[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 78 (Tuesday, May 9, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1557-S1560]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 878

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, today, I would like to talk about a 
distasteful subject to me--I get angry whenever I think about it--
fentanyl dealers. I hope there is a special place in Hell for them--
fentanyl dealers.
  Today is National Fentanyl Awareness Day. In 2021, fentanyl killed 
71,000 Americans. If you break down these sterile statistics, you will 
see that somebody in our country dies from fentanyl poisoning every 7 
seconds. There ought to be a special place in Hell for fentanyl 
dealers.
  And these aren't just sterile statistics. These are real people, and 
they have real families whose lives are torn apart. A lot of these 
deaths occur among young people. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of 
death for Americans who are 18 to 49.
  From 2020 to 2021, fentanyl deaths in our country increased by 24 
percent. It was even more among young people.
  What you allow is what will continue. And today, this body--the U.S. 
Congress--allows fentanyl dealers to carry on their person, if they 
would like to, enough fentanyl to kill 20,000 Americans before they 
face a mandatory 5-year minimum sentence if they are caught. Until 
these fentanyl dealers have to deal themselves with real consequences, 
I think the carnage is going to continue.
  I have a bill--it is called the Fairness in Fentanyl Sentencing Act 
of 2023, and it will change what I just talked about drastically. It 
will reduce the amount

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of fentanyl that a fentanyl dealer has to possess before facing the 
mandatory minimum 5 years of prison.
  Now, I know you know this, but when you are dealing with fentanyl, 
the amounts really matter. Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than 
heroin--not 5, not 15--50 times more potent. It takes only 2 milligrams 
to kill you.
  Here is a pencil. Here is the point of the pencil. The amount of 
fentanyl you can put on the point of a pencil will kill you.
  Let me say that again.
  The amount of fentanyl that you can put on the point of a pencil will 
kill you.
  Today, fentanyl dealers can carry up to 40 grams of fentanyl before 
they face the mandatory minimum 5 years of prison.
  And with me today is one of my colleagues, Mr. Wesley Davis, who is 
also a good lawyer, I might add. This is 40 grams of fentanyl. It is 
not actually fentanyl; it is flour. But if the flour were fentanyl, 
this would be 40 grams. You can have this much--you have to have this 
much before you get a minimum of a 5-year sentence. And remember the 
pencil? Enough to go on the head of a pencil can kill you. But you have 
to have this much--I don't know how many pencil points this is, but it 
is a lot. You have to have this much to get a minimum 5-year sentence--
40 grams.
  It would kill 20,000 people. This amount will kill every Member of 
this body 200 times over--every Member of this body 200 times over. And 
thanks to us, and the laws that we passed, the fentanyl dealer would 
just get a minimum 5-year sentence.
  This bag has 400 grams in it. It is flour, but fentanyl would 
represent the same thing. This has 400 grams. You have to have 400 
grams, given the laws that we have passed, to face a mandatory 10-year 
sentence, and 400 grams will kill 200,000 people dead as a doornail.
  Shreveport, LA, in my State--some of you have been there; if you 
haven't, you should visit--is home to 184,000 people. So a dealer has 
to have 400 grams--an amount that would kill every man, woman, and 
child in Shreveport, 400 grams--in order to get a mandatory 10-year 
sentence.
  These sentencing guidelines do not reflect how much damage can be 
done with just a little bit of fentanyl. For example, fentanyl dealers 
face a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence if they have 5 grams of 
methamphetamine. To get 5 years in prison, you just have to have 5 
grams of methamphetamine, but you have to have 40 grams of fentanyl, 
which is 50 times more powerful than heroin. Does that make any sense 
to anyone?
  Meth is a bad drug. I am not defending meth. But it is not nearly as 
lethal as fentanyl. This stuff will kill you, and people deal it every 
day in America. They deal it every day, and they are not facing 
consequences. In 2021, in fact, meth killed less than half as many 
people as fentanyl. Yet fentanyl traffickers--fentanyl dealers--I don't 
want to call them traffickers because that sounds too tame to me, too 
beige. They are dealers. They are drug dealers. They are death dealers. 
Fentanyl dealers can possess eight times as much fentanyl before facing 
the same mandatory minimum sentence as somebody who is dealing meth. We 
need a sentencing scheme that looks like somebody designed the damn 
thing on purpose.
  We need to have a Criminal Code that reflects fentanyl's lethal 
force.
  (Mr. MARKEY assumed the Chair.)
  My bill, the Fairness in Fentanyl Sentencing Act of 2023, is pretty 
simple. It will cut the fentanyl threshold for the 5-year mandatory 
minimum sentence from 40 grams to 2 grams--from 40 grams to 2 grams. 
You are not going to have 2 grams of fentanyl on you unless you are 
dealing.
  It would reduce the legal threshold for fentanyl analogs as well. 
Fentanyl analogs are synthetic copycats of fentanyl, and actually, 
these analogs can be even more lethal than pure fentanyl itself.
  Today, a dealer can carry up to 10 grams of fentanyl analogs before 
facing a 5-year mandatory minimum sentence. My bill would drop that 
threshold down to half a gram. By doing this, my bill helps our 
Criminal Code reflect the reality that fentanyl is not like other 
drugs. It is not. I mean, as bad as meth is, as bad as PCP is, as bad 
as crack cocaine is, as bad as heroin is, as bad as powder cocaine is, 
fentanyl is in a class by itself.
  The drug cartels who operate south of our border have found that 
fentanyl is a cheap way to cut corners and to make more money. They use 
fentanyl to make other drugs. They put fentanyl into cocaine. They put 
it into heroin, which makes the final concoction cheaper and more 
powerful. Today, everything from marijuana to Adderall can be laced 
with lethal amounts of fentanyl on the black market. It gives the 
concoction more kick, and the drug dealers make more money, which is 
all they care about. If the drug dealers don't measure it right, it 
will kill you.
  Now, look, we all know that young people experiment, and many young 
people--I dare say most young people--are going to try drugs. When my 
son, whom I love more than life itself, was a youngster--he is no 
longer young. Well, he is young.
  I consider you and I young, Mr. President.
  When my son was growing up--he is now a grown man--I would lecture 
him about drugs, and I would say: Don't use them. I knew he was going 
to try them, but I would say: Don't use them.
  He said: Dad, why?
  You get addicted. You get addicted.
  I was always terrified that my son would get addicted and would fall 
in with the wrong crowd.
  That conversation today is different for parents with young 
teenagers. Now it is, you can't even try it once--not fentanyl. You 
can't even try LSD or meth or PCP or crack cocaine or heroin or powder 
cocaine. Do you know why? Because it might have fentanyl in it. The 
drug dealers cut these products with fentanyl, and if they put too much 
in it, you get one shot--one shot. Forget addiction; the first time a 
young person experiments might be the last.
  My State of Louisiana, like every other State in this country, has 
seen the carnage of fentanyl. We all have. In 2021, 94 percent of drug 
overdose deaths in New Orleans were related to what? Fentanyl. In 
Louisiana, we call our counties parishes. Our coroner's office in East 
Baton Rouge Parish investigated 300 overdose deaths, and 88 percent of 
them last year were linked to fentanyl. In an average month in St. 
Tammany Parish, or county, where I live, we lose 10 or 11 people just 
about every month--10 or 11 young people usually--to fentanyl 
overdoses. Why? These weren't people just taking fentanyl; these were 
people taking other drugs that drug dealers--each of whom should be 
assigned a special place in Hell--that drug dealers are cutting with 
fentanyl to give the concoction a higher high to make more money. If 
they measure wrong and put too much fentanyl in it, you get to try 
their product one time, and then you are dead. These are sons. These 
are daughters. These are friends. These are coworkers. And every one of 
them has a family.
  While our families and our kids are suffering, the cartels and the 
drug dealers who help them in America are getting rich. There was a 
recent report from the Department of Justice. It stated that fentanyl 
dealing is one of the Sonora Cartel's most lucrative endeavors. That 
cartel is led by three of El Chapo's sons. We are not talking choirboys 
here; they have made a boatload of money selling poison to our 
children.
  But it is not just them; it is dealers in the United States as well. 
Our Customs and Border Protection officers are working as hard as they 
can to stop drugs from coming into this country, but their hands are 
tied by our bad policies.
  More people have crossed the border in the last year than at any time 
in the history of ever. That is a fact. More than 5 million people have 
entered this country illegally under President Biden, during the Biden 
administration. I only have 4.6 million people in Louisiana, so imagine 
just us adding another State besides Louisiana. The problem is expected 
to get worse. As we know, title 42 expires next week, and more people 
will be coming in. But it is not just folks who are coming into our 
country illegally.

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  Let me say, I don't hate migrants. I don't hate immigrants. I love 
immigrants. I mean, we are a nation of immigrants. But we have a legal 
immigration system, and we ought to follow it. Most Americans 
distinguish between legal immigration and illegal immigration. If you 
support legal immigration, as I do, and oppose illegal immigration, 
that doesn't make you a racist, as some people think.
  The American people oppose illegal immigration and support legal 
immigration for the same reason they lock their front doors at night. 
Most Americans don't lock their front doors at night because they hate 
everybody on the outside; they do it because they love people on the 
inside, and they want to know who is coming in and out. They are happy 
to welcome--I am happy to welcome Nigerian doctors and German engineers 
and whomever to come into our country legally. Vetting people at the 
border is not racist; it is prudent.
  But a lot comes across that border--and not just people. A lot of 
fentanyl does as well. In 2022, Customs and Border Protection seized 
14,000 pounds of fentanyl--a 127-percent increase from the previous 
year. That is enough fentanyl to kill every man, every woman, every 
child in the United States.
  We have to show the cartels and the people in America, in our 
communities, who are dealing this stuff that there are consequences for 
poisoning people, especially young people.
  I have also introduced a bill called Ending the Notorious, 
Aggressive, and Remorseless Criminal Organizations and Syndicates Act 
of 2023. It is known as the NARCOS Act. It will designate these cartels 
as foreign terrorist organizations. We need to give our border agents 
the resources to secure the border and to stop these dealers before 
they set foot in our country.
  Let me return to the Fairness in Fentanyl Sentencing Act of 2023. It 
is not going to solve the problem, but it is a start. Dealers carrying 
enough fentanyl to kill a small town deserve to face a minimum 
mandatory sentence of 5 years, and they deserve to be punished more 
severely than someone carrying meth or PCP or crack cocaine because 
fentanyl is in a class by itself. Without serious prison sentences for 
these drug dealers who put money over human life, we are not going to 
make progress. A 5-year prison sentence can close one stream of 
fentanyl into our communities, and it might deter the next person who 
is looking to make a quick buck while trafficking this poison.
  I am going to be clear. I am almost done. My bill is not looking to 
punish acts. My bill will not punish acts. I believe in free will and 
responsibility, but I also think there are mitigating circumstances in 
the nitty-gritty of life. That is why, if you are an addict and you are 
convicted of a crime, a serious crime, a judge will consider mitigating 
circumstances, like addiction. I wouldn't wish addiction on my worst 
enemy.
  This bill isn't about addiction. A lot of these people don't even 
take their own product. This is about people--fentanyl dealers--who 
deal death every day to make money, and there ought to be a special 
place in Hell for them. In Congress, this Senate punishes them less 
than we punish somebody dealing meth.
  Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent 
that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further 
consideration of S. 878 and the Senate proceed to its immediate 
consideration. Further, I ask that the bill be considered read a third 
time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made 
and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. BOOKER. Reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, the Senator from Louisiana is a friend and 
someone who is, as he said, angry about these issues. That passion is 
real. His anger, his frustration, his determination is something that I 
share. In fact, I think this is one of the issues that, if you polled 
100 Senators, you would see 100 Senators who sincerely and urgently 
believe we need to do something with this crisis that the Senator from 
Louisiana has so patently and clearly and candidly put forward. The 
fentanyl crisis is killing Americans at outrageous rates. Doing nothing 
or continuing to do the same thing is absolutely unacceptable.
  So my colleague, his passion--Louisianians should know that this is 
one of the best fighters when it comes to protecting people in his 
State, and his passion for protection affects people all over this 
country.
  But this is the challenge I have. We have now seen generations of the 
so-called War on Drugs, and the solutions that we seem to come up with 
are about more and more and more incarceration, longer and longer and 
longer sentences. And if that would solve the problem, count me in for 
continuing to go down that pathway.
  We now incarcerate more people than any country on the planet Earth. 
One out of every three incarcerated women on the planet Earth is here 
in America. One out of every four incarcerated people in the world is 
here in America. But has that stopped the crisis of drugs in our 
communities, kids dying of fentanyl, of opioids? No. There is no 
correlation. Not one study--nothing--shows that higher and higher 
rates, higher and higher sentencing relate in any way to safer 
communities, and I have looked for that data.
  The Department of Justice itself--the folks who are prosecuting 
people for drugs--their own report from the National Institute of 
Justice says more severe punishments do not chasten individuals 
convicted of these crimes. It has no correlation at all.
  And yet, as my colleagues pointed out, every 7 seconds someone is 
dying. And so the question is this: What will make the difference?
  My colleague, if you follow the evidence that you so passionately 
talked about on this day--National Fentanyl Awareness Day--the things 
that we know are actually driving down the deaths are treating this 
issue like a national health crisis.
  Yes, we need law enforcement. Yes, we need to stop this fentanyl 
coming into our country. Yes, the law enforcement needs all the tools. 
I support them. I will fight for them. I will continue to invest in 
them.
  But what is lacking to save lives is the kind of healthcare access 
that we need. Drug treatment, awareness, public health interventions--
we know those work, but yet we don't have the resources in communities 
to do them.
  I bring your attention to some of the facts. The National Institutes 
of Health reports that 85 percent of our prison population right now--
think about that. The overwhelming majority of our prison population 
right now has an active substance use disorder of people incarcerated 
involving drug use. That is who we are incarcerating in America right 
now, folks coming in and out, getting further and further engaged in 
that dark world of drug abuse and drug sales; but we are not solving 
the problem.
  Let me bring attention to the fact that, when it comes to sentencing, 
my colleague was talking about the mandatory minimums. But do you know 
what? If you get caught with possession--I know this--you get tagged 
with possession with intent to distribute. God, if you are in a school 
zone, you get tagged with something else.
  We have prosecutors now that could stack up 20, 30, 40, 50 years, 
even more so. I don't know if folks know this, but on your first 
offense, possession with intent to distribute has a 5-year mandatory 
minimum, but you could be given up to 40 years. In the second offense 
in the United States of America, you could get a life sentence. The 
mandatory minimum is 10 years to life.
  Is that stopping the crisis in our country? Do we need to bring in 
the death penalty? Is that going to stop what is happening in every 7 
seconds?
  Thirty years I have lived in Newark--25 years to be exact--and God, I 
have watched the drug war and what it has done: more mandatory 
minimums, more incarceration, and lives that continue to be destroyed 
by the horrors of drugs. I beg this body to look at the evidence of 
what actually saves lives.
  Did you know that the No. 1 reason why people don't call for help 
when someone is having a drug overdose is because they are afraid of 
the consequences when they engage with the police? People are dying 
right now because people are afraid of the police because we are 
treating this like just a

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law enforcement problem and not a public health problem.
  I will join with any colleague on either side of the aisle to stop 
the scourge of fentanyl taking too many of our children, but, God, 
follow the evidence, and let's work together on what we see is actually 
lowering causes, lowering the rates of death.
  So, yes, I object with a heart that is hurting with the same anger 
that my colleague has shown.
  I will work with him. We have worked together before. Let's do 
something that is a comprehensive approach, that follows the data, that 
follows the report, that follows the National Institutes of Health and 
the DOJ's best recommendations.
  I will join with him, and we will bring to the floor a comprehensive 
bill that does affect the fentanyl coming into our country, 
overwhelmingly being brought by Americans; that does affect law 
enforcement's capabilities and powers to detect those substances, as I 
found out on the border; that does impact the addicts that he so 
passionately and compassionately cares about. Let's do a comprehensive 
bill, not something that the data does not support will actually stop 
children from dying like they have died in the many seconds that I have 
talked.

  I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I listened very carefully to my friend 
Senator Booker's remarks, and I appreciate them, and I thank him for 
his offer to work together. And I do want to work with him again, but I 
want to make a couple of things clear. My bill doesn't deal with 
addiction. My bill deals with dealers.
  A pencil, the point of the pencil--enough heroin to fit on a point of 
a pencil will kill you dead. You are not walking around with 40 grams 
of fentanyl for your own personal use. You are going to deal it. You 
are going to cut other drugs with it. You are going to sell it to young 
people, probably not even tell them fentanyl is in it.
  And you are not going to measure the fentanyl very carefully. If you 
get too much in it, somebody dies. There are others, because if you can 
get them to take your meth with fentanyl--laced with fentanyl--given 
that fentanyl is 50 times more powerful, more addictive than heroin, 
you can get them addicted.
  I am not talking about addicts. I am talking about dealers--dealers 
in death, dealers that this body punishes less severely than a meth 
dealer or a crack cocaine dealer or a PCP dealer or an LSD dealer.
  What you allow is what will continue. I don't know if my bill will 
stop all the fentanyl dealers in America. I can't make you that 
promise. But it will, sure as hell, stop the dealer caught dealing, and 
that will save lives.
  I agree with my good friend Senator Booker. I believe in justice. The 
definition of justice for some is complicated. I believe in the 
definition that was put forth. I think it was Saint Augustine who said: 
Justice is when you get what you deserve. Justice is when you get what 
you deserve. And fentanyl dealers deserve, yes, a special place in 
hell, but they sure deserve to be punished more severely than dealers 
of less dangerous drugs.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
permitted to speak for 11 minutes, followed by Senator Grassley for 10 
minutes, and Senator Menendez for 5 minutes prior to the scheduled 
vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from New Jersey.