Todd Young: “thousands of miles separate Warsaw, IN, from America's southern border. That distance doesn't mean events on our…”

“thousands of miles separate Warsaw, IN, from America's southern border. That distance doesn't mean events on our southern border don't affect Hoosiers in Warsaw and communities across our State. Last month, I met with local law enforcement officials in the Warsaw area, and they shared some heart-wrenching stories with me. I heard about police arriving at a family's home. Both parents had overdosed, and one was unconscious--these terrible experiences right in front of their kids. They told me about emergency calls, the voice on the other end crying that a child had gone into cardiac arrest. In these situations and too many others, they suspected the same source: fentanyl. The fentanyl entering the United States through our southern border is hitting this northern Indiana community hard. It is hitting all of our communities. The opioid epidemic--and it is that--is the worst drug crisis in America's history. In the decade between 1999 and 2020, it killed over 564,000 of our country men and women. The number of lives lost is so great, it brought America's life expectancy down to a 25-year low. Now, because of fentanyl, this crisis is growing worse. Two milligrams of this synthetic opioid are enough to kill, and it is killing more young Americans than cancer, more than car accidents, more than COVID. There is enough of it reaching our country to kill every single American many times over.…”