The new law mandates 10-year minimum prison sentences for those convicted of trafficking at least 100 grams of deadly opioid-related substances.
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signed the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act on Wednesday during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
“This is a very special time because we’ve worked very hard to put ourselves in this position to strike a righteous blow to the drug dealers, narcotic traffickers, and criminal cartels that we’ve heard about for so many years,” Trump said.
Also known as the HALT Fentanyl Act, the bill, which passed with bipartisan support, reclassifies substances related to the deadly opioid as Schedule 1 narcotics, the strictest designation established by the Controlled Substances Act.
Such drugs are deemed to have no acceptable medical value and are subject to the nation’s most punitive criminal penalties.
The bill also mandates 10-year minimum prison sentences for those convicted of distributing 100 grams or more of any fentanyl-related or derived drugs.
“It’s a big deal,” Trump said. “We’ll be getting the drug dealers, pushers, and peddlers off our streets, and we will not rest until we have ended the drug overdose epidemic … we’re going to end it once and for all.”
A deadly dose is equal to approximately two-one-hundredths of a gram or smaller, depending on the user’s tolerance, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
Trump has targeted fentanyl distribution with several policy decisions since taking office for a second term, including designating cartel syndicates as foreign terrorist organizations and imposing tariffs against China, Canada, and Mexico for facilitating production or failing to prevent the precursor chemicals from reaching the United States.
“On day one of the Trump Administration, we declared an all-out war on the dealers, smugglers, traffickers, and cartels,” he said, suggesting that China will soon impose the death penalty on fentanyl traffickers.
“Those who traffic in these deadly poisons will be put behind bars for a very long time.”
The new law will help close loopholes that have allowed cartels and other criminal syndicates to create closely related substances, including carfentanyl, which is 100 times more potent than fentanyl, according to the DEA.
“For years, the monsters who manufacture illicit fentanyl have sought to skirt legal restrictions by making minor variations of the chemical compound, and in the process, they’ve developed even more toxic versions of the drug,” Trump said.
