Gov. Christie On Unacceptable Opioid 'Fix': There Needs To Be A Level Of Accountability In Congress

Statement

My reaction is that it's pretty extraordinary that members of Congress could vote for a law like that without a rollcall vote. They voted both in the House and the Senate by unanimous consent, and then a Republican Congress and a Democratic President then signed it. It's pretty extraordinary, looks to me like the fix is in when you have something like that. So I think it raises the stakes with what the President needs to do, I think it lays out some of the things that Congress needs to do, and we'll also address some of that in our final report as well. Well I think there needs to be a level of accountability, forget a higher level of accountability, how about a level of accountability? I mean that's just unacceptable, it's completely unacceptable, Dustin, and I think the President feels exactly the same way, and I think his comments after that and his withdrawal of Congressman Marino as the proposed drug czar is an indication that the President feels the exact same way. And so now it's about not just picking a new drug czar, because to me that's just a small part of it. This is about changing the attitude of the American people and its leaders towards these drugs. We consume, in this country, 85 percent of the world's opioids, 85 percent of all the opioids consumed in the world are consumed in the United States. It's just wrong, and we need to give all our law enforcement agencies every tool they need to be able to help interdict and prevent people's addiction and when you can't do that then we need to make every tool available to deal with people's addiction and get them treatment. These things are not mutually exclusive, there's three legs to that stool, and all three legs have to be strong. My position all along has been we've spent more time and money on interdiction than we have on treatment and prevention and we need to make sure that all three legs of the stool are even.

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