On the recordSeptember 19, 2022
Last year, over 100,000 Americans lost their lives to drug overdoses and 70 percent of those deaths involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl. These lethal compounds have continued to pour across a southern border that is not secure, and into communities that remain overwhelmed by this terrible onslaught. Unless we in Congress act, possessing fentanyl will become completely legal in just over 3 months. Unless we work now to permanently make fentanyl a schedule I narcotic, Americans will wake up on New Year's Day in a country where a drug responsible for tens of thousands of deaths can freely be sold on our streets. Our communities are counting on us. We need to pass legislation that permanently labels fentanyl as the deadly drug that we all know that it is. No more short-term bans. No more playing politics while lives are at stake. ____________________
