Lawmakers in the United States have made permanent a federal policy that established harsher penalties for trafficking illicit fentanyl and its analogues, but the punitive measure is unlikely to advance efforts to undercut the organized crime groups trafficking the deadly synthetic opioid from Mexico.
The US Congress passed the HALT Fentanyl Act on June 13, making permanent a temporary amendment made to the Controlled Substances Act in 2018 that classified fentanyl and its analogues as Schedule 1 drugs. This allowed prosecutors to impose harsher penalties on those trafficking and possessing the synthetic drug.
After passing both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the bill will now go to US President Donald Trump to sign before becoming a law. Proponents of the bill called its passing a “critical step” to ending the drug overdose crisis in the United States, which is driven largely by illicit fentanyl. Health officials recorded more than 80,000 such deaths in 2024, a nearly 30% decrease compared to 2023.
SEE ALSO: US Drug Overdose Deaths Are Dropping, and Here’s Why
But opponents of the legislation have criticized the continued reliance on punitive policies and said it may undermine efforts to address the root causes of the opioid overdose epidemic.
“It’s shocking that lawmakers still believe we can police our way out of a public health crisis – despite over 50 years of evidence to the contrary,” Liz Komar, Sentencing Reform Counsel at the non-profit Sentencing Project, said earlier this year as the bill advanced through Congress.
InSight Crime Analysis
There is ample historical evidence across Latin America and the United States that shows how an over-reliance on hard-line measures is counter-productive to combating drug trafficking groups.
“I don’t expect there to be a significant impact on Mexican organized crime groups,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior investigator at the Brookings Institution. “The US has already prioritized destroying the Chapitos and the Sinaloa Cartel more broadly, as well as the Jalisco Cartel, and I don’t see the scheduling having any dramatic effect.”
The US government has tried – and failed – with similar efforts before. With the rise of the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, lawmakers passed a law that established mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. In addition to severe racial disparities in the way in which those sentences were handed down, the move clogged courtrooms and swelled prison populations while doing little to stop drug flows into the country.
Penalties for drug-related crimes have also skyrocketed across Latin America. The governments of Mexico and Colombia, for example, have increased both the number of articles in its criminal legislation that pertain to drug crimes and the highest minimum sentences for those crimes, according to a regional study by the non-profit legal organization Dejusticia.
SEE ALSO: DEA’s Emphasis on Defeating Cartels Oversimplifies Fentanyl Industry
However, this has done nothing to combat the international drug trade. In Mexico, the vast global networks trafficking fentanyl and its precursor chemicals alongside major Mexican organized crime groups like the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) are stronger than ever. And in Colombia, coca cultivation and cocaine production have reached record highs in recent years as criminal groups there expand into new consumer markets across Europe.
What’s more, this punitive approach ignores the origins of the fentanyl crisis. In the United States, pharmaceutical companies spent years overprescribing powerful opioids to millions of people struggling with chronic pain and other issues. But as misuse grew and regulators made it more difficult for them to access those medications, users eventually turned to street drugs like heroin. That eventually gave way to a cheaper, more potent alternative: illicit fentanyl.
“The real big issue is that the Trump administration is dramatically cutting budgets for access to treatment and harm reduction services. These are bad policy developments that are likely going to significantly contribute to drug overdoses increasing in the United States again,” Felbab-Brown told InSight Crime.
Featured image: Counterfeit M30 pills, often referred to as ‘blues.’ Credit: NBC News