The Senate on Wednesday took one step to crack down on Mexican and Chinese entities behind the scourge of fentanyl that has killed tens of thousands of Americans.

The Democratic-majority Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs unanimously voted Wednesday to advance the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, first introduced by 2024 GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). FEND is short for Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence.

"It is past time we sanction the manufacturers, the exporters, and the cartels that traffic and sell this poison by hitting them where it hurts the most – their bank accounts," Scott said during the mark-up on Capitol Hill.

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The bill would direct the Treasury Department to use its economic sanctions to "choke off" the profits of the Chinese entities that make the precursor ingredients and the Mexican cartels that compile the ingredients into the finished product and then push it into the U.S. across the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a July 2021 investigation, the Washington Examiner exposed how Chinese money launderers and fentanyl-makers had gone into business with Mexican drug cartels, teaming up to make billions of dollars a year trafficking the powerful opioid that is killing thousands of people in the United States.

Chinese businesses have stepped up not only to facilitate the making of fentanyl but also to aid the Mexican cartels by laundering their profits out of the U.S. back to Mexico.

Fentanyl is a man-made drug that is so strong that three grains of powder can induce a coma. U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45 were more likely to die from consuming fentanyl than they were to die as the result of a car crash, the coronavirus, a heart attack, suicide, or a terrorist attack in 2021, the U.S. government declared.

Fentanyl was a driving force behind the record-high 100,000 overdose deaths last year.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection law enforcement personnel who inspect vehicles, people, and goods at the border are seizing an astronomical amount of fentanyl, surpassing last year's record-setting number in just the first seven months of fiscal 2023, which began last October.

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The Drug Enforcement Administration has stated that 2 milligrams of the typical fentanyl it seizes, often in pill form, is a potentially fatal dose. One pound of fentanyl would be equivalent to 453,952 lethal doses.

CBP's seizure of 3,257 pounds of fentanyl nationwide in April means nearly 1.5 billion lethal doses were stopped.