Tim Ryan: “I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) and Mr. Sensenbrenner for all their good work on this. This…”

“I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) and Mr. Sensenbrenner for all their good work on this. This is really one of the great days, great weeks, I think, on this House floor because of what we are doing here to address the heroin and opioid crisis in America. It is sad to watch someone from Virginia and someone from Wisconsin and someone from Michigan and someone from Ohio and someone from Texas all get up and really kind of embody and express how deep this problem is in our country today. I know we have all been to calling hours and we have all been to funerals and seen up close and personal how devastating this epidemic is here in the United States. Like many of my colleagues, unfortunately, Ohio has now seen accidental deaths by overdose surpass even car accidents. So we all need to come together, Democrats and Republicans, to try to solve this problem. I think this week is a major step in that direction. I am supporting the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Reduction Act and many other bills that are coming to this floor this week. In Trumbull County alone, one of my biggest counties, a few months back we had 22 overdoses and, of that, 7 deaths in that one county. This is pervasive in Cuyahoga County, which is Cleveland. We have almost one death a day that we are dealing with in Ohio. So the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Reduction Act program creates at the Department of Justice a real opportunity for us to fix this program.…”