Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment that directs the Department of the Health and Human Services to issue and expand guidelines for medical providers for prescribing naloxone to reflect a major shift that has occurred in the opioid health crisis that we continue to work to counter today. Mr. Chairman, earlier this year, I sat in a room with my colleagues on the Bipartisan Heroin Task Force and listened to Dr. Francis Collins and the NIH leadership present data revealing how we have seen a shift in the opioid crisis. For the first time, we learned that opioid overdoses from prescriptions of opioid drugs have dropped. That is good news. The shocking news was that overdose rates for illicit opioids, heroin and fentanyl, had risen at an alarming rate. If we are going to save lives of people overdosing from increasingly prevalent and increasingly unpredictable illicit compounds, we need to make sure naloxone gets in the right hands. My amendment would provide necessary guidance to patients, providers, public health professionals, first responders, and loved ones on the ability to obtain effective doses of naloxone to combat overdoses of all types of opioids, prescriptions or otherwise. It is so crucial that people dealing with this brain disease know how to use naloxone in an emergency and, importantly, understand that it is okay to have naloxone in the home. I was proud that I and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.…”