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.
