Everyone wants to stop opioid overdoses. But it’s unclear how a Republican-backed bill that passed the House last month with Democratic support would help.
Instead, it seems like the latest chapter in a failed drug war that hasn’t kept people safe. So it’s important to understand what the bill does — and doesn’t do — as the Senate considers it. The Biden administration has supported the measure, which was enacted on a temporary basis during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Called the HALT Fentanyl Act, it would permanently outlaw so-called “fentanyl-related substances” under the most restrictive federal drug control, Schedule I. That schedule contains drugs with no accepted medical use and high potential for abuse, according to the government. Keep in mind: cannabis is also on Schedule I, so the scheduling system isn’t exactly a model of common sense (though President Joe Biden has ordered a review of cannabis’ Schedule I status and it might finally change). Notably, fentanyl itself is used across the country in hospitals for pain relief and is controlled under the less-restrictive Schedule II, which also contains substances with high abuse potential but also approved medical use.
The bill potentially bans substances that not only aren’t harmful, but could even be helpful.
The pending bill wouldn’t change fentanyl’s status; rather, it would permanently place fentanyl-related substances into Schedule I. So what are they? They’re ones with chemical structures related to fentanyl, according to broad scientific criteria laid out in the bill. They’re defined on what’s called a class-wide basis, sweeping in scores of substances instead of outlawing them individually, thus making the government’s job easier on the front end.
The class-wide measure could make sense (relatively, in the context of the drug war) if we knew that all the substances potentially captured by the bill would be harmful. But that’s not necessarily the case. The proposed law,…
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