Political Quotes

“We have to make sure we have more border security so that we are intercepting these drugs as they come across the border. We need funding for the post offices because, in many cases, unwittingly, the letter carriers are the ones who are delivering to people's homes fentanyl and other drugs. In the incarceration system, we have to make sure we are testing inmates for the presence of drugs in their system during their incarceration. We can offer them medications which, upon discharge, actually block any effects of some of these drugs. We need to also make sure that Medicaid and other insurance companies' payments resume immediately upon release from their incarceration to prevent them from relapsing or returning to the drug culture. We also have to make sure we have solid data collection. In many cases, when we show the charts about death rates around the country, the charts may be grossly inaccurate. In many cases first responders, paramedics, and coroners do not keep accurate data on these rates. The persons themselves may not even be tested to see if they died from a drug overdose. There are several items in here listing what we can be doing here as a nation, and there are many more. The point is we have fallen short and we have seen some problems with this. There is more that we can do and we must do in order to save lives. I know I just have about 3 minutes left, Mr. Speaker, am I correct? The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 5 minutes remaining.”