While more than 100,000 Americans per year pass away from drug overdoses and poisonings, many of which are tied to fentanyl, House Democrats have blocked a measure that would take action against the deadly drug, which almost exclusively enters American communities through the U.S.-Mexico border.
This week, 220 House Democrats prevented consideration of the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act, introduced by Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-MN), which would have permanently placed chemicals linked to fentanyl in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.
Selling drugs linked to fentanyl would become unlawful after such a shift.
Similar legislation that would have tightened regulations on chemicals linked to fentanyl was prevented from discussion in April by House Democrats. While officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have advised parents to carry Naloxone in case their child is overdosing on fentanyl, bills to prevent fentanyl overdoses and poisonings continue to be blocked.
The warning is in response to worries that Mexican drug cartels are targeting youngsters by putting tens of thousands of fentanyl pills in Skittles and Nerds candy packages along with vape pens. The Mexican drug cartels are responsible for the majority of the fentanyl trafficking into the United States.
Most recently, police in Phoenix, Arizona, raided a stash house and recovered around a million fentanyl pills. One person can be killed by just two milligrammes of fentanyl.
Over 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the previous 12 months, the CDC revealed in April. Fentanyl was a factor in over two-thirds of those fatalities.
Fentanyl was implicated in 81 percent of drug overdose deaths in Ohio alone in 2020. Fentanyl was connected to between 76 and 71 percent of drug overdose deaths in 2019, 2018, and 2017, which is an increase from those years.
There was enough fentanyl trafficking into American communities last year over the southern border, according to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Anne Milgram, "to kill every American" citizen, she claimed months ago.
Republicans in the Senate have proposed switching the purpose of the CDC's Title 42 power at the southern border, which permits authorities to swiftly deport many illegal aliens, from preventing the spread of the Chinese coronavirus to fentanyl.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Breit Bart.