Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 489, I call up the bill (S. 331) to amend the Controlled Substances Act with respect to the scheduling of fentanyl-related substances, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. 331.
Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, most Members in this Chamber know someone 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 increasing presence of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues 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 four grains of sand.
A loophole that the cartels have tried to use to traffic their illicit fentanyl into our country is by changing one part of fentanyl's chemical structure to create fentanyl analogues. 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, and that order is now set to expire on September 30 of this year.
That is why the HALT Fentanyl Act, led by myself and my friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Latta) in this House and then Senators Cassidy and Heinrich in the Senate, is critically needed.
This bill aims to curb overdose deaths by permanently scheduling fentanyl analogues as schedule I substances, Mr. Speaker. This will strengthen law enforcement's ability to prosecute fentanyl traffickers and act as a deterrent.
The HALT Fentanyl Act promotes research by improving the registration process so eligible individuals can conduct studies on schedule I substances with the appropriate safeguards. In the Energy and Commerce Committee, we have heard there may be as many as 4,800 analogues. My understanding is that experts at NIH and FDA and other agencies have studied roughly 30 of those 4,800 analogues.
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. The temporary bans, Mr. Speaker, did not deal with the research component. So without this bill, we cannot legally do the research on the analogues that may, someday, be found to have medical benefits.
Because fentanyl itself has a proven medical use, it is considered a schedule II drug, but illicit derivatives of fentanyl, also called fentanyl analogues, currently have no demonstrated medical value.
Let me be clear. This bill will have no impact whatsoever on a physician's ability to administer fentanyl in medical settings. The HALT Fentanyl Act deals specifically with analogues, not medicinal fentanyl.
We must address this bipartisan issue immediately and not allow this temporary extension to expire in September.
Once fentanyl analogues are permanently placed into schedule I, Congress will continue to build off this work to continue to address the illicit fentanyl crisis in our country.
According to a 2021 GAO report, there was a 90 percent decrease in these analogues coming into our country the year they were placed temporarily 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 sends the precursors of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, the API, or active pharmaceutical ingredients, to the cartels in Mexico who are then making the drugs and bringing them across our borders.
By making these analogues permanently schedule I, it removes the incentive to traffic these drugs into our country due to the penalties if they are caught.
China has even realized the risk of analogues themselves and has permanently scheduled these analogues on their strictest schedule. Other countries have followed suit and done the same.
This bill received bipartisan support on the House floor with a vote of 312-108 in February. The bill has the support of many law enforcement agencies and other entities calling for the need to pass the bill.
With passage of this version of the bill, it will be sent to the President's desk. I am hopeful the President will sign this bill into law quickly so that we can continue to combat this crisis and begin research in earnest to see if there is any benefit from any of the analogues that may help people who are afflicted having been addicted by accident or on purpose to fentanyl.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support S.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), the chairman of the Health Subcommittee.
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Mr. GRIFFITH.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman said, this is an identical bill to the one that passed out of the House with the exception of a few technical changes the Senate made, including sticking their number on it instead of the House number. Other than that, it is essentially the same bill this House passed and, frankly, with bipartisan support.
I understand the gentleman's objections related to mandatory minimum sentences, but that is a different bill and a different day. That is not what this bill is about. This bill is about making fentanyl analogues a schedule I or making all of them schedule I substances.
The gentleman referenced that there is no off-ramp. I would suggest to him that the off-ramp is in the eye of the beholder.
What we did in this bill, and I think it is something that everybody on the floor can be proud of, we put into this bill the capability to do extensive research by universities, the NIH, and the FDA. We created a framework to do research on the 4,800 believed analogues of fentanyl.
I believe it has two advantages. One, if we find one of these analogues that has no harm and even has a positive effect for some issue, that creates your off-ramp. There is already an off-ramp in the law for drugs that show promise and have a medicinal benefit. That opens up other statutes. This one doesn't have that off-ramp, but other statutes do that would allow if somebody comes in and says, wow, look at what this does. It does good things in the X area or the Y area or whatever. This bill has the component parts to make that possible. Unlike our schedule I on marijuana, which never allowed research or realistic research and created some of the dilemmas that we have today with that substance. We fixed that with this bill.
Secondly, that research component, I believe if there is any benefit in the analogues at all, it may be that one of the analogues--I am not saying it will and I think the odds are slim, but it is possible that one of the analogues will have a blocking effect on the deadly aspects of fentanyl itself, and that would be a huge positive.
When my colleague says that it has nothing on dealing with the problem as far as people who have an addiction, he is right. It does not today, but that research component has great potential for the future.
In the short run, we stop the Chinese from bringing the precursors to Mexico and the Mexican cartels creating new analogues and trying to get around our laws by claiming it is not really fentanyl, it is an analog. We stop those attempts by the bad guys, the illegal people trying to bring this into our country and bringing it in, unfortunately, successfully. We stop it. We stop them using that technique to get around the law. Then we leave the door open for positive future benefits, if any, in the analogues.
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to have helped draft this legislation. I am proud to have drafted the part on the research component. I am proud that, notwithstanding the fact that they made a few tweaks and sent back a Senate bill rather than sending back mine and Mr. Latta's original House bill, I am proud to stand here today in support of the HALT Fentanyl Act.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues in this House to vote ``yes'' and let's send it to the President's desk. Let's make this a permanent law in the United States.
As Chairman Guthrie said: It is not going to solve every problem, but it makes our kids just a little bit safer.
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