Political Quotes

“I rise to introduce the Transnational Drug Trafficking Act of 2013 with my colleagues and friends, Senator Charles Grassley, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Tom Udall and Senator Ron Wyden. This bill, which passed the Senate unanimously in the last Congress, will support the Obama administration's Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime by providing the Department of Justice with crucial tools to help combat the international drug trade. As drug traffickers find new and innovative ways to avoid prosecution, we must keep up with them rather than allowing them to exploit loopholes as 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 with increasing frequency, it sees drug traffickers from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru who produce cocaine in their countries but leave transit of cocaine to the United States in the hands of Mexican drug trafficking organizations such as the Zetas.…”