Chuck Grassley: “last week, I led my colleagues in reporting a bill that is entitled the ``HALT Fentanyl Act.'' This bill was reported…”

“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.…”