Con­gress push­es to clas­si­fy fen­tanyl per­ma­nent­ly as Sched­ule I nar­cot­ic

Congress pushes to classify fentanyl permanently as Schedule I narcotic

Sen­a­tors emerged from a hear­ing on the fen­tanyl epi­dem­ic in agree­ment about per­ma­nent­ly cat­e­go­riz­ing the drug and relat­ed opi­oids with the high­est pos­si­ble clas­si­fi­ca­tion days before one such bill on the top­ic is sched­uled for a vote.

The sud­den push comes days after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump near­ly launched a trade war with Cana­da and Mex­i­co over fen­tanyl and levied an addi­tion­al 10% tar­iff on Chi­na over the dead­ly drug.

Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee Chair­man Chuck Grass­ley (R‑IA) said on Tues­day that Con­gress must act now on how the gov­ern­ment clas­si­fies fen­tanyl and relat­ed sub­stances.

“We’ve played this game for long enough. It’s time to make this tem­po­rary sched­ul­ing per­ma­nent so that the drug car­tels do not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to flood our coun­try with even dead­lier ver­sions of fen­tanyl,” Grass­ley said in the hear­ing on the need to sched­ule fen­tanyl.

The hear­ing took place days after Grass­ley joined Sens. Bill Cas­sidy (R‑LA) and Mar­tin Hein­rich (D‑NM) to intro­duce the Halt All Lethal Traf­fick­ing of Fen­tanyl Act, or HALT Act. The bill would per­ma­nent­ly clas­si­fy fen­tanyl-relat­ed sub­stances as Sched­ule I under the Con­trolled Sub­stances Act, the high­est pos­si­ble rat­ing. Sev­en Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors have since co-spon­sored the leg­is­la­tion.

The House is set to vote on the HALT Act as soon as Wednes­day.

Since 2018, fen­tanyl has been resched­uled on a tem­po­rary basis as a Sched­ule I drug, but its clas­si­fi­ca­tion is set to expire on March 31.

The Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Committee’s top Demo­c­rat, Sen. Dick Durbin (D‑IL), described get­ting fen­tanyl off the nation’s streets as a “Her­culean task” that would require bipar­ti­san­ship.

The Senate’s push comes at the same time as Trump’s efforts to force Cana­da, Chi­na, and Mex­i­co to crack down on bor­der secu­ri­ty and fen­tanyl seep­ing into the Unit­ed States.

The White House pro­posed 25% tar­iffs on Cana­di­an and Mex­i­can imports, but by Mon­day, Trump announced that those tar­iffs had been delayed by 30 days because those coun­tries made con­ces­sions.

In a call with Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau on Mon­day, Trump said his coun­ter­part had agreed to place 10,000 “front-line per­son­nel” on the bor­der with the U.S. and appoint a “fen­tanyl czar” to stop the ingre­di­ents for fen­tanyl from seep­ing south of the bor­der into Amer­i­ca.

Sen. Ash­ley Moody (R‑FL) praised Trump’s actions to enhance bor­der secu­ri­ty by threat­en­ing tar­iffs and said the prob­lem was final­ly being addressed after too lit­tle action under for­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

“The last four years, this com­mit­tee has not held one hear­ing on fen­tanyl,” said Moody, Florida’s for­mer attor­ney gen­er­al. “We’re going to talk about it mov­ing for­ward.”

Near­ly 90% of fen­tanyl seized was at the nation’s ports of entry, pri­mar­i­ly between the U.S. and Mex­i­co, where body smug­glers, com­mer­cial trucks, and pas­sen­ger vehi­cles attempt­ed to trans­port it through cus­toms inspec­tion booths. But plen­ty more has man­aged to get through.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑TX) is a bor­der state law­mak­er whose home state has seized enough fen­tanyl since 2021 to kill 622 mil­lion peo­ple. Cruz blamed the bor­der cri­sis seen under the Biden admin­is­tra­tion for the uptick in deaths due to fen­tanyl over­dos­es and poi­son­ings.

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple in Novem­ber issued a clear and unequiv­o­cal man­date the open bor­ders we’ve had for the last four years must be closed. We can no longer allow crim­i­nals and car­tels and gang mem­bers and dead­ly drugs to stream across our bor­der,” Cruz said. “Pres­i­dent Trump is doing his part to meet the man­date from the vot­ers. We also in Con­gress must do our part to meet that man­date.”

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In 2022, more than 109,000 peo­ple in the U.S. died from drug over­dos­es, includ­ing 75,000 of whom died from syn­thet­ic opi­oids, includ­ing fen­tanyl. Fen­tanyl-relat­ed sub­stances are the No. 1 cause of death in U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45, accord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion.

The Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion con­sid­ers 2 mil­ligrams of fen­tanyl, the amount that could fit on the tip of a pen­cil, lethal because it can put a user in a coma or cause death.