At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, independent U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine sharply criticized military efforts to help law enforcement interdict drugs coming into the United States.
King says there has been little, if any progress, by the military in keeping drugs out of the United States even as the opioid crisis continues to grow and claim more lives.
“It is inexcusable to be sitting here three or four years later and still only being able to interdict 25 percent of the drug shipments that we know about,” he says.
As intelligence efforts to find drugs stall, King points out that overdoses in the U.S. are not letting up, with about four people dying every hour.
“Since we’ve been talking here this morning four people in this country have died of overdoses, just in the last hour. As many people have died in the last month as were killed on September 11, including one a day in my state of Maine,” he says.
