Congress is sending a bill to the president in their push to address the nation’s drug epidemic. The legislation will give border agents access to high-tech equipment, making it easier to detect and stop the flow of the highly potent painkiller fentanyl.
Fentanyl comes mostly from China, and was the cause of more than 2,300 deaths in Ohio in 2016.
Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown says his bipartisan bill, which was unanimously passed in late December, will help authorities stop the synthetic opioid from finding its way across U.S. borders.
“So many people think they’re taking heroin which is dangerous enough and clearly contributes to their addiction there’s fentanyl in these substances sometimes and it can cause death and Ohio has had more deaths than any place in the country,” Brown said.
The bill provides new equipment for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Republican U.S. Senator Rob Portman is pushing a bill requiring more scrutiny of packages sent through the postal service.
