A Bay State Congressman reached across the aisle this week to join his Republican colleagues in offering legislation to stop the flow of deadly fentanyl into the U.S. from China.

U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, joined by U.S. Reps. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., announced they will offer three bills focused on stopping the lethal drug problem where it starts.

Late on Tuesday the lawmakers announced that three bipartisan pieces of legislation developed by the Fentanyl Policy Working Group — an offshoot of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party — were filed with an aim toward “better coordinating law enforcement efforts, strengthening sanctions on China-based and CCP-backed entities engaged in drug trafficking, and leveraging fines against People’s Republic of China (PRC) shippers that fail to implement appropriate transparency and related safeguards that hinder drug trafficking.”

Filed were the Joint Task Force to Counter Illicit Synthetic Narcotics Act of 2024, the CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act, and the International Protecting from PRC Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids Act.

The first bill, if made law, “would establish a coordinated task force” charged with combating synthetic narcotics trafficking. The second would target the “Achilles’ heel” of the illicit drug trade by codifying sanctions against traffickers and denying them access to the U.S. banking system. The third bill would hold Chinese shipping companies responsible for failing to implement drug trafficking safeguards through civil fines, which would then be used to fund anti-trafficking efforts.

The bills are the fruits of the select committee’s bipartisan investigation into the origins of the fentanyl crisis, which found that the Chinese Communist Party “directly subsidizes the manufacturing and export of illicit fentanyl materials and other synthetic narcotics through tax rebates” and is responsible for “the deadly fentanyl epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

If China is where poison is made, Auchincloss said in a statement, that’s where the punishment should fall.

“Dismantling the fentanyl supply chain starts at the source. The CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act sanctions Chinese chemical manufacturers that are profiting by poisoning the American people,” said Congressman Auchincloss.

Newhouse said that “for too long” the Chinese government has profited off of suffering, and that the legislation will hold party officials to account for their role in a global overdose epidemic.

“The fentanyl crisis they are manufacturing knows no boundaries. As we continue our work fighting the immediate threat the drug poses, we are also going after the CCP and their central role in subsidizing, producing, and exporting the precursors that fuel this epidemic,” he said.

The select committee’s investigation found that fentanyl is now the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45, and that “on average, fentanyl kills over 200 Americans daily, the equivalent of a packed Boeing 737 crashing every single day.”

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