Tim Ryan: “This week, we are going to take up a package of bills that I support dealing with the massive heroin epidemic plaguing…”

“This week, we are going to take up a package of bills that I support dealing with the massive heroin epidemic plaguing places like Ohio, but all over the country. In my congressional district, we saw, a few months back, over 22 overdoses. In Trumbull County alone, 7 deaths; in Summit County, city of Akron, 56 people died of a heroin overdose, compared to just 40 in 2013. Now, in Ohio, these drug overdoses have been the leading cause of accidental deaths in our State, bypassing car accidents. This House this week is going to do the responsible thing and pass key legislation and hopefully combine with the Senate legislation. But there is a missing piece on the recovery side. We need to make sure that, as we address this issue, it is comprehensive: it is about addiction and it is about treatment, but it also must be about recovery. So I commend my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for these important pieces of legislation that are coming forth. I will support them, but knowing that we have got a lot more work to do and that the bottom line is we need money behind these programs. The President put in his budget over $1 billion. We need to make sure that the resources get down to the local community so that we can help stem the tide of this epidemic in our country. ____________________”