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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last week, I led my colleagues in reporting a bill that is entitled the ``HALT Fentanyl Act.'' This bill was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
This is a battle-tested bipartisan bill that passed the House of Representatives with a supermajority of votes, including 98 Democrats voting in favor of the bill. If you have been involved with this issue over the last 3 or 4 or 5 years, you would know that bipartisan fentanyl legislation has been hard to come by. But I am pleased to see that this bill has seven Democratic cosponsors here in the Senate and had nearly half the Democrats in my committee vote in favor of it.
I want to thank all my Democratic colleagues for working with us on such a vital piece of legislation. I think you all know the statistics: About 70,000 of the 100,000 people that die of drug overdose are dying because of fentanyl.
The HALT Fentanyl Act does three things. First, it makes permanent the class scheduling of fentanyl-related substances. This is the same classwide scheduling that occurred during the first Trump administration and has been continued nine times by Congress on a short-term basis. This legislation would eliminate that from time-to- time scheduling of fentanyl analogs, and that is why permanent legislation is so important.
Second, the bill confirms the sentencing penalties the Federal courts have long applied to fentanyl-related substances. And thirdly, the bill creates a streamline registration process for studying schedule I controlled substances.
Classwide scheduling has been a successful policy. It has been a success in stopping the creation of fentanyl-related substances that would have otherwise killed countless Americans.
If you don't believe me, I would like to have you listen to Dr. Tim Westlake. Dr. Westlake is the inventor of the classwide scheduling system the DEA adopted. He came before my committee and testified:
[T]hese efforts have resulted in shutting down the creation and flow and very existence of new fentanyl related substances into the [United States]. It's why Congress must act to finally make permanent this temporary policy.
I began by saying that bipartisan fentanyl legislation has been very hard to come by. I am proud to lead the HALT Fentanyl Act with Senators Heinrich and Cassidy. That is one Democrat and one Republican.
Our bill has the support of the leading law enforcement organizations. These 12 organizations have called on us here in the Congress to ``advance this critical legislation without delay or modification.''
Our bill also has the support of an organization called Facing Fentanyl. That is a coalition supported by over 200 family groups impacted by fentanyl. They ``stand in full support of the HALT Fentanyl Act as it is currently written, without amendments.''
I have also received over 100 individual letters from parents who have lost their children to fentanyl poisoning.
Our bill also has the support of the medical community.
The HALT Fentanyl Act is truly a bipartisan compromise, bringing together stakeholders and Members from across the spectrum.
During the last 4 years, Senate Democrats couldn't be bothered to bring this bill or any other permanent legislation to schedule fentanyl to the floor for a vote, and that was the situation even after HALT passed the House with 74 Democrats voting in favor and even with the Biden administration's coming out in support of the bill--all taking place in the last Congress.
So the time has surely come. This is long overdue legislation, and I urge my colleagues to move to and support this bill. If we can't come together to pass this battle-tested bipartisan legislation, then we will have failed the American people and made the environment for even more people to die of drug overdoses and fentanyl poisoning. We owe it to the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones to this very poison. We owe it to our constituents. It is time that we found the will to act, and now is that time to act.
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