White House Unveils Fentanyl Fight Plan

The White House has unveiled a plan to join with international governments to fight the fentanyl supply chain, including targeting traffickers’ access to U.S. financial systems and tracking the precursors and equipment used in manufacturing the drugs.

According to a fact sheet released early Tuesday, the United States is building a global coalition to “develop solutions, drive national actions, and create synergies and leverage among like-minded countries who agree that countering illicit synthetic drugs must be a global policy priority,” reports ABC News.  

The international partners were not named in the fact sheet, but the White House said the initiative builds on the work of the Biden-Harris administration to schedule almost a dozen precursor chemicals with its global partners through the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs.

The effort aims to “prevent illicit drug manufacturing, detect emerging drug threats, disrupt trafficking, address illicit finance, and respond to public safety and public health impacts” and will target synthetic opioids, including fentanyl. 

“The nature of these drugs, and their ease of access and potency, presents a national security, public safety, and public health threat,” the fact sheet said. 

The plan calls for strengthening the coordination and information-sharing between U.S. intelligence and domestic law enforcement agencies.

This will include tracking pill presses and spare parts used to transform powdered fentanyl into pills, strengthening federal law enforcement coordination to increase the seizures of cash at the southwest border, and tracking and targeting origins of the precursors and equipment used to produce fentanyl, the plan says. 

The plan also calls on educating companies to safeguard against the sale and distribution of dual-use chemicals and equipment used to produce fentanyl and to increase efforts to disrupt financial activities that fund the drug operations by obstructing traffickers’ access to the U.S. financial system and to “strengthen collaboration with international partners on illicit finance and anti-money laundering efforts related to drug trafficking.”

The administration will also continue its call to Congress for closing legal loopholes for synthetic drugs. 

“Traffickers are continually altering the chemical structure of fentanyl to evade regulation and prosecution under the Analogue Act, sometimes with tragic results,” the report said. 

Congress has temporarily closed the loophole, making all fentanyl-related substances a Schedule 1 drug, but the measure expires on Dec. 31, 2024, the report said. 

President Joe Biden has called on Congress, through his fiscal year 2024 budget request, to invest $46.1 billion in national drug control program agencies, which are overseen by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. 

The request is a $5 billion increase from the 2022 request and a $2.3 billion increase over the level enacted in the fiscal year 2023. 

The latest request includes more funding for the efforts to reduce the supply of illicit drugs like fentanyl, stop drug trafficking, and expand services for prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery support.