West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey has joined a coalition of 25 states led by Iowa and Virginia in urging the U.S. Senate to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act, which will close the copycat fentanyl loophole and save American lives.
Since 2018, fentanyl has killed nearly as many Americans as World War II. The problem has only been made worse by Mexican drug cartels smuggling deadly Chinese-made copycat fentanyl across the southern border.
Between October 2021 and June 2022 alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized enough fentanyl to kill the entire American population five times over.
“How many more deaths should we endure for us to realize that the dangers of this substance are real? Everyone should be aware of the serious danger posed by fentanyl, which is tainting the entire supply of illegal drugs and counterfeit pills,” Attorney General McCuskey said. “Fentanyl and its analogues have made their way onto our streets with alarming regularity, and overdose deaths related to fentanyl now surpass deaths related to heroin.”
Copycat fentanyl, or fentanyl analogues, are lab-created drugs that are made to avoid certain harsher penalties under U.S. law. These fentanyl analogues are often more harmful than prescription fentanyl.
The legislation would permanently schedule all current and future fentanyl analogues as Schedule I drugs, giving law enforcement the appropriate tools they need to crack down on the epidemic by stopping the flow of the dangerous drugs developed to imitate fentanyl (although not chemically identical). Congress temporarily classified fentanyl and fentanyl analogues as Schedule I drugs, but that status is set to expire March 31. The HALT Fentanyl Act will permanently fix the problem.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the HALT Fentanyl Act with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. The coalition is now calling on the Senate to do the same.
Attorney General McCuskey joined the Iowa- and Virginia-led letter with Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
Original source can be found here.