you are watching live coverage on c-span 3. >> including parents of kids who have tragically died from fentanyl poisoning as well as law enforcement officers who have a strong interest in this issue. we thank you all very much for your support in this hearing by being here. fentanyl accounts for a vast majority of drug overdose deaths in the united states every year. in the last full year for which we have data, that would be two years ago, around 75,000 lives were lost to fentanyl alone. that happens to work out to be about 200 people dying every

day. we dubbed this "the poisoning of america" because most americans don't know they are taking fentanyl. many children think they are taking something else that turns out to be laced with fentanyl. there are countless families with tragic stories. one family in iowa is one of them. lori sent us a letter that i would like to introduce into the record and i will do that without objection. her youngest son bailey was taken on april 5, 2022. 22 years old. he was not drug addict. he did not think he was taking fentanyl.

but the pill he took was laced with it. she wrote "fentanyl stole our sons future and the joy of watching bailey mary the love of his life, have a mother-sun dance, watch him by his first home, watching him become a loving father, and our joy of having more grandchildren. we will never know if any of his children, our grandchildren would have his curly hair, his smile or his twinkling blue eyes. there will always be an empty chair at our family gathering whether it is thanksgiving, christmas, easter, birthdays, dinner parties. his voice and laughter will be forever silenced." maybe the saddest part of the

fentanyl crisis is that so many parents can tell a similar story of loss. in fact, we have many of them with us here today with 22 of our witnesses. i want to tell the parents in the audience today thank you for being here. thank you for making your voices heard. thank you for doing what you can do to keep other parents from going through what they've gone through. how long do we have to keep suffering through this attack? this is not an easy problem to solve, but there are certain parts of the problem that are simple to address. for one thing, common sense border control will help stem the flow of fentanyl. we have no idea how many pounds of fentanyl were carried that

will never show up in any statistics. we also have no idea how many surges of illegal immigrants has been used by the cartels as distractions to push drugs through our understaffed ports of entry. thankfully the trump administration is taking this seriously. another simple thing to address his fentanyl knockoffs. fentanyl is a substance easily changed by drug cartels to bypass the legal scheduling of becoming even more deadly. that's why in 2018, the drug enforcement administration scheduled fentanyl as a class using a formula created by an emergency room doctor. he is here today and i thank you

for coming. he will tell us more about that problem. congress temporarily extended the scheduling over and over. we played this game for too long. it's time to make this temporary scheduling permanent. so that the drug cartels will not have the opportunity to flood our country with even deadlier versions of fentanyl. last week, senator cassidy and i introduced a bipartisan bill to do just that. several democratic senators cosponsored it. we should pass that bill quickly and because of the temporary scheduling that we last passed expires again on march 31. we must get this done. we must also support president trump's attempt to secure the border. and with the mexican drug cartel. america's children need us to

act and i'm glad to have senator durbin speak now, but i'm also glad that he is sympathetic to what we are trying to do because i know you know it is a problem. >> i certainly do and i am glad you held this hearing. this is a bipartisan issue, as it should be, to discuss fentanyl and the devastating impact that opioid addiction has on america. in just a decade, this synthetic opioid has emerged as the deadliest drug in american history. all it takes is two milligrams, that is a fraction of the size of a penny, to cause an overdose. it is so cheap that dealers are lacing lethal amounts into street drugs like cocaine and heroin, and their buyers are none the wiser. there's an overdose crisis in america, but we've learned that evidence-based solutions reduce death.

in fact, in 2023, overdose deaths actually decreased for the first time since 2018, going down by more than 10%. we need to look at every factor that contributes to this. counseling and treatment, training for first responders, naloxone to our hardest hit communities all make a difference. you must also address how this poison gets in the hands of the most vulnerable people in america, our kids. too often fentanyl is peddled in the open on some of the world's largest social media platforms. last congress the judiciary committee advanced several bipartisan bills that would finally hold these companies accountable and demand safeguards be put in place to protect our children. one of the bills is the cooper davis act. cooper is a 16 euros kansas teenager who tragically lost his life to a fentanyl-laced pill he

bought through snapchat. this bill would require big tech companies to take a more proactive role in stopping drug dealers from using their platforms. sadly, cooper is not the only one who has lost his life to drugs peddled on social media. bridge ignoring is here to testify today. her son devon tragically died after taking a fentanyl laced pill he thought was percocet that he purchased over snapchat. there is a lawsuit that she will tell us about from the parents of those victims through snapchat. in the coming days i will join senators marshall, shaheen and others to reintroduce what we call cooper davis and devon nor in act. we hope the committee will advance this critical legislation on a bipartisan basis. and i hope that congress will finally, finally allowed these companies to be sued by the victims families so they can be held accountable in the court of law. enough teenagers have died due

to big tech's deliberate indifference. we must also acknowledge the role the u.s. has played in arming cartels to the teeth. we send hundreds of thousands of firearms south of our border in the cartels cash in. they facilitate the use of violence to traffic fentanyl into the united states. of state and federal law enforcement agencies are on the front lines of protecting our communities from fentanyl and other opioids. but the texan is getting more difficult. fentanyl is so potent and move in quantities so small that high-value shipments can easily be hidden. as a result, law enforcement needs access to technology and resources to quickly and efficiently detect these drugs. this includes expanding nonintrusive inspection making naloxone widely available and adequately funding state and local law enforcement.

the funding freeze which we are talking about if it is going to stop the efforts of law enforcement to combat fentanyl is a bad idea. the same is true of the recent order diverting federal law enforcement agents, including from the dea and atf, away from combating fentanyl and firearms traffic by cartels and working instead on a mass deportation effort. as a reminder, the vast majority of fentanyl and other illegal drugs are smuggled by american citizens through legal ports of entry. i'm also gravely concerned about the negative impact of mass removals of senior career law enforcement at the department of justice and the fbi and our ability to hold traffickers accountable and cut off the supply of fentanyl. the recent actions we seen distract us from the need to take a comprehensive, bipartisan approach to tackling this crisis, including investing in

addiction prevention and treatment, enforcing and strengthening our gun laws, giving federal, state and local law enforcement the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. getting fentanyl off the streets is a herculean task that will require all of us to come together and work across the aisle to make this country healthier and safer. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i'm going to introduce the majority of witnesses, and then i want to announce that approximately seven or eight minutes until 11:00 i'm going to leave the committee meeting to open the senate and senator cornyn will act as chairman while i'm gone. our first witness is a u.s. marine corps veteran, president of an organization victims of illicit drugs and that goes by the acronym void for short, an

organization he founded after he lost his six-year-old son to fentanyl. they are a nonprofit dedicated to educating parents and children about the dangers of drug use on social media platforms. i think i speak for everyone on this committee when i say we are deeply sorry for the loss of your son. next, mr. tom -- is a driving force behind today's class scheduling policy and has fought against the drug epidemic for 30 years. he's a full-time emergency room physician and a part-time medical regulator in wisconsin. he also provides medical direction for a statewide peer to peer drug recovery program.

he was formerly a member of wisconsin's own substance board. finally, sheriff, sheriff corner of orange county california. he leads around 44,000 employees, operates one of the nation's largest county jail systems, and manages the orange county crime lab. he also serves as a major county sheriff's of america's vice president for homeland security and as their chairman of the intelligence commander group. thank you all for once again being here today. i will turn it over to ranking member durbin now to introduce. >> thank you, chairman grassley. i want to welcome dr. cecelia --, and affiliative researcher

with the institute on global conflict and cooperation at uc san diego, expert on organized crime at the u.s.-mexico security. she cofounded the mexico violence research project which provides information, analysis, research and resources for understanding violence and organized crime in mexico. i also welcome bridget noreen who is the surviving parent to her son devon and a social media reform advocate. she founded a foundation to raise awareness and educate children and parents, caregivers and teenagers about the dangers of illicit drugs. she's a member of parents for safe online spaces which advocates for online safety for kids. i read your testimony and the loss of your son is so graphic and so touching. thank you for sharing. i read yours as well. it is just heartbreaking as he described those five or six days

in the hospital before you lost your son. any of us who have lost a child know exactly what you went through and will never forget it. i think all of the witnesses for being with us today. -- i thank all of the witnesses for being with us today. >> ranking member durbin, i believe you are up first. >> let's go ahead and hear from the witnesses. do you have an opening statement for the committee, please? >> good morning chairman grassley, ranking member durbin and esteemed members of this committee. i am the president and cofounder of victims of illicit drugs, and cochair of project facing fentanyl now. joining me today are mr. steve filson, every type police officer and secretary-treasurer as well as miss andrea thomas administration peters, ceo of

allianz to counter crimes online. and other family members who have injured the profound loss of a loved one due to illicit fentanyl. void, a california-based nonprofit organization was established to educate, advocate and raise public awareness about the devastating dangers of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic analogues. today i stand before you to give voice to the countless lives lost, including my own son, daniel. my son was not a habitual drug use or any sense of the word nor had he been diagnosed with substance use disorder, but he was diagnosed with adhd and depression. on april 1, 2020 at the very beginning of the pandemic i walked into my son's room and found an practically lifeless in his bed. in a state of shock and panic i called 911 first, then his mother. emergency services arrived and immediately began cpr and naloxone was administered.

he was then transported to los angeles children's hospital where a team of specialty doctors did everything they could to bring her son back but unfortunately, were unsuccessful in bringing him out of his catatonic state. his health had become much worse from the day he had been admitted, and all they could do was to keep them comfortable until his mother and i made the agonizing decision to discontinue all life-support. all life-support efforts. on april 6, 2020 at 3:45 p.m. all life-support was discontinued. his mother got into his hospital bed and laid next to him. gently stroking his beautiful head of dark brown hair and i was holding his right hand when he drew his last breath at exactly 5:0 8:00 p.m. on april 6 when he quietly passed away.

i kissed the bridge of his nose like a did on most nights when saying good night and left the hospital to go home without my son, utterly broken, devastated, angry and confused. after my son's passing i was contacted by the l.a. county sheriff's office and i was told that my son had died due to an overdose. have a blue pill which i later came to find out look exactly like a pharmaceutical grade oxycodone pill had been down on his dresser. it was to the laboratory for analysis and found that the pill which had taken my son's life was illicit fentanyl. my son had consumed what he thought was a blue m30 oxycodone pill but in fact had unknowingly, i repeat, unknowingly ingested and illicitly manufactured counterfeit opioid made nothing more than filler, a binding agent of illicit fentanyl. this was deceptively made to look exactly like a

pharmaceutical grade oxycodone pill and it killed him. i have shared daniel's story countless times, yet the problem worsens. the illicit fentanyl remains an insidious threat, so what can we do? our organization believe that knowledge saves lives, but we also need legislative action. the holt fentanyl act currently under consideration is a vital tool in this fight. illicit fentanyl has no medical use and is highly addictive. warranting its classification as a schedule one substance under the controlled substances act. for too long this legislation has stalled despite clear evidence of its necessity. my son daniel's death is just one of countless tragedies caused by this epidemic. his story is one of hope extinguished. of a family left broken. but it is also a call to action. no family, no family should have

to endure the pain that we have suffered. we have the tools to address this crisis. what we need now is the will to act. i urge you, i beg you, to act decisively and combat this crisis. thank you for inviting me and my fellow bereaved parents to this esteemed committee. >> thank you. >> thank you, chairman grassley, ranking member durbin and members of the committee. my name is bridget. i am a wife, mother, grandmother, advocate and founder of the devon j norring foundation, a foundation i wish did not have to be in existence. today marks another month that my son was taken from my family

at the age of 19, well before he ever got the chance to really begin life. you see senators, that is apparent like myself now measure time. it goes by the weeks, months or years it has been since our children lost their lives. devon was your average teenager. he had a passion for football, skateboarding, and music. he was smart as a whip when it came to anything mathematical. he was his siblings biggest protector, he had plans to go to california for summer of 2020 to look into schools to continue his music education and become the musician he wanted to be. unfortunately he never made it. he had been suffering from blackout migraines and dental pain that he had been under doctor's care for. at the height of the pandemic those appointments were canceled and we believe he was desperate by any means necessary to treat the pain. the morning after devon and an acquaintance went on to snapchat and connected with a drug dealer, he was found unresponsive in his bedroom by his then-14-year-old brother. his bedroom should have been the safest place in the world. and as i held him one last time i promised my son i would do

something. we would later learn that devon was poisoned by fentanyl, a single pill with enough to kill multiple people. i now also know that social media platforms are one of the primary sources which unsuspecting teenagers by all types of drugs, that the majority of them contain fentanyl. senators, this crisis has many facets and each should be addressed with care, and the encourage. education, supply and demand issues. a lack of accessible, affordable mental health and recovery programs and holding drug dealers and traffickers accountable for the devastating loss of life are all important issues to address. but we must do more. it is critical that we addressed social media platforms that facilitate drug peddling to children, platforms which make these connections as a matter of design and then profit from them. we cannot say we are protecting our children until we face this and pass legislation to stop it. in the spring of 2021 myself and

several families were invited to meet with executives from snapchat. today that meeting is what drives my fuel for social media reform. snapchat executives claim that they had no idea this was happening. even though snapchat and other platforms have been used for drug sales for years and this has been widely reported by the media. they blamed us as parents and told us that due to section 230, we had no power to hold them accountable in court. senators, as someone who opened a brick-and-mortar store and sold these drugs to our children out of that store we would be held accountable, we would be shut down so fast. so i asked why did the same rules not apply to social media? since losing devon my family has watched drug dealers continue operating on snapchat, instagram, and we got zero justice for devon staff but we aided in the indictments of individuals with ties to a cartel in minneapolis, i believe there were 19 members indicted.

i'm grateful for the hastings police department, drug task force and u.s. attorney for working on this case. in speaking about devon's story with middle and haskell students, kids have shared the toll that snapchat takes on the mental health and how on average they are spinning 26 hours a week on these platforms. that's why my family and so many others support the kids online safety act. i think the senators for spearheading this vital legislation on behalf of our children, because it is a crucial foundation for social media reform. i am blessed to work with senator klobuchar and angie craig. i want to thank congresswoman craig for introducing the act and senator klobuchar for acting on her commitment and promised to help parents achieve accountability for big tech. parents like me, andrea thomas, steve filson, and thousands of others cannot do this alone.

we look to you to pass the cooper davis and devon norring act. we need to stand with us so that we have a fighting chance for our country's kids to stop losing their lives. i am honored to be here and look forward to your questions. >> dr. lesslie? >> ranking member durbin, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify in front of leadership. before i talk science i want to tell you the last time i used narcan. it was just days ago. it was a quiet night shift in the emergency department and i was mulling over my testimony for this very hearing when i had to rush out to a car that screeched into the annular bay. it was driven by the girlfriend of a patient who took what he thought was percocet. it was actually a lethal dose of fentanyl. he wasn't breathing and was about to go into cardiac arrest. we pulled him out and quickly resuscitated him with narcan. within a minute he went from

being blue and pulseless to being wide-awake. he went home with his family that night. he was lucky this time. this is my reality and that of so many emergency physicians across america. we have a problem this country that requires of us to work together to solve it. i would like to clarify what frs bar and permanently scheduling them as a class is a critical policy tool. there almost identical to fentanyl except her tiny difference in their chemical structure by changing a single ingredient. the result of this is a new potent opioid with the same deadly effects as fentanyl and without class scheduling would be legal until it caused numerous deaths. fentanyls are so toxic they can be classified and have been used as chemical weapons. the lethal dose is nearly two milligrams, equivalent to five grains of sand remaining one teaspoon can kill 2000 people. that is what is in this packet

of sugar. can kill 2000 people if this were fentanyl. telling parents tragically on more than one occasion even friends of mine that their child will never come home is the worst part of my job. in fact, inspiration for frs class scheduling. archie was an altar server with my daughters. he started with prescription opioids then moved to heroin and unknowingly, fentanyl. i resuscitated archie on his second to last overdose. at that time i pulled out a body bag, laid it to him, and warned him that is where he would end up if he did not seek help. he stayed clean for six months until illicit fentanyl entered his life. one of the last things my friend lori saw first on arch it was him being zipped into the body bag. motivated to act by hundreds of such deaths come frs scheduling was enacted unanimously in

wisconsin legislature in 2017. dea adopted it as national policy shortly thereafter but only congress can make it permanent. this is -- frs scheduling does not address illicit fentanyl. it was never designed to do so. it only removes the incentive to create new frs's. there is no quick and easy solution to the scourge of illicit fentanyl but the solution to frs is a simple legislative fix, one you have for you right now. at its core come frs scheduling is not an extension of the war on drugs or law enforcement strategy designed to incarcerate. there have been a total of eight federal prosecutions under the language, half of which had already been known to have ties to drug cartels. as well there has never been a prosecution for non-bioactive

frs because there are none. all phenyl related substance encountered to date have been found have potent opioid activity. 27,000 times more potent than morphine. if schedule 1 penalties were removed from frs trafficking, it would re-incentivize their creation and significantly weaken the law's most powerful proactive and preventative effects. there is a time and place for criminal justice reform but frs scheduling is not it. some suggest frs scheduling would have a negative impact on research while theoretical, it has been addressed stakeholder input and supported by the very agencies and organizations representing academic scientific research, including the nih, hhs, fda, national institute of drug abuse. the hold fentanyl act would significantly loosen restrictions and just studying all schedule 1 substances not just frs's and open up promising areas of substance abuse research. in conclusion for the past six

years come frs scheduling has been federal policy as a primary architect of the wisconsin law, cannot be more pleased. in a few short years, the creation and distribution of new frs has ground to a halt. in our battle against fentanyl, the elimination of related substances that previously escaped our scheduling and devastated communities across the nation is surely one bright spot but congress must take action and permanently close the spigot of frs's. the fact is you can't die from adjusting something never created nor can he be incarcerated for trafficking something that does not exist. that is the beauty and simplicity of frs scheduling. thank you for this time and i look forward to answering your questions. chair grassley: doctor, i'm going to introduce but i don't want to get your last name wrong. is it farfan? >> correct. chair grassley: happy to hear your opening statement. >> thank you.

thank you for conducting this hearing and the opportunity to explain why saving lives in north america requires productive engagement with mexico. i appreciate the invitation to participate. i am an expert on organized crime and u.s.-mexico security cooperation. as an alum i of the fulbright, national problems required transnational solutions. to the families who testified today, i acknowledge your grief. there are no actions that can reverse the tragedies you have experienced. my testimony today does not seek to invalidate yours. on the contrary, it is precisely because i have witnessed and collaborated with families on both sides of the border that have lost loved ones to overdoses, homicides, disappearances that i am here to offer what i believe is a more helpful and sustainable path forward. generate 22nd, secretary rubio stated that america's foreign policy must be justified by answering three simple questions -- does it make america safer? does it make america stronger?

does it make america more prosperous? as a scholar who has dedicated her professional career to studying and working towards constructive u.s.-mexico relations, it is my strong professional opinion that the united states can only be safer, stronger, and prosperous if its neighbors are afforded the same opportunity. suffering on both sides of the border is inextricably linked. the u.s. is facing one of its worst public health crisis due to the availability of fentanyl and mexico faces was 70% of homicides perpetrated with a firearm. more than 40% of americans know someone who has died from an opioid overdose. equally important, homicide is the leading cause of death aged men 25 to 44 and a second cause of death for women ages 15 to 24 in mexico. worryingly, the urgency to save lives is reviving the worst policy failures of the war on drugs. with thousands of lives at risk on both sides of the border, it is urgent the u.s. and mexico

implement policies based on facts. to their public sectors, civil society, and academia, both countries have developed a robust evidence on how to acquire and maintain the health and safety of our communities. fentanyl and firearms trafficking have changed dynamics and criminal markets but these changes are not as simple as prevailing narratives of organized crime suggests. even the places like sinaloa, mexico, have been portrayed as -- transnational drug trafficking and mexico to the u.s. is not masterminded by three men hiding in the mountains. there is no special narco highwaym connecting the highlands of sinaloao the street of l.a. or philadelphia. but actors in mexico and the u.s. had take advantage of legal economies for the advancement of illicit activities. for example, the most recent data from the u.s. sentencing commission shows that for fiscal year 2023, 80 6.4% of people sentence professional are u.s.

citizens. serious policy conversations and addressing mortality caused by synthetic drugs cannot be separate from firearms trafficking. low production costs are often cited as a key reason suppliers moved away from heroin and into synthetic opioids like fentanyl. overlooked is the same -- over looked in this conversation is the same happened with firearms and ammunition. the ease of acquiring firearms lower the cost of perpetrating violence for criminal groups in mexico. even though there are significant variations to the frequency and ways, groups use violence, they issue credible threat under the ability to perpetrate this violence. their businesses depend on it. the more sophisticated the armament is, the more credible these threats become. why intimidate potential victims with a rifle left over from the mexican revolution when your arsenal can include 50 caliber weapons? this strategy has paid off or organized crime including those involved in fentanyl trafficking.

according to data released by the atf of firearms recovered in mexico but for tracing more than two thirds were sourced from the us. today, 74% of mexicans believe, groups have more and better weapons than the armed forces. access to lethally trafficked weapons from the us has allowed mexican, groups to amass german disk capacity for violence and a troubling capacity to intimidate. simply stated, by failing to address firearms trafficking to mexico the us is subsidizing the operating cost of criminal groups. it is as cartels receive an annual aid package with state-of-the-art technology to carry out crimes congress wants to stop. our shared tragedies are two sides of the same coin. the silver lining is there is no secret solution waiting to be discovered. actions available to congress like the arming cartels act can stem the devastating effect of this public health crisis and

must be implemented through us both vocals -- us/mexico security cooperation. i look forward to your questions. >> don barnes. >> thank you for the opportunity to testify. i represent the major sheriff's of america, the largest sheriffs in the nation serving one third of the nation's population. as sheriff of orange county i lead an agency of 4000 men and women serving 3.1 million residents. orange county consistently ranks one of the safest in the nation. unlike every community we have felt the devastating impact of the fentanyl crisis. the fentanyl epidemic is one of the most pressing public safety and public health crises to impact our nation. in a few short years nationwide drug-related deaths have tripled. a direct correlation to the problems of fentanyl.

we saw a slight increase in 2023 but numbers remain alarmingly high. deaths approaching one hundred thousand annually. in california we saw deaths increased 239. in 2016, 7000 in 2023. mexican based cartels taking advantage of the crisis at the border flooded our communities with deadly fentanyl. this is evident by our department's executive teams, in the past four years these teams have seized a total of 1551 pounds of fentanyl powder and 3 million clandestine produced fentanyl pills. what is even more alarming is the shared volume, the dramatic increase in seizures during the same time period. since 2021 my investigative teams seized 16,000 pills whereas in 2024 the number skyrocketed to over 2 million and that's just my agency alone. the fight against the fentanyl

epidemic in california is incredible challenging given our close proximity to the border, national drug trends and the state's permissive drug laws. proposition 47 passed in 2,014 largely ducommun lies most drug and property crimes which are attempts to seek action by the state legislature largely fell on deaf years. when we first saw the signs of fentanyl 2025 we propose legislation that enhanced penalties for trafficking fentanyl similar to trafficking cocaine and heroin. this bill failed year after year after year while deaths continued to increase. sadly in some instances our proposal was ridiculed by those too devoted to inch stream anti-incarceration policies. we faced complications through the california sanctuary laws which limits our communication with our federal partners. despite this grim picture there is hope. in orange county we've seen

fentanyl deaths fall from 2,020 one, to 613 in 2023 and while the state continues to rise. this progress is a result of our ongoing multifaceted strategy that focuses on supply and demand for illicit drugs. the strategy includes investing dollars to narcotics teams and resources. working with the us attorney to prosecute individuals who sell drugs that result in the death of another creating a new innovative drug education program taught in our schools. in 2016, deputies carried in a log zone resulted in lives saved in the community. we have created suv step down unit and have a medicaid assistant treatment program serving 1300 people every day. congress can help this progress by moving forward many of the initiatives often unsupported by members of this committee. first and foremost we must firmly schedule fentanyl analogs as a schedule one drug. the house is taking up the act ii this week. i think chairman grassley and members of the committee for

leading this effort in the senate. funding increases would be a significant help. funding has made static for ten years. we are grateful members of this committee are prioritizing the reauthorization and look forward to working with you to advance legislation which would reauthorize the program a $330 million annually. we need to protect law enforcement tools. legislation that would restrict or limit law enforcement's access to data necessary to investigate fentanyl trafficking organizations. we advocate providing law enforcement lawful access to devices which is crucial for identifying those responsible for distributing illegal fentanyl. lastly, and tsa supports bipartisan legislation crucial for addressing in the criminal justice system by focusing on continuous care, reintegration

and sustained sobriety post release from our jails. i'm honored to be here today and looking forward to answering your questions. >> thank you. i will start by a round of questions and then turn to senator durbin. i think it is only appropriate to express our condolences for your loss. when things like this happen i usually try to figure out is there anyway we can take something terrible and tragic and hopefully learn some lessons and make things better in the future so thank you for being courageous and telling your story. i know it is not easy but it is very important for people across the country to understand how this can happen to them and their family. having visited with a number of families in texas at various school districts i have come to believe this requires a layered approach, maybe starting at the

kitchen table with awareness of our children to the threat because none of them take these counterfeit drugs knowingly, at least knowing it will take their lives and it contains contaminated fentanyl but it will require all of us from parents, families, school districts and local law enforcement, state and federal law enforcement and border security. don barnes. it is my understanding that most of the chemicals that go into fentanyl basically have been traced back to china. is that your understanding as well? >> yes, senator. there is an issue with precursor chemicals transmitting from china to us ports and directed to china. >> i understand the announcements relating to the

tariffs that donald trump has announced his administration said this isn't so much a trade policy as it is an anti-fentanyl policy to finally get the chinese government's attention to do something about the precursors that emanate from that country but as you point out, they make their way to mexico where the cartels are putting them into pill presses and making them look like innocuous drugs only to be turned out to be contaminated with fentanyl and take the lives of people unbeknownst to them. do you believe with improved border security we can begin to stop the flow of illicit drugs coming across the border including fentanyl? >> what you describe is a very complex system, supply chain that starts in china. and transit going to mexico, the pill presses, it's not doing one thing, it's doing 12 things simultaneously.

i believe addressing this issue is more complicated than any one thing. when you look at the pill presses, that is one issue at the border. it will be the most significant issue as we shut down the border, the pathway for illicit fentanyl to make its way back to the united states but that and many other things have to take place. >> i heard senator durbin's statement which i disagree with, the vast majority of fentanyl comes across ports of entry transported by american citizens. is there anybody on the panel who subscribes to that point of view? cecilia farfan, do you think any of the 1.7 million got aways in the last four years have been transporting fentanyl?

>> a million of. >> during the mind not ministration the millions of people that were welcomed into the country and released, there were one. 7 million that appeared on various sensors, cameras and things like that that evaded law enforcement and made their way into the interior of the united states. do you think any of those one. 7 million individuals that were evading law enforcement were transporting fentanyl? >> what i mentioned in my testimony, data from the us sentencing commission shows 86.4 people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking in fiscal year 2023 were us citizens. >> that's not my question. the question is about the people who evaded law enforcement is it possible some of them or may be many of them were transporting illicit drugs including fentanyl? >> as someone who studies organized crime, that would be a bad business decision.

drug traffickers deal with -- >> sound to me like a very profitable decision on the part of the cartels to evade law enforcement and be able to deliver your drugs, your load into the united states, only to make a lot of money from it. why is that bad business decision? >> from a business point of view, you would prefer to have smugglers with a legal right to entry into the united states than an immigrant who is uncertain whether or not he or she is going to cross into the united states, you are looking at it from the point of view of will we turn a profit or not in this particular shipment, putting your shipment in the hands of an immigrant who does not have a legal right to entry to the us is a bad business decision. >> do you agree with that, don barnes? >> i do not. you have the trafficking of the narcotic which is often in large bulk. in our experience and intervention and interdiction as those are often times residents of mexico.

the distribution of that or sales of it might oftentimes be carried out by us citizens and the drug trafficking market so it is a combination of both but the vast majority of large quantities coming across it has been my experience are being conducted by mexican nationals. the distribution and sales inside the united states oftentimes has been carried out by us citizens. >> thank you. senator durbin. >> thank you all for being here. how many of you would this be your first time to see the senate judiciary committee, raise your hand. a few of our witnesses and others, first time. this is an interesting committee. it represents the spectrum of politics in the united states senate. we have the most republican republicans and the most democratic democrat sitting on this committee. so you won't be surprised many

times we disagree. that disagreement sometimes leads to good speeches but very few laws but there's an exception. 3 years ago we took up this issue and started talking about what we can do to stop the spread of fentanyl and the deadly impact it is having on america. we actually voted in this committee on a bipartisan basis unanimously for 5 majors that dealt with social media. your point, if snap chat were a store in the corner selling fentanyl related ads and it happened one time and they could be sued, that would be the end of the story. social media gets off the hook. joining families, i understand that are trying to hold them responsible for your son's

death and other deaths as well but i couldn't support you more. we passed bills in this committee, holding big tech and social media responsible, unanimously 4 or 5 new members of the committee but every member of the committee voted for it. democrat and republican, conservative and liberal, all voted for the major. what happened as a result of that combined bipartisan effort? nothing. nothing. speeches, that is what happened. we failed as democrats and the majority of the senate, the republicans failed as the majority in the house to pass any measure. i said it. democrats bear responsibility and republicans as well. we've got to be honest about this. why? why would something as popular and as obvious as that fail before the congress? because there were powerful forces that have a lot of money

at stake and don't want to liability who will piously and publicly say they love this measure, makes all the sense in the world and when the doors close and they get a chance to speak to members individually, flip and take the opposite position and nothing happens. chuck grassley is my friend. i've gotten in trouble for that but i am proud of it. we go back a long way. i went to him yesterday and said this time you are the chairman. i'm the ranking democrat. i'm here to help you pass legislation to do something which i'm sick and tired of excuses being made and people dying as a result of it and i think it is time for us on a bipartisan basis to find things we agree on. i don't know where the sources are. i think cecilia farfan makes a valid argument. i accept your response billion law enforcement and have a different point of view. we may never result that basic

question by think we can all resolve we don't care where it is coming from, we want it to stop. we want to stop in china, stop it in mexico, stop it in our backyards, however it is getting into the united states, so to those familiar with this committee, this is where it has to start. we won't agree on every aspect everything as a result of it. but we can agree on some basics that make a difference. you've testified before about your son and the loss of his life. senator klobuchar told me that and i would like to ask what the families are doing, you've get with the whole snapchat and others. >> the families and i filed suit against snapchat. we are in the process of making it through the courts as we speak. there is -- how many? they have hundreds of cases

behind hours. for a while it was looking pretty grim, snapchat has been immune for so long and it is now making its way through. we just got word but we are going into discovery. >> it passed on january 4th of 2023, i believe, accepted the lawsuit, 2024, not on the basis of free speech but on the basis of product design. that went on to the appellate ct. in california and the appellate court ruled in our favor for the lawsuit to go forward so we are in discovery. no other lawsuit against any major social media company has gotten as far as hours. >> i wish you well. i close by sailing we are dealing with fentanyl, deadly aspects of that drug and we are

also dealing with sexual exploitation particularly of children. a number of members you have shown real leadership. senator blumenthal on the democratic side, we all have bills, we can do this. hold us responsible, don't just come and leave and think nothing is going to happen. it is our job to make sure it does happen and do the right thing for you and your families. thank you very much. >> i think senator durbin for bringing up the conversation we had yesterday on the floor of the united states senate. i suggest, our staffs sit out and see what can be worked out. now i will ask questions. leading up to this hearing, my office received 58 letters from grieving families who lost loved ones to fentanyl. i want to offer those letters

into the record and thank the families for writing them so without objection, that will be done. one mother wrote, quote, families like mine have been sharing our stories of loss before 2018, open to ignite action among our leaders. tragically, despite hundreds of thousands of stories like mine over countless years we have yet to see a unified effort necessary to stop this poisoning of our generations. many of these letters urged congress to pass the legislation, halt fentanyl which would make scheduling of fentanyl, related substances very permanent.

sheriff don barnes, timothy westlake, kristalina georgieva teen, explain why permanent class scheduling is important to tackling this crisis. >> i believe it will increase penalties for tracking and different -- distribution and streamline prosecution by removing the burden of proving whether a particular fentanyl analog is harmful. it would be ill legal by default and it would give authorities greater flexibility as well to target emerging fentanyl analogs before they flood the market. >> i think it goes back to the whole point of me and coming up this idea come to stop the creation of this. what it does it stops it from existing to begin with. we looked at the possible modifications to the fentanyl molecule and surgically scheduled those modifications and what it has done and proven to be done, stop them from existing in the first place so no one is going to jail, no one is dying from it because they don't exist. it's the perfect form of prevention.

there's a lot of disease with the disease, the best place to hit a diseases at the beginning, if you can stop a diabetic from becoming diabetic they don't have the problems of having their leg amputated or being on dialysis. it is one the spigot, a huge fire hydrant, this is one spigot congress can turn off and that is what they should do. >> i also rise this way. with the controlled substances act, not including it as an analog we saw this happen in the 90s, there were analog knock offs, difficult for prosecution. most are state's laws are tied to controlled substances act so if this would aluminate the probability of prosecuting somebody for it and i will agree with the doctor when he said if we include these now, it will just incentivize the knockoffs because they will be by default included which will

solve the previous problem of prosecution at the state level. >> don barnes, the center for disease control reported that 100,000 americans die each year from drug overdoses. as i said, 75,000 of those related to fentanyl and that has been at least over the last four years. we've only recently seen a decline. do you think we've got a handle on the emergency drug threats and if not what do we need to do better? >> i don't believe we have a handle on it. we are responding to it. the cdc first reported in 2014 just over 10 years ago 4% of the nation's drug later deaths were attributed to fentanyl. 5 years later that increased to 40% and almost doubled all over again in the 5 years since. we've seen this coming. we been nonresponsive to it. i think that we have seen an emergent trend, we 've been

playing defense. as i shared earlier in my response to senator cornyn, not doing any one thing but it doesn't things simultaneously will put us in a better position, first and foremost as much as people don't want to recognize it, we have to deal with the demand side of this issue north of the border with our addiction crisis in this country to get people in sobriety and then deal with narcotics economy on the supply-chain side of it by limiting the need for the narcotics north of the border, that's the most important thing we can do as a country. >> last question has to be to you, thank you for sharing your son app store. some say fentanyl related substances as a class 3 system that overcriminalizes drug crimes. what is your response to that? >> i'm hispanic american, i'm colombia american.

and i believe a lot, the grand majority of the children dying today, doing the journal of medicine came out with a report in january of 2024 and came to the conclusion that in 2020, we were losing 22 non-addicted children in the united states of america per week between the ages of 14 and 18 years of age mostly driven by illicit fentanyl pills that were deceptively sold to them. are we to stand back and not do anything because we are going to over criminalize this? every time i get up in the morning i look in the mirror, i see a brown man which i see an american man as well and the injustice, this crisis is decimating minorities as well. this does not discriminate on your age, it doesn't discriminate your race, doesn't discriminate your religion, your socioeconomic status,

doesn't discriminate, it's taking everyone by storm and we as a nation have to come together and we have to do something to stop this. in 2020 with covid 19 we all knew we had to stand 6 feet away from each other, had to wash our hands and had to wear a mask over our faces. why does the american public not know about this crisis that is a national security crisis as well? we have a lot to do but i'm telling you right now this is taking everyone by storm and something has to be done. >> thank you. i think everyone was touched by your story and your bravery coming forward. i am honored to get to know you and i thank you for everything you've done. the hopes and dreams parents after devon were erased in the blink of an eye and snow mom should have to bury their kid. those are your words, all of

your friends that stand there to support you have their own theme. all he did was purchase a pill from snapchat, thought it was fine. you were there for that testimony with tech executives and a bunch of us had battle wounds going after them when we just want to put sensible rules in place or get rid of this legal protection they have that other companies do not have as you pointed out but nothing compared to what you have. if you heard their testimony in january of 2,024, do you think social media companies are doing enough to stop the sale of drugs to kids online? >> i do not think they are doing enough. i think it is continuing. i was introduced to two new families just last week from minnesota both with fentanyl with their children's passing so they are not doing enough. could they be doing more? i was just informed, the cooper davis act, i must ask if you

are in such support of it, all these companies are in support of the kids online safety act, why aren't they implementing those features and doing a good job now? why do we have to come before congress and have you make them do that? >> thank you. jaime puerta, should we reform section 230 in some way to make this clear? >> absolutely. 1996 this legislative body came up with section 230-the see of the communications decency act and what was meant to do was to protect free speech but what is happening right now, cannot be free-speech when you have a drug dealer selling illicit fentanyl to unsuspecting children, that's not free-speech, or grown man sending unwarranted pictures to young ladies, sexual exploitation, this is not free-speech, this is, behavior and if it is criminal, if it is a, lacked in the real world it

should be as well in the social media world. >> looking for that reform which i appreciate you bringing up. there's a number of other bills involving pornography as well. sheriff barnes, thank you for your testimony and being here, funding as we look into this next year, funding for law enforcement, do you think that is important to take on this fentanyl crisis as well as the height of programmers that conduct fentanyl off the streets? >> years, thank you for the question. the height of funding has been stagnant for the last we 10 years. if you look at the time value of money it is one third reduction the last 10 years, cost of gone up so it is $0.50 on the dollar. it is not a fully funded program. my program is funded at 1/6 of the cost put into it, mostly subsidized through my investment and other have withdrawn personnel. so i think the nation's worst

time in history, we have to reinvest those moneys, look at those moneys and look at what i call super hideout, the original intent is to invest the greatest offense which is our border hideouts and stop the drugs we can at the border before they make it into the united states. >> thank you. doctor timothy westlake, why does this reduce the incentive for drug cartels to create new fentanyl variants? >> the incentives were there before because when they initially created these under normal controlled substances act they were legal so we could modify instead of putting one group in, it is a legal substance. i was on the controlled substance board in wisconsin in 2015. we had nine different variants that were killing people, we

could schedule them immediately. than they were legal. when you schedule them and make them illegal, there's no effective for them to be created anymore and there's a cookbook of changes you can do easily, look up the research to find different chemicals so it literally just stops. it doesn't stop the illicit fentanyl but it closes the spigot. >> one last point and we will talk more in this committee, i'm so pleased senator grassley and durbin will lead this together on the social media issues that go beyond the ones we've talked about now, but you've also embarked on education campaign with a lot of our sheriff's in minnesota that i think has been pretty effective going back in the schools with that. 10 seconds on that and i'm out of time. >> we have to do it because nobody else is doing it. it falls back on us. if we sit by and say nothing children continue to die so we feel it is our obligation to get out there, educate our community and the children because as mentioned, the conversation begins at home. it has to begin at home.

>> thank you. >> senator lee. >> thanks to all of you for being here and sharing your insights today. the fentanyl crisis has infiltrated our homes, our schools, our communities, our workplaces, taking lives and destroying lives at an unprecedented rate. in utah, fentanyl related deaths are rising and it becomes a devastating reality of for far too many families. it seems everyone knows someone and in utah, in many cases almost everyone is related to someone who has been impacted adversely if not lost their life due to this crisis. from 2014 through 2023 deaths involving fentanyl surged by a staggering 116%. in 2023 alone, 600 times in

utah someone returned home to find their son, daughter, sibling or parent had lost their life due to a tragic opioid overdose. this marks a dramatic increase from just 23 deaths in 2014. in 2023, the most fentanyl pills seized in a year, then by the very next year, just 6 months into the year by july of 2024, the rocky mountain field division had confiscated well in excess of that, close to 800,000 pills, suppressing the entire year, record-breaking year of 2023 which recorded 664,200 bills.

the sharp increase in fentanyl related deaths increase the decline from prescription opioids. we took these steps as the crisis emerged as significant, roughly a decade or so and all of a sudden we have seen the number of deaths from nonprescription related drugs exceeding those, number of fentanyl related death doubled from 2019-2020 alone and that trend has only gotten worse since then. victims of the deadly scourge include our loved ones, our neighbors, our friends, bridgitte norring and jaime puerta, thank you for sharing your testimony is, deeply sorry for your loss. no parent should ever have to face that heartbreak, heartbroken for you that, donald trump has prioritize securing our borders and

prosecuting violent gang members that trafficked fentanyl into the country and throughout our communities and in congress i hope we can stand with him in his effort to make america safe again. i would like to start with you from october 2023 to october 2024, officials seized 22,000 pounds of fentanyl at us ports, us ports of entry. equaling nearly 1.1 million doses. according to the dea, ingesting 2 milligrams of fentanyl can be fatal. federal officials estimate at most 10% of fentanyl crossing from mexico is actually caught. do you believe the biden administration's open border policies contributed to that rapid increase of fentanyl entering the united states didn't what can be done to reverse that now? >> unequivocally the crisis at

the border that allowed the cartels opened a gateway and exposed our weaknesses and used against us. open border policy undoubtedly resulted in harm to this country through trafficking of not just fentanyl but human trafficking not to mention the got aways, we have no idea who they are, so much greater risk beyond fentanyl the resulted from that. >> appreciate what you have done in orange county that sparked the creation of all kinds of things that are flattering of your county and what you have undertaken there, suggesting most people cross into your county are shocked to learn the extent to which you are willing to enforce the law but california law in some meaningful ways impede your belly to enforce the law and make california safer. and how sanctuary jurisdictions are adversely affecting your work.

>> in 2014, proposition 36 reduced a lot of impacts. the accountability being restored into california. regarding the issues. i can speak for myself, i cooperate with federal partners those are creating harms, i have to release people in our communities, i support changing that challenge and give us the ability to cooperate with federal partners. >> senator blumenthal. >> i want to thank you for having this hearing and the ranking member as well, this

cause should unite us across the aisle and today's hearing reflects that kind of bipartisan support for stronger measures to stop social media from spreading, selling, distributing fentanyl and other toxic chemicals and with senator blackburn with the kids online safety bill, that will reduce the threat of these drugs and i hope with what was reflected in the 91 in the senate supporting that bill. i'm pleased to work with ted cruz and senator graham on measures that would reduce that threat of social media and others on the committee. i want to raise an issue that is tremendously relevant. it indicates, the mass purchase

of the ranks of the fbi. no denying fbi agents have been fired, suspended and otherwise disciplined, they took on orders increment investigations. kash patel said to us when i asked him directly, all fbi employees and protected against political retribution. this retribution undermines enforcement, i asked that we

call back kash patel to ask how he could deny there would be political retribution, likewise, i'm asking questions about the reassignment of assistant us attorney from drug cases to immigration cases, we need them on the front lines, we need fbi agents on the front lines. over the tip of the sphere. the law enforcement, exactly the prohibitions and dangers that bring us here today. i hope we can unite, bring back kash patel for a second hearing and jointly, the oversight we

are mandated to do on this topic. your suffering losses that are unspeakable and all of you who are so deeply engaged hands-on, the story about the body bags that i will always remember. i would like to ask about the kids online safety bill and whether you believe that our leadership in the senate and most importantly in the house is responsible for stopping it after the 91-3 vote in the senate could support this legislation, kids online safety act which had such strong bipartisan backing in the united states senate.

do you think house leadership ought to support it? >> thank you for that question. i firmly believe the house should support it. 90 one-3 coming out of this senate body is something that is so unheard of, the first time in years i ever felt some sort of peace. i felt hopeful something will be done to protect our children. it is putting more children at harm not just from fentanyl. thank you for the continued support on this bill. >> a lot of social media companies are driving these harmful algorithms and many enough various actors taking advantage of that. the act is exactly that. the kids online safety act is to protect them from various activity reaching them on a

daily basis. to get over the finish line. >> i will lose, senator cruz. >> madam chairman, thank you for hosting this very important debate and this important hearing. the american people you should a clear and unequivocal mandate, the open borders we have had the last four years must be closed. to stream across the border. and to secure the border. he reinstated the remain in

mexico policy and just yesterday donald trump negotiated mexico will station 10,000 troops at the southern border. donald trump is doing his part to meet the mandate from the voters. this will support the health fentanyl act, an act of permanently -- schedule one under the controlled substances act. fentanyl and its analogues are powerful and destructive. congress and the american people don't talk enough about fentanyl's dangerousness. i want to talk about that. timothy westlake, you are an emergency room physician. how much fentanyl does it take to kill an adult human being? >> 4 to 5 grains of sand is

enough. >> two milligrams is what it takes. you see on this photograph a penny. we all know the size of a penny. those couple of flakes are enough to kill an adult human being. timothy westlake, last year how many died because of fentanyl overdoses? >> around 70,000. >> this means on average, 6250 people died every single month due to fentanyl. a number that has trajectory's guy rocketed during the biden/harris years. and >> i can't answer that.

it is a lot and growing. >> 2250 pounds of fentanyl. an astronomical figure, i want to put this in context. this packet of sweet and low. to kill 500 people. take a look at this container? a container we are familiar with. if this is full of fentanyl, it will kill us 268,000 people. that is more than the entire population of corpus christi and let's look at another pack. something people have in our kitchen.

the single bag of sugar. could kill 900-5000 people. almost a million people. this single bag could take out the entire population of austin, texas, the capital of my home state. now imagine 562. that is how much fentanyl came into the united states in a single month. how many lethal doses of fentanyl is in 562 bags, what came in in a single month this year, 510 million lethal doses. in one month.

more fentanyl came into america than would be needed to kill every single man, woman and children and child in the united states. this is a crisis we have to solve. jaime puerta, bridgitte norring, thank you for being here, thank you for your courage. as a father of two teenage girls you lived a nightmare every parent is terrified of. what would you say to parents at home need to know about this, what do teenagers at home need to know about the dangers of fentanyl. >> if you don't think this can happen to you, i'm sorry but you are very sorely mistaken. this is taking everybody by storm. that is what i would tell every parent. most people think this could not affect the family because either they don't have somebody addicted to drugs in their

family or somebody using drugs on a recreational basis. children making mistakes, i do not condone my son daniel wanting to self medicate during the height of the pandemic what is happening in his head. he made a mistake, the price he paid was his life. people are supposed to make mistakes but not die from them. that is happening every single day. we have to stop this. >> i echo the same thing. that whole thing, it could very well be your kids. we had every conversation with our children about addiction because on both sides of our family nobody at the time was talking about this crisis which i feel robbed by a

conversation. take that out of your vocabulary. this very well could happen and could very well happen. every single one of them. the majority of the time it comes back as this does not violate our standards. monitor your children's social media accounts. have the conversation, save your child's life. >> thank you all for being here. i want to express my heartbreak, hearing about the loss of your sons. i can't imagine what you have gone through. every parent of college age kids or high school age kids have those conversations with

my kids, i am grateful that you are here. it is important for us to hear. a couple questions. i heard about the bill in the house, concerned that it could inhibit research. he made a comment too quickly for me about nih's view or others. is there a need to have language to make sure research can go on or is that a nonissue for some reason? >> to impact research negatively, the scheduling, the research component was added and that was supported through the first trump -- the common

research accommodations, and all schedule ones, support hhs, fda. >> that was incorporated in a new version of the bill. >> that is very helpful. if i could ask you, jaime puerta and bridgitte norring, what do you think is working in terms of trying to educate families, young people and what more do we need to do. i fully agree with the need, those using platforms or aligning platforms to be used to be held liable, what is happening in terms of educating those families but also schools

and others, teaching and have supplies on hand necessary to deal with emergencies. >> we have a documentary called dead on arrival, a 22 minute documentary we used in junior high school and high school across the nation, california, all of orange county, presenting the documentary. i think education awareness is key in evading these drug debts because they don't know what they are ingesting. they are dying because they have been deceptively sold a counterfeit pill, it turns out that it is fake and they end up diane. education awareness is working and we are a small organization.

with covid 19, why has, why on the national, on the federal level why have we not had a campaign of sorts, with melissa recreational drug use. due to the state of addiction and overdose, most don't understand what it is. it is a 3-pronged approach. widely available on college campuses a little bit. we need to do a lot more. >> education awareness, we face roadblocks all the time in schools the don't want us to come in, basically the idea that it is okay.

a former member of boyd and often time, the alexander neville foundation, and when you hear from youth directly on the crisis. doing community events, bringing the community together, really reducing the stigma of a crisis. i say overdose, you will never hear my son overdose. i know if my son knew that pill was going to take his life, he would never have taken it. all his hopes and dreams for the future are gone but not only that, his dreams erased in

the blink of an eye. i mirror your sentiment which our government needs to step up and start taking the handle on this because we are just parents, spending money out of our pockets. most apply for public grants or anything like that. why don't we have the campaign, kids are dying, you would think that would be a priority and we will do it because that means potentially a child's life is saved. >> thank you for your testimony and all the parents representing their children. i want to thank you for your advocacy. really important for us to see you and hear you and thank you for your testimony and you'll back. >> couldn't agree more. i want to enter a record of support for 9 organizations

that represent the medical community is led by the security of neurosurgeons. this commends bipartisan leadership and notes the temporary schedule classification is not sustainable. they note vote, quote, continually revisiting classification creates confusion about the dangers of these substances and hampers efforts to address the crisis comprehensively end quote. i ask unanimous consent the entirety of their b entered into the record. thank you. >> thank you, madam chair, thanks to all the witnesses for being here. i particularly thank you for being in the room today. you have highlighted the true crisis we are facing. my home state of missouri in 2022 alone, child fatalities from fentanyl double in 2022, deaths for children at the age

of 5 increased 500%. so the fates your families have endured are being replicated all over my state as well and that is a wake-up call for this body to do something and we need to seal the border against those who would traffic illicit drugs into this country and prosecute those who are doing it but i want to 0 in on something you both talked about and you in particular, your own children, your child was exposed to these illegal drugs, snapchat and social media platforms. you said a second ago that you have repeatedly reported drug dealers and others on social media platforms using the platform's on reporting rules and you said most of the time most of the time the vast majority of the time the answer you get back is they can't do anything. did i hear correctly? >> that is correct. >> you are trying to follow the

rules these company's have set up, we will deal with the problem if you just report it and i see parents behind you who are nodding, your reporting, they are not doing anything and i notice you, i have read your written testimony, you had a meeting with snapchat executives in the spring of 21 and they told you, walk us through if you would. you reported to them what was going on and they told you what exactly? >> the first three things out of their mouth was we had no idea this was happening on our platform, you can't sue us because we are protected under section 230 and as parents we should have been monitoring your children better. my son was 19 when he died. number one, how do you monitor and adult? number 2, how do you monitor a child on apps in which the whole allure to these kids is the fact the messages

disappear? is that was something i brought up to their attention and they had no response, they don't care. >> they don't care and it is interesting to point out to you you can't sue them. what do you think one of the reasons is they don't change? you are reporting these activities and they are not doing anything about it. do you have a guess as to why they don't change their behavior? >> there is no incentive. that was something they pointed out to us, we had no idea it existed but i can tell you in the weeks and months and years after my son passed, the dealers that allegedly harm my son, all that would happen is that would take down the account. they get a new burner phone, set up a new account, snapchat told us they had wi-fi blockers

to recognize the devices, the dealers were buying burner phones, going to your coffee shop. .. school, your library setting up a new account. our dealers in the community laugh at snapchat. ha-ha, they tried to bamboozle us. we are back, baby. seriously. sen. hawley: i want every me i would anybody who's watching every member of this committee and the city to understand what you said which is the social media platforms don't change because theyy do have an incentive. which is a polite way of saying there's no hammer on these people. they do whatever they want to do because they know everybody can effectively hold them accountable and they let it slip when you walkedo an officer told him they participate in the killing of joe because that's what happened. they make money off of it effectively because they are making billions on their social media platforms. killing our kids, exposing them to all kinds on combinatorial and he won't do anything about it because we can hold them

accountable. i want to say to members of this body that has got to change. it is time to give parents the right to sue these platforms. no company in america has the liability shield these companies have. they can do whatever they want to our kids and we can't do anythingut about it and i said that as a father of three young children i'm terrified about my kids might find on social media for the reasons you've given. as a parent i can't do a thing about it if these companies decide to exploit my children. it is time for that to change and we know how to change it. the way to change it is give the parent in this country the right to get into court, open the court of stores and allow them to sue these companies. it's time. and until this body takes action i have to say almost nothing else we do is serious. you could try to find them, they don't care. you can change the rules, you can slap the' on the wrist, they won't do anything after plaintiffs can get into court nothing will change.

i will introducel legislation this congress to allow parents to allow you to go to court and sue these companies and i called a member of these committee and every member of this body to support december to get justice for your children. thank you for being here today. thank you, madam chair. >> senator padilla. thank you, madam chair. colleague opportunity to focus on this crisis today with one caveat. i think that it is a little disappointing to continue to stick to an inaccurate narrative that the fentanyl crisis in america is primarily an immigration problem. the fentanyl crisis in america is a health crisis. it is a public safety crisis. as we've heard from testimonials today, it is a life and death crisis.

but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of fentanyl that is smuggled into the united states is brought in through legal ports of injury. not between ports of entry, but legal points of entry by primarily united states citizens. don't take my word for it. look at cbp data. i know that it has been called into question earlier the accuracy of it. even if it was off by half. half-and-half. don't mistake my words here in condoning that anybody attempting to come into the united states unlawfully that happens to be carrying fentanyl should be off the hook. we should clampdown on that. but if data is important for driving policy decisions and informing strategic actions, let's look the facts. 80% plus of the fentanyl

intercepted at the border is being brought through ports of entry by the united states citizens. so, again, folks coming through unlawfully, i'm not saying ignore them. but let's not ignore where the concentration of the problem is. i would ask the witnesses today what strategies we should be implementing through the department of justice, through the department of homeland security, and then we will have opportunities for other doj officials in the coming days and weeks to do that, and we should. i will suggest, colleagues, that the recent changes by the administration at the department of justice that has resulted in the shifting of critical resources, including from the fbi, including from the dea, including the atf towards immigration enforcement, which, to be clear, be honest with

ourselves and the public, is not exclusive to violent criminals. it's everybody. minor offenses. people who haven't committed any offense other than they came illegally and they are criminals. horrible, horrible way to think about this. it's doing a disservice on our efforts to crack down on the fentanyl crisis and illicit drugs that are killing so many of our kids. my first question, can you explain how diverting law enforcement resources towards immigration and were spent can undermine fentanyl investigations and make it harder to disrupt trafficking networks? dr. farfan: the u.s. as a mechanism called the organized crime drug enforcement task force. the task force is made up of several agencies. the department of justice,

homeland security, department of labor, postal service, the state department is also included. putting together criminal investigations to take down criminal networks is a long process taking time and interagency coordination and in the best cases international cooperation, including with mexico. when you distract those resources and allocate them in a different task come in this case immigration enforcement, your undermining long-term efforts to try do precisely bring criminal groups to justice. there is in the world that we have of limited resources, when you take away from one area you will definitely impact another. there is definitely a concern of weakening these crime enforcement task forces. sen. padilla: if you have an answer to the following question, my understanding is there is one legal gun store in mexico? dr. farfan: correct. mexico only has one legal gun store. sen. padilla: to my colleagues

for years who have talked about clamping down on the cartels, the criminal organizations who are arming themselves with weapons trafficked from the united states according to atf data -- again, i'm not sorry for relying on our own data. up to 500,000 u.s.-sourced firearms are trafficked into mexico every year with 70% of crime guns in mexico tracing back to the united states. the mexican president has stated that president trump agreed to work on reducing the flow of guns into mexico as part of yesterday's deal to delay tariffs for a month. what steps should the u.s. take to uphold that commitment? chair britt: if you can keep your answers short, we are out of time. dr. farfan: i hear this committee when you say that you want to save the lives of american children, americans in general. what i say to you is that the fentanyl market is not an

isolated illicit market. it is linked to the firearms trafficking market. in that conversation that they had come i think for the u.s. to seriously address fentanyl, the conversation also has to be about how you prevent criminal groups from having the firepower that makes addressing supply on the mexican side incredibly difficult. as i say, these are shared tragedies for mexico and the u.s. if the crime is transnational, shouldn't the solution also be transnational? sen. padilla: very well said. chair britt: i want to address before moving to the next senator the argument that u.s. citizens bring the most fentanyl into the united states and not illegal immigrants. today incomplete seizure interest statistics that support that argument.with the wide open border policies of the biden-harris administration over the last four years, we don't know the full scale of drugs smuggled into this nation.

the prosecution statistics only account for individuals who were actually caught, prosecuted, and sentenced, not criminals who managed to actually evade detection. the washington post says that federal officials estimate that we are only catching five to 10% of fentanyl coming in from mexico. do that math. if that is true, we are only catching -- we are not catching 90% to 95% of the fentanyl actually coming across our southern border. we have to be honest about that. that should alarm every single one of us, and it shows why border security is an important component to stopping the flow of fentanyl. senator kennedy. sen. kennedy: dr. farfan, the president of mexico until 2024 was president lopez obrador,

correct? he ran for president with respect to the cartels on the slogan, hugs not bullets. is that right? dr. farfan: no, he did not run -- sen. kennedy: yes, he did. his hand-picked successor is president steinbaum. dr. farfan: claudia sheinbaum. sen. kennedy: i love the people of mexico and the people of mexico are good friends but isn't a big part of the problem that president lopez obrador and now president sheinbaum live in

the right front pocket of the mexican drug cartels? dr. farfan: i disagree with that statement. sen. kennedy: i thought you might. you want more taskforces. dr. westlake, this represents 400 grams of fentanyl. kill every person in providence, rhode island. if you are a dealer and you are caught with this, you get 10 years minimum. this represents 40 grams of fentanyl. would kill every single man, woman, child in culpeper,

virginia. if you get caught with this amount as a dealer you get a five year minimum sentence. this is where it gets special. this represents 10 grams of pcp. if you get caught with it as a dealer you get five years minimum. is fentanyl more dangerous than pcp? dr. westlake: absolutely. fentanyl can be classified as a lethal weapon. i did a chart on it. sen. kennedy: this is five grams of meth. that is what this represents. if you're a dealer and you get caught with it, the minimum sentence is five years. is fentanyl -- you get caught

with this much fentanyl, five years -- or 10 years. you get caught with this much fentanyl, five years. you get caught with this much meth, you can hardly see it, you get five years. does that make any sense to you? dr. westlake: no, sir. sen. kennedy: it is like deep stupid, isn't it? you don't need a task force to see the illogic of that. i have a bill that i have fairness in fentanyl sentencing i have reintroduced. it will lower the 10-year mandatory minimum from 400 grams of fentanyl to 20 grams of fentanyl. the bill will not punish

addicts. it will help. it is not going to help until president lopez obrador and president sheinbaum get out of the pockets of the drug cartels. but it is a start.. this bill will punish dealers. thank you, madam chair. chair britt: senator whitehouse. sen. whitehouse: thank you, madam chair. welcome to the witnesses. we have real problems in this country with opioid addiction. i was the lead democrat author of the comprehensive addiction recovery act, which both changed the nature of the response to this with a lot more emphasis on

recovery and prevention, and also opened up significant funding that has flowed through to states to help the group helping people through their addiction and recovery. at this point, as best i can tell, the trump funding freeze is blocking dollars that would otherwise be flowing to treatment and recovery groups around the country. in some cases it is not so much that they are being told no, it is that they cannot get a straight answer. the confusion could well be just a deliberate fog to obscure the freeze. the lawsuits that are proceeding will help clarify that, but in the meantime i think that it's

notable when we are dealing here with this issue to understand that the trump administration has unilaterally frozen funds that flow through to this problem. our community health centers in rhode island are seeing funds similarly blocked or fogged so that they cannot get an answer that the funds are cleared. it is through community health centers that a lot of people get their treatment as they deal with addiction and recovery issues. so, i hope that we can get this freeze issue resolved. now, the two courts have found that it is illegal in the same way that the trump administration doesn't seem to respect the power of the purse and congress it is not clear that they respect the power of the courts to decide what the law is.

so we will have to see. we are clearly outside of constitutional bounds at this point, and people who count on addiction and recovery services are in the target hairs of this. we agreed as a committee, and we have done pretty good work together as a committee, republicans and democrats alike, to try to put pressure on drug sales that come via the internet and through social media. so, it is disturbing to me that president trump pardoned an individual who ran a drug-selling, dark website. he also had some murder for hire accusations just to add a little color to what a decent person he was. i think that the place where we

can make the most progress, as ranking member durbin mentioned, is section 230. i applaud the litigation moving forward and the lawyers who have been able to negotiate the various hurdles that congress has erected to the american system of justice having its role in dealing with these deaths and tragedies. i think there is bipartisan support for repealing section 230. i think the sooner we do that the better we are. it is simply wrong for these enormously powerful social media entities to have rights to do harm to americans without accountability that no other entity shares. so, they have blown any excuse to maintain that privileged position with their behavior, in

my view. let's go for 230. with respect to enforcement, reassigning fbi, doj, dea agents off of this task i don't think is a good idea. we will find out how many were reassigned. cutting dollars i think is a big mistake. i will close with a question to dr. farfan. it has been my experience as a prosecutor for many years that we put a lot of attention into interdicting distribution networks for drugs. by comparison, we put a very small effort into interdicting the financial return of that money, the hiding of that money in international accounts and international dark money banking and other covert systems. what more should we be doing to get after the financing of these cartels, and is the gun traffi

ck back to them part of the payment for the drugs that we try to interdict coming in? chair britt: we are out of time, so if you could keep your response brief? sen. whitehouse: as long as the question is asked before the clock runs out the witness gets to answer it. dr. farfan: in terms of the illicit flows, certainly because money-laundering laundering takes place across jurisdictions it requires also cooperation. the best cases we have seen between mexico and the united states on money-laundering operations had to do with working together between two governments. i understand this is not easily done, but these are the most effective cases for money-laundering. certainly firearms trafficking as part of that. there is a clear notion that drugs normally come from the south and firearms and money flow from the united states to mexico. there is a linkage between these criminal markets. if we want to save lives by

tackling the fentanyl supply, they should also be paying attention to money and firearms. sen. whitehouse: i appreciate your courtesy. chair britt: with regards to social media, i appreciate the work done on this committee, and certainly senator blumenthal, senator blackburn, and the work they've done in a bipartisan way to address this. as the mom of a 14-year-old and 15-year-old who knows that snapchat is used to tell people what color uniform they wear that day or figure out where friends are going to meet, this can happen to anyone anywhere. i am so grateful for both of you using your voice to speak up and speak directly to this issue. i want to address complaints about the brief pause on grant funding. it is important to know that this was a temporary pause and to the extent permitted by law. law enforcement grants are handed out during this time of year. our constituent needs will

continue to be taken care of while president trump delivers on-the-job voters elected him to do. voters asked him to grow our economy, protect our communities, and ensure that taxpayer dollars are used wisely. examining spending as part of that. president trump has always backed the blue, just like chairman grassley and just like myself. additionally, one more thing before we move on, i would like to enter a letter of support from 11 law enforcement organizations for halt fentanyl, including the national narcotic officers association, which is in town for its annual conference. i am pleased that we have several of their members here today as guests of chairman grassley. these organizations represent constituents from each of our states and a significant portion of our nation's federal, state, local law enforcement communities. as the letter says, for the sake of public safety we must pass halt fentanyl act. senator blackburn.

sen. blackburn: thank you, madam chairman. mr. puerto, -- mr. puerta, i am sorry for your loss. your son had an adhd diagnosis. i was looking at our medicare program in tennessee and there are over 400,000 children in our state of 7 million people who have an adhd diagnoses. i know that we have, so many times, seen kids that you deal with the pain would try to get something. my heart breaks for you. i hope that we take a deeper dive. if confirmed, that robert f kennedy will take a deeper dive into how we medicate children and work on these issues. thank you for the good work that

you were doing. ms. norring, thank you for your support of kosa. we share your heartbreak. i stepped out of committee to speak to a group of children who are here for wired human and are working on this issue. the work that you and other parents have done has encouraged these children to stand up and be a resource to their peers and help them through this issue. i think you -- thank you for that good work you are doing. sheriff barnes, i want to talk to you about hidta. in 2022 we had 134 criminal organizations that were dismantled by hidta. we had over 8700 kilograms of drugs that were removed nationally. in tennessee, our tbi director,

every time he sees me he says we have to reauthorize hidta because it is effective. the appalachia task force operating in tennessee was responsible for removing $50 million of street value drugs off the market. talk about why it's crucial that hidta be reauthorized for law enforcement officers like you. mr. barnes: thank you, senator blackburn, and for the reauthorization of hidta. i will summarize it this way. at this time in our nations history, the worst time of our narcotics trafficking and deaths, this is not the time to disenfranchise or divest from the hidta program. hidta programs are national. they rely on local law enforcement taskforces and contributions.

the hidta funding does not fully fund the hidta program. it offsets contributions from locals. with our municipal agencies having hiring problems, they are stepping away from hidta programs. keeping them staff is difficult. reauthorization is critical to keep the glue together to keep the hidta programs running. sen. blackburn: i want to stay with you, sheriff. i've talked to some of our law enforcement agencies. they have talked about sanctuary city policies. i know that senator lee brought this up with you. it seems that in a sanctuary city, to go after these traffickers, it is more difficult. that sometimes you have to find workarounds. i would love for you to talk for a minute about what we can do

that would help you all as you try to deal with the sanctuary cities to get these drugs off the streets. mr. barnes: it is even worse for me in california because of senate bill 54 past six years ago that prohibits my dialogue with federal partners on immigration issues. i have the ability to turn over high level offenders only to ice. they don't always pick them up which requires me to release them back into the communities where they often reoffend. sb 54 movement, we have to be able to cooperate with our federal partners. i think that if we hold these criminals accountable, this is not the general public, those interested in my care in my jail, the safest environment to transfer them to ice custody, will protect immigrant communities from them returning to prey upon them. sen. blackburn: many people will

say that when they get back out, when they evade law enforcement in the sanctuary cities, they really return even more committed to abuse people in those communities where they have been trafficking those drugs, to pick up the pace of selling the drugs. i look at these sanctuary city policies and i think how difficult it makes your job when you're trying to keep our communities safe. we thank you for the work you're doing. we thank each of you for being here today. senator blumenthal and i will continue to push kosa to get that foundational law that will allow us to hold social media to account. chair britt: senator schmitt. sen. schmitt: two hearings and

you are chairing the committee. amazing. thank you for recognizing me. first of all, as a parent of three young children, not so young now, teenaged girls and my son steven is 20. thank you for being here and sharing your stories. i cannot imagine how difficult it is to do this, but it is incredibly effective when you do show up and share those stories. it humanizes an issue that can often become about different things other than the actual human impact. from my perspective, the job i had before this, attorney general in the state of missouri, actually serving with senator moody, we went to the border and learned a lot about the activity and how the cartels -- and it is not just the drugs. there are obviously the drugs,

but the value of the human trafficking alone -- and this is a few years ago -- was $100 million a week. a week. we are not even talking about the value of the drugs they are moving. these zones of influence they have into the interior of the united states. this is a serious crisis, and obviously it is killing, you know, too many of our young men and women in communities across the country. it is overused now, but every state truly is a border state when it comes to this. about cartels, i want to ask you, doctor, in your view is mexico doing enough from a law enforcement perspective as it relates to the cartels? dr. farfan: i think both countries need to do more.

sen. schmitt: i am asking about mexico. there is a lot that we need to do, but i want to ask about mexico. part of the reason you're here is to speak to the relationship between the u.s. and mexico. are they doing enough? dr. farfan: i think there is more that can be done by mexico. sen. schmitt: what would that be? dr. farfan: working closer with u.s. counterparts. also having the diagnoses of these connections between the markets of firearms trafficking and drug trafficking to really benefit communities on both sides of the border. sen. schmitt: do you feel, and there has been testimony in high-profile cases, including the el chapo case, there has been testimony from witnesses who were once members of the cartels that there is widespread corruption at high levels of the mexican government that are preventing them from doing what they should do to crack down on the cartels. do you share those concerns?

dr. farfan: i -- i would not necessarily align myself with the testimony of potentially a criminal witness from a case like that. i understand that there are concerns about corruption within mexico, and i understand that there are questions about needing to address that. having said that, i think that general accusations about corruption of an entire government are not necessarily productive for good u.s.-mexico engagement. sen. schmitt: i guess what i am getting at -- and i understand the complexities of some testimony, but it is not just a one-off example. i think that the concern that i have is there is very little being spent, honestly, on law enforcement writ large in mexico. i don't know that this has been given attention over the last four years that it should. hopefully that dynamic is changing.

the cooperation between the u.s. and mexico is important, no doubt, but i want to turn my attention to you, sheriff. with my limited time, you do have, sort of, one arm tied behind your back given the laws in the state of california, the sanctuary status which i don't pretend to understand at all. it is a mess. when i was the ag in missouri, we had unique partnerships where we would a few ties people to work in the u.s. attorney's office to go after violent crime that maybe at a local level they were choosing not to pursue. is that -- if you have your arm tied behind your back, maybe that is a way forward? you have to have more federal agents working with u.s. attorneys to go after these folks because at a local level it is harder to do? mr. barnes: there are two parts. under california law i am

prohibited from cooperating with ice under any manner, including housing individuals in my jail. i cannot hold ice detainees and my jails. regarding federal task scores or designating task force officers, or those who are attorneys to prosecute on the behalf of the u.s. attorney's office, that is being done in california, but not specific to immigration. specific to fentanyl directly. sen. schmitt: thank you to the witnesses, thank you for being here today. chair britt: before we move on, i would like to enter into the record a letter of support from the premier prevention association representing over 7000 coalition members across the country in strong support of the halt fentanyl. the coalition supports millions of high school and medical students across this nation and have proven effective in reducing youth substance abuse and use. we thank them for their support of halt fentanyl. senator hirono. sen. hirono:, thank you, madam

chair. my sympathies to mr. puerta and ms. norring. this is a complicated question in the sense that we have disagreements on who is bringing in fentanyl into our country, but we all know that it is creating havoc. i was particularly interested in noting how we can prevent young people from getting access to fentanyl. at the same time we need a justice department that is stable. right now, there is chaos as this administration tries to eliminate anyone who can stand up to them. in addition, when they want the names of everyone who had anything to do with the january

6 investigations and prosecutions, we are talking about potentially thousands of fbi agents. you can imagine the chaos that is going on in that department. mr. puerta, i know that you mentioned "dead on arrival" as a documentary that is shown. what age do you think children should be when they are alerted to not buying anything on the internet? this goes to ms. norring as well in terms of prevention. a documentary like the one that you mentioned, does it really impact the young people? if not, what does in terms of education? mr. puerta: "dead on arrival" is a 22 minute documentary that we use in high schools and junior

high schools. we started with fifth and sixth graders in lake county, california. i have a stack of letters from high school students, junior high school students, elementary school students who've seen this documentary who had absolutely no idea of the impending danger and had no idea that buying illicit fentanyl was as easy as ordering a pizza through snapchat. sen. hirono: the danger of this drug is that they can die on first use? mr. puerta: according to the new england journal of medicine, 22 children per week died in 2022 -- non-addicted children -- between the ages of 14 and 18, mostly driven by illicit fentanyl pills. sen. hirono: so easy to obtain on the internet. that is why there is a number of us on the committee who have raised the issue of very

dramatically limiting the section 230 immunity for the social platforms. what parents in particular have to go through to hold these entities accountable, it shouldn't be that way. there are a number of us on that page. i believe that you mentioned there are schools who don't want to provide this kind of education for fear of something. could you go over more why that is? also for both of you, what can we do at the federal level to really support the kind of prevention efforts that you both i believe are engaged in? ms. norring: thank you, senator, for the question. i think this education needs to be taught as early as elementary school. from my own experience back home and studies and surveys done back home with our students,

12-year-olds are the start of where they are beginning with the vapes and thc vapes. the earlier that we can reach them, the better. it is multiple roadblocks. they don't want it in their schools, there is not enough time in the school year, there is the stigma that it could create more kids being exposed to these, we have seen a decline in the deer programs for that reason -- d.a.r.e. programs for that reason. sen. hirono: what can we do at the federal level to promote and support your efforts? ms. norring: that was a big thing with families like mine pushing to get schools to carry naloxone. as part of the legalizing marijuana bill in 2025, schools have to require, they are required to provide fentanyl poisoning education. it is kind of, with the legalization of that, it is kind

of hypocritical to have that education piece tucked into that in my opinion. now we are saying it is ok to do one drug but stay away from these. mr. puerta: most of these nonprofits are made up of bereaved families who came together because they felt the government wasn't doing enough and we felt that we could not stand idly by and watch these children die on a daily basis. one thing that could be helpful from the federal government is giving us grants to community organizations like ourselves. we don't fall into a certain category where we can get grants to do this. we are self-funded. it is really difficult to do that, especially when we are traveling across the nation doing the work we do. we don't charge any money for what we do. we charge zero dollars to go to a school. we take time out of our days and weeks. he was in lake county,

california for a full week educating 5000 students on the dangers of illicit fentanyl. community grants for our specific niche, for lack of better words, would be great. sen. hirono: i think that is something that we can do provided we have an administration that will put a blanket hold on all grants to entities such as yours. thank you very much for your testimony and your suggestion. chair britt: thank you. as has been discussed today, in 2024, cbp seized approximately 22,000 pounds of fentanyl at u.s. ports of entry on our southern border and northern order and coastal and interior ports. that is nearly 1.1 billion lethal doses. that averages out to approximately three doses for every person residing in the united states. perhaps, of even greater

concern, it has been estimated, as i mentioned, only 5% to 10% of fentanyl crossing the border is actually being interdicted. the flow of drugs across our borders is ravaging communities around our country, including in my home state of alabama. in 2023, the annual report of the alabama opioid overdose and addiction counsel discussed the alarming increase in fentanyl-related overdose deaths and poisonings in alabama between 2018 and 2022. in 2022, alabama seized a the equivalent of 8.3 million lethal doses of fentanyl, enough to kill everyone in the state of alabama plus 3 million more. in fy 2024, that number was up to 12,400 grams of fentanyl. let's be clear that these numbers increasing represent

more devastated families and more deaths. i have sat across from far too many parents in my short time in the united states senate that are grieving, just as you two are. thank you for sharing your story. i will have our team clip your testimony and put it together so that we can help you in that psa. you are changing lives. you are here today to not only see change in law, but to make sure we save lives and that no one else has to go through what you did. thank you for sharing your story. i can promise you with every ounce of me, we will do everything possible to elevate it. ask parents to watch your testimony today. ask parents to listen to what you are saying so that they don't have to go through the unthinkable that you have. we are so grateful for the willingness to be here. what i would like to know, sheriff barnes, you have

testified regarding this issue before. can you tell us from your perspective of a local law enforcement officer why you think the federal government needs a more effective strategy in place then you have seen over the last four years at our southern border in particular? what should elements of the strategy look like and how can congress work with the president to implement these things moving forward? mr. barnes: i have testified to this before. i think that if you look from post 9/11 to where we are today, the threat horizon is much broader than 24 years ago and it encompasses other categorical crimes like cyber, fentanyl, and human trafficking. theyare all on the same platform . specific to fentanyl, we have to work laterally and vertically. vertically with federal and state and local partners. laterally with all of the different efforts being put forth on the trafficking entities that are disparately

addressing the issue but not synergizing the efforts very well. i think we have a problem with communications. if we are going to do a great offense we have to communicate with our federal partners at the border, and how we can pivot, and also probably the maritime issues we will face going forward because of the closure at the border. they will pivot around on the waterways. chair britt: dr. westlake, thank you for the incredible work that you've done as a medical professional and an advocate working to protect americans from the dangers of illicit drugs like fentanyl. in my view, we need to be as bold as possible when it comes to taking steps to protecting american children and families from the scourge of fentanyl. that is one of the reasons that i am a cosponsor of the halt fentanyl act. can you comment on the impact

that frs class scheduling had on the enforcement landscape over the last several years? if there are any myths about class scheduling that you would like to dispel? dr. westlake: thank you for the question. the myths would be that people who are incarcerated from it. it has been reported that people are not being incarcerated for it for the same reason the people are not dying from it. because it does not exist . i do not envy the job that you have on the dais of addressing, one of the things that you address is the illicit fentanyl scourge. the lowest hanging fruit that you can address is permanently scheduling fentanyl-related substances. there is no impact on criminal justice if it is negative. it saves people's life, it is a proven strategy. bipartisan.

i encourage that to happen. chair britt: thank you for your time today. i am going to recognize senator moody and also this is the fastest rise to the top ever. you will be chairing this committee as i go to vote. sen. moody: this has been one of my priorities as attorney general and i'm honored to be here among all of you. if you are a family member who has lost a loved one or law enforcement official who stood by that family and worked with someone who lost a loved one, will you stand up? i just wanted this hearing to reflect the power of americans coming together under such tragic loss to get something done. thank you so much. this was one of -- thank you, katie britt. this was one of my priorities as attorney general because i

worked alongside so many people who have lost loved ones. law enforcement. i am the mother of a teenager, the wife of a law-enforcement officer. this is the number one killer of working and fighting-aged americans period. we have a lot to deal with, a lot on our plates as leaders of this nation. this is the number one killer of working and fighting-aged americans right now. it has been. if i sound upset about the fact that we have not moved faster on this, that is justified. i want to commend chairman grassley, who called this hearing. the last four years this committee has not held one hearing on fentanyl. again, i will repeat, this is the leading killer of working and fighting-aged americans. if you are a lab in china, a cartel in mexico, an

organization sitting by while your company or platform is being used to facilitate the trafficking of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances, this is happening on purpose. this is intentional. no one can say that it's not, because things can be done. like, i don't know, start with a hearing to talk about fentanyl. bring family members who have lost loved ones. law enforcement working on the front lines. thank you for taking the time to be here. i'm glad that this is one of my first hearings. i want to thank chairman grassley for doing this. the last four years we should have had a hearing on this in this committee. we have not. i am the newest member here. i sit at the kids' table. i'm not even attached to the real bench. we will talk about moving forward, i assure you that. joni ernst said that when she got here she planned to be a squealer on budget issues and i

plan to be a squealer on the loss of life.this weakens us. i know that all of you know that. i want to thank a great president who has done a lot in the first two weeks of office. in the last four years i said repeatedly as ag, we need to declare the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. he got that done. we need to do that to send military to th and by the way when i pointed out as dr. farfan said, when i pointed out that the mexican president at the time said that no is not our problem. i am in mexico first president. signal is an american problem. soon thereafter our commander-in-chief said that mexico was a greatur partner. i am so glad when the president now that when the first two weeks leveraged tariffs that now mexico and canada have both

pledged resources and bodies to shut those borders and stop the flow of fentanyl. that's how you get stuff done. it can happen if you people committed to it. transnational problem give a car transnational effort and i'mts glad we have a commander-in-chief holding feet to the fire in getting it done. there has been a 350% increase in fentanyl deaths among our teens in the last three years, four years. i want to say as a mother i could barely hold it together when i was listening to your testimony. i have a teenager. i cannot imagine the indescribable overwhelming traumatic pain that youou have suffered but i want to thank you for being here, for sharing your stories, most important for sharing your children's stories so that we could not only honor daniel and devon, remember them,

but bring meaning to what you have gone through so that other parents -- i want to say i and you and other parts right now of teenagers we arena the first generation of parents having to deal with this mess. we are learning as we go. you are on the front lines in this fight help because leading the way shining the light. we've got your back what we need you showing as where to go and i want to thank you for that. i want to start with you, ms. norring. what platform did your son obtain counterfeit bills that contained a lethal dose of fentanyl? >> snapchat. >> i would like to move to you, mr. porter, what platform did your son find a counterfeit pill that can take a lethal dose of fentanyl? >> snapchat. >> snapchat has become a vast

online drug market. there is no doubt that it facilitates drug sales doubled with children many who think they are buying xanax or percocet or adderall when in reality it is a pill that has a lethal dose of fentanyl. seven out of ten counterfeit pills now have a lethal dose of fentanyl. many of these one pills can kill four adults. that is what it after lurking for our children. the national crime prevention council as to 80% of teenagers and young adults fentanyl poison gas couldld be traced to social media. i know we talked about snapchat because that is what rot tragedy upon your lies like that or other social media platforms where children, vulnerable populations are obtaining access to drugs. teens can now get drugs so easily the cartels think of the social media platforms as their

uber eats for quick delivery right into the hands of our children. i agree with you, ms. porter and ms. norring. the bedroom isre what i was taut our children would go up stair, shut they're doing they would be safe. that is no longer the case. which presents challenges to parents like we've never seen before. they dea has one caucus cartels are now targeting young americans to platforms killing the fentanyl epidemic. every week the equivalent of a a high school classrooms with the students dies from fentanyl overdose deaths. this is an incredible statistic. if we sell this with any other product that would be federal law shutting down these products to make them face to really go back on market and we saw the time and time again in the automobile industry. when we start losing people to faulty automobile, there was a stop sale order.

they had to become an safe before they could be sold again. why can't something similar be applied to social media platforms? especially when the death toll is so egregious. you can look at the deaths from some ofth these automobiles and that was over years, the pinto was 89 deaths, or 180 deaths, that the two fastest way to t was 89 deaths, ford bronco 823 deaths. we lose weigh way more tht in kids overdosing from fentanyl every single year. we have got it going. we've got to get stuff done so i would just say this. this is what happens when you're the junior senator and your last. if you could tell us, , congres, after we passed the halt fentanyl act which deals with the changing chemical compound to get around c thed law, righ, after that what is most important thing we can do to stop the death toll on our children here in the united

states? >> i would say, senator, passing the kids online safety act, the cooper davis, the social media reform really needs to take the front lines. section 230 reform needs to be done because you cannot continue having his platforms have that kind of power over paris. and be allowed to care kill our children. >> mr. puerta? >> there's a lot we can do. definitely have to schedule the fentanyl, all of it is analog elicited no in schedule one drug. i would also say though we have to talk at the supply chain. we have to strengthen border security director cracked on the chemical supply. we have to destroy the cartel infrastructure. we have to increase intelligence sharing between both countries, support mexico security forces, expand sanctions and designations. we have to cut off their finances. td bank was just find $4 billion

because they were caught laundering all of this money from the cartels. why is nothing happening to the american banks here in this country was laundering the money? there so much we can do. i as a parent should should have all this information. i'm just a small business or from santa clarita california. why do i have all this information? because i do study this because i do want more kids to die. to go after these the launderers, we have to go out and target corrupt officials on both sides of the out come out on the abba to mexico and here in the united states. we have to seize assets and it also -- a lot of people who are addicted to drugs in the united states and we have nothing to them. nothing. we have medi-cal maybe to get some 30 day rehabilitation in the near out on your own. we have to get them has a to help us will. we have to increase penalties for distributors. we have to hold mexico accountable, pressure the mexican government to do more obviously. we have to leverage trade and

diplomatic tools, , military intervention is a last resort. mr. trump, donald trump are president designated them as, criminal cartels as fdo foreign terrorist organization. that's wonderful. that'ser needed but we have seen from here in the united states as well. so i think that it has to be bilateral and it has to be bipartisan and there's a lot that needs to be done. if not, more kids are going to die. but definitely the first and most important aspect of this is getting this scheduled as a schedule one. we have to do it because if not more kids are going to continue dying. >> thank you for being here. thank you for your advising us and devon and daniel certainly will be remembered in this committee and you make sure of that. thank you so much. at this time i get the honor of

recognizing senator tillis. >> well, what a rise here already, chair. >> so they tell me. >> i think what we just heard is really the mood of congress in general. first, i have spoken with too many families who are suffering through what you have suffered through. we have to change things. ms. farfan, i was here for the opening testimony, and you wanted to focus on the southern. i believe that the sisters n which is that something thatt concerned me and it had to do with the will of the mexican government. i want you to, first, i should say i do believe we have filled the social media platforms accountable, but make no mistake about it. these docs that when the cartels will find another way to get the poison here if we don't do