Closing loophole is critical to saving lives from fentanyl
Poisoning deaths in the United States are not the rare and magical things of fairy tales like Snow White. The main character doesn’t just spring back to life to enjoy a happily ever after particularly when fentanyl is the poison.
Country-rock star Jelly Roll illustrated that in his January testimony before the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking. My family knows it intimately thanks to a drug dealer.
Our organization found that fentanyl poisoning is the number one cause of death of Americans 18 to 45. Some 400,000 Americans have died by fentanyl poisoning since 2015 according to the CDC.
Sadly, my son is among them.
There is no grief like the grief of a parent who has lost their child and fentanyl poisoning is devastating families like mine all across the country. It is a soul wrenching pain that I wish no one had to experience.
The frightening truth is that illicit fentanyl is becoming more and more available throughout the United States. In fact, Americans are able to have fentanyl mailed straight to their homes.
It sounds hard to believe, but it’s true.
Tom never stood a chance against loophole
Highly potent, illicit fentanyl can be shipped straight from China.
It happened in the case of Tom, my 37-year-old son. A drug dealer in Ohio ordered super potent acetyl fentanyl online and it was mailed to him directly from China. Tom never stood a chance.
What makes this shipping so easy is a loophole in U.S. customs law known as “de minimis.” Under de minimis, literally millions of small international mail packages are mailed directly to U.S. consumers each day. And these packages completely bypass federal scrutiny.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection acknowledges that narcotics are coming in through the de minimis loophole, noting bad actors can “exploit the increasing volumes of de minimis shipments to transit illicit goods, including fentanyl.”
Misused rule opens door to fentanyl smugglers
All of this is far different from what Congress envisioned when it established de minimis almost 100 years ago. Back then, it was simply a means to save customs officials the trouble of assessing duties on trivial items Americans brought back from overseas trips.
But things have changed. The de minimis value grew over time. And in 2016, Congress changed the de minimis “threshold,” so that any package valued at less than $800 could enter the U.S. without facing any taxes, fees, or inspection whatsoever.
Shipments using this loophole skyrocketed from 150
million in 2016 to more than one billion shipments in 2023, posing an “unacceptable risk to the American people.”
That’s as many as three million packages each day — with much of that coming directly from China. There’s been a substantial rise in fentanyl smuggling specifically due to de minimis, according to National Bureau of Economic Research. Our nation is overdue to fix this loophole.
U.S. drug overdose deaths reached an all-time high last year and Ohio ranked number three in the nation for the most fentanyl deaths.
Joe Biden, Congress must act now to save lives from Chinese fentanyl
Clearly, more must be done to address this national emergency, from establishing a White House task force dedicated to the crisis to using every resource available to stop the foreign manufacturers of illicit fentanyl. Closing the de minimis loophole is an important part of the solution.
Families and nonprofits such as ours, along with law enforcement groups, are urging President Joe Biden and Congress to take immediate action. We’re seeking an executive order or legislation that would require these de minimis packages to undergo the same entry procedures as other foreign packages.
Closing the de minimis loophole is critical to saving lives. It’s too late to save our son.
But thousands of other families can be spared tremendous heartache if our elected leaders take prompt action.
Jim Rauh is an Akron-based businessman who founded Families Against Fentanyl to raise awareness of the illicit fentanyl crisis after his son was killed by fentanyl poisoning in 2015.