Washington DC.- The Foreign Relations Committee of the United States House of Representatives approved a bill that orders the Department of State to promote the designation of fentanyl and its precursors as controlled substances under the International Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997.
Approved loudly by both Republicans and Democrats, the initiative also orders the Biden Administration to strengthen cooperation with Mexico in the fight against fentanyl by allocating $64 million for programs such as its detection and support for chemical analysis.
“It is time to classify the different types of illicit fentanyl for what they are: chemical weapons,” said Tuesday the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Republican congressman for Texas Michael McCaul, about the initiative that now goes to the plenary session of the House It goes down and then to the Senate for consideration.
“(These are chemical weapons that) the communist regime in China purposely pretends not to see, and that drug cartels use to carry out the mass murder of Americans,” McCaul added in the Committee today.
Signed by 193 countries, the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction is the international instrument that regulates chemical substances that can be used as weapons of war, including mustard gas and sarin gas.
During the debate on Tuesday, only two Democratic legislators expressed their disagreement with the initiative – Joaquín Castro of Texas and Sara Jacobs of California – assuring that considering fentanyl within the International Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997 would have counterproductive effects.
