Earl Blumenauer

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the House is considering this week the appropriations for energy and water. These are important decisions, vital programs that seriously touch all of us across the country, and have important decisions on resource allocation. There were two elements in the accompanying report that I would like to highlight for a moment. First is that I am pleased that the committee has included language encouraging the Army Corps of Engineers to continue efforts to construct new tribal housing at The Dalles Dam on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. The Columbia River is the cultural artery that ties together the Northwest. It is an engine for agriculture and for industry. But long before we started changing that river into a machine with the construction of dams in the 1930s, the artery was the core of the civilization for thousands of years for Native Americans. The river looked very different. It was faster-moving and steeper. It produced salmon in such abundance that it was rumored you could walk across their backs as they swam upstream to spawn. And it provided food, trade, and a cultural identity for Native American tribes for years. These tribes--now known as the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs, and Yakama Nation--were never fully compensated for the disruption to their native ways of life, despite promises to the contrary. We have found that the Army Corps of Engineers now understands that it has the authority to begin the process of building another housing village at The Dalles Dam. It is important that we encourage and support this work, and continue to expand it through congressional action. It is the least we can do to keep faith with Native Americans, who have had their lives dramatically disrupted with that construction. Second, the report also continues an unfortunate rider, which blocks the Army Corps of Engineers from modernizing how it develops water resource projects. This has been an interest of mine since I first started serving on the Water Resources Subcommittee 20 years ago in Congress. The Corps operates on an antiquated methodology that are known as 1983 principles and guidelines for water infrastructure projects. It directs the Corps to focus on maximizing national economic development benefits when planning projects, not looking comprehensively at the benefits and the problems attained for everybody. It severely limits the Corps' ability to select projects which minimize environmental impacts, or contribute to the national interest in ways other than a narrowly defined economic development. I worked for years with the Corps back when General Flowers was in charge, and there was great interest on the part of the Corps to be able to update the ways that they operate to incorporate modern science, engineering, and environmental awareness. Those principles and guidelines were drafted back in the Carter administration. 398 months have elapsed since they were enacted into law. In that period of time, a lot has happened with food, fashion, technology, and science. It is time for the Army Corps of Engineers to be able to base its planning and activities on the best science and the best engineering, for the needs that we have today. I sincerely hope that we can come together and recognize that it is a need to finally remove that rider. It was frustrating for me, having worked for years, to finally achieve authorization in 2007 for the principles and guidelines to be updated. Yet, the Corps, having done that job, cannot use the updated principles and guidelines because of shortsighted action on the part of Congress. I strongly urge that my friends and colleagues in Congress take a look at this restrictive language. Think about the opportunities available to us to allow the Corps of Engineers to do its job right based on the latest information available to us. This does not speak well of the ability of Congress to prepare for the future. It makes the job of the Army Corps of Engineers much harder, and it makes it less likely that we are going to give people the benefit that they need from the various things that the Corps constructs and plans.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, today I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the important work of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in its 40th anniversary year. The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 to ``preserve and present American folklife'' through research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibitions, publications, and training. The Center collects and preserves living traditional culture and makes its valuable resources available to researchers and the general public in a celebration of American culture. Many of my colleagues are familiar with the work of the American Folklife Center because of the Veterans History Project, created with unanimous, bipartisan support in 2000. In this model oral history project--now the largest oral history project in America--volunteers across the country are recording interviews and collecting diaries, photographs, letters, and scrapbooks about veterans' wartime experiences, from WWI to the present day. The growing collection tells the personal stories of more than 100,000 veterans and enables current and future generations of Americans to understand their sacrifices. A similar Congressional initiative through the American Folklife Center is the Civil Rights History Project, concluding this year. The Folklife Center partnered with the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture on a project to record the experiences and memories of heroes across the country who participated in the historic struggles to secure freedom, equality and full citizenship for African Americans. The American Folklife Center's archive is the largest of its kind in the world, preserving the cultural practices of American families, ethnicities, religions, occupations and other groups and historical material from every state in the union. The collection contains more than 6,000 recordings of American Indian songs, chants, and prayers first recorded on wax cylinders dating as far back as 1890, and uses digital technology to preserve and ensure tribal access to this material. During its forty-year history, the American Folklife Center has worked closely with state and local folklife programs, local scholars, and cultural institutions, and has engaged the general public to provide expertise on preservation, archiving and public programming, enabling diverse ways to understand our history and cultural heritage. These projects and collections are just a sampling of the important work done in the Folklife Center by its wonderful staff to preserve and present American folklife and cultural history. I commend the good work of the American Folklife Center, and offer congratulations on forty years of service to this nation.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy in permitting me to speak on the en bloc amendment, and I appreciate the committee having accepted the amendment dealing with cost accountability for the B-21 bomber. This is a new weapon that has both conventional and nuclear weapons capability. We are in a situation now where there is tremendous stress on our Defense Department budget with a whole range of weaponry. I think it is more important now than ever that we are able to understand exactly what we are getting into, how much this is going to cost. There is about $1.4 billion already into this. We ought to be able to know what the total commitment is being made, to be able to have appropriate decisions made by Congress. I am deeply concerned that the Defense Department, to this point, has resisted giving an appraisal of what the total cost is going to be, somehow fearing that, if the total budget were available, that would give too much information to our adversaries about the weight, size, and range of the plane. I think not. I think the real danger here is that the American public and Congress would know what the costs are. This is not an acceptable approach as we deal with these critical questions. It is important, Mr. Chairman, that we have full transparency about what the costs are going to be for these massive, expensive, and, in some cases, questionable weapons systems. This is not an argument for or against it. It is an argument for transparency and being able to know what we are getting into. The worst of all possible worlds is making commitments and then finding, 5 and 10 years down the line, that we can't follow through on them or they result in cannibalizing other important priorities. I would think that this is one area that we could all agree we need to have this transparency and have this information available.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chair, this seems to me to be a priority going forward, given the experience we have had with cost overruns and given how many elements that this committee is trying to juggle. The demands on the committee, I think, are remarkable. It is not a job that I envy. These are hard decisions that are being made. The Department of Defense can do a favor for themselves and for us by being fully transparent so we know what we should be budgeting for in the future and that they can be held accountable for performance.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chair, I listened to the frustration of the chairman describing the process, and I sympathize with that. I have sat and admitted that this committee has one of the most difficult tasks, because as long as we are sort of unhinged here from the reality and the accountability of how they all work out, we will have people make requests for this or the administration will leave something out there, and it is difficult for the committee to try to make sense of reality out of these conflicting requests. Out of this, I think there is an elephant in the room of an unrealistic, unsustainable, and unnecessary trillion-dollar path we are on for the nuclear triad of bombers, land-based missiles, and the submarines. These are weapons that we have never used in 71 years. These are weapons that do not help us with the major challenges that vex this committee right now in terms of military readiness, the challenges dealing with ISIS, dealing with encroachment by the Chinese, problems with Russia. These are weapons that didn't stop Russian aggression in the Crimea or Ukraine or Chinese encroachment. These are weapons that don't deter the greatest nuclear threat we face, which is nuclear materials falling into the hands of extremist elements from rogue nations like North Korea or some of our purported friends in Pakistan. These are the threats that we face. And this muscle-bound nuclear triad that we are going to spend a trillion dollars on does not help us. There is enough blame, I think, to go around. The administration made an agreement to upgrade and modernize all these nuclear weapons in their effort to get the nonproliferation treaty advanced. I think it was a foolish bargain, an expensive bargain. They are not going to be around to have to deliver on the trillion dollars. They are nibbling around the edges and moving these things forward and leaving the big decisions for the future. They have actually made it worse by not fighting aggressively for nonproliferation resources to help us keep these materials out of the hands of the extremists and retire nuclear weapons that are floating around the world now. We have more nuclear weapons than we need, more nuclear weapons than we can use, more nuclear weapons than we can afford. We can debate whether we have enough to destroy the world 3 times, 5 times, or 10 times. What is ironic is that we never have that debate on the floor of the House on how the tradeoffs occur, what the threats to conventional military capacity are, and how they fit into an overall scheme of affairs.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. I suggest this is the least-effective part of our overall defense inventory. I would hope that, in the future, when maybe we have a new administration willing to turn a page, when we have a Congress that is willing to entertain a broad and robust debate about this critical issue, that we can deal with an effort to rein in this trillion-dollar spending folly that is going to have disastrous effects for our military readiness in the years ahead.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy and his leadership on this, and I think he laid it out very clearly. This is an imaginary problem, but it is an area that actually needs to have some attention to it. He referenced recent problems in terms of potential drug abuse. You know they found the cheating earlier because they were investigating drug abuse when they found out that there was cheating on the readiness test. I would advise my colleagues to read Eric Schlosser's ``Command and Control,'' a fascinating study about the history of American nuclear weapons and problems that we have had, mistakes that were made, and near misses. There are serious issues that we need to be thinking in terms of the readiness and how it goes forward. We need to think clearly about what we do in the future, what is the right level of deterrence, and how are we going to adequately analyze it. 454 land-based missiles are not necessarily a magic number that we should be freezing on a permanent basis. Looking at what happens going forward with the trillion-dollar commitment with missiles that are submarine based--we have our bombers; we have land based--and being able to have a critical appraisal of how much deterrence is enough and look at problems, such as security lapses, training problems, drug problems, this is not a situation that we should just sort of happily freeze for the next go-around and maintain that any adjustment to this or even evaluating an adjustment is somehow a threat to national security. The real problems that we face dealing with international terrorism and the potential of nuclear weapons falling into rogue hands, those are very real problems that we need to be doing more. This vast nuclear triad that we will spend a trillion dollars on does not help us with those challenges. Rather than hollow out the military, we ought to be looking at potential changes going forward. This amendment is ill-advised, unnecessary, and is the wrong direction we should be going.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to refer back to an amendment that was in the previous en bloc that dealt with the special immigrant visas. I want to express my appreciation to the committee, the chairman, the ranking member, and to the staff. This is a complicated issue. It is in your bill, but it is not entirely within your jurisdiction. And there has been an ebb and flow. It has been something that I have, as you know, been working on for a decade, and that is for the United States to keep faith with the people in Afghanistan who made the mission possible--the people who literally risked their lives as guides, construction workers, interpreters, and truck drivers--the men and women who made it possible for us to succeed. It isn't just the Department of Defense. There are men and women who worked with the State Department and USAID, which are an important part of our activities in those countries. Those foreign nationals are every bit at risk as somebody who is guiding our troops in the field. I appreciate your willingness to put in the en bloc amendment a little bit of flexibility. I hope it is not the last word, because we need to think seriously about what we do for the people who work on base, people who work for the State Department, and the people who work for USAID so that we are able to make sure that we have an adequate number of visas and that we don't have an arbitrarily short period of time because the pipeline has been hopelessly complex and flawed. We have been working with the bureaucracy in trying to make it work better, but that is an ongoing struggle. And the fact is, there are different people with different committees who have different orientations. I hope that this en bloc amendment is just the start and that we can continue working with the chairman, with the minority party, with the staff, and with the advocates and various people who are committed to making sure that we do right by the people who are at risk now of being killed, murdered, tortured, and having family members killed.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, one of the great tragedies of our time is our failure to adequately deal with the needs of our veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. We sent over 2 million brave men and women to fight under very difficult circumstances, to say the very least. While I was convinced from the beginning that the war was a tremendous mistake, that is all the more reason that we should work to protect those veterans as they return home with wounds that are both visible and, in some cases, unseen. It is no secret that these returning veterans have placed quite a strain on our VA facilities, which coincides with a national opioid epidemic. Prescription painkillers steal the lives of 78 Americans every day. Over 20,000 were killed last year, and it often leads to heroin addiction if their supply of opioid pills is interrupted. As veterans with PTSD, chronic pain, and any number of ailments are looking for relief, lethal opioid overdoses among VA patients are almost twice the national average. We are doing something wrong. This is at a time when the overwhelming number of veterans say to me that marijuana has reduced PTSD symptoms and their dependency on addictive opioids. Yet the VA official policy prevents their doctors who know them best from talking to our veterans about this, even in States where it is legal. In 24 States, the District of Columbia, and Guam, medical marijuana at the recommendation of a physician is legal. In those States, it is often used as an alternative to the addictive opioids to treat chronic pain. Fourteen States allow for medical marijuana to treat PTSD. Yet, veterans who are seeking relief from something that has proven to make a difference for many of their peers cannot get help from their VA doctor, even in States where medical marijuana is legal. This is outrageous. It is time for us to acknowledge our debt to those veterans and allow their personal VA physician, the doctor who knows them best, to be able to consult with them about medical marijuana in accordance with State law. My amendment doesn't authorize the possession or use of marijuana at VA facilities, but it would allow physicians to treat the whole patient and to give them their best advice. We should not force our veterans to go to another doctor and pay for the service out of their own pocket with somebody who doesn't know them as well as their own doctor. I would strongly hope that my colleagues would vote in favor of the Veterans Equal Access amendment in the MILCON-VA bill coming forward today. These men and women who have done so much for us and come home seeking help in dealing with health and coping with their return deserve our best. Forcing the VA to turn a blind eye to a potential useful therapy--something that is perfectly legal in their State--is not just shortsighted; I think it is cruel and unfair. I have listened to the many stories of veterans who have found that medical marijuana has made a huge difference in their return, recovery, and readjustment. Importantly, it doesn't subject them to the danger of being part of the opioid epidemic that has been visited upon our veterans. We can help stop the tragedy of VA veterans dying of opioid overdoses at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the population by at least allowing their doctors to work with them, considering medical marijuana as an alternative therapy.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, one of the great concerns we have is how the 2 million young Americans who were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan reintegrate back into society. Many of them return with wounds visible and invisible. We find that more than 20 percent of those 2.8 million American veterans suffer from PTSD and depression. A recent survey revealed that suicide rates among veterans are roughly 50 percent higher than among civilians. Another study found that the death rate for opioid overdoses among VA patients is nearly double the national average. What I hear from veterans that I talk to is that an overwhelming number of them say that medical marijuana has helped them deal with PTSD, pain, and other conditions, particularly as an alternative to opioids, and I would argue that it is essential that veterans be allowed access to this as a treatment if it is legal in their State. Twenty-four States, the District of Columbia, and Guam have passed laws that provide for legal access to medical marijuana at the recommendation of a physician to treat such conditions, ranging from seizures to glaucoma, anxiety, chronic pain, traumatic brain injury, and the symptoms associated with chemotherapy. Fourteen of these States specifically allow physicians to recommend medical marijuana for the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, PTSD. As a result of these medical marijuana laws, more than 2 million patients across the country, including many of our veterans, now use medical marijuana. Unfortunately, the Department of Veterans Affairs specifically prohibits its medical providers from completing forms brought by their patients seeking recommendations regarding a veteran's participation in a State medical marijuana program. What this means is that those patients who want to pursue medical marijuana have to go ahead and hire a physician out of their own pocket, not dealing with the medical professional of their choice, the medical professional, their VA doctor, who knows them the best. I think that is unfortunate. I have an amendment cosponsored by Dr. Joe Heck, Sam Farr, Dana Rohrabacher, Dina Titus, Tom Reed, and others that would prohibit funds from being made available to the VA to implement this prohibition. I think it is the right thing to do for our veterans, to be able to treat them equitably, to enable them to have access to the doctor who knows them the best, giving them better treatment, and saving them money. I would respectfully request that we approve this amendment to eliminate this unjustified prohibition. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to close. I am going to close when you have exhausted your speakers.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, there is nobody who I have more respect for than my friend, the chairman of the subcommittee. But I take modest exception. This amendment does not dictate treatment options. It is not interfering, it is not superimposing anybody's judgment about the merits of marijuana. It simply enables VA doctors and patients to interact with State legal marijuana systems--systems that this Congress has repeatedly supported through amendment votes, just like everybody else. We should not be limiting the treatment options available to our veterans. I fail to understand what the basis is to force veterans in the State of Pennsylvania who feel that they need to avail themselves of medical marijuana, like any other citizen in Pennsylvania or in Oregon has a right to do, but force them to not use the doctor that knows them best; instead, go to somebody else, hire them out of their own pocket, and be engaging with somebody who doesn't know their full range of activity. This doesn't engage the Veterans Administration. There is no marijuana on premises. It simply allows the doctor to be able to deal with the veteran, as a patient, to be able to counsel and potentially prescribe them, like any other person in any other State where it is legal. Bear in mind that these people are suffering from PTSD, chronic pain, depression, conditions that medical marijuana is legally entitled to treat and which veterans, who I have met with literally from coast-to- coast, say has transformed their lives. What we are doing now, they are dying at a higher rate than the average member of the population. Their suicide rate is high. Their opioid addiction rate is almost twice as high as the average citizen. I think that is unconscionable. We should have this amendment to try and help address it. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, for over the last decade, I have been working with a bipartisan group to deal with helping some of the foreign nationals in Afghanistan who helped Americans' mission be able to escape the tender mercies of the Taliban and others with long memories. These are men and women who helped us as guides, as translators, people who provided on-base security, construction workers, and truck drivers--a vast array of people who helped us with our vital mission. As we have scaled down and moved on, it has left these people vulnerable. We have example after example where the Taliban and al Qaeda have threatened them, have attacked their families, held them for ransom, tortured them, and, in some cases, killed them. We have implemented a Special Immigrant Visa program that has enabled over 8,500 people to get to safety to protect themselves and their families. I have witnessed some of these tearful reunions where a guide returned, was able to escape to the United States, and united with the person, the soldier, whose life he saved. This happens time after time. Unfortunately, the process is hopelessly tangled. It is slow, and it is bureaucratic. We have over 10,000 people still in the pipeline. Every year we struggle to be able to have sufficient visas authorized to be able to help thousands more who are at risk. We have the National Defense Authorization Act that is coming forward that would pose another problem to help those who put their faith in us. This version would leave out all individuals who worked with the State Department and the USAID--critical parts of our mission in Afghanistan. It would leave off all the on-base staff who worked in direct support of the Department of Defense, people who did construction, firefighters, on-base security, maintenance, and administrative support, people whose services were vital and whose service to the United States is well known and who are at risk. We are hopeful that as this bill comes to the floor that the House will be able to work with us to modify these unnecessary restrictions, to give more time to process and allow more people to come to safety. We have a moral obligation to protect people who put their lives on the line to support Americans in these troubled areas. I would hope that we would, once again, be able to make necessary adjustments to be able to try and help more come to safety. I have been working with my good friend Adam Kinzinger, who represents some of the newer Members of the House who actually served in theater, who are committed to helping people whom they saw help us. I would hope, as the process comes forward, we can consider amendments to be able to reduce some of these restrictions; and then I hope, as it works its way through the legislative process to the Senate that does not have anything in their version of the bill speaking to the Special Immigrant Visas, that we will be able to do our job to make sure that we are not having people at risk, their families threatened, and undermining the credibility of the United States. Remember, around the world, foreign nationals help us with our missions; and if we send a message that we are not going to stick with them when the going gets tough, then they are going to be much less likely to help us wherever it is in these trouble spots. America will be more vulnerable as people who have already helped us are at risk. We can do better.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chair, I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy, and I strongly support everything he just said. We are in a situation today where we have a massive epidemic of opioid abuse. We are prescribing it in unimaginable volumes, and many times people are getting supplies that are far more than they need. We are finding that young people, in particular, 62 percent of teens who abuse prescription drugs do so because they are easy to get from a parent's medicine cabinet or from a medicine cabinet of a neighbor or a friend or people who break into homes. We need to have a systematic effort to be able to safely dispose of drugs. One of the problems in some cases is people are flushing them down the toilet. As a result, we are finding in our water supply traces of these medications. We are slowly medicating the American population. That itself is extraordinarily dangerous, and it is expensive for our water treatment systems.

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chair, I hope this is a first step for us to have a systematic effort at the Federal level to be able to support these important programs to keep it out of the medicine cabinets and out of the sewer systems. I have introduced legislation that would provide a tax credit for providers to be able to provide these services. I hope that we can continue this conversation going forward.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, our nation is faced with unprecedented levels of prescription drug abuse. In 2012, nearly 260 million prescriptions were written for prescription painkillers--roughly one prescription for every adult in the country. While we see prescriptions for pain management on the rise, we don't have an easy or effective way of disposing of leftover, unused medication. A 2014 study found that over 65 percent of participants kept some or all prescription opioids even if they were no longer taking the medication, while only about 6 percent of patients reported safely disposing of their prescription opioids. Families are left with powerful narcotics after their loved ones have passed away. Parents struggle over what to do with leftover pain medications in their home. Without better options, when trying to dispose of medications, people often turn to flushing them down the toilet, putting our water at risk. One study by EPA scientists found that half of the 50 large-size wastewater treatment plants nationwide tested positive for at least 25 drugs. When it becomes more difficult to dispose of a medication than to get it prescribed in the first place, we know something is wrong. Today I am introducing the Safe Drug Disposal Tax Credit Act. This legislation would offer qualified entities a tax credit for starting or maintaining drug disposal and take back programs. Existing take back programs are typically run by law enforcement agencies. While the aim of these programs is admirable, they are not easily accessible to most members of the public, or are only available on specially designated dates. Locating safe drug disposal and take back programs at pharmacies and other health care organizations will increase access to safe medication disposal. This tax credit would help offset some of the expenses of establishing and maintaining a sustainable program.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, there is a major front on the war on drugs that is only now getting the attention it deserves. We will be discussing it later today on the floor dealing with opioid addiction. Instead of arresting or citing over 600,000 people for marijuana last year, which had zero overdose deaths and which a majority of Americans think should be legal, we should redouble our efforts to fight the abuse of opioid prescription painkillers and the epidemic of opioid deaths. Because of reckless marketing and lax oversight, there is an overdose death every 19 minutes; 78 people a day die, 20,000 last year. This is directly related to many heroin addicts. Deaths on heroin are increasing because the addict's drug of choice when their supply of opioids is interrupted shifts to heroin. 2.1 million suffer from substance abuse and 1,000 people a day are admitted to emergency rooms for opoid related causes. We have a challenge that needs to be addressed. There is plenty of blame to go around: the drug company's marketing practices, pill mills and unscrupulous doctors whose government regulators were asleep at the switch; and the DEA, which cannot get its priorities or its story straight. I am hopeful that today's action on the floor will be the first step. As my friend and colleague from Connecticut pointed out, today's legislation really doesn't speak meaningfully to what we are going to have to do: prevention and treatment, which ultimately can help disrupt this cycle of abuse. There is one simple step that I think would make a profound difference. We are introducing legislation today to deal with disposal of prescription drugs. We are issuing approximately one prescription per adult in the United States, 260 million this year. There are tens of millions of these pills floating around and left over. And what do people do? Many of them just flush them down the toilet or leave them in the medicine cabinets. Well, flushing them into the sewer system is not a good idea because we are slowly medicating millions of Americans who are having traces of these drugs showing up in their system from drinking water. They are expensive to remove. Leaving it in the medicine cabinet is how many people find drugs to abuse. Teenagers steal unused medicines out of medicine cabinets in homes that they visit or from family members. We are proposing a safe drug disposal tax credit, which would offer qualified entities such as retail pharmacies, narcotics treatment programs, and long-term care facilities a tax credit to be able to deal with disposal of these prescription drugs on site. Locating safe drug disposal and take-back programs at pharmacies and other healthcare sites will increase access to this safe medicine disposal and will remove millions of these highly dangerous drugs from the hands of people who shouldn't have them. By all means, let's have the debate today. Let's start moving forward. A look at the broader challenges of treatment and prevention is long overdue. Hopefully, the DEA gets its priorities straight in the future. But, in the meantime, providing a tax credit for safe disposal is a small step, which should have bipartisan support and will make a difference in every community across America to end this epidemic of prescription overdose deaths.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, as the founder and co-chair of the Public Broadcasting Caucus and a strong supporter of public media and federal funding for humanities, I would like to raise awareness of StoryCorps. As one of the largest oral history projects, StoryCorps invites people from across the country to record and preserve their stories for future generations within their archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. StoryCorps recently arrived on Capitol Hill and is welcoming individuals to record, preserve, and share their stories at their MobileBooth recording venue, which will be parked outside of the Library of Congress until May 15, 2016. Since 2003, generous support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and others has enabled StoryCorps to collect over 65,000 stories from more than 110,000 participants in all 50 states. They record interviews at various venues across the country, including at their MobileBooth, which tours the nation year-round. StoryCorps also shares excerpts of collected interviews with a national audience of millions through weekly broadcasts on NPR, broadcasts on local public media stations in towns and cities across the country, animated shorts on PBS, and via digital media and bestselling books. StoryCorps' work has been widely recognized with several George Foster Peabody Awards, a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, and most recently, the 2015 TED Prize. All StoryCorps' activities are carried out in collaboration with local and national partners. Each year, StoryCorps partners with hundreds of community-based organizations from across the country-- including local schools, public libraries, local public media stations, hospitals, veterans' affairs centers, and others--to record, preserve, and share the stories of their constituents. In these ways, StoryCorps is promoting a deeper understanding--both historic and contemporary--of people living in diverse communities that contribute to our nation's rich diversity. This important work would not be possible without federal support of public broadcasting, and I urge my colleagues to continue their support. I also hope that my colleagues and their staff will have time to visit the StoryCorps MobileBooth at the Library of Congress in the coming days to learn more and participate.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, last week I had the opportunity to be an official observer at the United Nations as they had a special meeting dealing with the international war on drugs. Much has happened since President Clinton addressed the Global Drug Summit at the United Nations in 1998, carrying the American war on drugs to the international stage. But this, in my mind, solidified the need for us to reset these failed drug policies. People across the political spectrum now agree that this approach to drug policy is flawed and ineffective. We have spent over $1 trillion on this effort over the years. We have undermined countries in Latin America and helped unleash an unprecedented wave of violence in Mexico, killing tens of thousands of people in the drug wars. Yet, despite all the effort, all the money, drugs are still widely available in the United States, actually less expensive than before we started. We seem unable to even keep drugs out of our own prisons. America's failure to deal with harm reduction, treatment, and prevention has helped lead to the epidemic of opioid addiction and death. In 2013 alone, we lost 20,000 people to prescription drug overdose. As people get hooked on amazingly over-prescribed prescription drugs, it leads to heroin addiction when they substitute it when they can no longer get access to opioids. Now, it is interesting that some of the countries that have been most devastated by this war on drugs, in dealing with the international cartels--Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala--were there at the United Nations leading the charge for a different approach. Many of the presentations that I witnessed were suggestions to the Outcome Document, with the common theme that it did not go far enough in reforming the path forward. Calls for harm reduction, greater access to treatment, and fighting the barbaric practice of executing drug offenders energized that consensus. Now, America was on the sidelines. America was not calling for adjustment and change in reform. We were sort of between those more progressive forces, including those countries that have really been in the throes of the drug wars. And then there is Iran and China and Russia, and we were sort of floating in between. It is kind of embarrassing, as an American, to see the United States not leading. I come back to Washington, D.C., more committed than ever for the new administration and the next Congress to be a voice of reform to change these failed policies. We need to put an end to the mindless military action and hard-edged policies that fail and replace them with policies that will make a difference, saving lives, and having effective regulations as tools. Now, the United States is moving ahead at reform at the State and local levels. Forty States now provide some access to medical marijuana. Four States and the District of Columbia deal with adult use, and there will be four or five more States that will join this year. In 2019, when we go back to the United Nations, hopefully to be able to make some of these reforms, the world is going to look different. First of all, there are moves in both Canada and Mexico to expand the use of medical marijuana and to legalize adult use. In 2019, virtually every American will have a legal access to medical marijuana, and we will continue the action at the State level, making those critical changes. Public opinion, once and for all, will be settled in favor of regulation, taxation, and responsible adult use. We will break the shackles of research on marijuana, where the Federal Government actually gets in the way of being able to have the information that the scientists and doctors can produce to settle the question so we don't have to guess. I am hopeful that the United States will be on the right side of reform, that we will stop expensive and regressive policies that don't work, and that we will be able to respond to the emerging American consensus of the people at the State and local levels to do it better. This is one effort we can't afford to fail.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, today is primary day in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast States, the so-called Acela Primary, the five States all served by Amtrak. Fortunately, we are going to get a break, briefly, from a primary season that is truly cringe-worthy. But for hundreds of people who were privileged to watch high school students from across America participate in the We the People constitutional competition, there is hope. These teenage scholars, most not old enough to vote or to drive, compete in a contest demonstrating their knowledge of the Constitution and democratic principles as well as their ability to think on their feet. At a time when civics education doesn't appear to be a priority for most of American education, this shows the appetite and the capacity to fill that gap. I have more than a little hometown pride in this undertaking. The Classroom Law Project has been a priority of my family for years and continues to be so. For the last 4 years, two public high schools in Portland, Oregon, have alternated the National Championship, with Lincoln High School finishing first in 2012 and 2014 and Grant High School in Portland winning the national trophy in 2013 and 2015. This year Oregon was able to send both teams to the national finals, and the pattern continued, as Lincoln won its third trophy in 5 years and Grant, given an opportunity to compete, finished third, an unprecedented accomplishment for one town's high schools. This amazing success speaks to the dedication of the young scholars and the amazing support of their families that was evident in the competition, the finals of which were held here in our Nation's Capital. Both teams have a core of volunteer coaches who are lawyers and judges, citizens who focus on these kids and civics. They care deeply. Having watched one of these young scholars several years ago in our household, I can testify to the intensity, the depth, and the passion for the Constitution and for our government. Time doesn't permit me to recognize all these outstanding young people and their mentors, the team that brought them here, but I must acknowledge the presence and advocacy of Peyton Chapman, the principal of Lincoln High School, their main coach, Steve Griffith, representative of all these amazing adults who invest so much in the young people, and Instructor George Ten Eych, because all of these programs rely on a dedicated professional in the classroom to make it happen. I had an opportunity on the floor of the House to meet with both of these teams late last week. Listening to their comments and questions, I celebrated their insights and hard work, their commitment, even as I wish we could have all of them on the floor of this House to elevate the discussion and deliberation, and I think they would add, frankly, to the decisionmaking. But until their time will come--and it can't come soon enough--in the meantime, we celebrate five consecutive National Championships for two public high schools in Portland, Oregon. Congratulations, Lincoln Cardinals, on your championship, and Grant High School, finishing third. Together, you have dominated this elite competition for 5 consecutive years. Congratulations.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BLUMENAUER

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Will the gentleman yield for a question?