Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the Transnational Drug Trafficking Act of 2015 with my colleagues and friends, Senators Charles Grassley, Richard Blumenthal, Heidi Heitkamp, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Udall. This bill, which passed the Senate unanimously in the last Congress, supports the Obama Administration's Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime by providing the Department of Justice with crucial tools to combat the international drug trade. As drug traffickers find new and innovative ways to avoid prosecution, we cannot allow them to exploit loopholes because our laws lag behind. This legislation has three main components. First, it puts in place penalties for extraterritorial drug trafficking activity when individuals have reasonable cause to believe that illegal drugs will be trafficked into the United States. Current law says that drug traffickers must know that illegal drugs will be trafficked into the United States and this legislation would lower the knowledge threshold to reasonable cause to believe. The Department of Justice has informed my office that, it sees drug traffickers from countries like Colombia, Bolivia and Peru who produce cocaine but then outsource transportation of the cocaine to the United States to violent Mexican drug trafficking organizations.…”