[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 72 (Tuesday, April 27, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S2204]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                FENTANYL

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, as I noted here on the floor last week, 
the unaccompanied children packed into overflowing facilities are not 
the only tragic consequence of our failure to secure the border.
  In addition to the U.S. mail, our southern border is a major source 
for the stream of lethal illegal drugs that continue to pour into our 
country. According to the CDC, more Americans died of overdoses last 
year than ever before.
  This health crisis predated COVID-19 and will outlast it, and Customs 
and Border Protection data tell us a major cause has been a spike in 
the flow of fentanyl and its analogs produced by chemical companies in 
places like China. These drugs, which can be hundreds of thousands of 
times stronger than morphine, are rightly classified on the schedule of 
controlled substances. There are severe penalties for those caught 
trafficking them. It is the least we can do to protect American lives, 
families, and communities.
  Clearly, on its own, this step hasn't been sufficient, but in a few 
weeks, even this obvious step is set to expire. Fentanyl analogs would 
cease being controlled substances in Federal law, making enforcement 
and deterrence even more difficult.
  So Congress is faced with what should be a crystal-clear choice. The 
right thing to do, of course, is to permanently schedule these 
substances. Only in Washington could this become some kind of intense 
debate, but alas, some soft-on-crime corners of the political left have 
convinced some Democrats that this impending expiration is actually, 
actually a political opportunity. They want the Democrats to only 
reschedule these analogs for a short period of time, punting this 
deadline just a few months into the future, which makes you ask, Why?
  Well, so that Democrats could come back to the table with an 
unrelated soft-on-crime bill--say, reducing prison sentences for drug 
dealers--and make that bad idea the price of admission for keeping 
these deadly poisons illegal.
  So look, we need to be clear-eyed here. No amount of political spin 
or inside-the-beltway horse trading can muddy the debate. It is very 
clear: Congress should schedule these fentanyl analogs permanently--
permanently.
  It is not complicated. Americans are dying. Communities are drowning. 
Chinese drug traffickers are getting rich off of our misery. 
Permanently scheduling these analogs is the very least, the very least 
Congress can do

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