END FENTANYL Act Introduced By Representatives Trone, Guest
Credit: WFMD, Kevin McManus
Legislation to clamp down on the amount of drugs entering the US is being sponsored by 6th District Representative David Trone (D) and Mississippi Michael Guest (R). Trone says it’s called the END FENTANYL Act. which “requires the Customs and Border Patrol to put together a report of changes, suggestions, how to execute better, and report that to the Senate and House Homeland Security on an ongoing basis every three years,” he says.
END FENTANYL Is an acronym which means Eradicating Narcotic Drugs and Formulating Effective New Tools to Address National Yearly Loses. Trone says it will also require the CBP to update its manuals every three years to identify ways to prevent drug and human smuggling at US ports of entry.
Trone says it could help reduce the amount of deadly fentanyl coming into the United States. “99-percent of the fentanyl is coming from precursor drugs from China, and then it’s manufactured by two cartels, the Jallisco and Sinoloa Cartels, and they’re the ones that are bringing it across the border,” he says.
A similar bill is making its way through the US Senate. “We have Senate Republican Rick Scott {Fl} who is a strong Republican. And It’s already passed the Senate Homeland Committee. So when you get it through the Committee like that, and it’s bipartisan, Scott will be able to get that through,” Trone says.
Related to that, the US House of Representatives last week passed the Fentanyl Results Act which is part of the fiscal year 2023 Defense Authorization Act. “It requires the State Department to work with foreign law enforcement capacity–i.e. China and Mexico—to work on detecting synthetic drugs,” says Trone. He says it has the potential to help save countless lives and ease the nation’s worsening synthetic opioid epidemic.
Tone says a lot of his work battling fentanyl is due, in large part, to the death of his nephew from an overdose. “He died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016 at Christmas, right around this time on New Year’s Eve, exactly,” he says.
