Trump Signs HALT Fentanyl Act Into Law

On June 16, President Donald Trump signed the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of (HALT) Fentanyl Act, permanently criminalizing all fentanyl-related substances (FRS) under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. Prosecutors will have the power to pursue longer prison sentences in more cases, and will use this power to target communities of color.

“Classifying all fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I narcotics [is] actually a very big deal, it doesn’t sound like much, it’s a big deal,” Trump told those gathered at the White House for the signing. “Meaning anyone caught trafficking these illicit poisons will be punished with a mandatory 10-year minimum sentence in prison.”

The Act was introduced by senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Senate President pro tempore Chuck Grassley (R-IA). It cleared the Senate in March and the House of Representatives in June, and was sent to Trump’s desk July 8. It’s been heavily backed by law enforcement associations, along with a coalition of 25 state attorneys general.

Proponents of the Act frequently claim that FRS, also known as fentanyl analogs, are more dangerous than fentanyl. In reality, some are more potent than fentanyl while others are less potent. A class-wide Schedule I ban means that prosecutors won’t even have to establish that the FRS in a given case is psychoactive at all.

Drugs are usually criminalized individually rather than in broad categories, but the Drug Enforcement Administration has been imposing temporary class-wide bans on FRS since 2018. For the past seven years, those expiration dates have been extended over and over.

There are many different FRS in the drug supply, and they haven’t been thoroughly researched. Many appear to have similar effects to fentanyl, or any opioid. But some have no effect at all, and some may have therapeutic potential. Although the major medical associations backing the Act have decided that no FRS have therapeutic potential, despite the lack of research.

“Illicit fentanyl analogues have an extraordinarily high potential for abuse, have no accepted medical use, and cannot be used safely under any circumstance—even with medical supervision,” a group of nine medical associations wrote in a February open letter expressing their support. “[Their] accessibility (and affordability) has caused chaos for patients as many pursued illicit fentanyl analogues, looking for pain relief and believing them to be equivalent to fentanyl but not understanding the dangers of these compounds, which do not carry the imprimatur of FDA approval and are not used under the careful monitoring by their physician.”

Sponsors have at times claimed the Act “does not increase mandatory minimums,” and it’s true that they’re not referenced in the Act directly. But while the Act doesn’t increase the number of years in prison required by a mandatory minimum sentence, it does stand to increase the number of people in prison serving those sentences, because the pool of eligible substances will be larger.

“Specifically, the HALT Fentanyl Act will permanently impose the following quantity-based federal trafficking penalties on FRS,” Cassidy’s office stated in February. “Mandatory minimum penalties: 5 years for 10 grams or more (10 years for second offense); and 10 years for 100 grams or more (20 years for second offense).”

There are also “discretionary maximum penalties,” including life sentences for quantities over 100 grams.

Mandatory minimums do more than require someone serve a certain number of years. Usually, judges have the ability to consider individual circumstances when deciding what sentence to impose (in a handful of states, felony sentencing is decided by a jury). Mandatory minimums remove that discretion, and put an enormous amount of sentencing power in the hands of prosecutors—who can choose whether to bring charges that carry mandatory minimums or ones that would still allow a judge to show leniency.

Prosecutors use this as leverage to strong-arm Black and Brown people into taking plea deals that sentence them to longer prison terms than they’d have gotten otherwise, in order to avoid a mandatory minimum sentence that would have been even longer. This power is overwhelmingly wielded against low-income non-white communities, which are also disproportionately targeted for drug charges.

Top image (cropped) via Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. Inset graphic via United States Sentencing Commission.