During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) spoke about the HALT Fentanyl Act.
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
Stay Connected Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
00:00Mr. President. I recognize the Majority Leader. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended. Without objection.
00:09Mr. President, Zach Didier was a good student, an athlete, and musician.
00:15He was an Eagle Scout, starred in a school play, and he was hoping to attend Stanford University.
00:20But two days after Christmas in 2020, Zach's dad found him dead in his bedroom with fentanyl poisoning.
00:27He was 17.
00:30Zach and his friends had gone to the mall to meet a drug dealer they had found through social media.
00:34He bought what he thought was Percocet. But it wasn't.
00:39The counterfeit pills he bought contained fentanyl.
00:43And what was a bad decision became deadly.
00:46Mr. President, Zach was one of the more than 90,000 Americans who died of an overdose in 2020.
00:53Many of those deaths from fentanyl poisoning.
00:56He was one of countless victims of fake pills being peddled on our streets.
01:01Pills that too often find their way into the hands of young people and steal their futures.
01:06Courage Mittens is another tragic story.
01:10Adopted from Ghana, Courage was pursuing his dream of becoming an airline pilot.
01:15He had attended flight school, interviewed for a job just days before he died at age 23.
01:20Courage's parents found him on their couch after a night out with friends, seemingly asleep until he stopped breathing.
01:28As they later found out, Courage had taken a pill with two times the lethal dose of fentanyl in it.
01:34Ashley Romero, a 32-year-old mother, took half of what she thought was a painkiller.
01:40But that half a pill contained a deadly dose of fentanyl.
01:44And the dealer who had supplied Ashley's boyfriend with the pill that took her life is believed to have sold pills that killed several other people.
01:51One of those individuals was Jonathan Ellington.
01:54Jonathan had become addicted to OxyContin when it was prescribed to him for a high school soccer injury.
02:00He got clean and stayed clean for about a decade until another injury and another prescription got him back on it.
02:06When his prescription ran out, he bought some pills from an acquaintance.
02:10It only took one pill with a lethal dose of fentanyl to take Jonathan's life.
02:15Mr. President, these are just a few of the stories that families have shared with the Judiciary Committee in support of the HALT Fentanyl Act.
02:24Unfortunately, there are many more like them.
