Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this Congress, I have the great honor of cochairing the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics with my friend and colleague from California, Senator Feinstein.

As our country continues to battle the scourge of the opioid epidemic, fight drug trafficking at our borders, and attack illicit drug sources abroad, the work of this caucus could not be more timely or more important. We must do more, I believe, to treat addiction, and we need to do more to stop Americans from using illegal drugs in the first instance.

Earlier this year, we had a hearing to examine the global narcotics epidemic--and it is a global one--and discuss our country's counternarcotics strategy. At this first hearing, we were lucky to have the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, as a witness. He spoke in depth about the scope of this problem and how the State Department is working with our friends and allies abroad to curb the supply of these illicit drugs. We learned a lot from Secretary Pompeo and our other expert witnesses about the complexity of this problem and a need for a whole- of-government approach. It was a strong way to kick off our agenda.

I am looking forward to our second hearing tomorrow, which I will talk about briefly, where we will have experts testifying on the public health effects of the most commonly used illicit drug--marijuana.

A 2018 report found that an estimated 43.5 million Americans used marijuana in the last year. That is the highest percentage since 2002. While marijuana is still a prohibited drug under Federal law, we know that more than half of the States have legalized it in some form, making the rise in usage not all that surprising.

Now, there is no shortage of people who claim that marijuana has endless health benefits and can help patients struggling with everything from epilepsy to anxiety to cancer treatments. This reminds me of some of the advertising we saw from the tobacco industry years ago where they actually claimed public health benefits from smoking tobacco, which we know, as a matter of fact, were false and that tobacco contains nicotine, an addictive drug, and is implicated with cancers of different kinds.

We are hearing a lot of the same happy talk with regard to marijuana and none of the facts that we need to understand about the public health impact of marijuana use. We have heard from folks here in Congress, as well as a number of our Democratic colleagues who are running for President, about their desire to legalize marijuana at the Federal level. But for the number of voices in support of legalization, there are even more unanswered questions about both the short-term and long-term public health effects.

Between 1995 and 2014, THC concentration--that is the active ingredient in marijuana--has increased threefold, making today's version of the drug far stronger and more addictive than ever before. It is true that for some people marijuana can indeed be addictive.

There has been an effort throughout the medical and scientific communities to learn more about the public health effects of marijuana use, but the results of these studies haven't provided any definitive evidence. I must say that among all the discussion at the State and Federal level about marijuana use and its benefits and its hazards, Congress really hasn't had an opportunity to soberly and deliberately consider this question, which, hopefully, we will be enlightened about tomorrow, about what the public health benefits are of this trend in our country.

A few years ago, the National Academy of Sciences convened an expert committee to review the health effects of cannabis and cannabis-derived products. The committee members were experts in the fields of marijuana and addiction, as well as pediatric and adolescent health, neurodevelopment, public health, and a range of other areas. Their findings were released in January of 2017, and while I will not read you the entire 468-page document, I will tell you that it raised more questions than it provided answers.

For many of the claimed medicinal uses of marijuana, the committee found that there was insufficient evidence to conclude its effectiveness, which is a pretty basic question. The benefits aren't the only thing clouded in mystery--so are the risks. There is simply a lack of scientific evidence to determine the link between marijuana and various health risks. That is something, I would think, Congress and the American people would want to know before we proceed further down this path.

This is especially concerning when it comes to marijuana's youngest users and the impact, for example, on the adolescent brain as it develops. We don't know enough about how this could impair cognitive function or capacity or increase the risk of mental illness or perhaps serve as a gateway for other drugs that are even more damaging to the health of a young person.

With increasing use and a growing number of States giving the green light for marijuana use, we need better answers. At our hearing tomorrow, I am eager to dive into this subject and learn more from our witnesses to help us fill the knowledge gaps that exist when it comes to this subject.

We are honored to have Surgeon General Jerome Adams among our distinguished witnesses. Surgeon General Adams has raised concerns in the past about the increasing use of recreational marijuana among adolescents and its impact on the development of cognitive functions in a growing and developing brain.

We will also hear from Nora Volkow, who is the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Our second panel includes experts in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, pathology, and epidemiology. So we will get a holistic look at the potential health implications. There is simply too much we don't know about the risks and the claimed benefits of marijuana use, and I am looking forward to hearing from our witnesses tomorrow to get a better sense of the facts as Congress contemplates future legislation.

I appreciate the bipartisan commitment of my colleagues on the committee, particularly the cochair of the Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Senator Feinstein, so that we can get to the bottom of the risks and benefits associated with marijuana use, and I believe tomorrow it will get us moving in the right direction.

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