Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) hosted a public roundtable in the Russell Senate Office Building about the fentanyl crisis and steps to address it. The event was also livestreamed via his Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Lexington Institute’s Paul Steidler spoke about the pressing need for more vigorous inspection of postal packages entering the United States from other countries, especially packages lacking advanced electronic data. He noted that 2019 legislation requiring such inspections, the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Protection, passed the House and Senate with broad bipartisan support.
The law’s implementation, though, has seen “an extraordinary number of failures of omission,” he said. As a result, “we simply do not know,” how much fentanyl continues to enter the U.S. from places like China and Mexico, via the postal system. A May 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that the postal system remains a popular smuggling method among drug cartels.
Mr. Steidler’s remarks begin at the 35 minute, 50 second point at the link here. Senator Scott’s office also shared a news release quoting Mr. Steidler here.
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