Prepared Floor Remarks by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Fentanyl Needs to Be a Schedule I Substance
Wednesday, September 28, 2022

 
Home should be the safest place in the world for a child. It used to be that parents could breathe a little easier once they locked the front door, knowing that their child was safe on the inside. Not anymore. Drug dealers have found ways into our homes through social media. Now, more and more children are dying alone, at night, in what should be the safest place for them—their own bedrooms.
 
That’s where Deric and Kathy Kidd found their son Sebastian unresponsive on the morning of July 30, 2021. He was slumped on his bed, still in his street clothes.
 
Sebastian was a high school senior in Des Moines, Iowa. He took half of what he thought was a pain pill. It was actually fentanyl. Sebastian’s parents should have had the rest of their lives with him. Instead, they buried their seventeen-year-old son.
 
Congress has responded in the worst possible way to parents like the Kidds—we’ve responded with inaction.
 
I’m disappointed that my Democratic colleagues have tried to block fentanyl related substance (FRS) scheduling. Under this Democrat-led Congress, reauthorization periods of scheduling of fentanyl knockoffs keep getting shorter. And bipartisan talks about permanent scheduling have all but stopped.
 
It doesn’t matter if you’re a rank-and-file Democrat or Republican. Fentanyl is a problem for all of us. It’s time we started treating it like one.
 
We can’t keep ignoring law enforcement’s request to schedule fentanyl analogues. Law enforcement are the folks responding to fentanyl poisonings. Police are putting their lives on the line facing off with the cartels. They’re asking us to continue classifying analogues as a Schedule One substance. Who are we to deny them that?
 
We all agreed that this scheduling was necessary in 2020, when we unanimously extended it by 15 months.
 
Even career officials in the Biden administration agreed that outlawing fentanyl knockoffs was necessary when they asked Congress to permanently schedule it.
 
But here we are, on the brink of the expiration of this scheduling authority. Families and law enforcement alike are panicked that we will let this authority disappear.
 
Temporary scheduling of fentanyl-related substances cannot lapse while we hash out more permanent solutions. We’ve all voted this provision into law before. We’ve been warned that more parents will have to bury their children if we do not pass it again.

I ask that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar number 45, S.1216, further that the Grassley amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, the bill as amended be considered a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.