During remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) spoke about the HALT Fentanyl Act.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. President, I come to the floor today, however, to talk about the bill that is currently
00:03before us on the floor of the United States Senate.
00:07And it is a bill relating to the fentanyl crisis in our country.
00:13We're seeing it in every state of the country, including your home state of Montana, my home
00:16state of Wyoming.
00:18In so many ways, every state has been impacted by the crisis of fentanyl.
00:24I practiced medicine in Wyoming for 24 years.
00:27Fentanyl is poisoning and killing Americans every day.
00:32More than 74,000 Americans died last year as a result of this poison.
00:39Every state is impacted to the point that it is the number one cause of death now for
00:42Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.
00:47When you take a look at the number of people that are being killed, this has actually resulted
00:51in lowering the life expectancy of the American people.
00:56Every American, in one way or another, is a victim of fentanyl because everyone knows
01:00someone who has lost a loved one to illicit fentanyl.
01:05No community has been spared.
01:07We're losing our sons and our daughters, our brothers and our sisters, friends and neighbors,
01:12our fellow citizens.
01:15Congress needs to treat illicit fentanyl like the crisis it truly is.
01:20We're going to do that today in the United States Senate.
01:24Our law enforcement officers are working to stop this flow of illicit fentanyl into
01:28this country.
01:29They're doing a great job now cracking down on drug dealers.
01:33What they need, and they ask for, and come to us with, is a desire for certainty within
01:38the law.
01:40Right now, law enforcement officers are fighting against these merchants of death, and they
01:44seem to be doing it.
01:45They have one hand tied behind their back.
01:49The Senate has an opportunity today to change that.
01:52We have legislation to the floor that's going to save lives.
01:56It's called the HALT Fentanyl Act.
01:59This bipartisan legislation permanently schedules deadly illicit fentanyl as a Schedule I drug.
02:08That's the way things are scheduled under the Controlled Substance Act.
02:12This is the reason it's an important change.
02:16Because it means tough penalties for fentanyl traffickers.
02:20It means certainty for law enforcement.
02:23That's going to be a law enforcement tool that they have been asking for in our effort
02:27to get fentanyl off our streets.
02:31This is why Senators just on Monday evening unanimously agreed to debate the legislation.
02:36We now, after working and working on this, now have strong bipartisan support.
02:40In 2018, the Drug Enforcement Agency temporarily scheduled illicit fentanyl on a short-term
02:47basis under this Schedule I.
02:50They found it started to make a difference.
02:52Congress voted a number of times to extend this classification of bipartisan votes.
02:59Republicans have pushed for years to make this change permanent.
03:03The Democrat leader, he said, oh no, when he was the leader of the majority, he wouldn't
03:07bring the permanent solution to the floor of the United States.
03:11He would not allow us to have votes on the HALT Fentanyl Act.
03:15Why?
03:16Because he bowed to the soft-on-crime Democrats, the left wing of his leftist party.
03:22They didn't want tougher penalties on drug traffickers.
03:25That was the clear message behind the Democrats' blockade.
03:30What Americans need, we want safety.
03:32We want security.
03:33We want it for our families.
03:34We want it for our communities.
03:36And the status quo with fentanyl is not an option.
03:40The border crisis of the last four years is what fueled the fentanyl crisis.
03:46An open border meant more illegal drugs flowing across our southern border.
03:52Most of the fentanyl in the United States actually comes from Mexico.
03:55It is produced, it is transported, and it is sold by transnational criminal cartels.
04:02Criminal cartels, they import chemicals to make the poison from communist China and then
04:08traffic it into the United States.
04:11The secure border that President Trump is delivering does take a chunk out of the cartel's
04:15bottom line, and they notice it.
04:18The cartels are actually having to shut down their drug labs.
04:21They're running scared.
04:22We need to keep them on the run.
04:25Now is the time to turn up the heat.
04:28Passing the Halt Fentanyl Act will aid President Trump's successful efforts to secure the border
04:33and to stop these killer cartels.
04:38On one point, Mr. President, let me end with this.
04:41The Senate Judiciary Committee heard from parents who lost their children to fentanyl
04:45overdoses.
04:48One of those parents who testified, Jamie Puerta of California, lost his son to a fentanyl
04:52overdose.
04:54His son was just 16 years old.
04:56Listen to what Jamie had to say here in the Senate.
05:00He said, my son had consumed what he thought was a blue M30 oxycodone pill, but in fact
05:09had unknowingly, and the man went on to say, I repeat, unknowingly ingested an illicitly
05:16manufactured counterfeit opioid made of nothing more than filler, a binding agent, and illicit
05:25fentanyl.
05:27That was deceptively made to look exactly like a pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone pill,
05:37and it killed him.
05:40We need to pass the Halt Fentanyl Act.
05:42We need to do it today.
05:43We need to turn the tide against this fentanyl epidemic.
05:47This is the legislation that deserves to become law.
05:51Every major law enforcement group supports it.
05:54Most importantly, families of victims support it as well.
05:59We have an opportunity to act today to save lives, to act now.
06:03Let's work together, Mr. President, to get it done.