Politics & Power Quote by Jim Ramstad

“Recovery Month” is the soft lighting here: a commemorative frame that makes a hard political ask feel morally inevitable. Jim Ramstad, a politician speaking in the cadence of civic ritual, uses celebration as cover for confrontation. The line pivots fast from uplift to indictment: if we’re honoring recovery, Congress can’t hide behind speeches and ribbons. “It is time” is the classic deadline-without-a-date, a pressure phrase meant to sound like consensus rather than partisan demand.

The intent is legislative and strategic. “Knock down the barriers” casts policy as demolition work, implying that the main enemy isn’t addiction alone but the structures around it: insurance carve-outs, inadequate funding, punitive criminal-justice approaches, stigma baked into law. The metaphor also dodges technocratic detail; you don’t have to name a bill to name a villain. Barriers are intuitive. Knocking them down is satisfying.

The “26 million” figure is doing double duty. It’s a scope signal to colleagues (this is not a niche issue) and a moral inoculation against the usual blame-the-user reflex. Ramstad’s subtext is that addiction is a public-health crisis with a mass constituency, not a private failing. “Suffering the ravages” leans deliberately visceral, pushing the listener away from abstract “substance use” language toward urgency, harm, and empathy.

Context matters: Recovery Month rhetoric typically emerges from an ecosystem of advocates, treatment providers, and families demanding parity and access. Ramstad’s choice to name Congress as the actor locates responsibility where politicians prefer it not to be: in budgets, coverage rules, and the gap between praising recovery and paying for it.