Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer an amendment moving $5 million from the Drug Enforcement Administration into the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program, which is part of the Department of Justice funding of initiatives to combat the opioid epidemic. I offer this amendment because ending the war on drugs has to mean changing our priorities in order to keep all communities safe and healthy. The best way we do that is by offering people the help and support they need before arrest and criminalization should be considered in the first place. The amendment is a relatively commonsense one. As of now, the DEA will be funded at $2.36 billion, which is nearly a $90 million 1-year increase and $77.7 million above even the President's request. The Bronx has an unprecedented opioid crisis with deadly overdoses nearly doubling in just a few years. As families across our Nation know, the opioid crisis is not limited just to the Bronx. Just yesterday in the Oversight and Reform Committee, we heard testimony from medical experts and providers, and the testimony from Nurse Gray from West Virginia struck me. She said that we cannot arrest ourselves out of this. We have to make sure that we are caring for people in order to prevent this crisis from exploding. Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano).”