Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2851, the Stop the Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogues Act. This bill is well intentioned but fatally flawed. I agree with the goal of preventing dangerous synthetic drugs from evading regulation, but this bill circumvents existing procedures for placing synthetic analogues on the existing schedule of the Controlled Substances Act, which reasonably incorporate medical and scientific analysis in favor of a law enforcement-focused approach that would worsen the mass incarceration crisis and could undermine scientific research. There are already statutory mechanisms in place to provide for the scheduling and regulation of new drugs that may be dangerous if misused. Those mechanisms require an appropriate degree of collaboration at the outset among the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Food and Drug Administration in scheduling synthetic analogues. This is because each of these agencies is equally important to the scheduling process. By marginalizing the roles of HHS and the FDA in this bill, we would establish a mechanism that does not adequately consider scientific and medical evidence about the substance in question. Such input is critical to a process that may result in the imposition of significant criminal penalties related to these analogue drugs.…”