U.S. Attorney Scott Brady says the House’s passage yesterday of a fifteen-month extension for the emergency scheduling of fentanyl analogues re-arms his office for the ongoing war on opioids.
Brady wrote just yesterday, before the House vote, that without the extension, what he calls “the whack-a-mole game” on drug enforcement would resume. “Drug traffickers will develop fresh formulas of deadly drugs, and by the time a new formula is identified and criminalized, the traffickers will move on to the next one. The (drug) cartels will profit, and our communities will suffer.”
Without the emergency scheduling of fentanyl analogues, drug cartels could implement small chemical changes in a drug and it would essentially become legal until a specific law banning the new substance was enacted. Another chemical change would start the process all over again.
In an appearance on Indiana In the Morning on WCCS this month, Brady said the drug battle remains his top priority.
The Senate already passed the extension, which runs through May 6th of next year, and President Trump is expected to sign it as soon as it reaches his desk.
Indiana County had 36 drug overdose deaths last year, and fentanyl or a fentanyl compound was the primary drug in thirty of them.
