- Twenty-five state AGs are urging the U.S. Senate to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act to permanently classify fentanyl analogues as Schedule I drugs.
- In 2023, synthetic opioids like fentanyl caused 69% of 100,000 drug overdose deaths in America, and U.S. Customs seized enough fentanyl in 2024 to kill the entire U.S. population 14 times over.
- The AGs criticize the Biden administration's border policies and argue that permanent Schedule I classification would close loopholes currently exploited by international drug traffickers.
Twenty-five state attorneys general, including Utah’s own AG Derek Brown, are asking U.S. senators to pass the HALT Fentanyl Act, which would permanently classify fentanyl analogues as a Schedule I drug.
The act passed in the House with a bipartisan majority in early February and is now waiting to be brought to the Senate floor. The AGs sent a letter Wednesday endorsing the legislation.
The DEA classifies drugs into five categories or “schedules,” with Schedule I including drugs with no accepted medical use and high abuse potential, and Schedule V including pain relievers and cough medications.
Schedule I drugs are illegal to manufacture, distribute or possess, except in research backed by DEA approval, and this group of attorneys is hoping to permanently classify all current and future fentanyl analogues as Schedule I drugs.
How AGs hope the act will combat gruesome drug deaths
The letter, headed by Virginia and Iowa attorney generals Jason Miyares and Brenna Bird, describes the necessity for the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl, or HALT, Act to pass.
“Each year, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues kill Americans at a rate that rivals World War II or the Civil War,” they wrote.
Citing a CDC report, the AGs wrote that synthetic opioids, including fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, contributed to nearly 70% of all overdose deaths in 2023. That year, drug overdoses took more than 100,000 lives.
Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin. However, current DEA guidelines list heroin as Schedule I and fentanyl as Schedule II.
The HALT Fentanyl Act hopes to close loop holes that allow foreign countries to send the synthetic drug into the United States.
The letter quoted former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who said Chinese fentanyl distributors would “take advantage of the fact that the fentanyl molecule can be altered in numerous ways to create a fentanyl analogue that is not listed as illegal under U.S. law.”
“When regulators are able to identify the new fentanyl and make it illegal, the distributors quickly switch to a new, unlisted fentanyl analogue,” he said.
AGs point a finger at the Biden administration for negligence at the border
U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized nearly 22,000 pounds of “cartel smuggled” fentanyl at its borders in 2024. The letter states that amount is “enough fentanyl to kill the entire population of the United States 14 times over.”
“The federal government’s response to this existential threat under the Biden administration was woefully deficient,” the letter added.
During this time of increased drug transportation into the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security eliminated protocols, including the Migrant Protection Protocols, which the letter claims prevented “transnational criminal organizations and gangs from exploiting migrants ‘to bring drugs, violence and illicit goods into American communities.’”
The letter continued, “The Biden administration’s abject refusal to secure our border — one of the basic duties of any government — was a direct cause of this crisis.”
If passed in the Senate and signed by President Donald Trump, the law would “allow the federal government to engage resources thus far underutilized in the fight against the fentanyl epidemic, putting drug cartels and traffickers on notice and saving American lives,” the letter concluded.