[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5432]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      HEROIN AND OPIOID ADDICTION

  (Mr. FOSTER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of those we 
have lost to heroin and opioid addiction.
  Another 30 people are likely to die today, another 30 lives lost on 
top of the thousands that we are losing each year to this epidemic. We 
have lost daughters and sons, fathers and mothers, sisters, brothers. 
Friends, acquaintances, and coworkers alike have lost their battles 
with addiction.
  Too often their deaths have been cloaked in the shadows. Obituaries 
remain silent on the cause of death. For too long our society has 
viewed opioid addiction as simply a moral failing rather than the 
treatable medical condition that it is.
  While opioid addiction may start with an excessive prescription or an 
indiscretion of youth, it ends with a scientifically understood, 
increasingly treatable, medical condition in which the biochemical 
pathways necessary to normal decisionmaking in the brain have been 
hijacked and the chemistry of the brain permanently altered.
  Heroin does not discriminate. It does not care if you are rich or 
poor, Black or White, a devoted mother, or a loving child. None of us 
are immune to its chemical grips.
  So today I pay my respects. Those who fall prey to opioids are worthy 
of being mourned. They are not forgotten.

                          ____________________