Dick Durbin: “before I speak on a separate issue, I would like to address the issue raised by the Senator from Maine. Her experience…”

“before I speak on a separate issue, I would like to address the issue raised by the Senator from Maine. Her experience in Maine is exactly the same as my experience in Illinois. There is no town too small, no suburb too wealthy not to have been touched by heroin overdoses and deaths. It is interesting--the Senator may be encouraged to know that in one small town in downstate Illinois, when they were desperate when two or three teenagers died in 1 week in a small town, they heard about a program in Gloucester, MA, where the chief of police, reacting to what the Senator said earlier, realized that we just can't keep arresting addicts. It is not working. He announced that if someone who was addicted came into the sheriff's office or the police department and reported their addiction, they wouldn't arrest them; they would take them to a treatment center immediately. The next day, 27 teenagers showed up in this small town in downstate Illinois. Then, of course, the challenge was where to take them. In rural areas, it is a long drive. Some of them were not in good shape for a drive. But they went into treatment. What they told me after I visited the town was that something happened immediately: The jail was empty because the jail had been filled with petty criminals who had been stealing, burglarizing, trying to feed their habits. Now they were in rehab. So it made it a safer community and at least gave them a chance to straighten out their lives.…”