The effort to permanently place deadly fentanyl and its chemical cousins on America’s list of the most dangerous drugs is gaining momentum in Congress.
The GOP-controlled House easily passed the HALT Fentanyl Act late Thursday, with 98 Democrats voting yes versus 74 Democrats in the last Congress.
The progress cheered Sen. Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who said he’s working with a Republican co-sponsor, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, to “advance it in the Senate ASAP.”
The bill would place fentanyl and its analogs on the Schedule I list of controlled substances, permanently, instead of listing it temporarily.
Experts say permanent scheduling would result in more efficient prosecutions and stiffer penalties under guidelines from the U.S. Sentencing Commission while sending a signal to China and Mexico that America is serious about tackling the fentanyl problem as it pressures those nations to do more.
Illicit fentanyl is made in clandestine labs and features chemical cousins. It’s tough for U.S. laws to keep up with every form, so the HALT Fentanyl Act seeks to cover all of the illicit supply and make it easier for prosecutors to win cases.
Some Democrats are leery. They say the legislation could result in overincarceration of drug offenders instead of attacking the root causes of drug addiction.
However, bipartisan support for the bill is giving it momentum.
“This bill permanently classifies fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I, giving law enforcement the tools needed to halt this epidemic,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said. “With this legislation and President Trump’s recent actions to secure our northern and southern borders, Republicans are taking decisive, strong and immediate action to keep these dangerous drugs out of our communities.”
Fentanyl started to flood the heroin supply in the middle of the past decade, resulting in an uptick in overdose deaths.
The highly potent synthetic opioid has shown up in a variety of drugs and counterfeit pills since then, killing Americans of all ages and backgrounds and bedeviling the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.
The drug still causes tens of thousands of American deaths per year.
Mexican cartels import precursor chemicals, often from China, and manufacture fentanyl. They often press the drug into fake pills, causing unsuspecting Americans to take them and die.
Mr. Trump recently threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico unless they clamp down on illegal immigration and drug trafficking. He agreed to a one-month pause after both countries agreed to stiffer border and drug measures.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports provisional data on overdose deaths each month, though the figures lag by nearly half a year.
The rate of U.S. overdose deaths steadily climbed during the COVID-19 pandemic that spanned the last year of the Trump administration and the first years of former President Joe Biden’s term — often topping 100,000 on an annual basis — before turning sharply downward in 2024.
Nearly 87,000 people died from U.S. overdoses in the 12 months ended in August, the most recent yearlong stretch available.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.