Protecting Americans from Fentanyl Trafficking Act of 2021

Madam President, sadly, the United States is in the midst of the deadliest drug epidemic in our Nation's history, caused by some of the deadliest drugs ever created.

It appears that more than 80,000 Americans died from drug overdose last year. By far, the biggest killers were lab-made opioids, such as fentanyl, which are cheap to produce and easy to mix with other street drugs such as heroin. These lethal cocktails have devastated countless communities and families across our Nation. Too many parents have come home to a dead child who mistakenly took a prescription pill or a so- called party drug laced with this deadly fentanyl.

Illicit fentanyl, the kind created in underground Chinese drug labs or smuggled across our porous southern border by Mexican cartels, is made only to addict and kill. For those dark, terrible purposes, fentanyl is unsurpassed in the tragic history of addiction. It is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl, an amount equivalent to a few grains of salt, is enough to kill a grown man.

Just last December, police arrested a man in Arkansas carrying 7 pounds of fentanyl. Depending on the purity of that fentanyl, that would have been enough to deliver a fatal dose to up to 1.5 million Americans. That is far from the biggest fentanyl bust that police have ever made.

That means that every time our Border Patrol stops a drug mule coming across our southern border, every time the Coast Guard intercepts a drug runners' vessel in our waters, and every time a SWAT team raids a drug dealer's stash house, they could be averting what is, in effect, a mass casualty attack on our country.

Unfortunately, these Mexican drug cartels and Chinese superlabs are diabolically creative in waging this new kind of opium war against the United States. When American law enforcement started cracking down on fentanyl a few years ago, the cartels started producing so-called analogs or look-alike drugs that are chemically distinct from fentanyl, yet have no legitimate medical uses but will kill you just as quickly. Some of these analogs are even more powerful than fentanyl--up to 150 times more potent of a drug that I would remind you, once again, is, itself, 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Because these drugs are chemically distinct from fentanyl, prosecuting and shutting down their creators is often prohibitively expensive, requiring law enforcement to hire expert witnesses to testify the analog is, in fact, a deadly drug.

In 2018, the Drug Enforcement Administration took the necessary and prudent step listing the entire class of fentanyl analogs as schedule I prohibited substances. This decision closed a deadly loophole that drug dealers were using to escape punishment from poisoning our citizens, while still allowing legitimate researchers to apply for and obtain approval to research these analogs for potential medical or scientific breakthroughs.

The evidence suggests that this law enforcement action has been getting results. Since the classwide scheduling went into effect in early 2018, law enforcement encounters with uncontrolled fentanyl analogs plummeted by almost 90 percent.

Of course, our work to solve the opioid epidemic is far from finished. We still have much to do to dismantle the cartels and drug trafficking networks that spread fentanyl and analogs and mix it with other drugs. But the DEA's efforts to control fentanyl analogs were a step in the right direction.

Last year, the Senate voted unanimously to extend the DEA's emergency scheduling of fentanyl, but that extension is now set to expire. We have the opportunity--in fact, I would say we have the responsibility to permanently control these deadly fentanyl analogs so law enforcement has the legal backup it needs to take these dangerous drugs off the streets.

If Congress doesn't act, this emergency scheduling order is set to expire next week. The authority of our Border Patrol to seize these drugs as they cross the border will be dramatically reduced. Cartels will, once again, be able to exploit loopholes to evade prosecution, and Chinese superlabs will get right back to work inventing new and creative ways to repackage fentanyl and to kill even more Americans. We cannot let that happen.

I introduced a bill to solve this problem once and for all by merely eliminating the expiration date on the law that protects us against these fentanyl analogs. I am asking my colleagues to approve it just like we did last year--unanimously.

I would also like to urge my Democratic colleagues to disregard the liberal activist groups that are lobbying

against controlling these deadly fentanyl analogs because they hope to use it as a bargaining chip to reduce criminal penalties for the most serious drug traffickers. Think about that. More Americans died of a drug overdose last year than in any other year in our history. Yet these liberal activists are trying to help the drug traffickers who spread these very poisons. If they succeed, drug dealers will have an easier time killing Americans for profit, and prosecutors will have to waste valuable resources proving that each new form of fentanyl they encounter is, in fact, a deadly drug.

We cannot play politics with this bill, trading the lives of innocent Americans for more lenient treatment of cartels and superlabs. Protecting Americans from deadly fentanyl should not be treated as a bargaining piece or poker chip. I ask my colleagues to think of the victims and think of the urgency of this measure. I am offering this bill on behalf of tens of thousands of Americans who were with us just last year but are not today because of these deadly synthetic drugs. I am offering this on behalf of the countless Americans who can still be saved if we act.

I urge my colleagues to support this measure and, therefore, Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of S. 1410, introduced earlier today; further, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I thank my colleague from New Jersey for these remarks.

Time is not on our side. This emergency scheduling order expires next week. The Senate is not in session next week.

I know that we want to empower addicts, as the Senator from New Jersey said; that we want to help give them the treatment they need to get back on their feet. That is a goal I share.

We are talking, though, about drug dealers, drug traffickers, cartels, Chinese superlabs. If we do not pass an extension--in my bill, a permanent extension of this emergency scheduling order--it is the addicts who will be hurt because the drug dealers and these cartels and superlabs will simply begin to flood our streets, once again, with the synthetic fentanyl analogs, which I remind you, again, can be 150 times more potent than fentanyl itself, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

I hope my Democratic friends will reconsider in the short time we have this week, and we will be able to pass a permanent extension of this scheduling order.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

I am deeply grateful to my colleague and friend, the Senator from Arkansas, for bringing this to the floor of the U.S. Senate.

There is an urgency he described that I agree with. One hundred Senators here, and not one State has not been touched, devastatingly, by the fentanyl epidemic. These analogs present a crisis to our country. Lives are at stake so I share his sense of urgency.

I am hoping we can work together to find a way to stop, as he put it, these cartels and these drug labs from wreaking such havoc on our country. I believe that together we can find a solution. In fact, there has been constructive talk across the Capitol--bipartisan talk about finding a way to come to some kind of accord.

In addition to that, I am hopeful that there are other bills out there that have the same ambition, the same goal, the same sense of urgency that I believe should be part of the discussion; for example, policies like the ones in the STOP Fentanyl Act, which I understand Senator Markey will be introducing in the Senate very soon. I believe we should have time in the Judiciary Committee to work on a longer term solution that cannot just deal with the international cartels, not just deal with these horrific drug labs but also empower people who are addicted to begin not to be punished simply with the criminal justice system but to find ways to provide treatment and support to people who are struggling with addictions to this horrific drug.

So with that, I would like to object.

Madam President, I want to say, in conclusion, before I switch to another topic, that I appreciate the willingness of the Senator from Arkansas to look not just at his bill but a powerful potential bipartisan extension however we can deal with this. The urgency does exist. We are in a crisis.