Washington – The Senate was preparing on Friday to give the final approval to a bill that could lead to more hard prison sentences for fentanyl traffickers, since both Republicans and Democrats seek to demonstrate that they can act to control the distribution of mortal drugs.
The bill has already approved the Chamber and has collected democratic support in the Senate, which shows that many in the party are eager to review the distribution of fentanyl after an election in which Republican Donald Trump Make the problem. The Republicans of the House of Representatives approved a similar bill in 2023 with dozens of Democrats by joining in support, but languished in the Senate controlled by the Democrats.
Critics say the proposal repeats the errors of the so -called “War on Drugs”, which imprisoned Millions of drugs addicted to drugsparticularly black black.
Now, with Republicans in Senate Control, majority leader John Thune He has prioritized legislation, which is one of the first bills to send to Trump for his signature. The president has indicated that he will sign it.
Thune said this week that the legislation “gives the police a critical tool to go after criminals bring this poison to our country and sell it in our streets.”
Called the Halt Fentanyl law, the bill would permanently place The drug control of the United States Most dangerous drug list, known as Annex 1. The drugs had already been temporarily placed on the list since 2018, but that designation would expire at the end of the month. The measure would mean an increase in criminal sentences to distribute substances related to fentanyl, according to the Congress Budget Office.
Legislation also seeks to facilitate drug research.
The bill approved the camera last month with 98 Democrats and all Republicans, except representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky in support. In the Senate, most Democrats have supported the impulse to take it to the final passage. The law application groups have also supported the bill.
“This is bipartisan because, frankly, fentanyl is a bipartisan problem,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisian Republican who has sponsored the bill.
Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have found an agreement on the attempt to stop the flow of fentanil in the United States, where tens of thousands of overdose deaths are blamed every year. Trump has said that Stop the illicit fentanyl flow It is one of its main objectives again Tariff threats against Mexico, Canada and China.
But some progressive democrats said the bill was missing the opportunity to address the fundamental causes of addiction or focus on preventing the drug from entering the United States.
Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement that support for the bill was “allowing a political trick at the expense of real solutions.”
The bill “will really resolve the fentanyl crisis, but it will make the investigation of addiction and overdose medication, interruption communities and families imprisoning instead of treating addiction, and divert the resources of the methods that work to interrupt the flow of fentanyl in the United States to strategies of outdated war solutions that do not work,” added Markey.
The average prison sentence for those convicted of drug trafficking related to Fentanyl was seven years and three months in 2023, according to the United States sentences commission. Almost 60% of those convicted were black, 23% were Hispanics and 16% were white.
