Rob Portman

Thank you, Ms. Metz. Mr. Brandt.

The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act championed by you, Senator Portman, and so many others is exactly the right direction to address the complexities of addiction treatment.

I could not agree you with more. And, tragically, we are going to hear from a witness in a little while about wisdom teeth extraction and the specific issue that you raised and how that led to an addiction and eventual overdose and death.

If we can get CARA passed, we will be in a good position to access some of these grants.

Senator Portman, down in your area, Colerain Township, they have a similar program that is going on.

We also though need Senator McConnell to begin to support much better funding.

We need to get it through the House. He is working on that. We are all working on that.

Every day we lose 120 Americans to drug overdoses.

There is no zip code that is immune from it. It also crosses every party line.

The fact that our legislation called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act passed with a 94 to 1 vote in the United States Senate, which never happens, which is evidence of that.

Thank you for your strong leadership on a very complicated issue.

Mike DeWine has been a leader on this issue, not just focusing on the law enforcement side of it.

Senator Portman was a co-author of the act.

Thank you, Senator Ernst, and thank you, Senator Carper, and thank you for having this hearing--you and the Chairman.

Twenty-two years ago, a constituent came to me, and said, 'My son just died. What are you going to do about it?'

This is an illness, this is to be treated as a disease--trying to take away the stigma.

We spent 2½ weeks on the floor with this legislation, called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA).

Let us figure out how to come together.

We need your help on this because we can keep talking about how we want more of this and we want more of that, but nothing is going to happen.

We have a crisis and an epidemic going on right now--and it is right in front of our eyes.

They are not going great. They are going terribly.

I agree the price of heroin is too low and I agree we should be doing more to deal with that, to stop the Fentanyl from coming in, and so on.

I was embarrassed not to have a better answer for her--and that is what got me involved in this.

I appreciate that. You guys are focused on the right thing, in my view.

I'd like to thank Ohio Senator, Rob Portman, a member of this Committee, for his support and leadership on U.S. innovation.