Ridge: The opioid loophole.
As has been well documented by this newspaper, opioid overdose deaths in Wisconsin have nearly doubled over the last decade, spurring a public health crisis that public health experts, elected officials and law enforcement officers are struggling to contain.
While elected officials such as Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Tammy Baldwin have taken significant steps to address the epidemic, it is imperative that lawmakers consider all the factors contributing to this crisis. That includes stopping the flow of synthetic opioids before they ever reach our communities.
Today, the global marketplace has made it easier than ever to order deadly, synthetic drugs over the Internet with just the click of a button. Growing evidence shows that these drugs are increasingly coming to the U.S. from abroad — and they’re reaching Wisconsin. In recent weeks, Milwaukee County has reported Wisconsin’s first deaths linked to carfentanil, a deadly elephant tranquilizer 10,000 times more potent than morphine.
A loophole in the global postal system has created a pipeline for these synthetic drugs directly into our communities. Every day, nearly 1 million packages reach the United States from foreign posts without important security data that would support law enforcement officers as they work to identify and stop packages containing deadly, synthetic drugs. Adding this critical security data should be a no-brainer. In fact, private carriers already provide this information. But the global postal system has yet to implement these important security measures, creating a loophole that bad actors abroad are exploiting to traffic illicit drugs into our communities.
To close this loophole and shut down the flow of synthetic opioids into the U.S., members of Congress on a bipartisan basis reintroduced the Synthetics Trafficking & Overdose Prevention (STOP) Act in both chambers earlier this year. If passed, this legislation would require electronic security data on all packages shipped from foreign posts. Bipartisan support for the bill continues to grow, and the STOP Act now has 16 co-sponsors in the Senate and 100 in the House of Representatives — including Wisconsin Reps. Mike Gallagher, Glenn Grothman and Ron Kind.
As the opioid epidemic devastates communities across Wisconsin and our country, we need to do all we can to address this crisis, including targeting the supply chain of these deadly drugs. That’s why I’m working with health care advocates, national security experts, businesses and non-profits on a bipartisan coalition with a mission to close the global postal loophole. Americans for Securing All Packages (ASAP) believes it is time for officials to act and ensure all packages shipped from abroad are adequately screened before arriving on Americans’ doorsteps. Only by tackling this crisis from all angles can we begin to find a lasting solution.