Support for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHMIDT. Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman for his leadership on this issue.

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I come from a part of the country in southeast Kansas where I have got a lot of classmates, friends, and neighbors who have struggled with addiction over the years. I know them personally.

When I started in public service, it was all about methamphetamine in our part of the world. It was the clandestine meth lab in the trunk of a car or an abandoned barn or an old house. We dealt with that, as a matter of public policy, by putting Sudafed behind the counter. We made it harder for people to pilfer Sudafed and go out and cook up their own meth. We knew that that was going to cut down the number of clandestine laboratories, but it wasn't going to decrease the demand; it was just going to increase the demand for meth to come across the southern border, and that is what happened. They created trade routes.

Then along came the 1990s and unrelated to methamphetamine, we had a lot of big drug companies and some bad actors, who decided they were going to make more money by doing a lot of stuff they shouldn't have done to incent the medical community to prescribe more opioids, and they did and it was illegal.

When I got to serve as attorney general, we joined together, Republicans and Democrats. We didn't think about party affiliation, and we sued some of these companies and held them accountable. When I left office, we had recovered about $340 million, $350 million for my State of Kansas to deal with drug treatment from Purdue Pharma and other companies that had peddled addiction for profit.

It doesn't sound like a lot of money in this Chamber, but to put it in context, that was many times more than the State of Kansas had ever spent on addiction treatment and intervention and prevention.

We have an obligation to support these folks who are struggling down the street from us with addiction. It shouldn't be a partisan issue. It is more than just closing the border, although we have to do that. It is about helping folks change their behavior and their lives.

There is a lot that needs to be done. This is one piece of it. I am a little bit disappointed that this has been something of a partisan debate. It never has been for me. It never was in my previous public roles. It should not be now.

Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman for his leadership and encourage all my colleagues to support this bill.

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