WASHINGTON – President Biden on Tuesday called for fentanyl to become a Schedule I drug, which would end its common medical uses, before his advisers clarified that he only wants to ban fentanyl-related compounds.
About 200,000 Americans have died under Biden from synthetic opioids, largely shipped from China, and Biden made the comment as he attempted to return the ball to Congress after criticism from Republicans.
“Look, I also urge Congress to permanently manufacture fentanyl and related substances, Schedule I drugs,” Biden said in a White House meeting with executive branch officials following a summit last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. who agreed to stop drug exports. even though his previous promises did not stop the increase in deaths in the United States.
Biden has stoked outrage with previous inaccurate comments about the crisis, including a trio of gaffes in January and February when he twice misstated the U.S. death toll and incorrectly described the potency of fentanyl.
“Either he has no idea about this deadly crisis or he simply doesn’t care,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana) tweeted earlier this year after one of the factual errors.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday called for fentanyl to be banned for all uses in the United States, making it a Schedule I drug, which would exclude its use in common medical applications. AFP via Getty Images
Fentanyl has a specific chemical formula (C22H28N2O) and, like cocaine, is a Schedule II drug, meaning it can be used legally with medical authorization to treat pain.
Schedule I drugs are defined as those that have no permitted medical use and cannot be prescribed.
Biden administration officials clarified to The Post that they were not actually calling for a ban on fentanyl, but rather for Congress to make permanent a 2018 emergency action that declared fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs.
Administration aides insisted to the Post that the president was not wrong when he asked Congress to make fentanyl a Schedule I drug because, they said, he was thinking about illicit street fentanyl, which may or may not contain substances related to fentanyl.
White House spokeswoman Kelly Scully said: “This is exactly what I intended to say. “Today’s event is specifically about illicit fentanyl, not medicinal fentanyl.”
Fentanyl-related substances have slightly different chemical compositions than fentanyl itself, which in the past allowed traffickers to avoid penalties.
Some 200,000 Americans have died under Biden from synthetic opioids, largely shipped from China, and Biden made the comment as he attempted to return the ball to Congress after criticism from Republicans.
In recent weeks, Biden has increased his focus on fentanyl and said he knows of several families who have had a family member die from smuggling synthetic opioids, which are typically smuggled into the country rather than diverted from national medical supplies.
“Too many will be faced with looking at an empty chair for the first time on Thanksgiving because so many people have died. It’s heartbreaking. “It truly is an American tragedy,” Biden said Tuesday.
“I am committed to doing everything in my power as president to control this crisis,” he said.
Biden also urged Congress to approve $1.2 billion for fentanyl detection equipment as part of a broader funding request in which he seeks $14.3 billion to fund Israel’s war against Hamas and $61.4 billion to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
A second Biden administration official, who specializes in the issue, told The Post that he did not consider Biden’s words to be inaccurate.
Biden has stoked outrage with previous inaccurate comments about the crisis, including three gaffes in January and February when he twice misrepresented the U.S. death toll and incorrectly described the potency of fentanyl. Sherry Young – stock.adobe.com
“When the president talks about fentanyl-related substances or fentanyl and related substances, it is interchangeable. “I use them both interchangeably all the time,” said the second official.
Data on specific synthetic opioids and their respective contributions to record deaths are confusing and often outdated.
“Currency is one of the biggest problems we have because it takes a while to prove these things. …Here we are in 2023 [and] Depending on what you are trying to obtain, the data could be one or two years old simply because the laboratories take a long time,” said the second official.
Some fentanyl-related compounds, such as acetylfentanyl, whose chemical formula, C21H26N2O, has one fewer carbon atom and two fewer hydrogen atoms, can only be distinguished from fentanyl through secondary testing using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.
Biden administration officials clarified to The Post that they were not actually calling for a ban on fentanyl, but rather for Congress to make permanent a 2018 emergency action that declared fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs. Getty Images
Data from a group of 10 states collected through 2018 show that fentanyl-related substances were detected in a large proportion of overdose cases and that the main variants changed over time.
However, the data also show that some related compounds almost always appear alongside fentanyl and are less potent. Meanwhile, some other related compounds are more potent.
Federal data from 2019 indicates that about 80% of offenders whose crimes involved synthetic opioids that year were arrested for smuggling fentanyl rather than closely related substances.
It is unclear how the 2018 classification of fentanyl-related compounds may have altered its illicit flow over the past five years.
The CDC’s data on drug overdose deaths does not say whether fentanyl, a related compound, or both was detected, or whether there was not enough information available.
Preliminary data shows that about 76,000 Americans died from synthetic opioids in 2022, an all-time high compared to about 72,000 in 2021 and 58,000 in 2020.
The CDC projects that monthly deaths from synthetic opioids continued to reach new monthly highs in the first half of 2023.
Xi’s pledge to stop exports has been met with skepticism, in part because former President Donald Trump boasted that he convinced the Chinese leader to impose a harsh crackdown that included executing exporters, only for overdose deaths to continue to rise. during his presidency.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in a briefing Monday that “[Xi] “He has said that he would be personally responsible for stopping the flow of these chemicals out of China, and we are grateful for that.”
“That’s going to take a little bit of time as he gets back to Beijing and puts those processes, those law enforcement actions in place,” Kirby added.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn