Is the HALT Fentanyl Act Delusional or Just Performance Art?

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the HALT (Halt All Lethal Trafficking) Fentanyl Act. The bill aims to make permanent a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) temporary emergency rule from 2018, which has been extended twice by Congress. This rule classifies derivatives of the synthetic opioid fentanyl not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration—known as “fentanyl-related substances”—as Schedule I controlled substances. This extended rule is set to expire in March.

This is nothing new. Lawmakers are not fundamentally altering existing federal fentanyl policy; they are simply continuing a framework that has failed over the past seven years to stop sellers of illicit fentanyl from meeting market demand. Celebrating the passage of the HALT Fentanyl Act as a new effort to combat fentanyl trafficking and overdose deaths is merely an example of performance art.

By classifying a drug as Schedule I, the DEA determines it to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The DEA categorizes cannabis, heroin, and psychedelic drugs as Schedule I. Cops may not see these substances as medically valuable, but many physicians might disagree.

No reasonable person would argue that cannabis has “no currently accepted medical use.” As early as 1916, William Osler, often referred to as the “father of modern medicine,” recommended cannabis as the drug of choice for treating migraines. Cannabis’s history of accepted medical use goes all the way back to at least 2,800 B.C. Heroin is a semisynthetic opioid that is considerably less potent than Schedule II hydromorphone and is included in the drug formularies of several affluent countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany, where it is used to manage pain and treat addiction. Nowadays, most people recognize the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, including some members of Congress.

But the HALT Fentanyl Act is also delusional. For decades, Schedule I classification has done nothing to halt the flow and use of cannabis, heroin, or psychedelics. Cannabis and psychedelic use is at historic highs, and heroin use is making a significant comeback after fentanyl nearly replaced it during the COVID-19 pandemic. Why should lawmakers expect things to work out any differently for fentanyl-related substances?

Classifying fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I will hinder progress in therapeutic research. Although the latest version of the HALT Fentanyl Act includes provisions intended to alleviate some burdens, it will not substantially lessen the multiple regulatory challenges that clinical researchers must overcome before the DEA allows them to conduct studies to determine whether Schedule I drugs can be used to treat certain conditions. We may never know if a currently banned fentanyl-related substance could help reverse overdoses or treat addiction.

The HALT Fentanyl Act increases mandatory minimum sentences for the possession or distribution of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances. Research indicates that this approach does not serve as an effective deterrent. Instead, it merely fills prisons, ruins the futures of drug users, disrupts their families, and provides aggressive prosecutors with coercive plea-bargaining strategies. Additionally, threatening drug dealers with life imprisonment or the death penalty is unlikely to deter the drug trade. Most drug dealers already consider the risk of death when entering the business and, realistically, fear being killed by rival cartels and dealers more than by the United States Department of Justice.

Politicians often refer to the fentanyl overdose crisis as an “epidemic” or an “invasion.” However, these metaphors are misleading. Drug trafficking organizations do not propel fentanyl into our country from launch pads in Mexico, soaring through the sky in search of innocent victims. The flow of fentanyl is a reaction to market demand.

More importantly, fentanyl is simply the latest example of what drug policy analysts refer to as the iron law of prohibition: The harder the law enforcement, the harder the drug. Prohibition encourages those who sell banned substances to create stronger variations that they can smuggle more easily in smaller quantities and divide into more units for sale. Prohibition makes the black market dangerous because people who buy drugs on the black market can never be sure of the drug’s purity, dosage, or even if it is the drug they think they are buying. 

If lawmakers continue to double down on the same prohibitionist policies they have used for over 50 years, deaths from illicit drug overdoses will keep rising. Repeating the same actions, with even more intensity this time, will not produce a different outcome. 

Until lawmakers abandon their tired rituals of prohibitionist theater, they will continue to fuel needless suffering and loss.

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