Portman highlights Obama administration experts who back anti-heroin bill

This week on the Senate floor, Senator Portman delivered remarks about how – despite political statements from the White House – the experts in the Obama administration who deal with drug policy every day strongly support the Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act (S. 524), bipartisan legislation designed to ensure that federal resources are devoted to evidence-based education, treatment and recovery programs that work. 

Following are excerpts from his remarks:
 
“From all the participants in this process we received a lot of great feedback and it helped guide us as we wrote this legislation. In fact, we went back and forth with legislative language with all these experts in the Obama administration as well as experts from around the country.

“This legislation is supported by over 130 groups, including those representing people who are in the trenches, providing treatment, providing services on prevention, law enforcement, doctors – those who are involved directly in this issue have given us a lot of guidance, but that included the expertise of the experts in the Obama administration. I’m appreciative of that expertise and for their support of our efforts.

“Because it was such an inclusive process, because it was a bipartisan process, because of the encouragement and assistance we received from the drug experts in the Obama administration … this bill received a lot of support immediately on a bipartisan basis.

“Despite all the work [the White House drug experts] did to support this bill, the White House did not issue a statement of administration policy that supported the legislation… This is kind of incredible given that this is the legislation that we all worked on together.”