Cotton Applauds Passage of Fentanyl Sanctions Act in Defense Bill

Synthetic opioids like fentanyl kill tens of thousands of Americans each year. They are terrible accelerant that has fueled the worst drug crisis in our nation’s history, killing more people every year than died in the entire Vietnam war.

These drugs aren’t made here in the United States. No. They are flooding across our borders from overseas, trafficked by cartels and even—unwittingly— sometimes by the United States Postal Service.

Synthetic opioids are often produced in superlabs by the drug cartels that are terrorizing our border communities. But the ingredients for those drugs—and sometimes the drugs themselves—can be traced back to a different source: China, whose vast pharmaceutical and chemical industries frequently have been abused to poison our fellow citizens.

The Chinese Communist Party has been waging an opium war in reverse against the United States for far too long. As tens of thousands of Americans have perished from overdoses, Chinese officials turned a blind eye to the drug criminals who profited off of our pain.

But now, desperate for a trade deal to save its sputtering economy, Beijing has finally promised to crack down on fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. But we would be naïve to trust any promise from Chinese Communists, especially this one however. It’s time that we took matters into our own hands, and that’s exactly what we will do in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes my bill—introduced with Senator Schumer—to sanction foreign drug dealers in China, Mexico, and elsewhere.

The bill also urges the president to work with our allies to impose even tougher, multilateral sanctions against foreign drug dealers. It authorizes new funding for law enforcement and the Intelligence Community for counter-narcotics activities. And it establishes a commission to find new ways to stop the flow of drugs from overseas.

This bill will soon be signed by the president and become law, and this is welcome news for law enforcement and for families who are battling the crisis of opioid addiction. And it’s bad news for the Chinese Communist Party and foreign drug dealers around the world who are responsible for the poisoning of so many Americans.