Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, discussed on Newsmax his efforts to reintroduce, in the current legislative session, a bill to combat illicit fentanyl circulating throughout the United States.
The congressman tells "Prime News" the Stop Our Scourge Act of 2022, which he plans on reintroducing, details "how we might be able to work with the Mexican military counter-drug operations. We know it's tough because of the cartels. We'll also seek a willingness of the People's Republic of China to stop this flow."
"And we want to see and assess our efforts — our efforts against trafficking. And this would include illicit fentanyl, its analog, and its precursors. So we're trying to empower all federal assets that we can and agencies to engage and work together to try and stop this. It's obviously very deadly."
A recent study from Dec. 2022, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found "from 1999 to 2021, there was a 50-fold increase in the methamphetamine mortality rate, which was accompanied by an increasing proportion of deaths that co-involved heroin or fentanyl, peaking at 61.2% in 2021."
Rachel Hoopsick, the lead researcher in the study, cited fentanyl as a "primary driver" of the deaths, according to Health Day.
"Mixing methamphetamine and opioids," she says, "isn't a new phenomenon. Although there has been an increase in the popularity of using these types of substances together, what has truly changed is the toxicity of the unregulated street drug supply, predominantly of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. I believe that this is the primary driver of the increase in deaths."
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