[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 43 (Thursday, March 6, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Page S1588]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           HALT Fentanyl Act

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, in just a few short weeks, President Trump 
has restored order to the southern border. If initial reports are 
accurate, approximately 8,450 illegal immigrants were apprehended 
trying to cross the border last month. Not long ago, Border Patrol 
would sometimes apprehend that many illegal immigrants in a single 
day--in a single day.
  With less chaos, Border Patrol can focus on the criminals, cartels, 
terrorists, and traffickers who used to try to hide behind the surges, 
and that makes our country safer. But we have more work to do. Illegal 
drugs continue to plague too many communities and take too many 
Americans' lives. More Americans die of drug overdoses each year than 
Americans who died in the entirety of the Vietnam war. The New England 
Journal of Medicine estimated that 22 teenagers died of overdoses each 
week in 2022. That is an entire high school classroom lost every week 
to the scourge of drugs. And so many of these tragedies are from a 
lethal dose of fentanyl in a single pill--fentanyl that can frequently 
be traced back to the southern border.

  This crisis is affecting every part of the country. We have seen it 
in South Dakota. Police in Sioux Falls seized enough fentanyl to kill 
2.5 million people last year. Law enforcement reports that cartels have 
a presence in our area, and the price of a single pill has dropped from 
$40 a few years ago to $5 per pill today, largely because of increasing 
supply.
  I am grateful for the men and women in law enforcement and first 
responders who work every day to save lives, and we need to help them 
get these drugs off our streets and prevent more overdose deaths.
  The President is already taking major steps to halt the supply of 
drugs flowing across our borders, and, later today, the Senate will 
vote to begin consideration of the HALT Fentanyl Act, which will 
provide law enforcement with a critical tool to combat fentanyl.
  Until a few years ago, the fentanyl analogs that have killed so many 
Americans were generally classified as schedule II substances, meaning 
they were less tightly regulated and violations carried lighter 
penalties. And if a particular analog was moved to schedule I, cartels 
would slightly alter the chemical composition of their fentanyl 
equivalents to avoid a crackdown--changes that made those drugs no less 
deadly.
  But in 2018, President Trump put a stop to that. All fentanyl analogs 
were temporarily reclassified as schedule I drugs, enabling law 
enforcement to go after the people bringing this poison to our 
communities. Congress has extended this provision several times because 
it works, but the most recent extension expires at the end of this 
month. It is time that all fentanyl analogs are permanently classified 
as what they are: the most deadly kind of drugs.
  Our colleagues Senators Cassidy, Grassley, and Heinrich have put 
forward a bill to do just that, expanding on Senator Johnson's 
leadership in this area and Senator Graham's good work. The HALT 
Fentanyl Act would permanently list fentanyl analogs on schedule I. 
Doing this will help law enforcement keep pace with the evolving threat 
of fentanyl that is driving drug overdoses in our country.
  It has backing from a number of State attorneys general and from law 
enforcement. Attorney General Bondi has endorsed the bill. It has 
bipartisan support here in Congress, including bipartisan cosponsorship 
and strong bipartisan votes in both the Senate Judiciary Committee and 
in the House of Representatives.
  I am also proud that this bill has come to the Senate floor through 
regular order. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on 
fentanyl, where members heard the heartbreaking stories of lives taken 
or changed forever by deadly fentanyl analogs. The committee held a 
markup and reported the bill to the floor by a bipartisan vote of 16 to 
5, and now we are going to have a debate on the bill here on the floor 
of the U.S. Senate. And I hope that, in the coming days, we will have a 
productive process to make a law that will save American lives.
  So, Mr. President, I thank Senators Cassidy, Grassley, and Heinrich 
for their leadership on this issue, and Senators Johnson and Graham for 
their work, as well, and I am looking forward to sending the HALT 
Fentanyl Act to President Trump's desk soon.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.