OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act

Floor Speech

By: Bob Latta
By: Bob Latta
Date: April 1, 2022
Location: Washington, DC

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Mr. LATTA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer a motion to recommit on behalf of members of our communities who have tragically lost their lives to substance use disorder, SUD.

Prior to the COVID-19 public health emergency, our country faced a different kind of enemy that knew no bounds. This Chamber was once united in the battle against addiction. And I was proud of the legislative work we did to address this crisis most recently through the SUPPORT Act. Unfortunately, all the progress we made seemed to evaporate with the onset of the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns, mandates, social isolation, and fear of an invisible enemy.

Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that 105,752 Americans died from drug overdoses from October 2020 to October 2021.

Let me repeat that: 105,752 Americans died from drug overdoses in one year's time.

Many of these deaths can be directly attributed to fentanyl, which is now the leading cause of death in Americans aged 18 to 45. Down at our southern border, Customs and Border Protection are confiscating record amounts of fentanyl coming across the Mexican border.

The CBP seized over 11,201 pounds of fentanyl from October 2020 to September 2021, which is a 41 percent increase from the year before. That is enough fentanyl to kill 2.5 billion people, or the entire U.S. population, seven times over.

To address this crisis, I introduced the HALT Fentanyl Act with my friend, the gentleman from the Ninth District of Virginia. This legislation will permanently schedule fentanyl-related substances as schedule I and enable researchers to continue to study schedule I substances for possible medical benefits. We must do everything we can to save lives, and I implore my colleagues to support this legislation.

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Mr. LATTA. Mr. Speaker, if we adopt the motion to recommit, I will instruct the Committee on the Judiciary to consider my amendment to H.R. 3617, to permanently place fentanyl-related substances in schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.

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