House aims at bills battling opioid abuse

WASHINGTON -- The House is diving into a two-week vote-a-thon on dozens of bills aimed at opioids abuse, as lawmakers seek to bolster efforts to curb a crisis killing tens of thousands a year and to score a popular win they can tout for the midterm elections.

A handful of the measures are contentious, including one Republican bill to create new criminal penalties for making or trafficking certain synthetic drugs containing fentanyl. The powerful opioid can be made illegally and is taking a growing toll. Democrats complain the legislation would give the government unfettered power to decide which drugs would be banned, without scientific input.

Most of the 39 bills scheduled for votes this week and dozens more next week are modest and also bipartisan -- testament to the deadly toll the problem is inflicting in urban Democratic and rural Republican areas alike. They include one allowing the government to repay up to $250,000 in student loans for some drug treatment workers who agree to serve in areas with especially severe problems. Others would prod health care providers to display in their records when a patient has substance abuse problems and create grants to help hospitals open opioid treatment centers.

Congress would have to provide actual money for the new programs in later bills -- a difficult task, even for popular programs, with annual federal deficits expected to soon surpass $1 trillion.

Nearly 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2016, including around two-thirds whose deaths involved opioids, according to the most recent figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 11.8 million people misused opioids that year, mostly by abusing prescription pain relievers.

Opioids are natural or synthetic drugs prescribed for pain relief, but they can also be made illicitly or legally provided prescriptions can be abused.

West Virginia had the highest death rate from drug overdoses in 2016, with Ohio, New Hampshire, the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania close behind. California, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania all saw more than 4,000 fatal drug overdoses that year.

The death toll has more than tripled since 2000, when around 17,000 people died from drug abuse. That's made the issue a top campaign-season priority for both parties. Despite enacting two significant bills on the subject in 2016 -- and Congress providing additional billions to combat opioids in this year's government-wide spending bill -- lawmakers are eager for another round.

Republicans have conceded the bills won't eliminate the opioids problem but say they will make a difference. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., tweeted Monday the panel "has been at the tip of the spear in the national fight to combat the opioid crisis."

Democrats said the bills were well-intentioned but expressed less enthusiasm.

"Collectively these bills do not go far enough in providing the resources necessary for an epidemic of this magnitude," Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the committee's top Democrat, said in a written statement. He said the bills don't expand treatment sufficiently and, along with GOP efforts to annul President Barack Obama's health care law, it "would have a devastating impact on people who suffer from opioid substance abuse."

Other bills being debated this week would bolster screening of international mail destined for the U.S. to find illicit opioids and provide grants for more "peer-support" counselors who've also battled drug use. They would set aside some federal housing vouchers for people battling drug use, provide more drug abuse information to health care providers and help states gather data on prescriptions.