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WASHINGTON - Today, the House Judiciary committee reported the USA Liberty Act to the House floor with 27-8 support. The bill is sponsored by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), and by Crime Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Ranking Member Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), and the legislation reauthorizes and reforms Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendment Act. Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) partnered with these House colleagues last year to pass the USA FREEDOM act, which ended NSA bulk metadata collection and contained significant reforms to other surveillance authorities. Sens. Lee and Leahy released the following statement regarding today’s passage of the USA Liberty Act:

“I feel like I’m trapped in a game of Calvinball,” Sen. Lee said. “Just a few months ago the CBO had us playing by one set of rules for debating health care policy and now we are being told those rules have been completely changed for tax policy. This is simply unacceptable and it is why Congress must pass the CBO Show Your Work Act of 2017.”

As we look for ways to solve this crisis, we should keep these social components in mind. More research is needed, but it does appear that loving families help addicts recover from addiction. More importantly, families appear to be a strong defense against becoming addicted in the first place.

In 2016, roughly 64,000 people died from drug overdoses, and opioids accounted for nearly two-thirds of those deaths. It is difficult to comprehend the full scope and magnitude of the opioids crisis, its causes, and its consequences—for families, communities, and workplaces. But better understanding the challenges it poses is a necessary first step to informed public policy. This report gathers an unprecedented amount of data on the opioids crisis.