[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Page 1954]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the Republican leader mentioned a number of 
things, and I am not going to talk about all of them, but there is one 
thing I want to focus on for just a minute. We have something that is 
devastating moving forward throughout this country, and that is 
poisoning by opioids. These products that come in the form of medicine 
prescribed by doctors have been devastating and sweeping the country.
  Of course, I am glad we are moving forward on Dr. Califf--he is a 
fine man, and he will do a good job as head of the Food and Drug 
Administration--but we are going to move to some legislation dealing 
with these poisons. I would hope that everyone would appreciate the 
fact that what we are going to do, as we do too often, is celebrate the 
passing of legislation that really doesn't have much to do with 
reality. The only way we are going to do a better job of fighting this 
scourge is to have some resources to help people who have the 
responsibility to do something about that. We need to take up the 
Judiciary Committee's opioid bill, maybe even as early as next week, 
but we also need to devote real resources, not just lipservice, to this 
important problem.

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