The U.S. House of Representatives advanced Monday legislation designed to bolster efforts to detect fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
The DHS Opioid Detection Resilience Act of 2019, which was passed by a 393-1 margin, requires the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to implement a strategy ensuring CBP chemical screening devices identify narcotics in an operational environment with purity levels of 10 percent or less.
“Our legislation ensures that DHS has the necessary technologies to detect synthetic opioids and combat evolving smuggling methods,” said Border Security Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), who introduced the bill. “This is a bipartisan effort and I’m uplifted to see it pass with broad support.”
Fentanyl seized at the southwest border tends to be less than 10 percent pure, per the 2018 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) National Drug Threat Assessment.
The revisions accompanying the legislation would fill the detection capability gap that currently exists while requiring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement a plan for the long-term development of a centralized spectral database for chemical screening devices, enabling DHS to push out data to the field as new drug analogs or spectra are identified.