Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, today on our calendar we have got about 10 bills dealing with a very serious issue in America: opioids and heroin. This is an awful problem we have in our Nation. There is more and more use of opioids and heroin and death resulting from it than at any time that I can recall in the past. I had a young friend a few years back who died of a heroin overdose. I have known of other promising young people in Memphis who have died of heroin overdoses. This is a problem all over the country, but predominantly in the northeast and predominantly in Caucasian areas. It has become an issue, as it should, of importance. But none of the bills that we are going to deal with today--all of which are good, and all of which I will support--deal with the real problem; and that is, the recognition in our country that we treat all drugs as a law enforcement problem, a criminal problem, and not as a health problem; and that we treat most all drugs on the same level and give law enforcement the same incentives to arrest dealers and/or users for any drug and not encourage them and give them reasons--besides public safety--to emphasize their enforcement on opioids and heroin. In the drug schedules which we have in our country that lay out the order in which we think drugs are the most serious, Schedule I is at the top; and in that classification are heroin, LSD, ecstasy, and marijuana. I ask you each not to answer reflexively which of those four don't fit. Marijuana does not fit.…”