Political Quotes

“I thank Mr. Green for yielding me the time. My bill, H.R. 4982, the Examining Opioid Treatment Infrastructure Act of 2016, is straightforward, and it is bipartisan. If we are ever going to get a handle on the heroin and opioid epidemic tearing through our communities, we have to know what we are dealing with. We need data, and we need to know what capacity we have in place and what capacity we need to treat this epidemic so that we can make smart and adequate investments, which is why we need this bill. This important bill directs a study of the inpatient and outpatient addiction treatment capacity and availability throughout the U.S., as well as an assessment of the needed types and numbers of treatment options. It seems simple, but there is no better place to start than at the beginning, with an understanding of the addiction treatment infrastructure that we have versus the need for that infrastructure. When I was first elected to Congress, I was not prepared to hear the stories from family members who had lost a loved one due to substance abuse. My office often gets calls from parents wanting to share their stories of the children they have lost to addiction. While opioid addiction may start in many ways, it ends with a scientifically understood, increasingly treatable medical condition in which the biochemical pathways necessary to normal decisionmaking in the brain have been hijacked, and the chemistry of the brain permanently altered.…”