{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.daines.senate.gov/2024/05/24/daines-discusses-addiction-support-at-senate-finance-committee-hearing/", "Daines Discusses Addiction Support at Senate Finance Committee Hearing", "2024-05-24", "2024", "2024-05", "Republican", "Senate", "MT", "Steve Daines", "D000618", "www.daines.senate.gov", "daines", "https://www.daines.senate.gov/news/press-releases/", "scraper", "U.S. Senator Steve Daines spoke at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, and emphasized the rapidly increasing number of fentanyl-related deaths in Montana as a result of President Biden\u2019s wide-open southern border. Daines also highlighted the importance of community partnerships and peer support in the addiction recovery process.\n\nWatch the exchange HERE.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve spent a lot of time on the southern border, sometimes going the night shift from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., watching what\u2019s happening. This vote this afternoon is a political stunt. If we\u2019re serious about solving the crisis on the southern border, the Democrats should go down to the Commander-in-Chief, the Oval Office, and ask President Biden to reverse the reversal of the policies that he put in place of executive action after President Trump left office. It really isn\u2019t that complicated\u2026\n\n\u201cBorder Patrol agents do not have enough resources. It\u2019s a zero-sum situation. They\u2019re apprehending nearly nine million illegals that come across the border since President Trump left office. And that allows the Chinese to ship the fentanyl precursors to the cartels, they manufacture them, and then ship them into the United States. In fact, by the time it leaves the Rio Grande until it gets to Montana is about 48 hours now with the efficiencies of the Mexican cartels. And what is going to happen this afternoon, frankly, will be seen by the American people as a political stunt in trying to save an election.\u201d\n\nDaines then asked the witnesses about the importance of substance use care and peer support.\n\nSenator Daines: Last month, I co-hosted a discussion with Senator Cardin in the Finance Health Care Subcommittee on the opioid epidemic in our country. I\u2019m glad the full committee decided to spotlight this issue as well. Driven by the man-made crisis at our southern border, fentanyl manufactured by Mexican cartels using the precursor chemicals from China have flooded across the border and they\u2019ve been in every community in Montana and, sadly, across the nation.\n\nWe\u2019re in a northern border state but we also have now a southern border crisis. In fact, in Montana alone, the state crime lab has preliminarily reported eighty overdose deaths involving fentanyl in 2023, an increase of 1,900 percent from 2017 when there were just four.\n\nAlthough we have therapies and FDA approved medicines for treating substance use disorder, accessing this care has long been outside the traditional health care continuum, resulting in a fragmented system and a challenge for patients to navigate.\n\nIn the subcommittee\u2019s work last month, it was apparent to me that the care provided for substance use disorder across the country is often a reflection of each individual community, its specific needs and the community partners available to help create local continuums of care.\n\nDr. Herron, could you share with the committee this hyper-local aspect of providing substance use care and the importance of community partnerships as well as coordination to treat patients?\n\nDr. Herron: Thank you for the question. Yes, I think I have an interesting perspective in that I work in a federally qualified health center in New York that includes urban sites, rural sites and suburban sites and the needs of each community are both different and the same. I think the access to evidence-based, high quality, low barrier treatment is shared among all people with addiction. But building those community partnerships in order to build trust, to build connections with additional resources, with schools, with recovery-oriented communities, with organizations that can help to do a lot of the preventive services you\u2019ve heard about today are really essential.\n\nAnd so understanding the needs of those different communities, whether they be the variable access to technology, to transportation barriers, differences in income levels and insurance demographics in each of those communities really do require a nuanced approach to the services you\u2019re providing in that local environment.\n\nDaines: Dr. Herron, thank you. I have one more question, final question, for Mr. Vezina. When Senator Stabenow and I led the Finance Committee\u2019s efforts on the Mental Health Workforce Working Group, one of the proposals I worked on was increasing Medicare participation for peer support for individuals with mental health or substance use conditions.\n\nMr. Vezina, your organization provides a number of resources to individuals struggling with substance use and addiction, including peer support as well as mentorship. Could you speak briefly about the role of peer support in the substance use disorder care continuum, especially for our youth and our young adults?\n\nMr. Vezina: Yeah, thank you so much for the question. For hundreds of years, people in recovery have helped other people recover, and it\u2019s been largely voluntary. The first drug and alcohol counselors were a lot of people in recovery. A lot of the evolution of how we treat addiction has been pushed by people in recovery and so this peer support occupation gives people in recovery a specific occupation to go out and motivate people to change. That\u2019s what peers can do, they can help motivate people.\n\nPeople who have addiction are oftentimes ambivalent; they want to quit and they want to use at the same time. And that\u2019s a natural human kind of condition. I want to stop eating candy, and I want to eat a bunch of candy at the same time. I think everyone can share that duality.\n\nAnd so peers really can help people motivate to change. And so at 4D, we have about 100 staff, and we have five recovery centers. And that\u2019s all we do is go out and motivate youth and young adults to get into recovery and to sustain their- recovery. And so you can put peers in pretty much any setting and help people to get motivated to participate in the recovery process.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T21:01:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.daines.senate.gov/2024/05/24/daines-discusses-addiction-support-at-senate-finance-committee-hearing/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.1651778370141983, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}