Political Quotes

“Madam President, as we have heard from the Senator from West Virginia, this week the Senate will begin consideration of a bipartisan bill that targets an epidemic that is raging across the country, but apparently it is especially hard-hitting in places such as West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the like. But this abuse of prescription painkillers and heroin is not just isolated to those areas, even though the leaders of this particular legislation come from places such as Minnesota, Rhode Island, Ohio, and New Hampshire. Sadly, Texas has been no exception. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in Texas opioid-related drug deaths have increased by 30 percent since 2002. Houston is widely recognized by the DEA and law enforcement officials as a key hub for the trafficking of illicit prescription drugs. In South Texas, right next to the U.S.-Mexico border, the transnational criminal organizations are exploiting our porous border to import increasingly large amounts of hard narcotics like heroin, which ultimately wreaks havoc in towns and cities across America. In 2014 alone, drug cartels successfully smuggled more than 250,000 pounds of heroin across our borders and into the United States at a street value of approximately $25 billion. These are the same criminals who traffic in human beings, including young girls and boys. These are the same people who traffic in illegal immigrants. These are the same people who traffic in illegal drugs.…”