Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act

GARRETT LEE SMITH MEMORIAL ACT -- (House of Representatives - September 08, 2004)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 2634) to amend the Public Health Service Act to support the planning, implementation, and evaluation of organized activities involving statewide youth suicide early intervention and prevention strategies, to provide funds for campus mental and behavioral health service centers, and for other purposes, as amended.

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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I believe every life is a precious creation and that suicide is a tragic and terrible way to lose a family member or friend. One would automatically assume if you are against suicide, you will vote in favor of this bill; however, nothing could be further from the truth. We all want to stop suicide. Some of our most precious resources are our young people, and that resource must be preserved and promoted.

Our children and teenagers are too valuable to be used as guinea pigs on this issue. The gentleman from New Jersey spoke of the movie Nobody's Useless, and I will not reiterate that here now, but that will not be the only case across this country where exposure to suicide discussion has actually brought on suicide. While this legislation does not fund suicide education for children under the age of 10, it did start out younger than the age of 10. I do not think we need to take chances with our young people. Awareness could put ideas into the heads of children and teenagers that are already at an awkward time in their lives.

I would point out what happens when we do sex education and antidrug education. It is hard to find a program that resulted in less drug use or less sexual activity on the part of young people because they are made aware of something they may be afraid of. The more they talk about something, the more comfortable they get with it, the more likely they are to experiment.

Research at Columbia University has suggested that encouraging suicidal students to identify themselves or to teach other students or teachers how to identify the suicidal teenager is not effective and in some instances may even undermine protective attitudes about suicide. In other words, the creation of this program can actually be harmful to our youth.

In addition, we should also be asking ourselves is this really the role of the Federal Government. Federal money usually has strings attached to it. We do not know enough about how the grants will be distributed to know what these strings will be, but this legislation is just one more way that the government is encroaching on the lives and health care of private citizens and the parental role. Suicide prevention is best done through private counseling, faith-based groups, and within the nucleus of the family unit.

I know of no successful suicide prevention programs. We should be able to find at least one successful model program somewhere in this world before we invest $82 million in a new, untried program.

In conclusion, while I believe this bill is offered with good will and absolutely with the best intentions, and with broken hearts as well, we need to take a step back and realize that suicide is based on emotion, and it was from emotion that this bill was created.

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones to suicide, and for that reason I ask my colleagues to vote no on this bill.

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