Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to this bill because it is abundantly clear it is not a serious effort to address the drug overdose epidemic in this country.

It is, in fact, partisan. Treatment is not partisan, but this bill is.

Before coming to Congress, I was a practicing physician. In 2022, I took care of a young person in the ICU who had unintentionally overdosed on what was thought to be a pain pill but turned out to be a counterfeit oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl.

I worked all night to save this young man's life, but his brain never woke up. I was the one who had to tell his mother and extended family that he was never going to come home.

This tragic story is all too familiar for Oregonians. In Congress, I am laser-focused on getting my community the resources it needs to ensure that no parent or family ever has to experience the pain of losing a loved one to an overdose.

That is why I am disgusted by the administration's current illegal freezing of all Federal funds, including over $8.6 billion in grant funding for Federal programs to combat the opioid crisis.

I offered a simple amendment to this bill before us today. That amendment stated that this bill could not take effect until we get confirmation that last week's funding freeze and any future freeze does not jeopardize Americans' access to substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery services.

The Republicans claim to care about addressing this crisis, but they refused to bring that amendment up for a vote. It is shocking to me what we have come to. My Republican colleagues are so afraid to stand up that they will rip essential healthcare services away from our most vulnerable.

We must take a stand, and I am going to take a stand. For those who are watching who are suffering, please know that we will not stop fighting. We cannot arrest our way out of this.

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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak, and I rise to strongly support this amendment. If we want to save lives, if that is truly what we are all here to do, let's make sure that is the outcome before we move forward.

As I stated, I am a physician. I am a lung doctor. I have taken care of people with addiction for 20 years. I know, Mr. Speaker, that people have to fail before they succeed most times when they struggle with addiction.

Criminalizing all use of fentanyl derivatives means that people will be driven into the shadows because they fear going to jail should they have an addiction. This is a chronic disease.

If we believe criminalization is the path to helping save lives, I want to see that because that has not been our experience in Oregon where it has been nationally recognized that we have struggled.

The other point I will make is that the scheduling of all fentanyl derivatives ties our hands. We cannot develop treatments that are derivatives of fentanyl if we criminalize all fentanyl-related derivatives.

Mr. Speaker, not only do we deny ourselves the opportunity for treatment upstream, but downstream, we criminalize people into the shadows where they are more likely to die of overdose.

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