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Floor Speech
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Mrs. MOODY. Mr. President, good afternoon. I rise today in the Senate Chamber for the very first time as a U.S. Senator to address a topic that unfortunately has become important to so many States, so many communities, so many families across this great Nation.
Before I became a U.S. Senator and one of your colleagues, I was the Florida attorney general. For the past 6 years in that position, I made it my mission every day to fight against the opioid crisis and put poison peddlers that sought to do harm to our families behind bars.
As many of you know, fentanyl now kills more Americans than any other drug by far, and it is the leading cause of death for working-age and fighting-age men and women. It is also a cause of death of infants and children that are exposed to the substance, and that number is increasing exponentially.
Florida is no stranger to the opioid epidemic. We suffered from a pill mill crisis, and we had to address that by tightening our laws and making sure people had access to help. Following that, we saw a surge of fentanyl pouring into our country and people overdosing from that drug.
Fentanyl now claims 70,000 lives a year. It is the deadliest drug our Nation has ever encountered. That is why it is vital that we continue to not lose focus that this is the deadliest thing facing our men and women right now. This is our challenge. We cannot be distracted, and we have to stop this drug from coming across our borders and into our communities.
That is why we have to continue to provide law enforcement the tools they need to get this drug off our streets and make sure we are providing lifesaving medications like Naloxone to first responders and that people who are struggling with addiction know where to get help.
After 4 years of a wide-open border and free range given to drug cartels to smuggle illicit substances into our country, it is no surprise that our Nation was flooded with fentanyl.
In Florida, we fought back despite the surge. Our law enforcement officers were up for the task. Our leaders gave us additional resources. Florida led the Nation in fentanyl seizures.
I, back in 2023, called for the cartels to be labeled ``foreign terrorist organizations.'' President Biden ignored our call. I called for the border to be closed and the then-head of DHS to be fired for allowing drug smugglers and countless amounts of fentanyl to flood our country. Those calls were also ignored.
So Florida took Biden to court. First, when he stopped deporting those here illegally, committing serious felonies against our citizens, we took him to court. Then, when he started welcoming in and paroling everyone into the Nation that was barely vetted, we took him to court, and we won.
We also sent Florida law enforcement to the border to slow down the flow of drugs. We ramped up interdiction efforts with Florida Highway Patrol and Florida Department of Law Enforcement. We fought back with everything that we had.
The death and destruction caused by illicit fentanyl started to decline. We started to see hope. Before I left the Attorney General's Office, Florida reported 2 straight years of reductions in the number of drug-related deaths. According to a recent FDLE Drugs Identified in Deceased Persons by Medical Examiners annual report, fentanyl deaths in our State of Florida dropped 10 percent. This rate of decline is well ahead of the national average, which declined by about 2 percent during the same time.
Still, thousands across our Nation are dying--tens of thousands--and we cannot take our eyes off the ball. While we have had success in Florida, we must push forward across the rest of the Nation to deliver accountability and protection for the American people.
Florida has always been a leader in law and order, and we have understood the danger presented by fentanyl. We understand that many Americans take this deadly drug not even knowing that it is in something else they are ingesting within counterfeit pills.
We classified fentanyl as a schedule I controlled substance back in 2017. This allows easier prosecutions for these types of cases.
It is time that the Federal Government follow the request and the pleas of national law enforcement organizations, including the DEA, which is calling for fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances to be scheduled permanently as a schedule I controlled substance.
When I got to Washington, one of my first actions was to join the HALT Fentanyl Act as a cosponsor. As attorney general, I led other States in calling on Congress to pass this bill. Now as Florida's newest U.S. Senator, I will work tirelessly to make sure this gets done.
I am so proud of my Senate colleagues. Last month, we passed the HALT Fentanyl Act through the Senate, and now it is in the hands of the U.S. House. This bill will ensure Federal agents and prosecutors have the tools they need to send a strong message to drug traffickers: If they continue to bring poison into our country, they will be held accountable. That has always been the case in Florida, and I am so proud of my friend and predecessor, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is taking this fight directly to the cartels.
The American people gave our great President, President Trump, a mandate last November. That was to restore law and order, make sure people were held accountable for their crimes. We believe that as a Floridian--the first Floridian President in our Nation's history--he is going to take that approach we have had in Florida to the rest of the Nation.
While my calls for a closed border and a declaration of drug cartels as ``foreign terrorist organizations'' fell on Biden's deaf ears, it is no surprise that President Trump immediately got to work on this. On day one, he closed the border. We have seen a 93-percent drop in illegal crossings since then. Turns out we didn't need a new law; we needed a new President. As one of his first acts, he declared cartels as ``foreign terrorist organizations.''
I am incredibly excited to work alongside my new U.S. Senate colleagues and President Trump as we begin to make America safe again, and this includes voting based on priorities that will make our communities and families safe.
We have a great opportunity in Washington right now to fight this crisis instead of fueling it through unlawful immigration policies. Now we need to do our part. We need to urge the U.S. House to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act and get it to the President's desk as soon as possible.
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