Political Quotes

“I would like to talk a little bit on the floor about an issue that is cascading across the country and is deeply troubling in the State of West Virginia, the region in which I live, and that is the opioid crisis we are seeing. Many of you have recently read about what has happened in the city of Huntington, WV. Huntington is a beautiful city. It sits right on the Ohio River at the corner of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. It is the home of the Thundering Herd of Marshall University. However, 1 month ago today, on Monday, August 15, in just a 4-hour period, this small city of Huntington was the site of 28 overdoses. Responding to this mass overdose occupied all of the ambulances in the city and more than a shift's worth of the police officers in Huntington. Of the 28 people affected, 26 were revived using naloxone, a lifesaving drug that helps reverse overdoses. However, the heroin they had used was likely laced with a substance so potent that the ordinary dose of naloxone was not enough. Responders had to use two and sometimes three doses of naloxone to bring people back to life and out of the overdose. Rashes of overdoses due to particularly strong batches of heroin have been happening more and more frequently. This is heroin that is likely laced with fentanyl or a new product we have heard about--a synthetic product--called carfentanil, which is a drug used to sedate elephants and other large animals that is 100 times as potent as fentanyl.…”