Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. LEE of Pennsylvania. Madam Chair, I stand today in solidarity with the millions of Black and Brown folks who have been locked up over the failed war on drugs.

I stand before you today some 50 years from the war on drugs and 39 years after President Reagan signed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which expanded penalties on weed possession, established mandatory minimums, and created civil asset forfeiture--50 years since establishing drug policies that systematically led to the mass incarceration of generations of Black men.

But somehow, this war on drugs will be different.

We don't always know the consequences of a bill like this, but with the HALT Fentanyl Act, we all know.

We have to listen to our experts: our public health, criminal justice, and civil rights organizations. They are on the ground doing the work in our communities, and 158 of them just told us that, no, the HALT Fentanyl Act will not help the American people, as this bill claims it would. It will only cause harm, especially to Black, Brown, and low-income Americans.

We really didn't need the experts on this one. We have had decades to observe the effects of policies just like this.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. The HALT Fentanyl Act will do exactly what it was designed to do if we allow it to pass.

We have seen 50 years of a terrifying merry-go-round: the economy struggles, housing becomes less stable, and a tough-on-crime approach is promoted as the solution. Lock up those most impacted, our siblings and neighbors struggling with addiction. Lock them up.

Who is winning? Not the 350,000 folks currently serving time for drug offenses, not the families that have been torn apart by mass incarceration. Imagine the loss of generational wealth.

Communities have been left without parents, grandparents, neighbors, leaders, and friends. Families are mourning tens of thousands that have died every year from drug overdoses.

Policies like this one do not lead to healing. They do not lead to safety. They do not lead to justice, and we do deserve justice.

We know there is a correlation between poverty and crime, not race and crime. We do not need tough-on-crime policies. We need to be tough on inequality, but for true, systemic change, we have to be willing to consider different roads. We have to be willing to consider community- based, trauma-informed, and harm-reducing policies. We must resist the urge to hearken back to tough-on-crime rhetoric.

Tough on crime is merely tough on community. We can do better, and we must do better than the HALT Fentanyl Act.

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