‘No family is immune’: As Congress debates fentanyl, mothers share their grief at hearings

WASHINGTON–Logan Rachwal entered college in fall 2020. He never finished his freshman year. He died at 19 years old in his dorm room at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Feb. 14, 2021.

A toxicology report showed three different forms of fentanyl in his system, even though he didn't seek out the drug, his mother said.

"Losing Logan was like a bomb going off in the middle of our family that we had build our life around," Wisconsin mom Erin Rachwal said during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday morning. "The explosion killed our son and Caden's brother."

The debate at hearings this week split among partisan lines, but grieving parents were unified in their testimony: Children are dying.

Logan was among the tens of thousands of young people who overdose on fentanyl after unknowingly buying counterfeit pills or taking other drugs laced with the highly potent and addictive synthetic opioid.

"No family is immune to this danger," said Rachwal, who noted her son did not use fentanyl. "This could happen to your family. Fentanyl does not discriminate."

Her testimony underscored a major shift in the opioid crisis. For much of the last 20 years, there have been warning signs of addiction and treatment. Now death is often the only warning sign. Parents say children don't have a chance to learn from their mistakes because they are instantly dying from them.

House and Senate try to stop fentanyl trafficking

The fentanyl trafficking supply chain is so dangerous it has created the leading cause of death in Americans ages 18 to 45.

More than 70,000 people died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021, according to the most recent federal data available. That's more than double the amount in 2019 and a large share of the nearly 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021.

"It is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced," Drug Enforcement Agency  Administrator Anne Milgram said in a Senate hearing Feb. 15. "Fentanyl is everywhere. From large metropolitan areas to rural America, no community is safe from this poison."

At 9 a.m. Wednesday, a House Judiciary subcommittee examined the issue.

Subcommittee Chairman Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, pointed out that from 1999 to 2020, there were 564,000 opioid overdose deaths. In 2021 alone, there were more than 100,000.

"Communities all across this country are suffering from this poison," he said.

Congressional Republicans have tied the fentanyl crisis to a surge of illegal border crossings, but Democrats say that is misinformation that conflates migrants seeking asylum with a dangerous influx of fentanyl trafficking.

Border Patrol and the DEA say the overwhelming majority of fentanyl is trafficked through legal ports of entry by U.S. citizens driving cars and commercial vehicles, hiding the illicit drugs among other goods.

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'This is a war'

While Democrats and Republicans in the Senate debate the politics of the issue, grieving mothers have been the face of this crisis.

"This is a war. Act like it! Do something," pleaded Rebecca Kiessling.

Kiessling, a Michigan mom who lost her sons Caleb and Kyler to fentanyl overdoses in 2020, testified during a House committee hearing Tuesday on the southern border.

She admonished lawmakers for not doing enough to battle the opioid crisis.

"We have a weather balloon from China going across our country, no one died and everyone’s freaking out about it. But 100,000 die every year and nothing’s been done. Not enough is being done. Numbers are going up, not down," she said.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., during the Wednesday hearing said he is a member of the GOP who doesn't need much convincing.

"The war on drugs is one that has been won by drugs," he said.

What is fentanyl?

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid so powerful that it is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It is highly addictive and deadly, even in the smallest quantities.

Fentanyl is often found in counterfeit pills – deceptively made to look like prescription drugs – and other illegal drugs. It is frequently mixed in with other drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. Even trace amounts can kill the user.

It is nearly impossible to tell if street drugs are laced with fentanyl unless they are tested, according to the CDC.

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Where is fentanyl made?

The supply chain mainly traces to China, where chemicals in fentanyl are mass produced.

Those chemicals are then typically sent to Mexican cartels, which turn them into fentanyl powder and pills that are often made to look like prescription drugs.

Fentanyl typically enters the U.S. from Mexico through ports of entry in low concentration, high-volume loads, according to the DEA. Deadly doses can move in tiny quantities and are sometimes shipped by mail. However, fentanyl is often hidden among legal goods and trafficked by U.S. citizens driving cars and tractor trailers.

In fiscal year 2022, more than 14,000 pounds of fentanyl, or hundreds of millions of doses, was seized at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Customs and Border Protection.

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Biden administration officials told senators last week how the fentanyl pipeline increases the challenges they face in stopping the surge of deaths. They also said China and Mexico need to cooperate more with the U.S. to reverse the increase in fentanyl deaths.

"We believe Mexico needs to do more to stop the harm that we're seeing," Milgram said.

Todd Robinson, assistant secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said the U.S. has had "very limited engagement with China" about fentanyl. "We have a number of issues to discuss with them."

Fentanyl poisoning 'a national crisis'

The latest trend in the fentanyl crisis is one of the most disturbing to lawmakers and law enforcement: kids are being poisoned.

Many of the opioid deaths among teens happen after they buy drugs illegally through social media, such as prescription pain killers like Percocet, unaware that they contain fentanyl. Some of them have taken a pill for the first time – not knowing it's counterfeit and full of fentanyl – and have died.

In 2022, the DEA seized more than 50 million poisoned pills.

When someone dies after taking one of the counterfeit pills, Milgram calls them drug poisonings, not overdoses, because people are tricked into consuming fentanyl.

From September 2021 through August 2022, more than 107,000 people died of drug poisonings in the United States, Milgram said.

"Every day, 294 people die from drug poisonings," she said. "Countless more people are poisoned and survive. These drug poisonings are a national crisis."

The DEA, now in year two of its "One Pill Can Kill" campaign, is focusing most of its efforts on trying to dismantle the Mexican cartels that are driving U.S. drug poisonings, Milgram said.

Candy Woodall is a Congress reporter for USA TODAY. She can be reached at cwoodall@usatoday.com or on Twitter at @candynotcandace.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fentanyl hearing investigates overdose deaths, how drugs cross border