Republican lawmakers said that the United States needs to tackle the fentanyl crisis by going after the source of the deadly drug abroad and taking action domestically to safeguard against the effects of the drug.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) spoke about potential legislative solutions on “Fentanyl: America’s Silent Epidemic,” part of a DailyWire+ docu-series on The Divided States of Biden. In 2023, more than 100,000 Americans died from a drug overdose, with many of the deaths being related to fentanyl poisoning.
Gallagher said that the Biden administration needed to be doing more to push China to crack down on the illicit fentanyl coming out of its country and into the United States.
“For years, China has been the fentanyl factory of the world, and for years Xi Jinping has pledged to do something about it,” Gallagher told Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro. “But that hasn’t happened. The Biden administration wants us to believe that another verbal commitment from Xi and more so-called task forces will finally stem the deadly tide of precursor production from China. But are we really to believe that the most powerful techno-totalitarian state in human history couldn’t stop this plague in a heartbeat if it wanted to?”
WATCH: Fentanyl: America’s Silent Epidemic
Gallagher proposed that one way to combat the drugs would be to crack down on the money laundering that fuels the industry, as well as going after payment processors that allow drug trafficking payments. He also suggested putting sanctions on port operators and the shipping companies that facilitate fentanyl trafficking into the United States.
“But even that, I think, will not be effective unless we secure our southern border,” he said. “If we are not strong at the southern border, districts like mine are going to continue to be effectively border districts, and sons, daughters, parents are going to suffer as a result of this ongoing fentanyl crisis we face in America.”
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Newhouse has proposed policies that would make Narcan, a treatment that can help reverse a drug overdose, available in all schools. He also proposed adjusting the law so that all fentanyl-related substances are classified as a Schedule One drug, meaning they can be targeted for stiffer punishments. In January, he introduced a bill called the “Save Americans from the Fentanyl Emergency Act” to upgrade the classification of all fentanyl-related substances. He said the current system allows drug cartels to bypass current laws by using a different combination of substances that aren’t technically fentanyl.
“And so prosecutors who are trying to nail dealers for selling illegal substances are faced with a much higher burden of proof,” he said. “If we can regulate that by including all fentanyl-related substances under a Schedule One classification, that will eliminate that problem and reduce the amount of time we can it takes to prosecute and convict drug dealers.”