When I had the privilege of serving as Nevada’s Attorney General, one of my priorities was addressing the dangerous methamphetamine crisis. I worked with elected officials, law enforcement, and Mexican attorneys general to combat the rise of methamphetamine manufacturing and cross-border drug trafficking.

Unfortunately, new drugs have emerged over the years that are devastating our communities. Opioids like fentanyl are tearing apart families throughout Nevada and across our country – in the United States, drug overdose is now the leading cause of injury or death. In 2022, Nevada had 836 unintentional fatal drug overdoses, with 43% of those cases involving fentanyl.

As Nevada families know, the victims of the fentanyl crisis are not just the people who overdose. The victims are also the parents, spouses, children, and loved ones they leave behind. The impact of fentanyl has been so wide-reaching that nearly everyone in Nevada knows someone whose life has been changed by this crisis, myself included.

Nevada’s Congressional delegation, our state legislature, and our local partners have been collaborating on ways to get dangerous drugs like fentanyl off our streets. Through spreading awareness about the harms of opioids, investing in making treatments more widely available, and cracking down on drug traffickers, fentanyl-related deaths in Washoe County decreased this past year for the first time since 2015. Data from the Drug Enforcement Administration shows that between June 2023 and June 2024, fentanyl deaths declined from 187 to 118.

This is incredible news, and now is no time to take our foot off the gas. We still have work to do to keep our communities safe.

Fentanyl is a controlled substance, which means it is illegal to have and sell in the United States. However, it’s also a synthetic substance, meaning drug manufacturers and traffickers can get around that law by making and distributing “fentanyl-related substances,” or drugs that are essentially the same as fentanyl but with a slightly different chemical composition. Congress has closed this loophole temporarily for years through 6- or 12-month long temporary stopgaps. It’s time to close that loophole permanently.

That’s why I’m proud to have passed bipartisan legislation through the Senate to permanently schedule fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I controlled substances, the strictest drug classification level. This bill, called the Halt Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl (HALT Fentanyl) Act, will help keep fentanyl-related substances off our streets, save lives, and make it easier for law enforcement to bring drug traffickers to justice.

This legislation passed with broad, bipartisan support in the Senate, and the House of Representatives has already passed a very similar bill. I am confident we can get this bill signed into law this Congress and give our law enforcement the tools they need to keep dangerous drugs like fentanyl out of our neighborhoods.

Our work doesn’t stop here. In order to get a handle on the opioid crisis and protect our communities, we need to keep it up.

I’ve been to the U.S.-Mexico border, and I’ve seen for myself just how much assistance our law enforcement needs to tackle such a wide-reaching crisis. That’s why I helped pass through the Senate the bipartisan Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence (FEND) Off Fentanyl Act, which would allow the United States to target, sanction, and block the financial assets of transnational criminal organizations, including those that launder money for cross-border opioid trafficking.

I’m also working to combat the illicit use of the drug xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that drug traffickers have been adding to fentanyl to boost their profits. It’s a deadly drug that should never be used by humans, and its side effects include severe skin necrosis. After several conversations with agencies across the state of Nevada, I introduced bipartisan, bicameral legislation to make xylazine a controlled substance and give law enforcement the tools they need to get it off our streets.

We are making important gains in the fight against fentanyl and other dangerous drugs, and we have to keep charging ahead and making our state a better, safer place. I will continue to make that my priority in the Senate.