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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is prodding Congress to help him do more to combat the scourge of fentanyl before he leaves office.
The Democratic administration is making the new policy push as Republican former President Donald Trump steps up attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, painting her as Biden's feckless lieutenant in the battle to slow the illegal drugs and immigrants without authorization coming into the United States from Mexico.
The White House on Wednesday announced a series of proposals from Biden aimed at curbing the ongoing drug epidemic. These include a push on Congress to pass legislation to establish a pill press and tableting machine registry and enhance penalties against convicted drug smugglers and traffickers of fentanyl.
Biden also wants to tighten rules on importers shipping small packages into the United States, requiring shippers to provide additional information to Customs and Border Protection officials. The move is aimed at improving the detection of fentanyl precursor chemicals that frequently find their way into the United States in relatively low-value shipments that aren't subject to customs and trade barriers.
The president's new efforts at combating fentanyl may also benefit Harris, the likely Democratic nominee, as Trump and his surrogates are trying to cast her as a central player in the Biden administration's struggles at the U.S.-Mexico border throughout his term.
“Still, far too many of our fellow Americans continue to lose loved ones to fentanyl,” Biden said in a statement. “This is a time to act. And this is a time to stand together — for all those we have lost, and for all the lives we can still save.”
Biden also signed a national security memorandum aimed at improving the transfer of information between law enforcement and federal agencies. The hope is to better understand the flows of production and smuggling of the synthetic opioid that has ravaged huge swaths of America. In the last five months, more than 442 million doses of fentanyl were seized at U.S. borders, according to the White House.
“Since day one, the administration, President Biden, Vice President Harris, have prioritized action to combat the scourge of illicit fentanyl and beat this crisis," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday. Biden was briefed on the issue Wednesday afternoon by his top aides and senior Cabinet officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The Trump campaign launched its first television ad of the general election cycle on Tuesday, dubbing Harris the “border czar” and blaming her for a surge in illegal crossings into the United States during the Biden administration. After displaying headlines about crime and drugs, the video brands Harris as “Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”
Border crossings hit record highs during the Biden administration but have dropped more recently.
The Trump campaign has so far reserved $12.2 million in television and digital ads through the next two weeks, according to data from the media tracking firm AdImpact.
Biden tasked Harris early in his administration with addressing the root causes of migration. Border crossings became a major political liability for Biden when they reached historic levels. Since June, when Biden announced significant restrictions on asylum applications at the border, arrests for illegal crossings have fallen.
House Republicans passed a symbolic resolution last week criticizing Harris' work on the border on behalf of the Biden administration.
The White House reiterated its call on Congress to pass sweeping immigration legislation that includes funding for more border agents and drug detection machines at the border. GOP senators earlier this year scuttled months of negotiations with Democrats on legislation intended to cut back record numbers of illegal border crossings after Trump eviscerated the bipartisan proposal.
The proposed pill-pressing registry floated by Biden aims to help law enforcement crackdown on drug traffickers who use pill presses to press fentanyl into pills.
Authorities say most illicit fentanyl is produced clandestinely in Mexico, using chemical precursors from China. Synthetic opioids are the biggest killers in the deadliest drug crisis the U.S. has ever seen. In 2014, nearly 50,000 deaths in the U.S. were linked to drug overdoses of all kinds. By 2022, the total was more than 100,000, according to a tally by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than two-thirds of those deaths — more than 200 per day — involved fentanyl or similar synthetic drugs.
Meanwhile, administration officials and Chinese government officials are expected to meet Wednesday to discuss efforts to curb the flow of chemical precursors coming from China, according to a senior administration official.
Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at a November summit in California that Beijing had agreed to press its chemical companies to curtail shipments to Latin America and elsewhere of the materials used to produce fentanyl. China also agreed to a resumption of sharing information about suspected trafficking with an international database.
But a special House committee focused on countering the Chinese government in April issued a report that China still is fueling the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. by directly subsidizing the manufacturing of materials that are used by traffickers to make the drug outside the country.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said China had taken “important steps” but there is much more to do.
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This story has been corrected to show Jean-Pierre said “beat this crisis,” not “meet this crisis.”