Portman delivers remarks on how CARA helps women, babies
On Monday, the Senate voted 86-3 in favor of a procedural motion to advance the Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act (S. 524) – legislation authored by Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
CARA has earned bipartisan support because it is backed by more than 130 national anti-drug groups and ensures that federal resources are devoted to evidence-based education and treatment and recovery programs that work. A final vote is expected later this week.
Portman went to the Senate floor Monday night to thank his colleagues for moving forward with his legislation and to urge them to pass CARA into law in order to begin to provide much needed treatment to communities across Ohio and throughout our country.
An excerpt of his remarks is below.
“The Senate has just taken another important step towards passage of CARA.
“This legislation will help us to save our friends, family members, neighbors, communities that are struggling with addiction. This is a really important opportunity for us to be able to move forward on legislation that is comprehensive, that is bipartisan, that has a companion bill on the House side, so there’s a very good chance that we could get this to the President’s desk. It’s the only bipartisan legislation that is comprehensive and evidence based and it’s critical we move forward with it.
[[In-content Ad]]“One of the most important aspects of this legislation – it expands treatment for pregnant women who struggle with addiction and provides support for babies with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, babies who are born with addiction. Recently my wife Jane and I visit Rainbow Babies Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. We toured the neonatal unit … it’ll break your heart. Because you find there an increasing number of babies who are born with this addiction. Unfortunately in Ohio, we’ve had a 750-percent increase in the number of babies born with this neonatal abstinence syndrome since 2004… The problem’s getting worse, not better. These hospital visits serve as another reminder: Addiction is a disease. It’s a disease that needs to be treated like other diseases.”Last week, Portman delivered remarks on the Senate floor about CARA four times. He went to the floor to define, in detail, CARA and how it will work, discuss how his legislation will help combat the drug epidemic by promoting education and prevention, detail how drug experts in the Obama administration who deal with drug policy every day strongly support his bipartisan bill and urge his colleagues to get CARA signed in to law to begin to help American families. In addition, Portman spoke with Fox News to describe how he has worked with experts across the country to put together this bipartisan legislation.