Letter to Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Hon. Kevin McCarthy, Minority Leader of House of Representatives - Buchanan, Pappas Demand Action on Bipartisan Legislation to Crack Down on Deadly Fentanyl

Letter

Speaker Pelosi and Leader McCarthy:

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed many shortcomings in our nation's health care preparedness and response systems. Unfortunately, many of those problems fueled a resurgence of another epidemic that has been raging uncontrolled for far too long -- opioid abuse and overdose deaths.

To address this continued surge in opioid related deaths, since 2018, illegal fentanyl and fentanyl analogs have been classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as a Schedule I substance to allow federal law enforcement authorities greater latitude to bring criminal actions against individuals who manufacture, distribute or handle fentanyl-related substances. Unfortunately, this classification is temporary and set to expire on October 22, 2021.

For that reason, we introduced H.R. 3269, the Federal Initiative to Guarantee Health by Targeting (FIGHT) Fentanyl Act, to permanently classify fentanyl and fentanyl analogs as a Schedule I substance. With 4,241 pounds of fentanyl seized at the southern border already in 2021 -- a 365 percent increase over the same period in 2020, enough to kill over 960 million people or almost three times the U.S. population -- what the DEA needs most now is certainty.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that fentanyl and other synthetic opioids contributed to 36,359 deaths in 2019 -- 73 percent of opioid-involved deaths -- and nearly 52 percent of ALL overdose deaths that year. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this problem by increasing risk factors like social isolation and making necessary treatment more difficult to access. As a result, these numbers increased to the highest total ever over the 12-month period ending in May 2020 with 81,230 overdose deaths -- with an increase of 38 percent involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl -- and, according to the CDC, could top 90,000 once the count is final for 2020.

Our legislation is bipartisan, bicameral and addresses an urgent need. We urge you to bring it to the floor for immediate consideration because we cannot sit idly by while more of our constituents' lives are needlessly lost due to illegal fentanyl and fentanyl analog overdoses. We appreciate your attention to this critically important issue and look forward to your prompt reply.

Sincerely,

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