Freshman Rep. Brandon Williams (R-Sennett) is supporting legislation meant to blunt the opioid crisis.
Williams held a roundtable with local law enforcement, county health officials and non-profits Tuesday to get a sense of how the opioid and overdose epidemic is affecting the 22nd Congressional District.
"We are losing this battle," Williams said. "We have to do more on prevention and education of our children."
Williams said educating youth is his number one priority in fighting a multi-pronged issue.
"Nobody wakes up and wants to be an addict and decides that as a career path," Williams said. "There’s a lot of mental health issues that play into this and so it’s really about equipping children at a younger age to be aware of the dangers."
His second priority — securing the border with Mexico to thwart the movement of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs into this country. He expects to focus on a series of legislation that will attack the crisis. To start, he’s signed on to the Tranq Bill, which he said can have an immediate impact.
"This is an effort to give law enforcement and medical professionals the tools that they need to combat this crisis," Williams said. "That is the ability to detect, to diagnose, to understand the effects of a lot of the drugs that are coming from fentanyl, so we can be more effective in fighting this on these front lines.’
Williams said he’s committed to continuing the community discussion about the overdose crisis and epidemic.
