Frank Pallone: “To close. The point that I have been trying to make and my colleagues have been trying to make on this side of the aisle…”

“To close. The point that I have been trying to make and my colleagues have been trying to make on this side of the aisle is that Republicans continue to push punitive and partisan policies with regard to the opioid crisis rather than real solutions to address the substance abuse crisis, strengthen border security, or fix our immigration system. The partisan HALT Fentanyl Act would not meaningfully address substance abuse. It would simply result in more incarceration. This bill takes a one-sided approach by only requiring permanent class-wide scheduling of fentanyl-related substances in an attempt to incarcerate our way out of a public health crisis. By contrast, the Biden administration has put forth an interagency proposal, which I have discussed, to permanently schedule synthetic fentanyl within schedule I without exacerbating existing sentencing disparities and inequities in our criminal justice system, as well as creating an off-ramp to remove or reschedule these substances shown to have medical or therapeutic value. Now, I know that we hear from the other side: What have you done? What are you doing? Well, the bottom line is that the Biden administration has taken aggressive action to combat the overdose epidemic.…”