Politics & Power Quote by Elijah Cummings

The number does the heavy lifting: "More than 26,000" lands like a ledger entry, cold and official, before the language pivots to grief. Cummings is working a classic congressional move here - translate suffering into a count, then translate the count back into moral urgency. It is both a warning and an argument for legitimacy: if the crisis can be measured, it can be governed.

"May be lost" is a careful hedge, the kind that signals policymaking constraints (projections, contested data, partisan scrutiny) while still letting the figure hit emotionally. He follows with "this great nation", a phrase that can sound boilerplate until you read it as a pressure point: if America is "great", then mass preventable death is not just sad, it's a contradiction. The patriotism isn't decorative; it's an indictment.

The real rhetorical turn comes with "communities across this great nation". That word, communities, spreads responsibility outward. Drug abuse is not framed as an urban problem, a poor problem, or a criminal problem; it's everywhere, which quietly challenges the reflex to treat addiction as someone else's failing. Then he narrows the focus: "our young people". That possessive does two things at once - it claims collective ownership of the victims and recruits the listener into a parental posture. You don't have to care about policy details to feel implicated when the subject becomes "our" kids.

Contextually, Cummings is also policing the boundaries of debate: this isn't a conversation about punishment, morality, or personal weakness. It's a public health emergency with national scale, and the subtext is simple - if the country can mobilize for other threats, it can mobilize for this one.