Political Quotes

“this evening, I want to talk a little about the nexus of high prescription drug costs and the opioid epidemic that has gripped my State and our country--the No. 1 public health crisis in America today. It is a story of greed, frankly, and it is a story of the need for some fixes here in Congress to keep it from happening again. With regard to the opioid crisis, I think the degree that this is affecting our communities is well documented. Some 72,000 Americans died last year of overdoses from drugs. This is the high water mark for our country. It is a grim statistic. More than two-thirds of those overdose deaths involve what is called opioids. This would be heroin, prescription drugs, and pain killers, and also the new synthetic opioids--the fentanyl, which is responsible for most of those opioid deaths. I think we have made good progress over the past couple of years here in Congress in passing new legislation to help to address this problem--new innovative ways to get people into treatment and longer term recovery, which we know works well in some instances--and also to do a better job on prevention and education. So I do think those numbers will begin to turn around, but they haven't yet. They haven't yet. We have much more work to do. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which we passed, is starting to work. The Cures Act is starting to work.…”