Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise today to discuss the issue that is facing Americans across the Nation: the opioids crisis. The 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment, a comprehensive guide published by the Drug Enforcement Administration, indicates that illegal drug use continues to rise. It cites Mexican transnational criminal organizations as America's greatest enemy in the war against drugs. While these criminal organizations are bringing a wide variety of illegal drugs across our southern border, I am particularly worried about their role in spreading the opioid crisis. Thousands of pounds of opioids are smuggled across our southern border every year. Just last year, the DEA seized more than 17,000 pounds of heroin in the United States. About 39 percent of this was seized at the southern border. Another opioid that has devastated communities across America is fentanyl. As we started to understand the scope of the opioid crisis facing our Nation, the CDC says doctors started prescribing less and less pharmaceutical fentanyl. But fentanyl overdoses remained steady as prescription rates dropped, meaning that illicitly manufactured fentanyl is one of the main drivers of the opioid crisis. Illicit fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is produced in China and Mexico. It is either smuggled into the United States through the mail from China or across our southern border from Mexico. In 2017, Customs and Border Patrol agents seized nearly 1,500 pounds of fentanyl at the border.…”