Providing for Consideration of H.R. Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 93 and ask for its immediate consideration.

The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 93

Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (H.R. 27) to amend the Controlled Substances Act with respect to the scheduling of fentanyl-related substances, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The amendment printed in part A of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution shall be considered as adopted. The bill, as amended, shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended, are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill, as amended, and on any further amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees; (2) the further amendment printed in part B of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by the Member designated in the report, which shall be in order without intervention of any point of order, shall be considered as read, shall be separately debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question; and (3) one motion to recommit.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, last night the Rules Committee met and reported out a rule for one measure, H.R. 27, the HALT Fentanyl Act, under a structured rule.

The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees and provides for one motion to recommit.

As most Members know, unfortunately, we all know somebody who has been affected by the drug overdose epidemic plaguing our country.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2023, there were more than 107,000 overdose deaths that occurred in the United States. These staggering numbers are due in large part to the increased presence of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues or fentanyl- related substances, which are approximately 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. The lethal dose of fentanyl is just 2 milligrams, or about 4 grains of sand.

A loophole the cartels use and have tried to use to traffic illicit fentanyl into our country is by changing just one component of fentanyl's chemical structure in order to create a fentanyl analogue or a fentanyl-related substance. The cartels did this in an attempt to evade our criminal laws.

Right now, fentanyl analogues are considered schedule I substances but only because of a series of temporary scheduling orders, which is now set to expire on March 31, 2025.

Along with my colleague, Mr. Latta from Ohio, we decided to introduce H.R. 27, the HALT Fentanyl Act.

The bill aims to curb overdose deaths by permanently scheduling fentanyl analogues or fentanyl-related substances as schedule I substances. This will strengthen law enforcement's ability to prosecute fentanyl traffickers and act as a deterrent.

The HALT Fentanyl Act also promotes research by improving the registration process to eligible individuals so that they can conduct studies on schedule I substances with appropriate safeguards.

In the Energy and Commerce Committee, we have heard testimony that there may be as many as 4,800 individual analogues or fentanyl-related substances. Our experts at the NIH, the FDA, and others have studied roughly 30 to 40 of those 4,800 analogues or fentanyl-related substances.

By encouraging research of schedule I substances like fentanyl analogues, we can better understand how these substances work and how we can prevent potentially harmful impacts in the future or even find a better use or a better opportunity than the current fentanyl that we use.

Because fentanyl has a proven medical use, it is considered a schedule II narcotic, as the Speaker knows, having practiced medicine for many years.

Illicit derivatives of fentanyl, also called fentanyl analogues, currently have not demonstrated a medical value.

Let me be clear. This bill will have no impact whatsoever on physicians' ability to administer fentanyl in medical settings.

The HALT Fentanyl Act deals specifically with fentanyl analogues or fentanyl-related substances, not medicinal fentanyl.

The Biden administration even released a statement when this bill passed through the House last Congress stating that they supported permanent scheduling and streamlined research for fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances.

We must address this bipartisan issue immediately and not allow this temporary extension to expire.

Once fentanyl analogues are permanently scheduled in schedule I, Congress will continue to build off this work to continue to address the illicit fentanyl crisis.

According to a 2021 GAO report, there was a 90 percent decrease in these fentanyl analogues coming into our country the year they were first placed into schedule I.

This bill is a critical step in combating the opioid crisis in our country because China and Mexico are heavily involved in this business. China is sending the precursors of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues to the cartels in Mexico, who are then bringing it across our border.

By making these analogs permanently schedule I, it removes the incentive for the cartels to traffic these analogues or fentanyl- related substance drugs into our country. China even realized the risk of fentanyl analogues and permanently scheduled those analogues on their strictest schedule. Other countries have followed suit and done the same.

Last Congress, this bill cleared through the Energy and Commerce Committee on a bipartisan basis and then passed on the House floor with 74 Democrats voting in favor.

The bill has the support of many law enforcement agencies and other entities calling for the need to pass the bill as it is.

We must act quickly to make the scheduling order permanent before it expires again at the end of March.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, I understand there are all kinds of concerns on the other side of the aisle, but we are talking about the HALT Fentanyl Act.

I could stand here and talk about Burma. We heard today that the President has extended the emergency situation with Burma, that undemocratic country where they overthrew the democratically elected government and how Burma, also known as Myanmar, is the largest cultivator of opium products and the producer of heroin globally, second only to Afghanistan. That doesn't have anything to do with the HALT Fentanyl Act. The HALT Fentanyl Act is a good bill.

Mr. Speaker, I keep thinking I am here to talk about the HALT Fentanyl Act, but they keep talking about all kinds of other things.

My colleagues have acknowledged that the HALT Fentanyl Act passed in the last Congress with a large majority, yet here we are using this as a vehicle to talk about everything else they think is going wrong in the world.

Mr. Speaker, I have a little bill here. It does some good. We ought to pass it. If my colleagues want to talk about lots of other stuff, they are entitled to. That is their right. However, I don't want the focus taken off the HALT Fentanyl Act. It is a good bill. It helps law enforcement. It helps slow down the flood across the southern border. That is what we are here about today.

I know if the motion on the previous question fails, then they are going to introduce a different bill. However, my understanding is their bill completely eliminates and doesn't have anything in their language about halting fentanyl.

This is something a large majority of Congress wants to get done. Let's get it done. Let's stop all the rhetoric. Let's stop trying to point fingers at us and everybody else for other things. Let's just do our job. I think that is what the American people want us to do.

In fact, I hear a lot of times from my constituents back home that they are tired of seeing these gigantic bills. It sounds like what my colleagues on the other side want is some more gigantic bills that people vote on. It is kind of like what the former Speaker said: We have to vote for it so we can find out what is in it.

I would rather vote on bills that I know what is in it. That is why I read all the bills if I plan to vote for it.

I helped write this bill. I am the lead sponsor of this bill. It is an easy bill to read. It is pretty straightforward in what it does, what it is supposed to do, and what we are trying to do. President Biden thought it was okay. He issued a statement in favor of it last term. This term President Trump says that he is in favor of it.

This is a bipartisan approach to solve a problem.

Does it solve all the world's problems, Mr. Speaker?

Of course it does not, but it solves a problem that our law enforcement has that helps the bad guys, the people making the precursors in China, the people in the cartels in Mexico flooding across our southern border with these harmful fentanyl-related substances and analogues. It makes it easier for our law enforcement people to focus on illegal fentanyl.

Mr. Speaker, fentanyl is legal for medicinal purposes, and it will be even after this bill.

There is something else that Democrats haven't mentioned. I mentioned it briefly, but I will talk about it a little bit further, Mr. Speaker. That is the component in this bill that allows for research on the 4,800 other related substances or analogues that we believe are out there. It is a rough number. Nobody knows until they get in and start experimenting, but we heard that testimony in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

There might be some benefit to some other analogue. There might be some benefit, but we don't want it out there on our streets or being used for medicinal reasons until we know for sure that it does something positive for society.

Right now, all the analogues that we have seen are either inert or just as bad as the illegal use of fentanyl, so this bill needs to be passed.

I understand the minority doesn't want to talk about this. My Democratic colleagues want to talk about everything else, but that is not why we are here today.

When I came to Congress, I pledged to read the bills. I pledged to talk about what it is we are talking about today and not talk about everything else in the world that I think we might be able to fix someday or that we might ought to do someday. There is a process for that.

As my friend Terry Kilgore used to tell me all the time, somebody would come up with an idea, and then they would want to put on some kind of an amendment or change the bill around when we had a nice, little, simple bill. Mr. Kilgore is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, and he was my seatmate. He came up with a famous phrase when people wanted to rearrange the bill in a way that he didn't think was proper or put an amendment on it that would completely change the bill or, in this case, defeat the motion of the previous question in order to defeat the HALT Fentanyl Act and put forward some other bill. He would say: Well, you might have some points to make. I would say to the gentleman: Get your own bill.

Mr. Speaker, it is kind of interesting. I keep thinking we are talking about the HALT Fentanyl Act, and then I hear all this other stuff.

Earlier, one of my colleagues said that we were cooking up some kind of a plan to cut--I forget what the number was now--$2.5 trillion or $2.7 trillion out of Medicaid. I haven't heard of any such plan being cooked up. I think that is just hyperbole, but that is my opinion.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman keeps asking about a pardon or about somebody who was pardoned. Well, I don't know if he has noticed or not, but I am not the President of the United States. I don't have the power to pardon. I don't get the information put on my desk about various individual pardons.

I didn't make any comments about pardons by the previous President when many people were pardoned or were sitting on death row and had sentences commuted. That is not what we are here about today.

We can get down into that trap if we want to, but I am just telling you that we are here today to talk about a rule for a simple bill that the majority of this House supports. I believe it is an overwhelming majority. I don't know if my colleagues admitted it was exactly 74, but they admitted it was a big vote last year. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle admitted it was a part of a package that the minority wanted to see pass on the floor at the end of last year.

I thought we were here to talk about this. I recognize that it is a free-for-all on the floor, but I just hate to get into all those kinds of things and start talking about this or that and, whether crossing the line or not, somehow casting aspersions that Members over here don't have independent wills. We certainly do, and I think my colleagues might recognize that from some of the things I said last night when I was being questioned.

Do I support the President? Well, of course, I do. Do I agree with everything he does? No.

As the old saying goes, I don't agree with my wife all the time. She certainly doesn't agree with me most of the time.

The bottom line is that I think the President is moving us in the right direction. One of those right directions would be to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act. Another is closing down the border, shutting that border down.

If Democrats want to talk about drugs coming across our southern border and want to point to an individual who is thought to be primarily responsible for some of that, how about the hundreds and thousands of people who were used by the cartels to bring illicit substances, whether it be at ports of entry or other places, across our southern border?

The President is cracking down on that, too, but that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about making sure that when our law enforcement officers arrest somebody and their preliminary examination indicates that what they have is significant, or even a small amount but generally significant amounts of a fentanyl-related substance, that when they go to court, they don't have somebody arguing in court that, wait a minute, this is not the fentanyl on schedule II, that this is a fentanyl-related substance but it is a left-handed molecule instead of a right-handed molecule or a right-handed molecule instead of a left- handed molecule.

I can say that, as a former defense attorney, I loved those kinds of arguments. As a Congressman, it is our job to shut those arguments down. The HALT Fentanyl Act stops those arguments from being made in court, which are basically spurious attempts to help drug dealers.

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleagues are not trying to help drug dealers. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are just here to try to make some other points today. Let's talk about this bill and the good that this bill can do.

My Democratic colleagues brought up substituting this bill with the SUPPORT Act. I am a cosponsor of the SUPPORT Act, which is carried by the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Brett Guthrie. That bill has a very good chance of passing this body, so let's let that bill go through its process, and let's let this bill, the HALT Fentanyl Act, finish out this process, get across to the Senate, get signed into law by the President, and start doing good work.

The Speaker might be asking why we have to do this at this moment. The answer is that we have had a rolling series of temporary bills on making the fentanyl-related substances schedule I because we all recognize the danger that these present to the American public.

Let's make it permanent and give our scientists an opportunity to look at some of those other 4,800 analogues or fentanyl-related substances to see if there is anything there that might be beneficial to mankind, that might be a reversal of an overdose, that might be a better and less-addictive pain reliever. Let's let them do that research.

They can't do that research without the HALT Fentanyl Act, and the efforts of the defense attorneys for the cartels can't be crippled by constantly passing temporary bills because any day that it is not in effect is a day that lawyers will take advantage of.

Mr. Speaker, darn, I wish I had known 40 minutes ago we could talk about anything we wanted to, that this time was not really to talk about the rule present before us today or the underlying bill, but was to talk about whatever we wanted to, whatever is on our agenda, their agenda.

I have to say, Mr. Speaker, this is why the American people don't have confidence in Congress, because they can't follow the bouncing ball. We are here to talk about the HALT Fentanyl Act, and we are talking about everything including the kitchen sink.

If I had only known that 40 minutes ago, I could have brought over all my CRAs that I am interested in getting passed, all my bills that I think are fascinating and interesting that I can't seem to get out of committee, at least not in the past. I could have talked about all kinds of things.

I understand that may not be the practice of the Rules Committee. I am new. The gentleman is absolutely right to remind me of that. I have no problem with that. I just didn't know that we could talk about whatever we wanted to when the subject of the day is: Are we going to pass a rule that ultimately we hope will be put in place for the debate and passage of the HALT Fentanyl Act.

Then I heard, amongst a number of things today that I thought were just kind of odd, that my bill, the HALT Fentanyl Act, had been watered down.

Well, that is news to me because the bill, with the exception of changing a couple of paragraph numbers, the lettering on the paragraphs to make sure we were alphabetically correct, is exactly the way I introduced it. I don't think that is a watering down. A watering down is when you take a bill that is 20 or 30 pages long and you make it into a 2-page bill and you have it do half of what it was supposed to.

What this bill was supposed to do, Mr. Speaker, is exactly what this bill does. It takes and makes a permanent schedule I classification for all of the roughly 4,800 fentanyl-related substances or analogues. It provides for research on those fentanyl-related substances or analogues at our research institutions with certain safeguards to make sure we can continue to do research so that maybe we can find a better path forward, something that may help with our drug addiction issues, something that may be a better, less addictive pain reliever.

We want that research done, but until we have the evidence that one of those 4,800 analogues or fentanyl-related substances actually does good, we need to make them schedule I. They need to be on there so that the cartels can't use this as some trick in the courtroom to get out of trouble, to get a proverbial get-out-of-jail-free card.

My colleagues want to talk about everything else coming down the road, including an individual--and I haven't reviewed his file--who they claim was involved in the drug trade and who was pardoned.

I haven't heard them talk about Lairon Graham of Buffalo, convicted of heading a drug conspiracy and selling fentanyl, crack cocaine, and heroin, who was pardoned by the previous President, Mr. Biden.

I haven't heard them talk about Valentino Shine, convicted of narcotic sales, along with sex trafficking and distribution of crack cocaine, who was pardoned by the previous President.

Now, I personally don't think any of that is relevant to today's discussion, and I recognize that that is apparently the practice of the Rules Committee. I find it surprising. I think it is a sloppy practice, but if that is the practice, then next time I will be sure to bring my wish list with me and we can talk about everything except the bill we are supposed to be talking about.

It does make you wonder and think that everybody at home watching this, both of them, are confused because we are not talking about the bill that we are supposed to be talking about. I hope Congress some day gets around to talking about the bill that it is supposed to talk about, whether it is my bill or somebody else's bill.

Today, I will try to make my remarks as much as I can about passage of the rule for the HALT Fentanyl Act.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I offer the gentleman from Massachusetts an opportunity for whatever comments he has remaining.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I just have to say that I am appalled. I understand they get the right to say whatever they want to during this time of debate on the rule for the HALT Fentanyl Act. I understand that, but they say you have to choose what side you are on, then bring up Elon Musk, and then say vote ``no.'' This bill has nothing to do with Elon Musk. This bill is about fentanyl-related substances and fentanyl analogues. It perplexes me, other than it is an attempt to confuse everybody on what this bill is about.

If they want to make all those statements, they can, but I would think they would be in favor of getting this bill done. If you are going to choose to say whose side you are on with this bill, you are making a choice. You are making a choice. We have an opportunity today, right here and now, to pass a rule and then tomorrow to pass a bill that will make a step forward in stopping the cartels, the Chinese precursors, and the folks who are doing the bad things in our country and in other countries from bringing their substances into this country and trying to use a gimmick, a chemical technique, saying that it is not really fentanyl, that it is a fentanyl analogue, and get around our laws.

That is what this bill is about. Every Member ought to be in favor of that. Why you wouldn't be in favor of at least bringing that bill to the floor and having a vote on it is beyond me. If we are choosing sides, I am going to choose to take a step forward. I am going to take a step forward to try to stop this scourge of fentanyl poisoning, fentanyl analogue poisoning, and fentanyl-related substances coming into our country. That is the side I am going to choose.

I understand they want to talk about all kinds of other things. I think it is a pretty darn good bill, and I think we should pass it.

Now, let me get to my script. I would like to reiterate the importance of the bill to permanently schedule fentanyl analogues as schedule I while still allowing for research into these substances.

This is one small step in fighting the opioid crisis our country faces. If we allow this temporary extension to expire in March--as it will if we take no action, if we choose the wrong side today and tomorrow--it will bring back the incentives for traffickers to bring these fentanyl analogues and fentanyl-related substances into our country.

I truly don't believe my colleagues on the other side want that. I understand they get fired up on the floor sometimes and say things that maybe later, in retrospect, they think maybe they shouldn't have gone that far.

If we are going to choose sides, I urge everybody to pass the rule and choose the side of stopping the fentanyl scourge in our country, the fentanyl analogue scourge in our country, and urge the passage of this rule and for final passage of the underlying bill.

The material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows:

An Amendment to H. Res. 93 Offered by Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts

Strike all after the resolved clause and insert the following:

That immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the bill consisting of the text of H.R. 4531 of the 118th Congress, as passed by the House, to reauthorize certain programs that provide for opioid use disorder prevention, recovery, and treatment, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.

Sec. 2. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H.R. 4531.
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