Pat Ryan: “I appreciate the opportunity to come to the floor this afternoon about a topic I wish we didn't have to address. This is…”

“I appreciate the opportunity to come to the floor this afternoon about a topic I wish we didn't have to address. This is the plague in our country of fentanyl and fentanyl overdoses that so many families throughout this country have had to deal with. Coming from Ohio, we have, unfortunately, been on the front-end of the opiate crisis. We have been on the front-end of the heroin crisis. And now we are on the front-end of the fentanyl crisis. I have a picture here of Rachel, who is from Akron, Ohio, who died at 17 years old. Her life was tragically cut short because she took a fatal overdose of cocaine that was unknowingly laced with the synthetic opioid carfentanil. Carfentanil, for those of you who haven't been paying close enough attention to all of these issues, is 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 times more potent than morphine. So we have young, talented, beautiful people--in this case, a high school student--who had so much promise, so much life, so much personality. I speak with her mom often and listen to stories about and see pictures of this beautiful young woman. Now, her mom, Cindy, carries on her daughter's legacy, providing peer-to-peer programming at local schools and in the local community. We failed Rachel. This country failed Rachel and her mom and her family and all of the families across this country. We thought we had at one point enough attention on the issue of opioids, on the issue of heroin, now on the issue of fentanyl.…”