Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders held a press conference on Friday to announce the state’s new Drug Czar, Thomas Fisher and to share her support for a bill that would impose harsher punishment for those who traffic fentanyl.
Sanders said that isolation imposed by the pandemic caused addiction to spike across the country noting that the last year on file for which data is available recorded 628 lives lost in Arkansas due to drug over doses.
“As a mom, it’s hard to see all the lives that are lost and my heart certainly breaks for every parent who has lost a son or daughter to an overdose,” Sanders said. “I don’t think any of us can not think about people that we know and have connections to those who have lost somebody to this epidemic.”
Sanders said House Bill 283, written by Senator Sam Gilmore and Representative Jimmy Gazaway, would hold ‘killer drug dealers’ accountable.
