigative Counsel,
Oversight and Investigations.
Ms. DEGETTE. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investiga-
tions will now come to order. Today, the Subcommittee on Over-
sight and Investigations is holding a hearing entitled ‘‘Oversight of
Federal Efforts to Combat the Spread of Illicit Fentanyl.’’
The purpose of today’s hearing is to examine the increasing
threat posed by fentanyl and the Federal Government’s coordina-
tion and response.
The Chair now recognizes herself for purposes of an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANA DEGETTE, A REP-
RESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLO-
RADO
Today, we are once again here to discuss the opioid crisis, an epi-
demic that this country has been battling for years. Previously, this
committee has taken numerous actions to investigate the origins
(1)
 2

and elements of the crisis and help bring relief to those who are
suffering.
Today’s hearing will examine the growing threat of synthetic
opioids, which experts have called the third wave of the opioid epi-
demic.
Our communities have already been ravaged by prescription
opioids and then heroin. Now, unfortunately, we are seeing signifi-
cant increases in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids like
fentanyl, including in my home state of Colorado.
Fentanyl is extremely dangerous. It is 50 times more powerful
than heroin, 100 times more powerful than morphine, and it is re-
sponsible for a number of growing overdose deaths in America.
Fentanyl is also cheap and it’s easy to produce, giving a high re-
turn for those who seek to profit from the destruction that it
causes. Fentanyl can be used on its own or can be mixed with other
drugs.
Alarmingly, even amateur chemists can produce this highly dan-
gerous drug with minimal resources and experience. It is often
made overseas, likely in China, then shipped either directly to
users in the United States or through intermediaries in other coun-
tries like Mexico.
It can be bought anonymously on the dark web, and because it
is so potent, small but deadly quantities of the drug can be shipped
in packages via the U.S. mail or in private consignment carriers.
Today, we have before us six agencies who play important roles
in fighting the proliferation of fentanyl. Each is responsible for a
piece of this effort, from guarding the border, to taking down drug
trafficking organizations, to protecting the legitimate drug supply.
These agencies will provide us with their assessment of how we
got here, where the fentanyl threat stands right now, and how it
has changed in recent months.
And I want to thank each one of our witnesses for coming today.
The purpose is to examine the state of fentanyl, but also our gov-
ernment’s response to it. The threat is serious and evolving, and
our response must be equally committed and adaptable.
These agencies have experience enforcing our nation’s drug laws,
gathering intelligence against traffickers, and arresting powerful
criminals, and we are thankful for their efforts.
But fentanyl represents a unique problem, so these agencies need
to develop new ways of attacking it. Because we have seen the
opioid crisis evolve and take different forms, we also need to antici-
pate how fentanyl trends are likely to continue to change.
I am interested to hear all of our witnesses’ perspectives on this
and how we can get ahead of the evolving threat so we are not
caught flat-footed like we have been before, unfortunately.
I am struck by the diverse missions of this panel. It is not every
day that we have a hearing with the U.S. Postal Service and the
DEA on the same panel.
Every one of these witnesses represents just a piece of the puz-
zle, which means that we cannot succeed unless everybody comes
together. The crisis is going to require a massive coordinated effort
to overcome.
We, frankly, need a national strategy on fentanyl response, and
I don’t mean just a white paper document or a task force report.
 3

I mean we need a coherent practical plan for how we are going

to beat this problem. For example, the Office of National Drug Con-
trol Policy is supposed to formulate a strategy, bring all of the
agencies together, and see to it that the strategy is implemented
effectively.
Are you coordinating the efforts of these agencies, and if so, how?
Your mission is now more important than ever, so we will be look-
ing to you for leadership and vision.
DEA, you are on the front lines and often develop important
leads for targeting drugs. Is that information being regularly
shared with CBP so that it can adequately target fentanyl ship-
ments when they come into the U.S.?
FDA, suddenly, you are in the middle of this fight because
fentanyl is increasingly being mixed with other drugs, including
counterfeit prescription drugs.
How are you coordinating with law enforcement to protect the
drug supply?
These are just a few of the questions we will explore today. If we
are going to solve this problem, we need better cooperation across
agencies, and we need to think differently than we have on past
drug epidemics.
Finally, this hearing is just one piece of oversight. This sub-
committee will stay on this issue and ensure progress is being
made so, as so frequently happens, unfortunately, we are not back
next year talking about the same problems.
Again, I thank the witnesses for their service on this critical
issue and for coming here today, all in one panel.
[The prepared statement of Ms. DeGette follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. DIANA DEGETTE
Today, we are here once again to discuss the opioid crisis, an epidemic this coun-
try has been battling for years.
Previously, this Committee has taken numerous actions to investigate the origins
and elements of the crisis and help bring relief to those who are suffering.
Today’s hearing will examine the growing threat of synthetic opioids, which ex-
perts have called the ‘‘third wave″ of the opioid epidemic.
Our communities have already been ravaged by prescription opioids and then her-
oin. Now, we are seeing significant increases in overdose deaths involving synthetic
opioids such as fentanyl, including in my home state of Colorado.
Fentanyl is exceedingly dangerous. It is 50 times more powerful than heroin, 100
times more powerful than morphine, and it is responsible for a growing amount of
overdose deaths in America.
Fentanyl is also cheap and easy to produce, giving a high return for those who
seek to profit from the destruction it causes. Fentanyl can be used on its own or
can be mixed with other drugs. Alarmingly, even amateur chemists can produce this
highly dangerous drug with minimal resources and expertise.
It is often made overseas, likely in China, then shipped either directly to users
in the United States or through intermediaries in other countries such as Mexico.
It can be bought anonymously on the Dark Web, and because it is so potent, small
but deadly quantities of the drug can be shipped in packages via the U.S. Mail or
private consignment carriers.
Today, we have before us six agencies who play important roles in fighting the
proliferation of fentanyl. Each of them is responsible for a piece of this effort—from
guarding the border, to taking down drug trafficking organizations, to protecting the
legitimate drug supply.
These agencies will provide us with their assessment of how we got here, where
the fentanyl threat stands now, and how it has changed in recent months.
 4
The purpose of today’s hearing is to examine the state of fentanyl, but also our
government’s response to it. The threat is serious and evolving, and our response
must be equally committed and adaptable.
These agencies have experience enforcing our nation’s drug laws, gathering intel-
ligence against traffickers, and arresting powerful criminals. And we are thankful
for their efforts. But fentanyl represents a unique problem, so these agencies need
to develop new ways of attacking it.
Because we have seen the opioid crisis evolve and take different forms, we also
need to anticipate how fentanyl trends are likely to continue to change. I am inter-
ested to hear these witnesses’ perspectives on how we can get ahead of this evolving
threat, so we are not caught flat-footed.
As I look at the witness panel, I am struck by their diverse missions. It is not
every day that we have a hearing with the U.S. Postal Service and the DEA on the
same witness panel.
Each of you represents only a piece of this puzzle, which means we cannot succeed
unless all of you come together. This crisis is going to require a massive, coordinated
effort to overcome.
We need a national strategy on our fentanyl response. And I don’t just mean a
white paper document or a task force report. I mean we need a coherent, practical
plan for how we are going to beat this problem.
For example, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is supposed to
formulate a strategy, bring all the agencies together, and see to it that the strategy
is implemented effectively. Are you coordinating the efforts of these agencies, and
if so, how? Your mission is now more important than ever, so we will be looking
to you for leadership and vision.
DEA, you are on the front lines and often develop important leads for targeting
drugs. Is that information being regularly shared with CBP so it can adequately tar-
get fentanyl shipments when they come into the U.S.?
FDA, you are suddenly in the middle of this fight because fentanyl is increasingly
being mixed with other drugs, including counterfeit prescription drugs. How are you
coordinating with law enforcement to protect the drug supply?
These are just a few of the questions we will explore today. If we are going to
solve this problem, we need better cooperation across agencies, and we need to think
differently than we have on past drug epidemics.
Finally, this hearing is just one piece of our oversight. This Subcommittee will
stay on this issue and ensure progress is being made so that we are not back here
again next year talking about the same problems.
I thank the witnesses for their service on this critical issue, and for being here
today.

MS. DEGETTE. And now I recognize the ranking member of the

subcommittee, Mr. Guthrie, for five minutes for an opening state-
ment.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BRETT GUTHRIE, A REP-
RESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEATH OF
KENTUCKY
Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you, Chair DeGette, for holding this impor-
tant hearing.
The Energy and Commerce Committee has been steadfast in its
efforts to help combat the opioid crisis with both investigations and
legislation.
Whether it was the committee’s investigations into opioid dis-
tributors, patient brokering, or major opioid manufacturers, we
have continued to ask questions and demand answers for the
American people.
When it comes to legislation, this committee led the way on pas-
sage of the 21st Century CURES Act, the Comprehensive Addiction
and Recovery Act, and the SUPPORT Act for patients in commu-
nities.
I was proud to work with these three landmark bills which are
advancing treatment and recovery initiatives, improving preven-
 5

tion, protecting communities, and bolstering our efforts to fight

deadly illicit synthetic drugs like fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times stronger
than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. For many
years, pharmaceutical fentanyl has been utilized as a powerful pain
medicine to treat severe pain such as advanced cancer pain com-
monly used in the form of a patch on the skin or a lollipop.
But pharmaceutical fentanyl is not why we are here today. We
are here today because of concerns over illicit or illegally manufac-
tured fentanyl. The fentanyl crisis is particularly dangerous be-
cause of its high potency, and the small amount required to poten-
tially cause an overdose.
It has become a powerful additive to drugs such as heroin, co-
caine, or counterfeit pills with or without the user’s knowledge.
According to the CDC, in 2017 there were more than 28,000
deaths involving synthetic opioids in the United States, which is
more deaths than from any other type of opioid.
Further, overdose death rates from synthetic opioids increased
all across all demographics, county urbanization levels, and numer-
ous states.
A little bit of fentanyl goes a long way, which makes it harder
for law enforcement to track where and how fentanyl is being pur-
chased. Fentanyl can be purchased on the internet both in open
source and on the dark web, and can be purchased pseudo anony-
mously using bitcoin or crypto currency.
In addition to being smuggled across our borders, fentanyl can be
mailed in small quantities through the Postal Service or express
consignment carriers and, therefore, has a higher likelihood of com-
ing into the United States undetected.
These circumstances require a much different approach to intel-
ligence, interdiction, and law enforcement compared to methods
that may be better suited for what might be considered a more
common drug smuggling operation.
The threat is real, and it has been growing over the past few
years. According to Customs and Border Protection data, in fiscal
year 2015, 70 pounds of fentanyl were seized in the United States.
In comparison, for fiscal year 2018, more than 2,000 pounds of
fentanyl was seized. Further, for fiscal year 2019 to date, there
have been 17,003 pounds of fentanyl seized, which is enough
fentanyl for more than 600 million lethal doses of fentanyl, and we
still have four more months of data to count before we know the
total for this year.
I want to acknowledge some of the efforts and accomplishments
of this administration, including but not limited to HHS estab-
lishing an interdepartmental substance use disorder coordinating
committee, China pledging to add fentanyl to its list of controlled
substances, increasing shipment tracking responsibilities and co-
ordination among multiple entities, and disruption efforts which
has taken down an entire online black market.
While we are already seeing new tools and resources provided
and utilized as a result of this committee and the administration’s
work, the threat still exists, and our work is not done.
I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today. I look for-
ward to hearing from all of you about successes we have had in
 6

combating our nation’s fentanyl threat but also how the threat has
changed, what challenges remain, and what more we in Congress
can do to be partners in this fight.
I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Guthrie follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. BRETT GUTHRIE
Thank you, Chair DeGette, for holding this important hearing.
The Energy and Commerce Committee has been steadfast in its efforts to help
combat the opioid crisis, with both investigations and legislation. Whether it was
the Committee’s investigations into opioid distributors, patient brokering, or the
major opioid manufacturers—we’ve continued to ask questions and demand answers
for the American public.
When it comes to legislation, this Committee lead the way on passage of the 21st
Century Cures Act, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, and the SUP-
PORT for Patients and Communities Act. I was proud to work on these three land-
mark bills, which are advancing treatment and recovery initiatives, improving pre-
vention, protecting communities, and bolstering our efforts to fight deadly illicit syn-
thetic drugs like fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine and
50 times more potent than heroin. For many years, pharmaceutical fentanyl has
been utilized as a powerful pain medicine to treat severe pain, such as advanced
cancer pain, commonly used in the form of a patch on the skin or a ‘‘lollipop.″ But
pharmaceutical fentanyl is not why we’re here today—we’re here today because of
concerns over illicit, or illegally manufactured, fentanyl.
The fentanyl crisis is particularly dangerous because of its high potency and the
small amount required to potentially cause an overdose. It has become a powerful
additive to drugs such as heroin, cocaine, or counterfeit pills—with or without the
user’s knowledge. According to the CDC, in 2017 there were more than 28,000
deaths involving synthetic opioids in the United States—which is more deaths than
from any other type of opioid. Further, overdose death rates from synthetic opioids
increased across all demographics, county urbanization levels, and numerous states.
A little bit of fentanyl goes a long way—which makes it harder for law enforce-
ment to track where and how fentanyl is being purchased. Fentanyl can be pur-
chased on the internet-both in the open source and on the dark web-and can be pur-
chased pseudo-anonymously using bitcoin or crypto currency.
In addition to being smuggled across our borders, fentanyl can be mailed in small
quantities through the postal service or express consignment carriers, and therefore
has a higher likelihood of coming into the United States undetected. These cir-
cumstances require a much different approach to intelligence, interdiction, and law
enforcement compared to methods that may be better suited for what might be con-
sidered a more common drug smuggling operation.
The threat is real and has been growing over the past few years. According to
Customs and Border Protection data, in fiscal year 2015, 70 pounds of fentanyl were
seized in the United States. In comparison, for fiscal year 2018, more than 2,000
pounds of fentanyl were seized. Further, for fiscal year 2019 to date, there have
been 1,703 pounds of fentanyl seized. That is enough fentanyl for more than 600
million lethal doses of fentanyl, and we still have four more months of data to ac-
count for before we will know the total for this year.
I want to acknowledge some of the efforts and accomplishments of this Adminis-
tration, including but not limited to HHS establishing an interdepartmental sub-
stance use disorder coordinating committee; China pledging to add fentanyl to its
list of controlled substances; increasing shipment-tracking responsibilities and co-
ordination among multiple entities; and disruption efforts such as taking down an
entire online black market. While we are already seeing new tools and resources
provided and utilized as a result of this Committee and the Administration’s work—
the threat still exists, and our work is not done.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for being here today. I look forward to hearing
from all of you about successes we have had in combatting our nation’s fentanyl
threat, but also how the threat has changed, what challenges remain, and what
more we, in Congress, can do to be partners in this fight.

Ms. DEGETTE. The Chair now recognizes the chairman of the full
committee, Mr. Pallone, for five minutes for purposes of an opening
statement.
 7
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, JR., A REP-
RESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JER-
SEY
Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Madam Chair.
This committee has held many hearings on the opioid crisis over
the last several years, and with each hearing it seems the chal-
lenge to combat the crisis grows even more daunting.
While opioid prescribing rates appears to have gone done, over-
dose deaths continue to climb. Communities all around the country
are still suffering from this epidemic, now largely at the hands of
heroin, increasingly fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a deadly synthetic drug that is 50 times more power-
ful than heroin. Because it’s relatively easy to make and so potent,
it is tragically leading to large increases in overdose deaths.
We have all heard the terrible numbers that tell the story. In
2017, there were over 47,000 opioid overdose deaths. Twenty-eight
thousand of those deaths involve synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.
My home state of New Jersey, for example, has seen a ten-fold
increase in deaths involving fentanyl in the last several years, and
fentanyl represents the third wave, as the chairwoman said, in the
opioid crisis.
After the country was inundated with prescription opioids, pre-
scribing rates when down. But many of those who were already ad-
dicted then turned to heroin, and now the trend is shifting towards
synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which pose a unique threat.
These drugs are manufactured overseas in countries like China,
oftentimes in clandestine labs. These drugs are then shipped into
the U.S. often in small quantities that are difficult to detect.
And to make matters worse, we are now seeing fentanyl increas-
ingly mixed into other drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, and
even counterfeit prescription drugs like Oxycodone.
This means that many unsuspecting people are dying at the
hands of fentanyl when they didn’t even realize they were taking
it, and this drug represents an unprecedented threat to the U.S.
and we have to do everything we can to stop this flow into our com-
munities.
Today, we are hearing from the key law enforcement and regu-
latory agencies on the front line of this battle. Each agency plays
a critical part and has decades of experience in this fight.
The problem, however, is that fentanyl is unlike any drug crisis
we have faced before. All of these factors point to one conclusion.
We have to think differently about how to counter the spread of
fentanyl. The old approaches simply will not suffice.
Finally, we have repeatedly heard from experts that we cannot
arrest our way out of the opioid crisis and fentanyl is no different.
Evidence-based treatment is the best hope for those suffering from
addiction and we must support programs that provide that help.
So today’s hearing focuses on how to stop the flow in fentanyl but
this is by no means the end of the conversation. I am committed
to providing Americans suffering from opioid use disorder access to
the quality treatment they need, and this committee will continue
to shine a spotlight on this crisis to help identify solutions includ-
ing in the treatment and public health arenas.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]
 8

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, JR.

This Committee has held many hearings on the opioid crisis over the last several
years, and with each hearing it seems the challenge to combat the crisis grows even
more daunting.
While opioid prescribing rates appear to have gone down, overdose deaths con-
tinue to climb. Communities all around the country are still suffering from this epi-
demic, now largely at the hands of heroin and increasingly, fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a deadly synthetic drug that is 50 times more powerful than heroin.
Because it is relatively easy to make and so potent, it is tragically leading to large
increases in overdose deaths.
We have all heard the terrible numbers that tell this story. In 2017, there were
over 47,000 opioid overdose deaths, 28,000 of those deaths involved synthetic opioids
such as fentanyl. My home state of New Jersey, for example, has seen a tenfold in-
crease in deaths involving fentanyl in the last several years.
Fentanyl represents the third ″wave″ in the opioid crisis. After the country was
inundated with prescription opioids, prescribing rates went down—but many of
those who were already addicted then turned to heroin.
Now the trend is shifting toward synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which poses a
unique threat. These drugs are manufactured overseas in countries like China, of-
tentimes in clandestine labs. These drugs are then shipped into the United States,
often in small quantities that are difficult to detect.
To make matters worse, we are now seeing fentanyl increasingly mixed into other
drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, and even counterfeit prescription drugs like
oxycodone. This means that many unsuspecting people are dying at the hands of
fentanyl when they didn’t even realize they were taking it.
This drug represents an unprecedented threat to the United States—and we must
do everything we can to stop its flow into our communities.
Today we will hear from the key law enforcement and regulatory agencies on the
front lines of this battle. Each agency plays a critical part and has decades of experi-
ence in this fight. The problem, however, is that fentanyl is unlike any drug crisis
we have faced before.
Just about everything about this threat is new: how easily it can be produced and
sold, where it can be made, how it can be trafficked into our country, how difficult
it is to detect—and of course, how deadly it is.
All of these factors point to one conclusion—we have to think differently about
how to counter the spread of fentanyl. The old approaches simply will not suffice.
We need to hear from the agencies about how they are adapting to this new and
evolving threat, how they are thinking of new ways to attack this problem, and es-
pecially, how they are collaborating.
The fentanyl threat is so unprecedented, and so challenging, that no single agency
can tackle it on its own. They must all work together.
You simply cannot let turf wars or the competition for bringing cases stop you
from cooperating with one another to help solve this problem. The stakes are too
high.
Finally, we have repeatedly heard from experts that we cannot arrest our way out
of the opioid crisis, and fentanyl is no different. Evidence-based treatment is the
best hope for those suffering from addiction, and we must support programs that
provide that help.
Today’s hearing focuses on how to stop the flow of fentanyl, but this is by no
means the end of the conversation. I am committed to providing Americans suf-
fering from opioid use disorder access to the quality treatment they need. This Com-
mittee will continue to shine a spotlight on this crisis to help identify solutions, in-
cluding in the treatment and public health arenas.
I yield back.

Mr. PALLONE.I have about two minutes left, and I’d like to yield
that now to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire, Ms. Kuster.
Ms. KUSTER. Thank you, Chairman Pallone.
We have seen the opioid crisis evolve and take many different
forms, as you described. But no community in this country has
been spared. New England and New Hampshire, in particular,
have been devastated by this crisis.
 9

In my home state, while we have seen the rate of prescription

opioid and heroin overdose deaths decline, the rate of fentanyl—in-
volved overdoses has not subsided.
With the help of a coordinated approach at the local level, the
hub and spoke model ensures that every Granite Stater has nearby
access to treatment and recovery services.
But this does not solve the supply problem. We know all too well
that newer, stronger, and deadlier analogs of fentanyl continue to
proliferate and challenge our ability to prevent needless premature
deaths.
I look forward to the hearing. I look forward to your testimony
and I thank the gentlewoman chairing this subcommittee and the
chair of the committee for their attention to this crisis.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. PALLONE. Thank you. I have about a minute. I don’t know
if anybody else wants the time. If not, I will yield back, Madam
Chair.
Ms. DEGETTE. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the ranking member of the full com-
mittee, Mr. Walden, for five minutes for purposes of an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENT-
ATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON
Mr. WALDEN. Good morning, Madam Chair, and thank you for
holding this really, really important hearing on getting illicit
fentanyl off our streets.
As you’ve heard, fentanyl is so deadly a piece of it, the size of
a few grains of salt, can kill you. It reportedly led to 49 deaths in
Oregon in 2017. So, ridding our communities of fentanyl is a key
piece of combating the opioid crisis in Oregon and across the coun-
try.
Illicit fentanyl is a tremendously difficult and dynamic problem.
It is hard to detect and is highly potent and lucrative enough to
be sent in small envelopes or packages, and while the heroin mar-
ket was monopolized by large criminal groups, this fentanyl wave—
it is harder to police.
It is coming almost entirely from the black market on the dark
web and clandestine labs in China and Mexico with many mid-level
and small operators in addition to drug smuggling operations like
the cartels.
This subcommittee last held an oversight hearing on illicit
fentanyl back in March of 2017. The need for fentanyl focused ac-
tion was clear then.
Two years later, there are numerous significant accomplish-
ments. Last year the committee worked in a bipartisan way to
enact the SUPPORT Act to bolster the fight against opioids such
as fentanyl. This law has helped provide advanced electronic data
of international mail shipments to help target and intercept illicit
fentanyl.
This act also provided the FDA with a new tool for deterring im-
ports of illicit fentanyl. As you’ll recall, Dr. Burgess went up to a
mail distribution facility in New Jersey and learned a lot and
brought that back to us.
 10

The Trump administration has spurred improved actions in the

fentanyl fight. Our nation is getting at least some improved level
of cooperation from the Chinese government on class-based sched-
uling, which helps remove an incentive for traffickers to introduce
new substances in the fentanyl family for the purpose of evading
controls.
President Trump deserves credit for moving this bold proposal
based on the longstanding work of the White House Office on Na-
tional Drug Control Policy, the DEA, and the State Department.
President Xi of China deserves some credit for agreeing to a com-
mitment to crack down on fentanyl as a class. We’d like to see
more there.
While it’s too soon to assess the impact, early indications are at
least encouraging. And since February of 2018, DEA has imposed
emergency scheduling of fentanyl-related substances, but we need
to work with DEA and other federal agencies to find the best ap-
proach to make this scheduling permanent.
The Stop Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogs, or
SITSA, Act, which would have given law enforcement additional
tools they need to get illicit drugs such as fentanyl off our streets
without compromising important public health and research protec-
tions, that was included in our House-passed version of the SUP-
PORT Act but, sadly, was not included in the final package that
became law.
Mr. Katko of New York, he sponsored this legislation. It would
be a good place to start again and we should make it law.
On July of 2017, the Department of Justice announced the sei-
zure of AlphaBay. That’s the largest criminal marketplace on the
dark web and a major source of fentanyl linked to overdose deaths.
The AlphaBay takedown was an international operation led by
the U.S. Both DEA and CBP recently made the largest seizures of
fentanyl in U.S. history and we thank you for that. Federal agents
working with local police seized 50 kilos of fentanyl precursor in
2017.
For the first time the Justice Department announced indictments
of Chinese nationals for conspiracies to distribute large quantities
of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs.
May of ’19, a dark net drug dealer was indicted for selling
fentanyl online, thanks to Homeland Security’s investigations, a
year-long nationwide undercover action, and under agreement with
the U.S. Postal Service, China Post is providing advanced elec-
tronic data on parcels mailed to the U.S.
FDA and CBP signed an agreement in April of 2019 to maximize
inspection detection capabilities to products such as fentanyl from
entering the United States.
So, we salute these important federal workers and agencies for
their work. But we know big challenges remain. More work is
needed to get better cooperation from Mexico’s law enforcement au-
thorities.
We need to remain vigilant with China on its fentanyl commit-
ment. Much more needs to be done to collect better data on
fentanyl trafficking and to improve data sharing and we want to
hear more on strategy to disrupt fentanyl trafficking.
 11

We will be asking questions how we can strengthen our efforts

on what this committee can provide. The SUPPORT Act was a
great start, but it is not enough.
And Madam Chair, I would remind you we posted our final over-
sight investigations report on the committee’s Web site and sent
everybody a letter at the beginning of the year.
There were some important recommendations there I hope we
can eventually get to.
Before I conclude, I want to take a moment to recognize Michael
Gray. He is father of Amanda Beatrice Rose Gray. Amanda died of
an overdose of pure fentanyl in January of 2018—pure fentanyl.
Michael has been a tireless advocate fighting against the opioid
epidemic and fentanyl. His efforts informed our work in the last
Congress. He was incredibly helpful in that, and let us remember
as the face of this crisis his daughter, and we thank you for being
here and we thank you for your work.
Madam Chair, in conclusion, the Actus Foundation—we have a
letter we would like entered into the record that we previewed with
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walden follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN
Chair DeGette, thank you for holding this hearing on getting illicit fentanyl off
our streets.
Fentanyl is so deadly that a piece the size of a few grains of salt can kill you,
and reportedly led to 49 deaths in Oregon in 2017. Ridding our communities of
fentanyl is a key piece of combating the opioid crisis in Oregon and across the coun-
try.
Illicit fentanyl is a tremendously difficult and dynamic problem. It is hard to de-
tect, highly potent, and lucrative enough to be sent in small envelopes or packages.
While the heroin market was monopolized by large criminal groups, this fentanyl
wave is harder to police. It is coming almost entirely from the black market on the
dark web and clandestine labs in China and Mexico with many mid-level and small
operators, in addition to drug smuggling operations like the cartels.
This Subcommittee last held an oversight hearing on illicit fentanyl in March
2017. The need then for fentanyl-focused action was clear.
Two years later, there are numerous significant accomplishments.
Last year, this Committee worked in a bipartisan way to enact the SUPPORT Act
to bolster the fight against opioids such as fentanyl. This law helped provide ad-
vance electronic data of international mail shipments to help target and intercept
illicit fentanyl. This Act also provided the FDA with a new tool for deterring imports
of illicit fentanyl.
The Trump Administration has spurred important actions in the fentanyl fight.
Our nation is getting cooperation from China on class-based scheduling, which helps
remove an incentive for traffickers to introduce new substances in the fentanyl fam-
ily for the purpose of evading controls. President Trump deserves credit for moving
this bold proposal, based on the longstanding work of the White House Office on
National Drug Control Policy, the DEA, and the State Department. President Xi of
China deserves credit for agreeing to a commitment to crack down on fentanyl as
a class. While it is too soon to assess the impact, early indications seem encour-
aging.
Since February 2018, DEA has imposed emergency scheduling of fentanyl-related
substances. We need to work with DEA and other federal agencies to find the best
approach to make this scheduling permanent. The Stop the Importation & Traf-
ficking of Synthetic Analogues (SITSA) Act, which would have given law enforce-
ment additional tools they need to help get illicit synthetic drugs, like fentanyl, off
our streets without compromising important public health and research protections
was included in the House-passed version of the SUPPORT Act, but ultimately not
included in the final package that became law. Mr. Katko’s legislation is a good
place to start.
In July 2017, the Department of Justice announced the seizure of AlphaBay, the
largest criminal marketplace on the dark web, and a major source of fentanyl linked
 12
to overdose deaths. The AlphaBay takedown was an international operation led by
the U.S.
Both DEA and CBP recently made the largest seizures of fentanyl in U.S. history.
Federal agents working with local police seized 50 kilos of a fentanyl precursor in
May 2017, apparently one of the largest, if not the largest, seizure of a precursor
in the U.S.
For the first time, the Justice Department announced indictments of Chinese na-
tionals for conspiracies to distribute large quantities of fentanyl and fentanyl
analogs.
In May 2019, a darknet drug dealer was indicted for selling fentanyl online,
thanks to Homeland Security Investigations’ yearlong nationwide undercover ac-
tions to target vendors of illicit goods on the dark web.
Under an agreement with the U.S. Postal Service, China Post is providing ad-
vanced electronic data on parcels mailed to the U.S.
FDA and CBP signed an agreement in April 2019 to maximize inspection and de-
tection capabilities to products such as fentanyl from entering the U.S.
We salute the federal agencies for this work, but big challenges remain. More
work is needed to get better cooperation from Mexico’s law enforcement authorities.
We need to remain vigilant with China on its fentanyl commitment. Much more
needs to be done to collect better data on fentanyl trafficking and to improve data-
sharing. We want to hear more on a strategy to disrupt fentanyl trafficking. We will
be asking questions on how we can strengthen our efforts, and what help this Com-
mittee can provide.
The SUPPORT Act was a great start. Let’s continue our bipartisan legislative ef-
forts to combat this crisis.
I look forward to the testimony and thank our witnesses for being here today.

Ms. DEGETTE. Without objection, and I would add my thanks to

you, Mr. Gray, for all of your tireless work.
Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. DEGETTE. The gentleman yields back, and I now ask unani-
mous consent that the Members’ written opening statements be
made part of the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Ms. DEGETTE. I would now like to introduce our panel of wit-
nesses for today’s hearing.
Mr. Kemp L. Chester, Assistant Director of the National Opioids
and Synthetics Coordination Group, the White House Office of Na-
tional Drug Control Policy. Welcome.
Mr. Matthew Donahue, Regional Director, North and Central
Americas Operation Division, Drug Enforcement Administration at
the U.S. Department of Justice.
Mr. Thomas F. Overacker, Executive Director, Office of Field Op-
erations, Custom and Border Protection at the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security.
Mr. Gary R. Barksdale, Chief Postal Inspector at the U.S. Postal
Service,
Mr. David A. Prince, Deputy Assistant Director, Transnational
Organized Crime, Homeland Security Investigation, Immigration
and Customs Enforcement at the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security.
Carol Cave, Director of the Office of Enforcement and Import Op-
erations, Office of Regulatory Affairs, Food and Drug Administra-
tion at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Thank you all for appearing in front of the subcommittee today.
You are aware the committee is holding an investigative hearing
and, when doing so, has had the practice of taking testimony under
oath.
 13

Do any of you have any objections to testifying under oath?

Let the record reflect that the witnesses have responded no. The
Chair then advises you under the rules of the House and the rules
of the committee you’re entitled to be accompanied by counsel.
Do any of you desire to be accompanied by counsel today?
Let the record reflect the witnesses have responded no. If you
would, please rise and raise your right hand so you may be sworn
in.
[Witnesses were sworn.]
Ms. DEGETTE. You may be seated.
Let the record reflect the witnesses have now responded affirma-
tively and you are now under oath and subject to the penalties set
forth in Title 18 Section 1001 of the U.S. Code.
The Chair will now recognize the witnesses for five minutes sum-
mary of their written statements. In front of each of you is a micro-
phone and a series of lights. The light turns yellow when you have
a minute left and it turns red to indicate that your time has come
to an end.
And so let’s start with you, Mr. Chester. You are now recognized
for five minutes.
STATEMENTS OF KEMP CHESTER, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF
THE NATIONAL OPIOIDS AND SYNTHETICS COORDINATION
GROUP, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF NATIONAL DRUG CON-
TROL POLICY; MATTHEW DONAHUE, REGIONAL DIRECTOR
NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICAS, OPERATION DIVISION,
DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF JUSTICE; THOMAS F. OVERACKER, EXECUTIVE DIREC-
TOR, OFFICE OF FIELD OPERATIONS, CUSTOMS AND BOR-
DER PROTECTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECU-
RITY; GARY R. BARKSDALE, CHIEF POSTAL INSPECTOR, U.S.
POSTAL SERVICE; DAVID A. PRINCE, DEPUTY ASSISTANT DI-
RECTOR, TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME, HOMELAND
SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS
ENFORCEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECU-
RITY; CAROL CAVE, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF ENFORCEMENT
AND IMPORT OPERATIONS, OFFICE OF REGULATORY AF-
FAIRS, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT
OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
STATEMENT OF KEMP L. CHESTER
Mr. CHESTER. Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Member Guthrie,
members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify
today on this critical issue.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy, under the leadership
of Director Jim Carroll, leads the development of the administra-
tion’s national drug control strategy and oversees its implementa-
tion.
The 2019 strategy is a comprehensive plan to address the presi-
dent’s top drug priority—the current opioid crisis—also focusing on
the emergence of even newer synthetic opioids and other emerging
crises such as methamphetamine use and the increase in cocaine
availability.
As part of the executive office of the president, ONDCP is
uniquely positioned and has played an integral in coordinating a
 14

comprehensive approach to drug policy development and implemen-

tation.
It has facilitated successful interagency collaboration, coordina-
tion, and problem resolution on myriad drug policy issues.
To that end, ONDCP has led countless interagency efforts di-
rectly related to the illicit opioid problem set. ONDCP established
the National Heroin Coordination Group, recently renamed the Na-
tional Opioids and Synthetics Coordination Group, in the fall of
2015 to apply new thinking to the heroin and fentanyl problem and
develop a novel approach to addressing it.
We worked collaboratively with the interagency in 2016 to de-
velop and issue the Heroin Availability Reduction Plan, or HARP,
to guide and synchronize interagency activities against the avail-
able of heroin, fentanyl, and fentanyl analogs.
To this day, the HARP is the one document that brings together,
contextualizes, and synchronizes the Federal Government, activi-
ties at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels as well as in the
international domain.
Ten times every month our opioids and synthetics coordination
group leads video teleconferences at all levels of classification and
nationwide webinars where departments, agencies, state, local, and
tribal officials and key embassies share information and syn-
chronized efforts based upon a common understanding of the stra-
tegic trends related to the opioid problem set.
This level of direct leadership has been instrumental in devel-
oping a better understanding of the crisis at all levels as well as
serving as the driver for collaboration and tangible results both do-
mestically and with international partners.
Based upon our in-depth understanding of the opioid crisis, key
issues such as the challenges of fentanyl detection, safe fentanyl
handling, and the need for innovative public health approaches
were brought to the forefront and are currently being addressed.
Our partnership with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has in-
creased interagency understanding of the international and domes-
tic mail flow into the United States, and U.S. vulnerabilities in dis-
rupting the fentanyl and synthetic opioid supply chain.
Our collaboration with the FBI-led Joint Criminal Opioid and
Darknet Enforcement, or J–CODE, team, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection’s National Targeting Center, and our management of
key international relationships with Mexico, Canada, China, Af-
ghanistan, and others have brought tangible results in disrupting
the flow of these dangerous drugs across our borders.
For example, because of the interagency focus on disruptive the
fentanyl supply chain, in the spring of 2017 CBP began to imprint
odor of fentanyl on all narcotics detection K9s, and now more than
450 dogs are trained addressing a critical vulnerability in our de-
tection capability.
As the fentanyl threat grew in 2016 and 2017, the lack of good
scientific information concerning the threat of fentanyl exposure
had a chilling effect on U.S. law enforcement and our first respond-
ers.
ONDCP initiated an interagency working group to develop and
publish the fentanyl safe handling recommendations, and shortly
thereafter CBP released a companion roll call video in use today.
 15

ONDCP is leading an interagency process with the Departments

of Justice and Health and Human Services to schedule fentanyl
analogs before the temporary action expires while providing a
framework to address the dynamic illicit drug market in a more
comprehensive manner and making all of these substances avail-
able to the research community.
The national drug control strategy states, quote, ‘‘While con-
fronting today’s drug crisis to arrest its growth and reduce its ef-
fects, we must also further develop the capability, knowledge, and
infrastructure to respond to the evolving nature of the drug threat
as we move deeper into the 21st century,’’ closed quote.
The men and women of ONDCP are doing just that. I would like
to thank this committee and your House colleagues for your fore-
sight and leadership in addressing this critical national security,
law enforcement, and public health challenge.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and I look forward
to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Chester follows:]
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Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you, Mr. Chester.

Mr. Donahue, you’re now recognized for five minutes.

STATEMENT OF MATTHEW DONAHUE

Mr. DONAHUE. Good morning, Chairman DeGette, Ranking Mem-
ber Guthrie, and members of the subcommittee. It is my honor to
appear before you today to discuss the critically important issue of
illicit fentanyl and fentanyl like substances that have had a tre-
mendous impact on the health and safety of our communities.
Illicit fentanyl and other fentanyl like substances are especially
dangerous drugs are often far more potent and deadly than other
drugs like heroin and cocaine.
I have had the privilege of being a DEA special agent for almost
30 years, having worked in South America, the Caribbean, and now
North and Central American region.
When I reflect on my time with DEA, the challenge we face with
the ongoing opioid crisis, along with the sophistication, capacity,
and global reach of Mexican poly-drug cartels is what worries me
and deeply concerns me the most.
As the regional director of North and Central America region, I
see firsthand everyday the extreme lawlessness and other atrocities
committed by Mexican cartels to maintain their dominant market
share to provide illegal substances to individuals in the United
States.
The ruthlessness of these cartels, combined with their callous
greed, is devastating families and communities, resulting in an in-
crease of violent crime in the United States.
Dangerous and highly sophisticated cartels operating in both
Mexico and the United States have been and will continue to be
the most significant source of illicit narcotics trafficked into and
throughout the United States.
When it comes to illicit fentanyl, China is the primary manufac-
turing source as well as the source of precursor chemicals needed
to manufacture fentanyl outside of China.
However, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that China has taken
important action to stem this manufacturing by the extraordinary
step of controlling the entire class of fentanyl-based drugs.
History has shown that when China and the United States have
jointly controlled the drug it has drastically decreased its importa-
tion into the United States.
However, Mexican cartels now have increasingly an important
role in the fentanyl trafficking. We have witnessed a transition
from importation of precursor chemicals for the production of
fentanyl to the manufacturing of precursor chemicals and fentanyl
within Mexico itself. This is a very alarming development.
Fentanyl comes into the United States in three ways. It is
shipped directly to the United States through the U.S. mail serv-
ices, it is trafficked in through our northern border, and most im-
portantly, it is trafficked over our southern border via Mexican car-
tels by various means and methods.
In many cases, fentanyl comes in the form of counterfeit pre-
scription pills. Oftentimes, people believe they may be ordering
Hydrocodone or Oxycodone on the internet but they’re receiving a
 32

fentanyl or a fentanyl analog, which could lead to deadly con-

sequences.
As a leader of DEA in Mexico, I can say confidently that we have
not been a spectator in this battle. DEA has the largest footprint
of the United States Government in Mexico. We are addressing this
threat by focussing on efforts of identifying the supply chain and
disrupting it. We are working bilaterally and judiciously targeting
and dismantling the cartels.
Through our more than 300 domestic and international field of-
fices, our special operations division, which works with our inter-
agency and international partners, we are conducting large-scale
investigations and prosecuting those who seek to profit and are re-
sponsible for the production, transportation, distribution, and sale
of these deadly substances.
Perhaps one of the most notable examples of these efforts is the
2016 arrest of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin Guzman Loera, com-
monly known as El Chapo, who coincidentally is being sentences
tomorrow in New York City.
The DEA will continue to investigate the biggest and most egre-
gious organizations that are poisoning our communities. We will
continue to focus on targeting drug cartels and significant organi-
zations operating in and outside the United States whose only mo-
tive is to make tremendous profits on unsuspecting and vulnerable
populations.
But there is more work to be done. On February 6, 2018, the
DEA used its authority under the Controlled Substances Act to
temporarily place all nonscheduled fentanyl like substances in
Schedule I and it has had a significant impact.
Let me reiterate that point. The temporary control of all non-
scheduled fentanyl substances has had a significant positive impact
in this fight. The class control action has substantially slowed the
rate at which new substances are introduced to and encountered on
the illicit market.
However, this temporary action expires February 2020, which is
only 206 days away. Additionally, if lawful access is not addressed,
criminals will continue to use our own laws to evade detection and
exploit members of our communities as technology advances and
law enforcement is prevented from judicial interception and collec-
tion.
Make no mistake—no matter the challenge, DEA will never stop
aggressively pursuing the most dangerous and prolific criminals
trafficking in illicit drugs in our communities.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify before your sub-
committee on this important issue and I look forward to your ques-
tions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Donahue follows:]
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Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you so much, Mr. Donahue.

Mr. Overacker, you are now recognized for five minutes.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS F. OVERACKER

Mr. OVERACKER. Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Member Guth-
rie, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity
to testify before you today.
I am proud to represent the men and women of the U.S. Customs
and Border Protection, our nation’s unified border agency with a
vital counter narcotics mission.
On a typical day, CBP seizes more than 5,800 pounds of nar-
cotics that would otherwise make their way into American commu-
nities. While today’s hearing focusses on the opioid crisis and its
devastating effects, CBP is committed to stopping all illicit drugs
from crossing our borders.
For example, last month, with our partners at Homeland Secu-
rity investigations and the United States Coast Guard, CBP seized
more than 19 tons of cocaine on a container ship in Philadelphia.
The cocaine had an estimated street value in excess of $1.3 bil-
lion and was the largest cocaine seizure in the combined 230-year
history of the U.S. Customs Service and CBP.
Compared to cocaine or methamphetamine, CBP seizures of
fentanyl are relatively low. However, these seizures have increased
dramatically in recent years and that is cause for concern.
In fiscal year 2013, CBP seized approximately two pounds of
fentanyl. Last year, we seized over 2,100 pounds. Through June of
this year, we have already seized as much as we did last year.
Most of the fentanyl coming into our country does so at ports of
entry along the Southwest border. It’s brought in by privately
owned vehicles, commercial vehicles, even pedestrians.
Less frequent is fentanyl entering through international mail
packages and express consignment environments. In those cases,
most of the shipments originate from China.
However, the fentanyl in the international mail and express en-
vironments is far more potent and pure than the fentanyl crossing
the Southwest border. Stopping fentanyl and other narcotics takes
a collaborative effort.
Through CBP’s national targeting center we work with our part-
ners to identify and disrupt fentanyl smuggling at ports of entry,
international mail facilities, and express consignment carrier facili-
ties.
Our partners include Homeland Security investigations, the
United States Postal Inspection Service, the Drug Enforcement Ad-
ministration, Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Admin-
istration, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Organized
Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, and numerous other domes-
tic and international partners.
Based on our encounters, CBP produces intelligence products to
help identify the tactics, techniques, and flow of drug trafficking.
This enhances targeting efforts and supports investigations.
It also provides policymakers, agency leadership, and the intel-
ligence community with information that can lead to drug interdic-
tion.
 44

Information sharing, advanced electronic data, the targeting of

precursors and pill presses are among the many elements that in-
form our actionable intelligence and allow us to combat narcotics
trafficking in a dynamic threat environment.
In addition, CBP uses a variety of technologies and techniques
to detect and identify illicit drugs. With the support of Congress,
we are making significant investments and improvements in these
capabilities, including additional narcotics detection K9 teams, en-
hanced field testing and new nonintrusive inspection, or NII, equip-
ment.
NII contributes to more than 98 percent of the number and total
weight of seizures. Currently, CBP scans approximately two per-
cent of privately-owned vehicles and 16 percent of commercial vehi-
cles arriving at the Southwest border ports of entry.
To enhance our capabilities, CBP has developed a new model
port concept that prioritizes the use of drive through scanning
equipment to streamline the inspection process and increase scan-
ning rates, thereby increasing the probability of interdiction.
To protect CBP personnel, who may be exposed to dangerous
substances during the course of their duties, we have deployed
more than 1,100 2-dose boxes of counter narcotic Naloxone to train
personnel in the field.
CBP was the first federal law enforcement agency to implement
such a program and we have already administered nine lifesaving
doses to members of the public.
Together, CBP and its partners are focused on enhancing collabo-
ration and information sharing to reduce the amounts of illicit
opioids that cross our land, air, and sea borders.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to tell our story. I
look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Overacker follows:]
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Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you so much.

Mr. Barksdale, you are now recognized for five minutes.

STATEMENT OF GARY R. BARKSDALE

Mr. BARKSDALE. Good morning, Chair DeGette, Ranking Member
Guthrie, and members of the subcommittee.
I appreciate this opportunity to be here today to discuss efforts
to combat opioids, including fentanyl.
My name is Gary Barksdale. I am the chief postal inspector for
the United States Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement
arm——
Ms. DEGETTE. Mr. Barksdale, can you move the microphone just
a little closer? Thank you.
Mr. BARKSDALE. Winning the battle against illicit drugs in the
mail stream is one of our top priorities. Postal inspectors work not
only to remove drugs from the mail but to investigate and arrest
individuals and disrupt drug trafficking networks across the U.S.
Internationally, the inspection service is working aggressively to
stem the flow of illegal drugs entering the country.
Due to the opioid crisis, nearly two years ago we created an in-
ternal team of cross-functional subject matter experts specifically
focussed on narcotics trafficking through the mail.
The Contraband Interdiction and Investigations team, or CII,
uses enhanced investigative methods, deploys resources as needed,
and strengthens strategic partnerships to achieve significant im-
provements in our ability to seize fentanyl and synthetic opioids
from the mail.
The inspection service works closely with other law enforcement
agencies to share intelligence, coordinate cases, and conduct joint
enforcement operations to maximize our resources and impact.
Relationships with partners such as DEA, HSI, CBP, and FDA
allow us to better advance our mission to enforce the laws that de-
fend the nation’s mail.
Inspection Service personnel are assigned full time at ONDCP,
the DEA’s Special Operations Division, the National Fusion Center,
and CBP’s national targeting center. Internationally, the Postal In-
spector is now detailed at Europol and the Hague.
We also work with state and local law enforcement to share in-
telligence and conduct joint operations including several Inspection
Service sponsored task forces. These relationships facilitate com-
munication and data sharing that enable the identification of drug
trafficking organizations which would not be possible without inter-
agency cooperation.
The Inspection Service launched cyber and analytics unit to en-
hance investigative techniques to better utilize data to target par-
cels. Due to many illicit dark web vendors aligned with physical de-
livery networks for their products, the Inspection Service is in-
volved with investigations into vendors and the take down of their
illicit marketplaces.
The Inspection Service has also joined DHS, CBP, and ONDCP
as a sponsor for the opioid detection challenge, which is a global
prize competition for rapid nonintrusive detection tools that will
help find illicit opioids in international mail.
 54

Postal inspectors interdict and seize thousands of illegal drug

shipments in the mail. From fiscal year 2016 through 2018, we
achieved a thousand percent increase in international synthetic
opioid seizures and a 750 percent increase in domestic synthetic
opioid seizures.
Thus far in fiscal year 2019 we have seized 185 synthetic opioid
parcels, 153 of which were in the domestic mail stream. Our cur-
rent stats represent a decrease in international seizures while our
domestic seizures are trending up.
This shift may suggest synthetic opioids are increasingly enter-
ing the country through means other than international mail.
In 2018, Congress enacted the STOP Act, which requires the
Postal Service to receive advanced electronic data, or AED, on at
least 70 percent of inbound package shipments including 100 per-
cent of shipments from the People’s Republic of China by December
2018 and 100 percent of all inbound international shipments by
December 2020.
The volume of inbound packages with AED has improved from
26 percent in October of 2017 to approximately 60 percent in May
of 2019, while the volume of packages with AED from China has
increased from 32 percent to approximately 85 percent in May of
2019. This represents a significant improvement within a relatively
limited period of time.
The Postal Service continues to collaborate with foreign postal
operators and organizations that support international postal oper-
ations to work towards obtained AED on 100 percent of inbound
packages and shipments.
We have significantly improved coordination with CBP and de-
veloped processes to ensure we take action on requests to hold
packages for inspection.
The Postal Service currently has a 93 percent success rate in the
capture of CBP hold requests and they will continue to focus on
employing technology to improve interception capability and reach
100 percent.
The Postal Service takes seriously its mission to protect the secu-
rity and sanctity of the mail and is committed to taking all nec-
essary actions to combat illicit drugs in the mail.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify and I look forward to
your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barksdale follows:]
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Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you, Mr. Barksdale.

Mr. Prince, you’re now recognized for five minutes.

STATEMENT OF DAVID A. PRINCE

Mr. PRINCE. Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Member Guthrie,
and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you to discuss my agency’s efforts in
attacking the national opioid crisis impacting our communities.
Homeland Security investigations is the department’s primary
criminal investigative agency and is focussed on disrupting and dis-
mantling transnational criminal organizations.
As the sole investigative agency with combined customs and im-
migration authorities, HSI investigates and enforces more than 400
federal criminal statutes that protect our nation’s trade, travel, fi-
nancial, and immigration systems.
Today, I would like to speak about our successful efforts in com-
batting the flow of illicit fentanyl into the United States. In fiscal
year 2018, HSI initiated 1,393 opioid related criminal investiga-
tions, executed 5,262 opioid related criminal arrests, and seized a
total of 9,928 opioid—pounds of opioids, which consisted of 2,737
pounds of fentanyl and 7,103 pounds of heroin.
Our 2019 fiscal year statistics are set to exceed 2018 statistics
in these areas. HSI has collaborated with Chinese authorities to
address the China-sourced fentanyl threat through investigative in-
formation sharing. As of May 1st, 2019, Chinese authorities passed
legislation making all fentanyl illegal.
However, it is still—it still remains a threat. We are now urging
general administration of China customs and China postal services
to secure its mail and express consignment industry.
Through our transnational criminal investigative units in Mex-
ico, HSI works to disrupt Mexico-based opioid TCOs. TCIUs are
multi-discipline units comprised of foreign law enforcement officials
who ensure that shared information and operational activities are
collaborated upon without compromise.
HSI’s customs authorities extend to the virtual border of the
open internet and the dark net. HSI’s Cyber Crime Center, known
as C3, provides support and assistance to global cyber investiga-
tions targeting illicit marketplaces where fentanyl and opioid sales
proliferate.
Today, HSI has more than 700 open cyber crime investigations
and more than 200 investigations specifically targeting criminal
dark net organizations.
Many of these investigations focus on illicit opioid suppliers. HSI
is at the forefront of cyber investigations and has been successful
in developing methods to track and trace digital crypto currency,
often used as a payment system for online opioid transactions.
In fiscal year 2018, HSI delivered its online international opioid
smuggling training course to more than 4,000 local, state, federal,
and international law enforcement partners.
This course provides law enforcement with the technical knowl-
edge and in-depth case briefings to assist criminal investigations
involving the dark net and crypto currency-related crimes.
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The Border Enforcement Security Task Force, known as BEST,

utilizes local, state, and federal agencies at land border sea port,
international airport, and mail facility locations to target TCOs.
There are currently 65 BEST teams across the United States and
we have increased our presence at international mail facilities and
express consignment carrier to include JFK, LAX, Memphis, and
Louisville.
We have also established BEST teams in areas hardest hit by
the opioid epidemic such as Ohio and West Virginia. In fiscal year
2018, BEST Memphis initiated 204 narcotic control deliveries, exe-
cuted 46 criminal arrests. It effected 149 seizures.
BEST Cleveland has initiated Operation Darkness Falls to target
top dark net vendors. Darkness Falls has led to the disruption and
dismantlement of large-scale opioid vendors to include the largest
identified fentanyl vendor with the most verified transactions.
The National Targeting Center Investigations—NTCI—partners
with CBP and Postal Inspection Service to interdict illicit opioids
entering the United States.
Recently, NTCI assisted in an investigation where 171 pounds of
fentanyl was seized from a New Jersey-based TCO involved in the
importation of opioids.
To date, this investigation is one of the largest domestic seizures
of fentanyl from China. HSI seeks to identify, disrupt, and dis-
mantle criminal financial networks and leverages a multitude of in-
vestigative techniques to target money service businesses, all cash
smuggling, and crypto currency.
In fiscal year 2019 thus far, HSI seized nearly $1.9 million in
fentanyl-related digital currency and has over 268 open investiga-
tions involving the illicit use of crypto currency.
I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you to share
HSI’s efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. We will continue our
commitment to maximize our full complement of authorities.
I thank you for the support that you provide to HSI as we exe-
cute our mission and I look forward to any questions you have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Prince follows:]
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Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you so much, Mr. Prince.

And Ms. Cave, you are now recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF CAROL CAVE
Ms. CAVE. Good morning, Chairwoman DeGette, Ranking Mem-
ber Guthrie, and members of the subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to discuss the
Food and Drug Administration’s role in combatting our nation’s on-
going crisis of opioid addiction, specifically regarding fentanyl.
I am Carol Cave, the director of the Office of Enforcement and
Import Operations within FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs.
FDA, along with our partner government agencies, continue to
work together to consider more active and creative steps to make
inroads against this crisis.
I am pleased to be here today to discuss the work we are doing
at our nation’s borders and at the international mail facilities, or
IMFs.
FDA plays an important role related to the interdiction work
that takes place in IMFs and has acted to enhance our operations
there. In the international mail environment, Customs and Border
Protection is the leading interdicting authority for controlled sub-
stances including fentanyl and other opioids.
As such, they examine before FDA and generally will act against
these types of shipments without forwarding for FDA for review.
FDA is focusing on inspecting and sometimes testing products that
may be counterfeit or unapproved drug products.
Last year, Congress gave FDA more tools to intercept illicit
drugs coming through our nation’s IMFs by enacting the SUPPORT
Act. On behalf of FDA, I would like to thank the members of this
committee for your work on these important authorities.
The SUPPORT Act, specifically Section 3022(d), gives the FDA
new authority to treat imported articles as drugs when they meet
certain requirements, even in the absence of certain evidence of in-
tended use.
This allows FDA to apply its existing authorities to appropriately
detain, refuse, and administratively destroy these subject articles.
The implementation of this section, which began in March of this
year, has been an unquestioned success. For articles determined to
be under the 801(u) product specifically our destruction rate is,
roughly, 99 percent, thus eliminating distribution of these products
into the hands of consumers.
Additionally, on April 4th of 2019, FDA and CBP leaders signed
a letter of intent that addresses the areas of cooperation outlined
in Section 3014 of the SUPPORT Act, including information shar-
ing, operational coordination for better targeting of high-risk par-
cels, and collaborative strategies. FDA and CBP have actively been
exploring ways to enhance collaboration and increased efficiency of
operations by sharing existing but limited space.
As FDA is able to increase the amount of space allocated to its
activities in the IMS, FDA can further add staff, enabling the agen-
cy to expand its admissibility review of drugs shipped into the U.S.
international mail parcels.
The letter of intent also addresses FDA’s and CBP’s commitment
to establish, expand its scientific presence at the IMS considered
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most of risk of receiving opioids and other illegal or dangerous

drugs entering the United States.
FDA and CBP are looking at ways to develop and refine labora-
tory-based methods to identify unapproved, counterfeit, and other
unlawful controlled substances.
The division of import operations managers have met several
times with their counterparts at CBP and U.S. Postal Service to as-
sess how our respective systems can be utilized to share data and
information on actions taken by the agencies on individual parcels
and commodities.
All three agencies are considering the most appropriate and effi-
cient means of using existing data streams to share IMS specific
data and investigational outcomes.
We remain committed to using our regulatory authority to the
fullest extent to address the opioid crisis including new authorities
granted by FDA—granted to FDA by the SUPPORT Act.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and I look forward
to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Cave follows:]
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Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you so much, Ms. Cave.

It’s now time for Members to ask you questions and the Chair
will recognize herself for five minutes.
Mr. Donahue, combatting fentanyl is challenging because, as we
all know, it is cheap and easy to make. It has huge profits. It is
hard to detect in shipments and it is deadly even in small amounts.
It’s also increasingly mixed into other drugs, often without the
user’s knowledge, and so that leads to more overdoses.
Would you agree with me with that assessment of the challenge
that we are facing?
Mr. DONAHUE. Yes, Congresswoman. I appreciate the question
and it’s not an easy one because with all the drugs and the
fentanyl and the different types of drugs coming in from other
countries we are required to have their cooperation and we actually
investigate these cartels specifically here with the fentanyl coming
in. We are concerned with China, sometimes India, sometimes Hol-
land where the drugs are coming in——
Ms. DEGETTE. Right.
Mr. DONAHUE [continuing]. Directly to United States and/or to
Mexico to produce it and send it up.
Ms. DEGETTE. But it’s—because of all the things I said it’s hard-
er to make those identifications and so working with the other
countries is even more important. Wouldn’t that be fair?
Mr. DONAHUE. Extremely important, and with our panel mem-
bers here as well working collectively on attacking the people who
are actually producing the drugs and shipping the drugs and actu-
ally really the key is prosecutions.
Ms. DEGETTE. Right.
Mr. DONAHUE. We got to do something with the seizures that we
make in the United States and bring it back to the source countries
and gain their cooperation to attack the source of the drugs.
Ms. DEGETTE. To do it there.
Mr. Chester, your agency has been trying to coordinate drug con-
trol efforts for a long time. What are we doing to think outside the
box in addressing the fentanyl threat that’s different from what
we’ve been doing with some of the previous illicit drug control
strategies?
Mr. CHESTER. Thank you for the question, ma’am. I think we’ve
done a couple of things. The first 1 is we have, through our inter-
agency coordination and our work with the intelligence community
and with partner nations, we are a generation ahead of where we
were before in understanding the problem first, which I don’t be-
lieve we had a good grasp on what the nature of the problem was
and we didn’t have an ability——
Ms. DEGETTE. When was that? When was that?
Mr. CHESTER. This was really about the 2014–2015 time frame,
and so what this does is with this greater understanding we can—
we can look beyond the immediate actions that we take and are
better able to anticipate trafficker actions in switching to other
synthetic opioids. I think that’s the first thing.
And then I think the second thing is we look outside of the
bounds of one particular class of drugs to things like nonsynthetic
opioids and things of that nature, and our understanding has al-
 76

lowed us to be able to be more—much more anticipatory than we

have been in the past.
Ms. DEGETTE. Do you think that the agency cooperation has
been different than it was before and if so, how?
Mr. CHESTER. Absolutely. I think the level of information shar-
ing—the first one is in the mechanisms that we have put in place,
and when I say ten times every single month all of the members
of this—of this panel and the agencies and departments that they
represent, we have mechanisms to share cooperations at all levels
of classification.
The ability to coordinate and the ability not only to shape our
own actions domestically but our approach with other countries as
well much, much better than it has been in the past.
Ms. DEGETTE. Mr. Overacker, I would like to ask you, do you
agree that the agencies are doing a better job of sharing data and
working together than in the past?
Mr. OVERACKER. Yes, I believe so. My experience tells me that
when we can link up, you know, investigators with operators we
can do a better job of basically identifying targets and supporting,
you know, investigations in the field.
This is something we’ve done at our national targeting center.
It’s been successful, and now with this fentanyl crisis we’ve really
amped up our capabilities for that purpose.
Ms. DEGETTE. What is it that you’re doing differently now? Obvi-
ously, we can all agree that coordination is great. But what is it
that you’re doing differently?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s different,
just to say that I think what we’ve learned over the years is we
have to be working on this daily.
It has to—you know, it’s a collaboration and it really is some-
thing you have to work on every day and I think it’s just—the level
of collaboration we have for the fentanyl crisis is more than what
we’ve seen for other issues in the past.
Ms. DEGETTE. And what can we do to help you do your job bet-
ter? Is there something—is there a better way to share data across
the agencies? Is there something that we can do to help?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, you know, we certainly appreciate your
support—your continued support for CBP. As far as data sharing,
we do have, you know, data sharing arrangements with all of these
agencies, and because we work collectively at our national tar-
geting center we are able to share information in a sort of rapid
real-time format.
Ms. DEGETTE. OK. Thank you.
I yield back and recognize Mr. Guthrie for five minutes.
Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you very much, and I want to go down the
panel with this question, and so be mindful I got to do that in five
minutes and ask a couple of other questions, too. So, I am going
to be brief.
So, I just want each of you to say your agencies in fentanyl, what
is your biggest accomplishment the past two years—your agencies.
I know you have done a lot, but your biggest—and then what
your biggest challenge is.
Mr. CHESTER. I would say that our biggest accomplishment is the
publishing of the National Drug Control Strategy, which
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contextualized everything the departments and agencies are doing

in this particular regard for all drug issues, but in this 1 specifi-
cally.
I would say that our biggest challenge is the rapidity with which
new substances appear in the United States either have crossed
our borders or are detected in post-mortem toxicology testing.
That is—that is something that requires an enormous amount of
effort.
Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you.
Mr. Donahue?
Mr. DONAHUE. I would say one of our biggest accomplishment is
actually scheduling—emergency scheduling all analogs of the
fentanyl, which has really greatly helped DEA in our investiga-
tions. One of our biggest challenges is actually obtaining the evi-
dence required to enter to the Grand Jury in the United States to
target these cartels that are producing and trafficking in fentanyl
in the court of law in the United States.
We recently established our Sensitive Investigative Units specifi-
cally for that reason to work with our counterparts to obtain evi-
dence in the foreign countries to utilize back in the Grand Jury in
the United States. But that’s a very big accomplishment for us that
we are going to use, going forward.
Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you.
Mr. Overacker?
Mr. OVERACKER. From a CBP perspective, I would say one is our
detection capabilities. We now have a fully staffed 24/7 laboratory
in Springfield, Virginia, dedicated exclusively to fentanyl and we’ve
also deployed detection equipment throughout CBP so we can iden-
tify fentanyl in a safe way.
I would also say that our collaboration with the U.S. Postal In-
spection Service is another big success story for us as we increased
our level of effort with them. And also just through our national
targeting center the partners that we work with there and the co-
ordination efforts, the sort of community of effort that we’ve estab-
lished through the national targeting center is important.
Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you.
Mr. Barksdale?
Mr. BARKSDALE. Thank you. I would say our biggest accomplish-
ment, as Mr. Overacker has said, is our collaboration and data
sharing, our embedded inspectors at the national targeting center
and DEA’s SOD. I’ve seen a difference in the type of cases we are
making.
As far as challenges, I think our biggest challenge is also one of
our biggest successes is although we’ve improved in our capability
to attack the problem, internet sales is still a challenge, going for-
ward.
As good as we are taking down one site, they will quickly stand
up another site or a different marketplace so that will be a chal-
lenge, going forward.
Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you.
Mr. Prince?
Mr. PRINCE. I would say some of our things that we can—we can
definitely say we’ve accomplished is our development of the innova-
tion lab, which is something we bring problem sets to to help us
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expand our capability to deal with stuff like opioids and our expan-
sion of the BEST initiative as well, particularly with our recent ex-
pansions, which we think are going to bear fruit.
You know, our block chain analysis as well in the crypto currency
space is something that we are very proud of. We continue to make
inroads in that and it helps us develop much more robust target
packages on our complex conspiracy investigations.
Obviously, China is recalcitrant when it comes to a lot of these
issues that we are dealing with that was part of our oral testimony,
and I would say that’s a challenge that we continue to deal with.
Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you.
Ms. Cave?
Ms. CAVE. Good morning. I would say the number-one thing for
the FDA is, clearly, the 801(u) authority that was given to us by
the SUPPORT Act, which actually allows us to destroy product
when it’s coming in as opposed to refusing admission and export-
ing.
So thank you very much for that. In terms of challenge, I would
say it’s just in the international mail facilities in terms of the vol-
ume and the sheer volume that we are dealing with and the ad-
vanced—you know, lack of advanced data that comes in, for exam-
ple, on addressing those issues.
Mr. GUTHRIE. A colleague of mine, a couple of them, have seen
different targeting centers the thing you’re talking about and just
amazed at the effort that you guys are doing in working, and then
second of all, and just also amazed at the volume you’re dealing
with.
So, we are mindful of that. I hope to see one of those as well.
Mr. Donahue, I just have less than a minute left. But the Wilson
Center Mexico Institute reported that fentanyl is entering Mexico
via the Ports of Manzanilla and Lazaro Cárdenas,—we say
Cárdenas,, who’s our colleague here—but Cárdenas,.
Do you agree with that finding and, if so, what level of coopera-
tion is DEA getting from Mexico law enforcement authorities at
these ports in taking and seizing fentanyl?
And when are their—I will go ahead and ask the second ques-
tion—you may answer them together. In an interview with the Wil-
son Center Mexico Institute, Mexico federal forces said that they
did not believe that fentanyl was a significant part of the Mexican
drug traffickers’ criminal portfolios.
In your opinion, what do you comment on that?
Mr. DONAHUE. They are both two big ports where we see enor-
mous amount of precursor chemicals coming in, not just for
fentanyl but for methamphetamine and for production of heroin as
well.
We are seeing chemicals coming in through the airports as well
from China in various forms. We are working with OFAC as well
to take those addresses that we are getting in China, working with
our offices in China to follow up to see what laboratories they’re
coming from.
So you see large numbers coming in through the ports. But we
also see them coming in through the airports and other small air-
ports as well in Mexico.
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In our assessment and active investigations and intelligence they

are synthesizing fentanyl inside of Mexico and we’ve seen pill mills
with industrial size pill presses making fentanyl pills inside of
Mexico, specifically on the border, and we’ve had seizures in the
airports of pills——
Mr. GUTHRIE. I didn’t leave you much time to answer. My time
has expired. So, I appreciate your answer.
Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you so much.
The Chair now recognizes Ms. Schakowsky for five minutes.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. I thank the Chair and ranking member and
I thank you all for coming today to testify.
I am really glad that you all gather together to discuss this crit-
ical issue and I believe it will require a broad government approach
to tackle the spread of illicit fentanyl across the public health, law
enforcement, and international relations sector.
In particular, I am glad that in recent years both the legislative
and executive branches appear to have realized the devastating
failure of the previous war on drugs and have turned to a system
of helping rather than locking up drug users, which has led to
mass incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Americans, mostly
brown and black.
Recently, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar in-
dicated that he would be fully in support, for example, of needle ex-
change programs as part of his agency’s plan to combat HIV—the
HIV epidemic. But needle exchanges are also critical responses to
the opioid epidemic.
In Illinois, Lindsay Hartman of Kane County runs a van every
Saturday that provides clean needles, clean straws, Naloxone, and
everything else a drug user needs to stay alive, and thankfully the
Illinois state legislature passed a bill last month to ensure public
health vans like Lindsay’s can continue to run without fear of legal
repercussions.
One important item that’s on that van is—are test strips that
can detect the presence of fentanyl in drugs. A recent study from
RTI International found that, quote, ‘‘People who use illicitly made
street opioids and tests them for fentanyl by using fentanyl test
strips are 5 times more likely to engage in safer drug use behavior
than when the test comes back positive,’’ end quote.
So you can imagine I was disappointed to learn that Assistant
Secretary of Mental Health and Substance Use Dr. Elinore
McCance-Katz has publicly come out against the use of these test
strips, and she wrote, quote, ‘‘Is it our goal simply to stop people
from dying so they can continue a life of ’safe’ heroin use or should
our goal be different?’’ End quote.
So Mr. Chester and Ms. Cave, and then anybody else who would
like to respond, do you believe that fentanyl testing strips and
other similar innovative measures are essential to—for preventing
death and shouldn’t that be an objective in light of the current
fentanyl epidemic?
Mr. CHESTER. Thank you, Congresswoman. I can’t speak on be-
half of anyone else. I can just——
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. No, I am asking you.
Mr. CHESTER. Yes, I understand. So the approaches as we laid
out in the drug control strategy is three pillars, and two of those
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three pillars are public health. One of them is to prevent drug use
before it starts and then the second one is to provide treatment
leading to long-term recovery. Those are our main efforts, and any
public health interventions, and when I mentioned in my testimony
innovative public health interventions there are a wide range of
things that we discuss and that we consider. We look for their effi-
cacy in the public health space, all designed to save lives and to
get people on their path to recovery.
That is our principle concern and that is the bulk of our efforts
in the public health space specifically when it comes to opioids.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. So saving lives is a goal?
Mr. CHESTER. Absolutely. That is the single and, as it states in
the strategy, the single criterion of success is to save American
lives and stop Americans from losing their lives to these deadly
drugs. Yes, ma’am.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you.
Ms. Cave?
Ms. CAVE. So to echo that, I would say I am not a scientist or
a physician either, and so I would—honestly, I would take this
back to our department and have them answer as an HHS re-
sponse in terms of what their opinion would be on this issue.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. OK. But it doesn’t take a scientist, it seems
to me, if test strips would actually show that fentanyl is present
and prevent people—five times more people—lives saved because of
it, that that’s really a values question.
Ms. CAVE. Right. I would say safety, obviously, is number one.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. McKinley for five minutes.
Mr. MCKINLEY. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank
you for holding this hearing. I got to tell you, I am really dis-
appointed that it’s taken us seven months to have another hearing
on this topic. Seven months.
It looks like we are going to get started again because we had
a hiatus from last—the last Congress. Think about it. During the
last Congress we had H.R. 6.
We had CARA, 21st Century CURES. We were having multiple
hearings on this, and then it all went silent. And I thank you for
bringing it back up again.
I think everyone has to understand during that hiatus, during
that period of time—seven months—215 people died yesterday from
substance abuse. Two hundred and fifteen people died today. Two
hundred and fifteen people are going to die tomorrow.
In my state of West Virginia, the epicenter of this problem, we
have one person dying every eight hours from a drug problem. I
think we need to be faster with this.
So let me question, though. The theme or the concept that I am
still struggling with is that why, and I’ve had a conversation with
NIH.
We’ve had conversations with other folks. Why are—why are
Americans turning to drugs to deal with their problems? Why is it
that we have such a problem?
I’ve got the report here that has been filed that talks about why
America is leading the globe in the use of drugs. As an example,
 81

in France about 350 people died two years ago from drug overdose
out of 66 million.
That’s a half of a person per 100,000. In Ohio, it’s 35. Nearly 40
persons per 100,000 is dying from drugs. Why is France not using
drugs? What are they doing right in France?
Or take England, for example. England’s ratio of death overdose
by drugs is 4 per 100,000. In West Virginia, it’s 52. What are we
doing about—what are we actually doing?
Some of you, like Mr. Barksdale—it’s not your issue with the
Postal—but I want to understand why are Americans turning to
drugs so rapidly and quickly instead of finding another way to deal
with drugs.
Because what we are dealing in this hearing right now is the re-
sults. We want to chase the drug after it’s come here. I want to un-
derstand why our kids, adults, others, are turning to drugs in the
first place when the rest of the world isn’t. They’re finding other
ways to deal with this problem.
So I would like maybe each of you to tell me why is it that you
think America is using drugs at such a greater rate than anyplace
else in the world.
Start with you, Mr. Chester.
Mr. CHESTER. Thank you for the question, Congressman. I am
not—I am not prepared to answer why that is. I don’t know just
as you don’t. I think that there are a lot of—a lot of variables as
to why individuals choose to use drugs.
However, I will say that we no longer speak in terms of supply
and demand. We speak in terms of availability and use, because we
do know and our experience has shown that the greater availability
of drugs in a community the greater chance that an individual will
be able to use them for the first time and that first use leads to
chronic use very, very quickly, particularly with opioids.
Mr. MCKINLEY. Reclaiming my time.
Last year we had Zuckerberg in here from Facebook. We had
Dorsey in here from Twitter. And both of them were saying how—
thumping their chest they don’t use—they don’t sell—they don’t
allow that to be sold on their platforms.
But yet, we demonstrated on both occasions that you can get
drugs without prescriptions with Facebook, Twitter, Google, all
these other accounts, and within hours each of them pulled it back
down again.
And I am here to say I am told they’re back up again. So regard-
less of—we took them to task. They’re back out there again.
So we talk about availability. Are our social media platforms—
are they being used and how can we structure that? How can we
in Congress do a better job to prevent Facebook, Twitter, and oth-
ers from selling drugs over the internet?
Mr. Donahue?
Mr. DONAHUE. Well, two things. I will get with our demand re-
duction unit in our DEA headquarters because it’s an important
question that you asked and I will get you our answer and our
opinion that we got with DEA why people are using drugs.
I know one of the things we are always pushing for is the ability
to be able to judiciously intercept devices—Facebook, other
things—that we currently can’t do with a judicial order which
 82

causes a huge problem for law enforcement to infiltrate certain or-

ganizations, not having the ability to get into certain encrypted de-
vices.
Mr. MCKINLEY. Thank you. My time has expired. I yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. The gentleman’s time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentle lady from New Hampshire, Ms.
Kuster.
Ms. KUSTER. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you again for
holding this hearing.
As we know, the opioid epidemic continues to impact commu-
nities across this country. This is a crisis that knows no demo-
graphic and impacts urban and rural communities like mine alike.
My home state of New Hampshire has been one of the hardest
hit by the country’s fentanyl crisis. This is a crisis that knows no
border, no ocean deep enough, no continent broad enough to stop
the flow of deadlier and deadlier fentanyl analogs.
As the epidemic evolves, we must evolve our approach to combat
it and if one thing having all of these agencies before us today has
shown it’s that there’s a greater need for an even more coordinated
approach across international, national, and local agencies.
I want to start with you, Mr. Chester. As you have relayed,
fentanyl is the biggest driver of overdose deaths, providing the best
business model to drug traffickers, and being the hardest to detect.
You told committee staff that enforcement has historically been
focused on interdicting 20th century drug trafficking and that it
has taken us awhile to develop the architecture and means to com-
bat 21st century drug trafficking.
What do you mean that fentanyl trafficking is following a 21st
century architecture and what challenges do we face in adapting
our strategy to meet this new threat?
Mr. CHESTER. Thank you for the question, ma’am, and I do want
to be clear about one thing. We still have a 20th century drug traf-
ficking problem in the United States and that’s principally heroin,
and New Hampshire is one of our state partners that we hear from
every single month, and we’ve seen how heroin has tapered off in
New Hampshire while synthetic opioids like fentanyl and fentanyl
analogs have continued—have continued to rise.
Twentieth century drug trafficking, plant-based drugs that are
packaged, moved across the borders through a hierarchical drug-
trafficking organization, and that ends in a face-to-face cash trans-
action somewhere—that’s what we refer to as 20th century drug
trafficking.
Twenty-first century drug trafficking is an individual who does
not need to interface with a drug trafficker or a drug-trafficking or-
ganization. They can get on their own laptop.
They can get on the dark web. They can go to—go to a vendor
that will sell them the drugs. They can pay for it with bitcoin. It
will be delivered directly to their house through the mail service
or through express consignment. That’s what we refer to as 21st
century drug trafficking.
Unfortunately, we have both of those models that we are dealing
with right now and I will tell you that our law enforcement commu-
nity and our State Department and our other partners have done
a remarkable job in being able to take on the 21st century drug
 83

trafficking at the same time we are still dealing with the tradi-
tional model that we’ve dealt with for 30-plus years of drug policy.
Ms. KUSTER. Thank you.
Mr. Prince, fentanyl poses unique challenges compared to other
drugs. Cheap to make, clandestinely produced in labs, easily trans-
portable and, as we know, hard to detect.
Traffickers are increasingly mixing the drug into other narcotics
as well as counterfeit prescription drugs. I ask you what is HSI
doing to tackle the fentanyl epidemic that is uniquely different
from its efforts to combatting heroin, cocaine, and other narcotics?
Mr. PRINCE. Thank you for the question, ma’am.
As my colleague had illustrated the 20th century versus 21st
century drug problem, I call it analog versus digital. Our analog
methodologies haven’t changed in 35 years.
Surveillance, informant management, cultivation development,
cooperating defendants, execution of search and arrest warrants,
those are all our analog tools that we use that are always going
to be relevant.
They will be relevant a hundred years from now.
As far as how we deal with the digital aspect of it, we have our
innovation lab that I mentioned earlier. We have NTC and NTCI.
NTCI is placed very squarely in NTC where there’s information
sharing.
Many of the people here on the panel are part of NTCI or NTC,
collaborate with us on a daily basis. We have the OCDTF program
that shepherds large-scale federal investigations in a collaborative
team effort, and the two meet.
At some point the digital crypto currency space and the dark net
activity is going to turn into something at the corner of what I say
walk and don’t walk where a drug deal is done, and that’s where
our ability to deal with the digital space while at the same time
dealing with the analog space is going to bear fruit.
In my oral testimony, I mentioned just a few cases that devel-
oped into some significant opioid and fentanyl seizures. That’s a
collaboration of the digital space mingling with the analog space
and providing arrests, seizures, and significant results.
Many of those investigations are ongoing. Some of those inves-
tigations are over. But we are moving with the digital trans-
formations of the criminal enterprises. We are keeping up with
what is going on.
Ms. KUSTER. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. I thank the gentle lady.
The Chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Walden, for
five minutes.
Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Madam Chair, and again, thanks to the
panel. We have two hearings going on simultaneously. So, I am
kind of bouncing between all of that.
Mr. Overacker, I was down at the Southwest border touring some
CBP facilities in Yuma, Arizona on Sunday, and I asked CBP
whether they had seen an uptick in fentanyl coming in from Mex-
ico in the Yuma sector.
The answer was no, they had not seen an uptick and, in fact,
drug interdictions on the whole are down across the Yuma sector
as the CBP checkpoints were shut down for months because of the
 84

humanitarian crisis on the border, and that meant CBP agents

could not staff those checkpoints during the border emergency,
given the huge influx of people.
So, my question is the data show interdictions are down, but
with those checkpoints closed I am not sure we can rely on those
data this year.
And are there other CBP sectors being similarly impacted by this
humanitarian crisis at the border and is there anything you can
tell us about the way the cartels are using and profiting from the
humanitarian crisis to overwhelm your agents—our agents—and
then get the drugs in along the way?
What can you tell us about that?
Mr. OVERACKER. Thank you for the question, sir. The first thing
I would say is that what we are tracking right now is overall our
interdictions on the Southwest border are as much as we had last
year.
That includes not just what the Border Patrol does at check-
points. That includes our ports of entry and, roughly, 90 percent of
what we seize is at a port of entry as opposed to in—between the
ports by the Border Patrol.
I understand the humanitarian crisis has impacted their oper-
ations. They’ve also impacted the operations at our ports of entry
as we’ve redirected CBP officers to support the Border Patrol sec-
tor.
Mr. WALDEN. So we were hearing.
Mr. OVERACKER. As a result, we’ve had to close lanes at ports of
entries, which has slowed the amount of traffic.
But given that 90 percent of what we seize is at a port of entry,
we are seizing just as much as we did last year overall as an agen-
cy.
But with respect to the other Border Patrol sectors, I would glad-
ly take that back and get you more information on what they are
seeing as well.
Mr. WALDEN. You might take another look at it because some
data we were seeing over the weekend showed that it was down
considerably in some categories.
Mr. OVERACKER. Some categories.
Mr. WALDEN. And so, I just want to make sure that—you know,
we know your folks are getting overwhelmed when you go thou-
sands of people coming in in a given night or hundreds where you
had 10 or 20 or 30 in the past, and I know we’ve got colleagues
that want to get rid of CBP or get rid of ICE and don’t respect the
tough conditions and what you and your folks are doing on things
like this.
But we keep hearing they’re being pulled aside to do the proc-
essing of the asylum claims. I mean, there’s a lot of this work being
done. They’re not out in the field doing the interdictions.
And so, to what extent do you think this humanitarian crisis at
the border is affecting the ability to interdict these drugs?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, like I say, it has impacted not only Border
Patrol resources between the ports of entry. It is also impacting
field operations at the ports of entry in terms of just by—just the
manpower that we have to dedicate to those traditional intercep-
tions.
 85

Mr. WALDEN. Right.

Mr. OVERACKER. But I think at the port of entry we’ve seen
things stabilize and, of course, with the apprehension numbers de-
clining now between the ports of entry, we think that the situation
is improving.
Mr. WALDEN. All right. Mr. Prince, do you have any comment on
this from your agency’s view—DHS?
Mr. PRINCE. Most of the agents that are responding to the border
crisis are responding to human smuggling or human trafficking
events. The border crisis at some point could create a tipping point
for us in the investigative space.
At this time we are not seeing that. We are deploying bodies,
agents, to the border. Most of the agents that are responding are
already at those special agent in charge offices along the Southwest
border.
I will say that it has created some opportunities for us to open
up new portfolios in the investigative tool space, 1 of those being
DNA testing. The DNA testing is allowing us to actually separate
children who are being used in a human trafficking scheme or a
smuggling scheme.
Mr. WALDEN. We met with some investigators who had just got-
ten that tool and said they can turn a DNA test in 90 minutes I
think they told us.
Mr. PRINCE. Right, and the DNA testing is actually identifying
children that don’t—that aren’t of these individuals that are cross-
ing the border with them. And so we are rescuing kids in this ef-
fort.
Mr. WALDEN. Yes. All right.
Madam Chair, my time has expired. Thank you all.
Ms. DEGETTE. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr.
Sarbanes, for five minutes.
Mr. SARBANES. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the panel
for being here.
Obviously, we all know well the threat that fentanyl is posing to
the health and safety of our communities. We’ve been hearing a lot
of very strong testimony on that and the experience in our districts
clearly bears that out as well, and it has to be a very coordinated
role, which you’re trying to project here today. I appreciate that.
I did, Mr. Chester, want to focus a little bit more on the role of
ONDCP because it asserts this coordinating function among all the
various agencies that we need leaning in to address this crisis and
this threat in terms of how our federal agencies are responding.
So tell me a little bit, to try to illustrate the coordinating role,
what would be happening if your agency did not exist in terms of
being able to pull the resources together across these agencies.
Mr. CHESTER. Well, the first thing, Congressman, I think there
would be a lack of focus and a lack of direction in advancing the
administration’s drug control priorities, and that’s one of the more
important functions that ONDCP does is to—is to document our
priorities and lay out the lines of effort that we are going to—that
we are going to operate on. I think that’s the first thing.
I think the second thing is that the day-to-day activity of ensur-
ing that when departments and the agencies are doing things in
 86

the drug control space they’re doing it for a higher purpose and
they’re doing it in—to get complementary effects from other depart-
ments and agencies that are working in the same space.
This happens all the time in government, right. You have got
three or four departments and agencies that are redundant. They
are doing the same thing.
They don’t—they don’t know that the other ones are operating
and that they are doing that. The third thing is when it comes to
the interface between what we are doing on the national security
and law enforcement side of the house and what we are doing in
the public health space, and we’ve said from the very beginning
that we can be as productive on the front end of the supply chain
of drugs coming in the country as we want to.
But our true effectiveness has to be measured in the public
health space, and you can—you can increase seizures and increase
arrests and increase removals in the transit zone and do all of that.
But if Americans continue to die from these drugs then you’re
not being truly effective.
And ONDCP, by being an organization not only in the executive
office of the president but one that has national security, law en-
forcement, and public health responsibilities, we are the organiza-
tion that can bring both of those things together in a complemen-
tary fashion, unlike——
Mr. SARBANES. So let me—let me follow up on that, because that
last observation in terms of the health dimension of this—the pub-
lic health dimension may be a rationale for why some of the grant
programs that you have previously administered are being pro-
posed to be placed in other agencies—the High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Areas program.
Maybe I think it would go to DOJ and the drug-free community
support programs at HHS.
So maybe you could explain why that decision is being made, and
then in terms of your emphasizing the role that the—the impor-
tance, the priority, that the administration gives to this fight and
the coordinating, sort of traffic cop role that your agency can play
in that.
I don’t, frankly, understand how the administration has come I
think three years running in its proposed budget with a proposal
to cut your budget by 90 percent.
Now, we have restored in our appropriations—we recognize the
value that your agency plays and I think we even plussed it up
over prior years because we want you to play that role.
But you need to help me reconcile what you just said, which I
agree with, that this should be a priority and it should reflect the
administration’s emphasis here on coordinating the efforts of all
these agencies—on the one hand, reconcile that with the fact that
the president’s budget keeps coming with a 90 percent proposed
cut; on the other hand, which doesn’t send, I wouldn’t think, the
right message in terms of the role you want to play with respect
to all of these agencies in terms of coordination.
So I won’t ask any more questions because I am out of time. But
if you could answer that I would appreciate it.
Mr. CHESTER. Thank you, Congressman.
 87

The discussion about those 2 particular grant programs has been

going on for many, many years, and the Congress has decided
where those programs would be originally placed at their inception
and the Congress will decide where they go.
I will tell you that both the HIDTA and the DFC program are
critical to not only the coordination that we do across the federal
government, and we’ll talk about the HIDTA program for a second,
but the integration of federal, state, local, and tribal together is in-
credibly important, and to ensure that that function is rolled into
the broader efforts that ONDCP does is working very, very well.
When we talk about preventing drug use before it starts. I would
struggle to find a program more successful than the drug-free com-
munities program doing just that.
And so the placement of the HIDTA program and the DFCs to-
gether is a great example of what I talked about in bringing our
national security, law enforcement, and our public health programs
together in one place and ONDCP is glad to have those programs.
Ms. DEGETTE. Thank you, Mr. Chester.
The Chair now recognizes Mr.—the gentleman from Virginia, Mr.
Griffith, for five minutes.
Mr. GRIFFITH. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and appre-
ciate you calling this hearing. I know how important this subject
and other drug issues are to you, and I do appreciate it.
Let me quickly say in response to the previous questioning that
I fully support the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program
and it’s been very helpful in my district.
Mr. Chester, in May of 2017, the Drug Enforcement Administra-
tion recovered 50 kilos of NPP. Now, I am going to botch this up,
but that’s N–Phenethyl-4-piperidinone—if I got close. But NPP is
what we’ll call it, a fentanyl precursor chemical that could yield
about 19 million fentanyl tablets with a street value of more than
$570 million.
The NPP was found in a storage locker in Northborough, Massa-
chusetts. This recovery of NPP was one of the DEA’s largest sei-
zures of a fentanyl precursor chemical in U.S. history.
It had been believed prior to that that fentanyl synthesis using
precursor chemicals is conducted at clandestine labs in China or in
Mexico. But this appears to call that into question.
Prior to May 2017, do you recall any previous fentanyl precursor
seizures of this size indicating possible synthesis occurring here in
the U.S.? Yes or no.
Mr. CHESTER. I do not recall a seizure of that size prior to that
event. No, sir.
Mr. GRIFFITH. And given the size of the seizure that it was a
fentanyl precursor chemical and would presumably support a near-
by fentanyl synthesis lab in the United States, would this case be
important enough to the Office of National Drug Control Policy-
ONDCP—on fentanyl issues to be notified about it and briefed
about it? Yes or no.
Mr. CHESTER. Yes, it would be. But when I get the chance I
would like to talk about its—NPP’s relationship with fentanyl syn-
thesis. But please finish your questions.
Mr. GRIFFITH. All right. Let me get—let me keep moving.
 88

Did the DEA report or brief you—did they either report to you
or brief you or someone else at the Office of ONDCP about this sit-
uation?
Mr. CHESTER. I don’t remember a specific briefing. But we get
continual reports from the DEA on drug events.
Mr. GRIFFITH. But you don’t remember getting one on this one?
Mr. CHESTER. This one is not particularly memorable to me. No,
sir.
Mr. GRIFFITH. Even though it would have been a very large size.
I mean, this is—this is what it looks like and it’s just one of the
precursors, and that’s a picture of what they seized. That’s a fairly
significant amount of precursor when you realize it could be—back
to my notes—19 million fentanyl tablets with a street value of $570
million. I would have thought you might remember that if you had
been informed of it. I understand you don’t. That’s fine.
In cases like this, do you believe sharing information would be
helpful to law enforcement?
Mr. CHESTER. Yes, and I will tell you that we have many, many,
many mechanisms to be able to share information and intelligence
information. In this particular case as a precursor chemical we do
know a couple of things.
The first 1 is the presence of a precursor chemical in the United
States does not necessarily mean that there’s synthesis going on
nearby because precursor chemicals are shipped from the United
States to other countries.
And the second thing is about 2 months before that particular
seizure, under United States leadership the international commu-
nity placed controls on the two chemicals related to fentanyl syn-
thesis—NPP, which was the one that was seized, and ANPP.
So——
Mr. GRIFFITH. OK. In this case—let’s see that picture again, if
we could—on many of those boxes there are Chinese characters. It
would indicate it did not come from the United States. It came in—
the precursor came in from China to the United States.
Mr. CHESTER. Absolutely, and it could be—although I don’t know
this, it could be that the individual was warehousing it for use, not
turning it into someplace close by. We don’t know.
Mr. GRIFFITH. OK. And here’s my problem, and Mr. Donahue, I
am going to ask you a question about whether or not your agency
notified them. Here’s my problem.
If we found that precursor, it would seem to me you would want
to at least check, see who the storage locker belonged to, do an in-
vestigation, and it would seem like to me there needed to be a lot
of coordination.
And as far as I know, that didn’t happen.
Mr. Donahue, do you know if your agency briefed other agencies
and Mr. Chester’s agency on this particular seizure of a large
amount of precursor?
Mr. DONAHUE. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to that.
The case is currently under investigation. It’s coming up to trial,
which is a lot of times why stuff is not put out in the open due to
the protections of the people testifying.
We daily notify other agencies on seizures that are made. That
specific seizure was work with state and locals as well. It’s ongoing.
 89

It was built up, and it’s still ongoing, and we do these daily—these
types of investigations—at our international scale.
So you mentioned the markings that are in Chinese. They go to
our offices over in Beijing, which follow up on those companies,
whether we can task a foreign country to do certain intel gathering
for us to bring it back, to identify the source all the way back to
where the seizure is made.
So we do the follow up on those investigations. So sometimes
they take a year, sometimes six months, sometimes two years be-
cause you’re dealing with foreign countries.
Mr. GRIFFITH. We are already on two years and it doesn’t look
like we followed up.
And, look, I think we need to just do a lot better job. Mr.
Barksdale might have been liked to have known about that so he
could check those addresses out.
I think we do a better job if we are all working together and as
President Reagan said, there’s no limit to the amount of good you
can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.
And I yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr.
Tonko, for five minutes.
Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Madam Chair.
As others have stated today, the fentanyl threat is unlike any
drug problem we have seen before and it is going to take the total-
ity of the Federal Government’s capabilities to fight it.
Each of these agencies has unique skill sets. But they each only
see a piece of this picture. We need them to actually come together
and pool their resources, information, and expertise.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that that’s happening as much
as it could. For example, committee staff visited CBP’s National
Target Center and saw how CBP is able to use algorithms to target
shipments and packages likely to contain contraband.
But that is only as good as the data that is fed into the system,
and CBP does not receive all of the data it could from other agen-
cies.
So how do we get past this burden, Mr. Overacker? Why is this—
why are we not getting the most that we can here? What is holding
back the progress that we need to realize?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, I would say that, first of all, we do have
good levels of collaboration. We do receive data that is required by
regulation and then we fuse that data with other information to try
to identify high risk.
Mr. TONKO. But if I might, though—see, when we look at the Na-
tional Target Center visit, they’re saying it’s not happening as well
as it could.
What is holding that back?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, there is room for improvement and I
would just say that this is an example within the law enforcement
community of where I believe that we need to have investigators
get to a comfort level where they can share their case information
with CBP, knowing that as law enforcement officers, ourselves,
that we can protect those cases.
 90

But we can also use that information to advance those cases by

basically giving them greater feedback and greater information.
So I just think it’s a question of education of the investigators in
the field of what our capabilities are and what value we can add
to their cases.
Mr. TONKO. And what additional data would CBP like to receive
from other agencies involved in this fight to feed into your tar-
geting system?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, like I said, I think the case-specific infor-
mation, that will allow us to pinpoint target and also provide
meaningful interdictions for those agents in the field.
Mr. TONKO. And, Mr. Donahue, I understand DEA frequently
shares data with CBP on specific cases when DEA deems it appro-
priate. But what is stopping DEA from providing CBP with more
data on an automatic ongoing routine basis?
Mr. DONAHUE. We work with CBP daily down in Mexico City and
various other countries. We are mandated by DOJ policy to provide
all of our data into the Special Operations Division where there’s
over 38 foreign and domestic agencies, both state, local, and fed-
eral, that seize that data that can share it and CBP actually has
officers stationed in the Special Operations Division, and we work
a lot along the border with them passing information on seizures
that we need them to make for our investigative purposes that we
can use in a court of law in United States.
So there’s daily engagement.
Mr. TONKO. Why then is CBP stating that they’re not receiving
all of the data that they need to?
Mr. DONAHUE. You know, I don’t—they’re not tied in directly to
SOD but they can see all of our data there because they have rep-
resentatives stationed in the Special Operations Division that co-
ordinate with all the other agencies there to include people out in
the field and in foreign offices.
Mr. TONKO. Well, let me give a specific example. If DEA executes
a search warrant related to fentanyl and discovers packages con-
taining fentanyl that include names and addresses, can that infor-
mation automatically be sent to CBP for it to interdict all related
shipments coming in?
Mr. DONAHUE. If they’re working that investigation in conjunc-
tion with DEA, they would have it right then and there. We pro-
vide all that to our targeting over in SOD and they would, in turn,
share it with the CBP officer there when they could give value add
to that investigation to help identifying the people responsible for
that seizure.
Mr. TONKO. Well, Mr. Chester, this is one of ONDCP’s essential
missions, to make sure that these agencies are working together
and sharing all of the information that they can. But, clearly, there
is more that can be done in terms of ongoing information sharing
and for there to be this proclamation by some of the groups saying
we are not doing as well as we should. What are the roadblocks
here?
Mr. CHESTER. Clearly, there are roadblocks. There is always
room for improvement in the ability——
Mr. TONKO. But what are the roadblocks?
 91

Mr. CHESTER. I think some of them may be procedural. Some of

them may be technical in nature, the ability for databases to speak
with—to one another on a routine basis, and as those issues arise
we absolutely are more than happy to work with the interagency
to try and reduce them, as you pointed out.
Mr. TONKO. But why can’t we link up more of these data systems
so that the agencies can help one another?
Mr. CHESTER. Yes, sir. We would have to take a good close look
at the reason why it’s not happening and fix that problem. We ab-
solutely will.
Mr. TONKO. We have a crisis on our hands. Why are we not tak-
ing that closer look?
Mr. CHESTER. Yes, sir.
Mr. TONKO. We could look at it. Why aren’t we?
Mr. CHESTER. We absolutely will look at it. This particular case
that you raise we absolutely will take a look at why the informa-
tion is not routinely shared and we will reduce that barrier and
make sure that that happens.
Mr. TONKO. Madam Chair, I yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. The Chair now recognizes the gentle lady from In-
diana, Mrs. Brooks, for five minutes.
Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for holding this
incredibly important hearing. I am really pleased that we are fo-
cusing in large part on law enforcement issues.
I am a former U.S. attorney from ’01 to ’07, and so worked with
all of your agencies. Was there when Homeland Security was stood
up, and so just want to thank you all very, very much for your
work.
I think what the frustration is is we are trying to determine if
there are any legal barriers, legal authorities, or anything that is
keeping the agencies from sharing at the level that we all think
you should be sharing at.
And so my question is to any of you, and your counsels who
might be here, are there any legal barriers that exist in law that
are keeping you from sharing information?
Discovery issues—is there anything? Mr. Donahue, anything you
know of?
Mr. DONAHUE. I think that depends on what the seizure is, if it’s
actually in judicial processes—is it actually protected information
from other countries.
But there is no legal, you know, policy or anything preventing us
from sharing information. I could tell you what we’ve done in Mex-
ico City in our offices. We have HSI agents and FBI agents sitting
right in the office with DEA for that deconfliction purpose and for
the immediate sharing of information.
Mrs. BROOKS. OK. And do any of the other agencies know of any
legal reasons why our law enforcement agencies aren’t sharing or
can’t share anything? Or is it just operational?
Mr. OVERACKER. I am not aware of any legal restriction——
Mrs. BROOKS. OK.
Mr. OVERACKER [continuing]. And I think our default position al-
ways should be we have an obligation to share.
Mrs. BROOKS. OK. And I assume—is that anything different?
 92

Mr. PRINCE. Again, yes, I am not aware of any legal prohibitions

but I think that, you know, the size of some of these agencies—
these are large enterprises that we are talking about.
But a lot of these gaps are closed through deconfliction houses,
case coordination such as OCDTF, HIDTA. A lot of these things I
am sure you’re very much aware of, and I think it’s not—these
aren’t insurmountable issues. These are issues that we collaborate
on daily——
Mrs. BROOKS. Right.
Mr. PRINCE [continuing]. With respect to the international
space——
Mrs. BROOKS. OK. Just wanted to make sure there were no legal
impediments because actually Mr. Donahue talked about a legal
impediment, which I’ve been very concerned about for a long time,
and that’s the encrypted phones, which we have not resolved, have
we, Mr. Donahue?
Mr. DONAHUE. No, we’ve been pending that issue for years now.
Mrs. BROOKS. OK. And could you very succinctly remind us all
what that is?
Mr. DONAHUE. So it’s a law that’s going to enable us to judicially
intercept a device that’s signed by a judge on a target that we can
demonstrate is violating U.S. law.
Mrs. BROOKS. But then the encryption is what’s keeping you
from getting to the information in the phone. Is that correct?
Mr. DONAHUE. Correct. Certain companies don’t cooperate—
aren’t obligated to cooperate to give us the technology to intercept
the encryption.
Mrs. BROOKS. OK. I want to talk about some of the technology
challenges, and Mr. Prince, you talked about the dark web, and can
you please share with us what—how it is that it’s more of a law
enforcement challenge than, you know, other issues that we’ve seen
and whether the issues with cryptic currency, and I just read that
Facebook is now contemplating a currency. Can you please talk
with us about any successes or challenges you’re having on the
dark web?
Mr. PRINCE. The successes are I mentioned in my oral testimony.
The challenges are, obviously, with respect to crypto currency and
that when we are looking at transactions that are occurring in the
dark net and the dark net is largely where nefarious activities are
occurring and transactions are happening.
We don’t necessarily know what these purchases and sales are
unless or until we arrest an individual who is engaged in this
criminal activity and perhaps commandeer their account, in which
case we can see their entire wallet and what those transactions
translate to.
If we are looking at it from the outside in what we see is trans-
actions that are occurring we can presume that those transactions
are in fact criminal in nature because we are in the dark net space.
But we don’t know what they’re selling, what they’re buying.
So those are some challenges. But we overcome those challenges
through a variety of different techniques that I can’t really get into
here.
Mrs. BROOKS. Right.
 93

Mr. PRINCE. But, certainly, we do make an impact and we are

making inroads in that space.
Mrs. BROOKS. And I would like to follow up on that further. But
one thing that I know CBP mentioned but I would also like to ask
you, Mr. Barksdale. Can we talk a little bit in my time that I have
left about the Narcan availability for—I know it’s at key facilities.
Obviously, when we are dealing with fentanyl all the law en-
forcement—everyone who touches it it’s of significant concern be-
cause it could kill.
What percentage of postal and—I am curious, and I think we’ll
have to do this in written form to all the agencies—what percent-
age of your officers have access to Narcan?
Mr. BARKSDALE. Well, first, as far as postal inspectors, every
postal inspector has access to Narcan.
Mrs. BROOKS. OK. Good.
Mr. BARKSDALE. Those on our drug teams has access to Narcan.
On the operational side, all of our key facilities does have Narcan
distributed to them, and that would include all of our process and
in distribution centers and other large facilities.
As far as the percentage of employees that covers, I will have to
get back to you with an exact number.
Mrs. BROOKS. OK. And I will be submitting for—written ques-
tions about the availability of Narcan, the percentage of your em-
ployees that are all covered or have access to that because I think
this is a serious issue for law enforcement.
Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, for five minutes.
Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you, Madame Chair. Thank you for hosting
this incredibly important hearing. Thank you for the witnesses to
be here today and for your service to our country.
A number of complexities that—and hot issues that been brought
up over the course of the testimony today, and I appreciate your
focus on that.
I want to try to drill down on some of that, given that Congress
has the opportunity to make some changes here and some invest-
ments here that I think are necessary, although we need to do that
right.
So, Mr. Overacker, you told us earlier that, quote, ‘‘Most of the
illicit fentanyl entering our country by weight does so at ports of
entry along the Southwest border by private vehicles, pedestrian,
and commercial vehicles,’’ and that, quote, ‘‘Fentanyl entering from
the northern border does so by international mail packages and ex-
press consignment courier,’’ end quote.
So in your opinion, sir, would a border wall at a cost of up to $25
billion be the most effective way to stop fentanyl from arriving in
our country through mail and ports of entry?
Mr. OVERACKER. Let me just say that I think when we talk about
border management you have to have a comprehensive approach.
You know, most of what we encounter is at a port of entry and—
but we are working with—working to change our concept of oper-
ations at these ports so we can increase the scanning rates, and
when we increase those scanning rates I think it will have an im-
pact on the patterns of crossing and if we deter these drugs——
 94

Mr. KENNEDY. Understood.

Mr. OVERACKER [continuing]. Deter them from coming to the
ports they’re going to go someplace else.
Mr. KENNEDY. Right. So I am going to interpret that based upon
the phrasing in which you answered that question as a no, not the
most effective way to spend the initial first $25 billion.
So if Congress was to appropriate $25 billion to the CBP to com-
bat fentanyl trafficking, would you choose to spend that money on
a border wall or, as you said, increase technology focused on
screening cars and pedestrians at ports of entry and packages that
are arriving through the mail?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, in the 2019 appropriation we received
$570 million to improve our scanning capabilities at ports of
entry——
Mr. KENNEDY. And given what you just said, we are not there
yet in terms of trying to——
Mr. OVERACKER. No, that’s going to be a multi-year investment.
But that’s our first priority right there.
Mr. KENNEDY. Appreciate that, sir.
Mr. Donahue, if given $25 billion by Congress, do you believe the
most effective way to stop any arrival of illicit drugs to the United
States is a border wall?
Mr. DONAHUE. Again, collectively, with all different tools, can’t
say, you know, it won’t help. I mean, I can’t say it’s the solution.
But it would help. It’s just another tool in our toolbox that we can
actually filter certain threats to certain areas and we can focus on
in personnel——
Mr. KENNEDY. So but the most—if you had $25 billion is the
intervention that you would go with first a border wall?
Mr. DONAHUE. It would just be part of our comprehensive plan
on how we approach the issue.
Mr. KENNEDY. Sir, you touched on the importance of treatment
and recovery options here in the United States as a way to reduce
demand.
Do you think that a $25 billion border wall would help us in-
crease access to care in places like Massachusetts that would lead
to reduced demand?
Mr. DONAHUE. I mean, again, that’s part of our—we believe in
the rehabilitation. We believe in the demand reduction and the en-
forcement, and the international focus on the sources of supply. So
we——
Mr. KENNEDY. And so would that——
Mr. DONAHUE [continuing]. We’d spread that money out, look at
it collectively on the entire problem.
Mr. KENNEDY. And so that $25 billion could be spent on some-
thing like Medicaid, which is the largest payer of mental behavior
health services in the country that accounts for more than 40 per-
cent or nearly 40 percent of all adults with opioid addition in the
country?
Mr. DONAHUE. It would help that too, and our concern is to have
less drugs and less flow into the United States, have less drugs ad-
dicts and less people dependent on those programs.
Mr. KENNEDY. And so if I am understanding your answer that
that would help—expanding access to Medicaid would be a criti-
 95

cally important part to ensuring that people get access to the treat-
ment that’s necessary.
Mr. DONAHUE. The DEA doesn’t run anything on—in Medicaid.
We are targeting the cartels that are responsible for bringing the
drugs into the country.
Mr. KENNEDY. Right. But as you said, if you’re trying to reduce
demand, getting people treated that are affected with addiction is
probably part of that, no?
Mr. DONAHUE. Yes, it is.
Mr. KENNEDY. OK.
Mr. Chester, on multiple occasions the administration has op-
posed—has proposed gutting ONDCP by 95 percent. Do you believe
that our response to this epidemic would be improved without a
centralized agency tasked with leading that response?
Mr. CHESTER. As the central EOP office for advancing the admin-
istration’s drug control policy, ONDCP has been very effective in
doing that role.
Mr. KENNEDY. Do you think cutting your budget by 95 percent
would make you more effective or less effective?
Mr. CHESTER. Well, clearly, cutting our budget by 95 percent
would make us less effective.
But I will also tell you that the administration’s support for
ONDCP has been very strong and they’ve allowed us to do our jobs
very, very well in this particular crisis over the last——
Mr. KENNEDY. Would you characterized the proposed cut by 95
percent as being very strong support, sir?
Mr. CHESTER. The proposed cut by 95 percent was the inclusion
of the other two programs that were very pricey. So it wasn’t a—
it wasn’t 100 people from ONDCP became five people.
But what I will tell you that the relationship that we have with
the administration they have allowed us to be able to do our jobs
at advancing the drug policy across the federal government.
Mr. KENNEDY. So why do you think they’d propose cutting your
office by 95 percent?
Mr. CHESTER. I think that these were all parts of budget discus-
sions in the past but we are all very glad that ONDCP exists and
continues to do its good work to this day.
Mr. KENNEDY. Me, too. Thank you.
I yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman
fromOklahoma, Mr. Mullin.
Mr. MULLIN. Thank you, Madam Chair.
My questions are going to be for Mr. Donahue and Mr.
Overacker, if you could both kind of answer when you can.
How much fentanyl is coming directly from China?
Mr. OVERACKER. So the fentanyl that comes directly from China
typically we see that in mail or express, and I can tell you that——
Mr. MULLIN. How much? I mean, give me—like, how much have
we—have we stopped? How much do we estimate is entering the
country from China directly?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, the numbers have dropped precipitously
this year.
Mr. MULLIN. OK.
 96

Mr. OVERACKER. So we are talking about only pounds of

fentanyl——
Mr. MULLIN. Pounds?
Mr. OVERACKER [continuing]. That we have encountered so far
this year.
Mr. MULLIN. Mr. Donahue?
Mr. DONAHUE. We couldn’t give you the exact number coming in
because we only know what we know. We can give you our seizures
numbers that——
Mr. MULLIN. Right. That’s what I am looking for. How much
have you seized?
Mr. DONAHUE. So I will get those exact seizure numbers for you.
Mr. MULLIN. Thank you.
Mr. DONAHUE. One thing we are looking for in China is actually
the precursor chemicals coming from China actually utilized to
produce more fentanyl.
Mr. MULLIN. How much is coming over our southern border that
we are apprehending?
Mr. OVERACKER. On the southern border, that’s where, basically,
most of what we are seeing——
Mr. MULLIN. Right.
Mr. OVERACKER [continuing]. And I think this year we are track-
ing at over 1,800 pounds or——
Mr. MULLIN. Eighteen hundred pounds.
Mr. OVERACKER [continuing]. Close to 2,000 so far. But this is
not pure fentanyl. This is fentanyl that would be either——
Mr. MULLIN. It’s laced. Right. I get it. Right.
Mr. OVERACKER [continuing]. Yes, laced or cut or however you
want to——
Mr. MULLIN. I get it. Mr. Donahue, would you agree with those
numbers?
Mr. DONAHUE. They seem accurate, and we see a lot going up
through the corridor for Tijuana and Mexico.
Mr. MULLIN. Are we grabbing most of that at the port of entry?
Mr. OVERACKER. Absolutely. Ninety percent of our seizures occur
at a port of entry.
Mr. MULLIN. And if I am—if I am not mistaken we are only in-
specting, roughly, 20 percent of the—of the vehicles. We are only
able to inspect 20 percent of the vehicles coming across the port of
entry. Is that correct?
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, currently, our scanning rates for pri-
vately-owned vehicles coming across the southern border are
around two percent and it’s, roughly, 16 percent for commercial ve-
hicles, and that’s really a function of the volume of what’s crossing.
We have——
Mr. MULLIN. Well, the point I am trying to get to is my colleague
that was before me was bringing up the $25 billion for the south-
ern border for building the wall, and underneath the president’s
proposal he also designated a significant amount of money for the
port of entry to scan 100 percent of the vehicles as they was driving
through because right now we are only inspecting, roughly, 20 per-
cent and we are already catching the largest amount but through
the port of entry.
 97

To get back to what my colleague was referring to, would the

wall work. Well, what the wall would do is draw more people to
that port of entry. Is that not correct? If the wall is there, then
they would have to look for a more—a different avenue to be able
to enter the country through, which would be the legal point of en-
tries.
Mr. Donahue, would you like to respond to that?
Mr. DONAHUE. We do a lot of great work with CBP and passing
information when we can drive people or operations that we do at
the port of entry where we can focus on cars and trucks.
Mr. MULLIN. It’s to funnel them there to a certain point.
Mr. DONAHUE. Yes.
Mr. MULLIN. So would the wall help funnel that?
Mr. DONAHUE. Absolutely would.
Mr. MULLIN. Mr. Overacker, would you agree with that?
Mr. OVERACKER. I would say that the port of entry is a controlled
place.
Mr. MULLIN. Sure. Where the—where the open border isn’t, cor-
rect?
Mr. OVERACKER. And so because it’s a controlled place and we
have better opportunities to interdict.
Mr. MULLIN. OK. So my point that I am trying to drive home
here is there’s not just one thing that’s going to solve this problem.
But the amount that we can keep from flowing over our southern
border, which is where the majority of the drugs are coming from—
if we can get a better control on that and designate dollars specifi-
cally for those and make our southern border a harder target rath-
er than right now being an easy target because, as we all know,
the easy target is an opportunity for success and a harder target
most criminals aren’t going to attack.
If we are able to make it a hard target, would that help us with
combatting the overdoses that are taking place and the addiction
issues that are taking place here inside the United States?
Mr. DONAHUE. We look at all tools because, you know, we are
speaking about fentanyl today and we are concerned with the enor-
mous amount of methamphetamine that’s being produced that’s
coming up——
Mr. MULLIN. Right.
Mr. DONAHUE [continuing]. The enormous amount of cocaine and
the heroin as well, which are bulky to bring in that they need big
trucks to do it.
So we are looking at every tool possible to identify and disrupt
and seize those drugs that are coming in.
Mr. MULLIN. With the amount of human trafficking that’s going
on in our southern border right now—the overflow that’s taking
place—is it distracting your mission from being able to—being able
to look directly to drug trafficking or you have to spend resources
to the human trafficking side of it, too?
Mr. Overacker, you want to——
Mr. OVERACKER. Well, there’s no question that the current condi-
tions on the Southwest border have caused us to have to shift, you
know, our personnel. So it does have some impact. There’s no ques-
tion about that.
 98

Mr. MULLIN. See, what I am thinking is that the cartels are pur-
posely flooding our southern border so that the drug routes can be
easily accessed because they know that we having to put resources
to the human trafficking crisis that’s taking place and the humani-
tarian that’s taking place.
So the wall, to which my colleague brought up, is to help all the
above picture, not just one single issue.
With that, I will yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Duncan for five minutes.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thanks for
holding this hearing.
I sat here a long time listening because I am concerned about the
28,000 deaths in the United States from synthetic opioids like
fentanyl.
And my colleague made a great point just now that cartels are
going to exploit weaknesses or crises to get their product across. I
think they are. I think walls do work and I think they create cor-
ridors that our law enforcement can better utilize the resources we
give them within those corridors to stop the bad guys from wanting
to bring these horrendous drugs into our cities and killing our fel-
low Americans.
I’ve been sitting here and for—sat here for several hours listen-
ing to all the other questions. One of the benefits or challenges
being last is all the groovy questions have been asked.
You all have been great to answer those questions. I want to give
you a chance to tell us what more we can do in Congress. We
passed the SUPPORT Act last year, the SUPPORT for Patients
and Communities Act. I want to see the implementation of that.
But what I would like to do is just ask Mr. Overacker first what
can we do in Congress to help keep our law enforcement officers
best positioned to continue infiltrating the supply chain. What
more can we do?
Mr. OVERACKER. Thank you for that, Congressman.
First of all, I would just like to say that we are very fortunate
that Congress has supported us most generously over the last two
budgets with respect to our detection capabilities, and so we are
grateful for that, and we know we have a multi-year effort to im-
prove our scanning capabilities on the Southwest border but also
throughout CBP.
We are also grateful for the continued support we’ve received
with respect to improving our laboratory capabilities and also ap-
propriations for improving our facilities.
That’s an important part, particularly what we are doing now to
improve the international mail facilities where we process mail
with the U.S. Postal Service.
So that continued support is most helpful for us. So that’s what
I would say, just thank you for the support we’ve received so far.
Mr. DUNCAN. Let me ask Mr. Donahue from the DEA standpoint.
What can we do to help you disrupt the distribution process of
opioids and what more can we do?
Mr. DONAHUE. I think having hearings and meetings like this
and keeping it to the forefront is really important, and inviting
DEA to these meetings. We bring something specific to the table.
 99

We have extraordinary amount of resources in our overseas of-

fices which is where the drugs come from—the cocaine, the meth-
amphetamine, the heroin, the fentanyl. It all comes from inter-
national and other countries.
So bringing this to the forefront I think is really important for
the DEA and letting our message get out there, and I think having
the youth and other people seeing the damage of the drugs that are
coming in from a foreign country, just the damage to our cultures
and our communities. It’s really important not to do it every six
months but to do it daily.
Mr. DUNCAN. I’ve got a—my best friend from college is a doctor
and we talked about fentanyl just this week, and we were talking
about the smuggling efforts.
And as you guys become more and more effective, my concern is
the very potent fentanyl could be put into food supplies as part of
the smuggling effort in containers and contaminate food supply
that ultimately gets in.
Not talking about drug users that are looking for that stronger
high. I am talking about fentanyl get into an area where it con-
taminates food or liquids that ultimately end up on the digestives
systems of just average Americans, and then we have a lot of other
innocent deaths.
I want to ask Mr. Prince with HSI—you know, as containers are
being brought in, I know HSI is doing a great job overseas. Is that
a reality that we should think about is fentanyl contaminating any
other sort of food supply or liquids that are coming into this coun-
try?
Mr. PRINCE. I think it’s an abstract thought that I have that I
will share but, you know, lack of imagination is something that we
shouldn’t have when it comes to fentanyl in the same sense that
when you think about 9/11 and how that happened.
So we should have an imagination about the various ways that
fentanyl can be introduced into the United States as we put pres-
sure on organizations. We should be creative. We should continue
to leverage tools that we have. We should continue to create new
tools and expand our aperture within the cyber space.
And don’t forget about our, as I mentioned earlier, our analog
tool sets that allow us to also be effective.
Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Chairwoman, before I came to this com-
mittee I was on the Homeland Security, and I was on the Border
and Customs Border Patrol—Border and Maritime Subcommittee.
We went to the ports and we looked at container security, and
we looked at the screen for radioactive devices. We looked at what
drug smugglers have done.
But fentanyl being put on containers it’s going to be very difficult
for these guys to detect. That’s something we ought to consider in
future hearings.
And with that, I yield back.
Ms. DEGETTE. The gentleman is right. Fentanyl is really difficult
to detect and that’s 1 of the real dangers.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for coming today. Your par-
ticipation has been very informative and helpful.
 100

I do have a document that Ms. Schakowsky asked me to enter

into the record. It’s an article from the International Journal of
Drug Policy and I would ask unanimous consent. So ordered.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Ms. DEGETTE. I can assure all of you, and everyone in the audi-
ence, this committee does intend to stay on this issue. This has
been a multi-year process, a bipartisan process, and we intend to
continue to look quite closely at it, because it is really a national
crisis.
And I want to thank all of our witnesses for recognizing it as
such and for increasing your cooperation between your agencies.
I also want to remind Members that pursuant to committee rules
they have 10 business days to submit additional questions for the
record to be answered by witnesses who have appeared before the
subcommittee.
I would just ask if all of our witnesses would agree to respond
promptly to any such questions if you receive any. I think you will
be getting some from Mrs. Brooks, for example.
And with that, the subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:06 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ANNIE KUSTER
We have seen the opioid crisis evolve and take many different forms. No commu-
nity in this country has been spared, but New England and New Hampshire in par-
ticular have been devastated by this crisis.
That is why it is imperative that we anticipate how the fentanyl crisis will con-
tinue to evolve. We need to get ahead of this ever-changing threat, so we are not
caught flat-footed.
As I look at the witness panel, I am struck by their diverse missions. It is not
every day that we have a hearing with the U.S. Postal Service and the DEA on the
same witness panel.
We need a national strategy on our fentanyl response. And I don’t just mean a
white paper document or a task force report. I mean we need a coherent, practical
plan for how we are going to beat this problem.
For example, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is supposed to
formulate a strategy, bring all the agencies together, and see to it that the strategy
is implemented effectively.
DEA, you are on the front lines and often develop important leads for targeting
drugs. And FDA is suddenly in the middle of this fight because fentanyl is increas-
ingly being mixed with other drugs, including counterfeit prescription drugs.
These are just a few of the issues we will explore today. If we are going to solve
this problem, we need better cooperation across agencies, and we need to think dif-
ferently than we have on past drug epidemics.
Finally, this hearing is just one piece of our oversight. This Subcommittee will
stay on this issue and ensure progress is being made so that we are not back here
again next year talking about the same problems.
I thank the witnesses for their service on this critical issue, and for being here
today.
I yield back.
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