House and Senate lawmakers are pursuing legislation to crack down on the use of pill presses to create and distribute powerful opioids like fentanyl illegally.
A bipartisan bill in the House and a companion version in the Senate introduced Monday would increase enforcement of machines that are flooding into the U.S. and used to make counterfeit pills.
The Substance Tableting and Encapsulating Enforcement and Registration Act would give law enforcement more tools to identify pill press machines being used for illegal purposes.
It calls for the Department of Justice to give a report to Congress that details the registration and accounting of any machines used for criminal activity and taken by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a press release on the bill said. It would also boost criminal penalties for people who use pill presses to distribute illicit opioids.
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“Pill presses play a huge role in the spread of opioids by providing an easy pathway for these narcotics to infiltrate our communities without detection,” said Rep. David Kustoff, R-Tenn., in a statement.
Kustoff is a sponsor of the House version alongside Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H. Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., are the sponsors of the Senate version.
“We can save lives by getting black-market opioid pills off the streets,” Cassidy said in a statement.
The legislation doesn’t outlaw pill press machines.
“If you are not manufacturing controlled substances or using analogues of controlled substances in your manufacturing, this legislation does not apply to you,” according to a statement on the bill.
Illicit versions of powerful opioids like fentanyl have become a key driver in opioid overdose deaths.
Of the 42,000 Americans who died of an opioid overdose in 2016, more than half were due to fentanyl, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
