Rob Portman: “I appreciate the thoughtful comments from my colleague from Oklahoma of the need for us to have an independent…”

“I appreciate the thoughtful comments from my colleague from Oklahoma of the need for us to have an independent judiciary. I am on the floor to talk about a different issue, and it is the latest, very troubling information that we are receiving regarding the addiction epidemic and specifically drug overdose deaths in the United States. I am also going to talk about some of the steps we can take right now to address that reality. One of the top priorities I have had in this body and in the House has been this drug addiction issue. Frankly, this is a moment of frustration because we were making progress, and then COVID-19 hit. Unfortunately, the drug epidemic has hit my State of Ohio particularly hard. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, show that it is a pretty grim picture right now, and it should be a wake-up call to all of us. Overdose deaths rose nearly 30 percent nationwide from September 2019 to September 2020. During this time period, you can see the overdose deaths numbers going up dramatically. This is heartbreaking for me because we were making progress. After literally decades of increases in drug overdose deaths every single year--decades--going back to the 1990s, we finally here in the 2017, 2018, 2019 periods began to make progress in reducing overdose deaths.…”