I have introduced, with my good friend and colleague Congresswoman Blunt Rochester, the STOP Fentanyl Act to provide a comprehensive, balanced public health approach.

My legislation, the Emergency Support for Substance Use Disorder, was included in the American Rescue Plan to ensure smaller organizations on the front lines of the addiction crisis would receive support for their harm reduction services…

We would love to meet with you. I will set that up. We have game-changer legislation that would eliminate the exclusion of Medicaid during incarceration.

What began as an opioid crisis has evolved to an epidemic that knows no bounds.

We must do more to address the new realities of this epidemic defined by illicit synthetic opioids as well as ensure that our policies don't reinforce the mistakes of our past that disproportionately have impacted communities of color.

This is the reason that 7 years ago I founded the bipartisan Congressional Opioid Task Force and why this Congress we have now expanded it to the Addiction and Mental Health Task Force, to include this complex crisis that needs…

I am very concerned, as many of us are on both sides of the aisle, about the disparate impact on race with these mandatory minimums.

So my legislation with Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, known as the STOP Fentanyl Act, is comprehensive in its public health approach to addressing fentanyl.

I am pleased to see that this administration's priorities focus on evidence-based approaches that holistically address prevention, support, and treatment for those battling with substance use disorder.

This is deeply personal. And New Hampshire has consistently had one of the highest rates of overdose deaths in the country.

I think I speak for many people when I say simply, how could this have happened in the United States of America?