Rob Portman wants to tackle copycats of fentanyl, permanently classifying them as some of the most dangerous drugs out there, a reform he thinks would crack down on drug trafficking and help prevent overdose deaths.
The Ohio senator, a Republican, is trying to give the Drug Enforcement Administration the authority to classify, in a lasting way, drugs that are almost chemically identical to fentanyl but much deadlier. For now, the agency can criminalize these drugs, called fentanyl analogs, for short durations of time until Congress renews a temporary order.
“Permanent scheduling has to happen,” Portman told the Washington Examiner. “There’s an opportunity for the DEA to do more in terms of scheduling, to avoid Congress having to go through this issue of scheduling something that so clearly should be illegal and is dangerous.”
Unless the House approves the reauthorization recently passed by the Senate, the current temporary scheduling order, first enacted in February 2018, will expire Feb. 6. Portman says renewing the temporary measure isn’t enough.
“This is a short-term extension, and then we’ll have to grapple with it in 15 months or so,” he said.
Portman wants fentanyl analogs to be classified as Schedule I drugs, which also include heroin, LSD, marijuana, and ecstasy. Schedule I drugs are considered to have the highest potential for abuse and have no accepted medical uses. Fentanyl has medicinal value, though, as a treatment for acute pain in cancer patients, which makes it a Schedule II drug. The drug is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. The slightest alterations to the chemical makeup of fentanyl can create an even stronger synthetic opiate, such as sufentanil, which is 10 times more potent than its parent drug.
Medical professionals and coroners have seen a growing number of post-mortem reports showing that those who died of opioid overdoses also used sufentanil or other fentanyl analogs. Traffickers often spike opioids with fentanyl because it’s less expensive than pure heroin and easy to make in a lab setting. People who buy heroin or other opiates from drug dealers often don’t know that they’re also buying fentanyl.
Among 11,045 opioid overdose deaths between July 2016 and June 2017, fentanyl analogs contributed to 2,275 of them. Carfentanil, a relative of fentanyl that is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and was developed initially to tranquilize elephants, has been identified in 1,236 toxicology reports.
Portman’s home state of Ohio has seen the most significant increase in deaths caused by fentanyl analogs, including carfentanil. In September 2016, the number of carfentanil deaths in Ohio, reached 86 and then jumped to 218 in April 2017.
“I had the opportunity to speak with the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio for trying to keep this poison out of our communities,” Portman said. “If these analogs come off the schedule, it’ll be impossible to stop them.”
Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Justin Herdman is not endorsing Portman’s bill in particular, but he supports enacting a permanent ban on all substances similar to fentanyl.
“Those who peddle in this poison know our federal drug laws. They are not fools,” Herdman wrote in the Canton Repository, an Ohio newspaper, on Jan. 19. “They will try to sell these analogs in Ohio and across the United States with impunity, staying one step ahead of law enforcement and health officials by manipulating a molecule here or there.”
Herdman told the Washington Examiner that an extension of the temporary order by the House would continue to save lives. A permanent ban would be even better, sending “a message to illicit manufacturers that the U.S. will take this seriously.”
“Since this [temporary] ban has been in place, we have seen fewer and fewer novel analogs, those that appear so suddenly that we have to develop new testing methods for them,” Herdman said. “Manufacturers don’t have the incentive to create new, molecularly different ones because we’ve already banned them with this prohibition.”
The only people legally permitted to manipulate the makeup of fentanyl are medical researchers, and Portman’s bill wouldn’t prohibit researchers from trying to find new uses for fentanyl and other opioids.
However, Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s health research group, said people “don’t need new opioids.”
“We already have on the market legal opioid products approved by the FDA for treating severe pain,” he told the Washington Examiner. “It doesn’t appear there’s a need for more.”
Portman’s bill would not prohibit the creation of new opioids or take prescription fentanyl drugs off the market. Still, it would allow the DEA to crack down on the illicit trafficking of fentanyl and help bring more traffickers to justice. The FIGHT Fentanyl Act has bipartisan support in the Senate, as well as backing from 56 state and territorial attorneys general. It has not gone to the full floor for a vote, though.
