On the recordMay 12, 2016
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I commend the gentleman from Michigan for offering this amendment and for his commitment to combating opioid abuse, including joining as an original cosponsor of H.R. 5046. In a recent poll, 62 percent of American teenagers stated that prescription drugs are easy to get from the family medicine cabinet. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, a full 70 percent of prescription drug medications that are obtained by adolescents are acquired from family, relatives, or friends. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, of the 2.4 million people annually who use prescription drugs nonmedically and for the first time, a shocking 800,000 are aged 12 to 17. Often, the drugs are pilfered, which means a child or a visitor takes one or two from a bottle at a time in order to escape detection from a parent or a friend. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment that addresses this problem.
