Chuck Grassley: “we have heard a great deal on this floor about the problem of drugs in this country. Senator Hatch, Senator Feinstein…”

“we have heard a great deal on this floor about the problem of drugs in this country. Senator Hatch, Senator Feinstein, Senator Moynihan, and others, have spoken eloquently about the personal and societal costs that we bear because of illegal drug use. Add in the abuse of legal drugs in this country and the costs are staggering. The record of the harm done is clear. The facts accumulate in depressing measure, detailing the damage done to individuals, to families, to communities, and to our civic life. Drugs destroy a person's capacity to live a decent life. They contribute to a widening circle of hurt that goes far beyond any individual choice to use drugs. Like a stone dropped into a pond, the ripples move outward in an ever-widening circle. The result is an arc of pain and loss that is no respecter of social position, education, age, race, or location. Nothing brought this home to me more forcefully than a letter I received recently from a constituent. A constituent whose family has borne the brunt of what illegal drug use truly means. We can pile up facts and figures. We have the numbing statistics. But these cold, sterile numbers do not bring home to us the true meaning of what is involved.”