Political Quotes

“I wish to thank the senior Senator from Vermont, who is a dear friend of mine. As he knows, this is a problem. It is an epidemic all over this country. No State is immune from it. It doesn't matter whether you are a Democrat or Republican. It has no home. It attacks and literally eradicates all of us, and it causes extreme hardships for all the families. I know the Presiding Officer, who is from Indiana, is aware of this problem. Every week I have come to the floor to read letters from people who have been affected by addiction in West Virginia and other States. I have a letter from the Presiding Officer's home State of Indiana, and I have a letter from my State too. This is something we have been fighting. The CARA Act is a bipartisan piece of legislation. It is not going to be a cure-all, but it starts in the right direction for us to start looking at opioid addiction and prescription drug abuse, not as much as we have in the past as a crime but as an illness, and an illness needs to have treatment. I think we are moving in that direction. Politically we are accepting this, and we are going to basically meet that need of treatment which is so few and far between. We have 51 people dying every day. In my little, beautiful State of West Virginia, just last year we lost over 600 lives to prescription drug abuse, and I have a State with less than 2 million people. From 1999 to 2013 there has been an increase of over 700 percent.…”