Political Quotes

“I rise today to simply say to Chairman Grassley and the Judiciary Committee: Thank you for being willing this week to have a markup and to legislate and report out a bill with regard to the prescription drug and heroin epidemic we now face around our country. The legislation is called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA. It focuses on several areas. One is prevention and education to try to keep people from making the wrong decision and going down the road to addiction, but another is to encourage States and provide incentives to local governments and nonprofits to use evidence-based treatment and recovery that has been proven to work to try to deal with this epidemic. Today we have unfortunately higher levels of death from drug overdoses than we do any other accidental cause of death--more than car accidents, for instance. In my own home State of Ohio, this has been true for the last couple of years. We lost over 2,400 Ohioans last year to drug overdoses. Part of the legislation also addresses this issue directly by providing our law enforcement and other first responders-- firefighters, EMS--with Narcan, also known as naloxone, which is a miracle drug to bring people back if they overdose. Finally, the legislation helps to get prescription drugs out of the hands of the wrong people.…”