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Floor Speech
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Mr. BUDD. Mr. President, just last week in my home State of North Carolina, narcotics investigators from the Iredell County Sheriff's Office and the Gaston Police Department seized 5 pounds of fentanyl that was in possession of an illegal alien. It was enough to kill over a million people. That is nothing short of a weapon of mass destruction.
The reality is that is not just a public health crisis. It is a nightmare that is destroying families, shattering communities, and devastating our country.
On average, nine North Carolinians die every single day from fentanyl overdoses. Every day, fentanyl claims nearly 200 lives across our country. Just last year, this silent killer took more than 70,000 Americans.
But they are not just numbers. These are sons and daughters. These are parents and siblings. These are our friends and our neighbors. These are people who should be living full, meaningful lives but, instead, have become statistics.
Let's put this into perspective. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl similar to 7 grains of salt is enough to kill a person. If it is a sugar packet and you pour it in your morning coffee and it were to be filled with fentanyl, it could take the lives of 500 people--the quantity equal to a sugar packet. Now, if it was a standard 4-pound bag of granulated sugar--the kind we all have in our pantries--if it were filled with fentanyl, it would wipe out 905,000 individuals.
This deadly drug is flooding our communities, and it is not by accident. When I talk to law enforcement across all 100 counties in North Carolina, I repeatedly hear the same alarming message: Every single county is a border county. North Carolina is roughly 1,000 miles from the southern border, yet the fentanyl pouring into our country knows no distance and no boundaries.
This is a direct consequence of the Biden administration's reckless open border policies that allowed the drug cartels to exploit our immigration system and to flood our communities with illegal drugs. President Trump, however, is taking necessary steps to restore our border, restore order, and dismantle the criminal networks profiting off of human suffering.
But the consequences of President Biden's open borders and lack of action to mitigate the fentanyl crisis in our country remain the deadly reality facing our communities every day. This was not just a failure of policy by the previous administration. It was a betrayal of the American people to put political agendas over our public safety.
Even in the face of these staggering losses, Democrats continue to block bipartisan efforts to dismantle the criminal networks fueling the crisis. They refuse to support measures that would cut off the supply, crack down on traffickers, and strengthen our border security.
I ask my colleagues: How many more lives are you willing to sacrifice before standing up and saying, ``Enough''? We can't afford to turn a blind eye to the sobering reality and traumatic consequences of this crisis. We need to make our streets safer, and we need to do it right now.
That is why I proudly stand with my colleague Senator Cassidy in supporting the HALT Fentanyl Act, a commonsense bipartisan legislation that will give law enforcement the tools they need to close loopholes and stop criminals from evading the law by simply doing two things: first, permanently classifying fentanyl and related substances under schedule I and, second, increasing the sentences for fentanyl traffickers.
This bill has already passed the House with strong bipartisan support, and now it is time for the Senate to do the same. Let's secure our streets. Let's stop the flow of fentanyl. Let's protect the American people, and let's do it before another innocent life is lost.
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