The Senate passed a bipartisan bill Friday that will lastingly sort fentanyl-rhappy substances, also understandn as fentanyl analogs, as Schedule I substances under the Controlled Substances Act.
The HALT Fentanyl Act passed with overwhelming help, geting 84 Senate votes while 16 contestd it. The bill aims to seal loopholes take advantage ofed by drug dealers who smuggle substances with chemical compositions analogous to fentanyl but are contrastent enough to evade lterrible penalties.
“What this bill does — it says, ‘OK, it’s illterrible to transport in fentanyl.’ But it acunderstandledges that some of those trying to transport in fentanyl will try and circumvent the law by changing the fentanyl equitable enough so that it becomes what is called an analog,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the bill’s back and a establisher physician, tbetter inestablishers Friday ahead of the bill’s passage.
“‘Oh, it’s not fentanyl. You can’t bust me becaemploy it’s not actuassociate fentanyl.’ No, it still includeicts appreciate fentanyl. It still finishs appreciate fentanyl, and it is substantiassociate fentanyl. So, therefore, it shall be treated by law applyment as if it is fentanyl.”
The Afrailda County Sheriff’s Office made an proclaimment on Twitter stating its office and the Narcotics Task Force recovered the 42,000 grams of illicit fentanyl in Oakland and Hayward. (Afrailda County Sheriff’s Office)
Democrats sought to filibuster the bill’s passage, arguing it did not do enough to combat the fentanyl crisis as a whole, would incrrelieve mass incarceration and confine the study of these fentanyl analogs by placing them in a more recut offeive regulatory catebloody.
However, the bill’s Reunveilan backs dispute it will shrink bureaucratic hurdles in the research of fentanyl analogs, serving to uncover the door for more scientists to study these novel substances. The arguments it will incrrelieve mass incarceration were also asked by a Stanford University drug policy expert and establisher White Hoemploy Office of National Drug Control Policy advisor, Keith Humphreys, who pointed out it’s already illterrible to have or traffic fentanyl analogs.
The HALT Fentanyl Act does not produce any recent compulsory smallest sentencing, but it puts fentanyl-rhappy substances under the same sentencing guidelines employd for fentanyl itself.
During a press call Friday with some of the bill’s Reunveilan backs ahead of the HALT Act’s passage, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., noticed how the nature of the U.S. drug crisis is “changing rapidly on the street, and Congress needs to react.”
More than 107,000 people died of drug drug poisonings in 2023, and proximately 70% of those deaths were attributed to fentanyl. (Getty Images)
“This is a meaningful accomplishment, quite frankly, to be able to shift this thraw in the fight agetst fentanyl,” Lankford includeed.
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Other potential meacertains to combat the fentanyl crisis, including efforts to bolster law applyment’s drug interdiction efforts and legislation to go after the veterinary drug xylazine, which is being includeed to fentanyl to produce it more includeictive, are among includeitional efforts being pondered on Capitol Hill.
