Susan Collins

I was impressed by a group of students from Fort Kent, Maine, who have developed their own program to try to help their peers avoid alcohol abuse, tobacco, and opioids.

I just want to tell you that I am just overwhelmed by your ability to take such a tragedy and turn it into something that is going to help other families avoid what you went through.

We need that information. We have been given a minimal amount of documents, most of which are not at all responsive to the request.

You have not produced any documents. We have made phone calls. We have sent emails, status updates. We need that information.

I hope we can do this in a bipartisan basis as kind of the first step toward a much broader issue here.

I am happy to hear that.

Thank you to my colleagues for being so gracious.

I think your online services are excellent, but they do not reach everybody.

Mainers age 65 or older accounted for 19.4 percent of the population of the state in 2016.

By median age, Maine is the oldest state in the Nation and is aging the most rapidly.

For the next 12 years, 10,000 Americans will turn 65 each day.

I have seen firsthand students becoming discouraged from completing their degrees because they start to feel overwhelmed by college costs, debt going up, repayment.

I think these programs, in Maine's experience, have been absolutely critical in filling gaps and thus allowing students to complete their education.

I have no faith in Congress to come up with--that is not really fair, given the track record of the Chairman and the Ranking Member of this Committee, which is a spectacular one.

I joined a bipartisan group of Senators in pressing for an extension of that program in 2015.

I contrast that port security effort with what I perceive to be a real vulnerability in our ability to detect and effectively and quickly respond to an attack using biological or chemical agents.

I want to applaud you for your leadership in this area.

Between 2010 and 2015, the number of grandparents taking care of their grandchildren and being solely responsible for their care soared by 24 percent, and it's because of the opioid epidemic.

I held a hearing in the Aging Committee to look at this issue of grandparents raising their grandkids due to the opioid crisis.

You've said that heroin is what you get when you destroy Dreamland. You've said that isolation is heroin's natural habitat.

In your investigation, did you find that drug dealers tend to target communities that are economically devastated?

This is a whole different approach for law enforcement to take--rather than locking people up, helping them to get the help that they need.

What has been discouraging to me is despite much greater public awareness and much more money and much greater intentions that the problem does not seem to be getting much better.

Thank you for writing such an important book that offers us possibilities.

Senator Susan Collins voted yes the first time around. It looks like she's on her way to that this time around, putting out a statement, lotting this Senate bill.