US Senate leader pushes for sanctions on China, Mexico for failing to stop fentanyl trafficking

NEW YORK

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has urged the House to take up a new bipartisan defense bill passed by the Senate imposing sanctions on China and Mexico for failing to stop drug trafficking into the US.

Schumer is pushing for a new measure at the federal level to prevent drug traffickers and criminal organizations from ferrying the deadly fentanyl, a synthetic drug, into the US.

"We are at a breakthrough moment in the fentanyl crisis where the traffickers who are killing Americans can finally be held to account in meaningful and proactive ways, but we need the House to act," Schumer said on Sunday.

"For years, Chinese laboratories have been cooking-up formulas of death and freely trafficking lethal fentanyl across New York, and to many other places across America, where it is killing tens-of-thousands of people — and it has to stop."

The Senate passed the bipartisan defense bill, also known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), on July 27 that also includes a plan to address the influx of fentanyl.

"Our legislation will allow the President to declare a state of emergency and impose tough sanctions, economic sanctions, on China and Mexico, and every expert who looks at it says that will make them stop sending us this deadly, deadly drug," Schumer said.

"We need the House to pass it in September."

''While Mexico and China are the primary source countries for fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked directly into the US, India is emerging as a source for finished fentanyl powder and fentanyl precursor chemicals,'' according to the US Department of Drug Enforcement Administration.

The US hit a record of nearly 110,000 drug overdose deaths last year as the country faces a drug epidemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.