Sheila Jackson Lee: “I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Let me express my appreciation to Representative Kuster for her unending fight on…”

“I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Let me express my appreciation to Representative Kuster for her unending fight on this terrible scourge of drug addiction and death across the Nation. I look forward to working with her on her the Humane Correctional Health Care Act, H.R. 4141, as well as the Judiciary Committee taking this up in the near future to begin to address some of the wide scope issues that have to be addressed. I am reminded of the tenure here in the United States Congress, where the impact of the arrest of addicted persons to crack and cocaine resulted in mass incarceration and upward of 2 million people incarcerated in this Nation, higher than any nation around the world. I am reminded of the 2010 enactment of legislation that I wrote and passed, along with my colleagues, that set to reduce, through the Fair Sentencing Act, the unjust disparity between crack and cocaine from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1. President Obama granted clemency to almost 2,000 individuals serving lengthy sentences for drug offenses during his administration. Now, I realize in my own community in Houston, Texas, there have been 149 deaths documented by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences in 2017, up from 79 in 2015. I also realize that, according to the drug policy guidelines, accidental drug overdose is the leading cause of death in the United States for those under 50.…”