Political Quotes

“I rise today to talk about a problem that each one of us--all 100 Senators--knows. In any gathering we go to, in our State or around the country, people are affected by drug abuse, whether legal or illegal. In our personal families, immediate families or extended families, we know somebody whose life is affected. So today I urge my colleagues to support a commonsense amendment that I have introduced to the Every Child Achieves Act that addresses an epidemic that is devastating to my State and our country--and I know to the Presiding Officer's State also--which is substance abuse. Communities across the country, including many in my beautiful State of West Virginia, are seeing an alarming rise in substance abuse and addiction to legal prescription drugs. These are drugs we would find in the medicine cabinet of our home. West Virginia is No. 1 in overdose deaths--No. 1 in overdose deaths-- due to drug abuse. We have seen over a 600-percent increase in the number of people dying since 1999. Nationally, 21.6 million Americans are battling substance dependence or abuse. But as most of us know, we can't truly understand substance abuse by just listening to facts and statistics. It is one that can only be understood by hearing stories of those impacted. When I was Governor of the State of West Virginia, I traveled around the State, and I saw firsthand the effects that substance abuse can have. We tried to tackle many of these issues at the State level.…”