Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman and Ranking Member Pallone for his help on this bill. The CONNECTIONS Act, as the chairman has stated, deals with state-run prescription drug monitoring programs which are widely recognized as an important tool in fighting the opioid epidemic. These programs enable providers to better identify patients who may be at risk for abuse of opioid prescriptions. This is a critical first step in preventing abuse by those who may be vulnerable. The bill will improve Federal support for state-run prescription drug monitoring programs to empower those States to successfully implement improvements and build off of their existing programs. Now, the legislation facilitates more widespread use by the providers. So what we are trying to do is, right now we have 49 of 50 States that have PDMPs or prescription drug monitoring programs. They all are trying to talk to each other. And particularly, when you have a district like mine, which kind of forms a sort of a triangle in the southwest corner of Virginia, you can get to West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee all within a single day, without any problem. And if you are a physician in those areas, you need to know if your patient may have driven a few miles across the line in an attempt to get more prescription drugs than maybe they ought to be taking. So what the PDMPs are supposed to do is to let the physician know what is going on.…”