Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. H.R. 4223 is intended to address the problem of large-scale medical product theft. I think we will all agree that this crime poses substantial risks to the public. For instance, in North Carolina, in 2009, over 120,000 vials of insulin were stolen and subsequently reintroduced back into the supply chain to be used by unsuspecting patients. Patients should be able to rely on their medications to be safe, effective, and unadulterated, and we certainly need to treat it as a significant crime when criminals steal shipments of drugs. Large-scale medical product theft is a serious problem that merits a serious solution. I commend my colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee for making important changes to this bill. The manager's amendment adopted at markup clarified that the mens rea applies only to conduct in which the perpetrator knows that the product involved is a medical product that is stolen, expired, or not yet released to the public. I also believe that the correct reading of this bill, consistent with the general presumption that the mens rea element in a statute applies to all other nonjurisdictional elements, is that a defendant would have to know that the product is a pre-retail medical product in order to be convicted. While I note these important issues, I want to raise a note of concern about the approach of increasing penalties as a way of addressing crime.…”