CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on Thursday joined a 23-state coalition in a letter urging U.S. Senate leadership to immediately pass the HALT Fentanyl Act.
The legislation would permanently schedule all current and future fentanyl analogues as Schedule I drugs, giving law enforcement the appropriate tools they need to crack down on the epidemic by stopping the flow of the dangerous drugs developed to imitate fentanyl (although not chemically identical). The House of Representatives recently passed this bill with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, and the coalition of attorneys general hope the Senate does the same.
“How many more deaths should we endure for us to realize that the dangers of this substance is real—everyone should be aware of the serious danger posed by fentanyl, which is tainting the entire supply of illegal drugs and counterfeit pills,” Attorney General Morrisey said. “We are at the front lines of this crisis, which starts with ingredients from China sent to Mexican drug cartels to be made into finished fentanyl and shipped across the border in alarming rates, where it touches every corner of our country.”
“The United States is experiencing a cataclysmic surge of overdose deaths due to the lethal amounts of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances that cross the southwestern land border unimpeded. Each year, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues kill Americans at a rate that rivals World War II or the Civil War. Just last year, drug overdoses killed more than 100,000 Americans. Synthetic opioids like fentanyl caused 66% of those overdose deaths,” the coalition wrote.
Attorney General Morrisey joined the Florida- and Virginia-led letter with Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming.
