Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Let me thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his leadership and for his concern for what has been a deadly journey for many Americans. As I close, I would like to share just a moment of the devastating impact that this epidemic of drugs has had in many communities. More than 80 percent of the defendants sentenced for crack cocaine offenses were African Americans, despite the fact that more than 66 percent of crack cocaine users were either White or Hispanic. In 2010, we reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1. We did not even make those changes apply retroactively. The remaining disparity and the remaining mandatory nature of the penalty remains. Therefore, there is much to do. This bill will help us a lot, but there is no excuse to continue to allow people, as is evidenced by the recent pardon by the administration of an individual who had been incarcerated on a drug offense, no excuse for us to allow these injustices to persist, even as we proceed to work on this opioid epidemic. So I think it is extremely important that, as former Attorney General Eric Holder said when he instituted his initiative to address some of the inequities with respect to prosecuting drug crimes, we need to be smart on crime. Treatment is very important. This legislation raising the amount of grant money to help with the courts and treatment elements will be a major aspect to saving lives.…”