Casey Applauds Senate Passage of Bipartisan Bill to Investigate Illicit Fentanyl Financing

Preventing the Financing of Illegal Synthetic Drugs Act will investigate how transnational criminal organizations finance synthetic drug trafficking

Legislation now heads to President’s desk to become law

PA Senior Senator has led efforts to crack down on fentanyl producers in China and traffickers bringing drugs across the southwest border

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) applauded Senate passage of the Preventing the Financing of Illegal Synthetic Drugs Act, a bill that will direct the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate how transnational criminal organizations finance synthetic drug trafficking and help the federal government target them more effectively. The bipartisan legislation passed the Senate unanimously and now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law. This is the latest effort to stop the flow of fentanyl and its precursors from China and Mexico into the United States, after Casey worked to pass the Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence (FEND) Off Fentanyl Act earlier this year.

“As I’ve traveled across Pennsylvania, I’ve heard from too many families who have lost a loved one to the fentanyl crisis. No legislation will bring their daughters, sons, parents, relatives, and friends back, but we are taking steps to prevent the scourge of fentanyl from claiming more lives,” said Senator Casey. “Like the FEND Off Fentanyl Act we passed this year, this bill will help us crack down on the cartels and Chinese chemical suppliers that are behind the fentanyl crisis—and it will save lives.”

Senator Casey has been traveling around Pennsylvania meeting with law enforcement and families of victims of fentanyl overdoses as he pushed for passage of the FEND Off Fentanyl Act and continues to push for passage of his Stop Fentanyl at the Border Act. Casey’s bill would increase staffing and technology to detect and stop the flow of fentanyl coming across the southwest border. It would enable U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to hire more Officers and Border Patrol Agents as well as provide funding to purchase Non-Intrusive Inspection systems, which scan vehicles and cargo at the border to provide detailed images of their interiors, and create an inspection program to increase seizure of firearms, which Mexican cartels frequently purchase in the United States and use to support their fentanyl production operations and other violent criminal enterprises.

The Preventing the Financing of Illegal Synthetic Drugs Act, introduced by U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), would direct the Comptroller General of the United States to study the illicit financing associated with synthetic drug trafficking and detail for Congress the business model of these organizations, how they move and hide their illicit earnings, and what the U.S. government can do to better prevent fentanyl money laundering. The GAO is required to submit its report to Congress no later than one year after enactment of the legislation.

Read the Preventing the Financing of Illegal Synthetic Drugs Act here.