May 23, 2023
President Joseph R. Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden:
The undersigned organiza-ons, including the Drug Policy Alliance, FAMM, Law Enforcement Ac;onPartnership, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The Sentencing Project, and Vera
Ins$tute of Jus$ce, write this le#er to express disappointment at the White House’s May 22, 2023
Statement of Administra/on Policy (“SAP”) on H.R. 467, the Halt All Lethal Traﬃcking of (HALT) Fentanyl
Act. Perhaps inadvertently, your Administra)on’s statement fails to condemn the HALT Fentanyl Act’s
expansion of mandatory minimums and encourages Congress to throw its support behind legislationthat will only exacerbate the harms of illicit drug activity and will do nothing to further the public healthsolutions urgently needed. We ask your Administration to issue a clear statement against the HALT
Fentanyl Act and we ask Congress to vote no on this legislation.

1

The HALT Fentanyl Act fails to implement cri6cal aspects of your Administra*on’s 2021 permanent
fentanyl-related substances (FRS) scheduling proposal: 1) HALT fails to provide for “a streamlined process
for the Department of Health and Human Services to iden%fy and remove or reschedule any individualFRS” that does not pose a “high poten/al for abuse;” and 2) it contains no provision for studying theimpact of permanent FRS scheduling on “research, civil rights, and the illicit manufacturing andtraﬃcking of FRS.” These fatal ﬂaws in the HALT Fentanyl Act --- the absence of what the SAP calls“cri%cal components” of any permanent FRS scheduling ini,a,ve --- make it absolutely impera0ve that
Congress votes no on the bill. A vote for the HALT Fentanyl Act is a vote against not just smart publichealth and public safety, but against your Administra*on’s stated posi%on on permanent scheduling aswell.
Disappoin(ngly, the SAP does not men(on yet another unacceptable aspect of the HALT Fentanyl Act: its
entrenchment and expansion of mandatory minimums. As dra5ed, the HALT Fentanyl Act expressly
entrenches quan,ty-based mandatory minimums for traﬃcking FRS. Under the HALT Fentanyl Act, aperson who distributes just 10 grams of an FRS will be subject to a 5-year mandatory minimum prison
term, which increases to a 10-year mandatory minimum prison term for traﬃcking 100 grams of FRS.
What’s more, the HALT Fentanyl Act also expands mandatory minimums to non-FRS fentanyl-analogue
traﬃcking. Sec.on 6 of the HALT Fentanyl Act, as amended, would express Congress’s view that non-FRS
analogues of fentanyl should be subject to the same harsh quan2ty-based mandatory minimums thatthe HALT Fentanyl Act applies to FRS traﬃcking under the classwide scheduling approach.
You campaigned on a policy of ending mandatory minimums, but the HALT Fentanyl Act does theopposite. Punishing FRS through mandatory minimums is par)cularly egregious. This is because FRS aredeﬁned solely based on their molecular structure and without regard to their pharmacological eﬀect.
What this means is that, under the HALT Fentanyl Act, a person could be subject to harsh mandatory
minimums for distribu-ng harmless substances or even substances that reverse the eﬀects of fentanyl
overdose --- just so long as those substances exhibit a par3cular molecular structure. Enac3ng a schemethat imposes mandatory 5- or 10-year sentences on people without regard to whether the substancethey traﬃc is harmless or even helpful is, to say the least, inconsistent with the promise to end
mandatory minimum sentencing.
Entrenching and expanding mandatory minimums in the context of FRS traﬃcking is also inconsistent
with your Administra*on’s stated commitment to racial jus*ce. The data are stark: in FY2021, Blackpeople made up 61.5% of all people sentenced for fentanyl-analogue traﬃcking in federal court. La3nos
made up 24.8%. The racial dispari4es in fentanyl-analogue traﬃcking are shocking, and a vote for HALT isa vote for policies that will worsen racial dispari0es in American sentencing.
The public-safety and public health case against any form of permanent FRS scheduling is overpowering.
Permanent FRS scheduling will do nothing to redress the fentanyl overdose crisis. All it will do is hinder
scien&ﬁc research into lifesaving overdose-preven&on treatments, make individuals less likely to seek
help, and inﬂict harsh punishments on people who use drugs.
But at least your Administra*on’s 2021 proposal --- introduced in the House as the Save Americans fromthe Fentanyl Emergency or SAFE Act --- recognizes that if the federal government is going to schedule
thousands of substances in one fell swoop and without regard to their pharmacological eﬀect, it must, atminimum, ensure that no mandatory minimum sentences be applied to those substances and that thosesubstances have an opportunity to be delisted or rescheduled. The HALT Fentanyl Act contains no2

equivalent protec/on --- it entrenches and expands mandatory-minimum sentencing for FRS andfentanyl analogue traﬃcking. Because your Administra*on’s SAP has failed to ﬂag this important point, itfalls to us to make it clear: to support the HALT Fentanyl Act is to support an unprecedented expansionof mandatory minimums.

Sincerely,
Center for Disability Rights
Center for Popular Democracy
CURE (Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants)
Drug Policy Alliance
Due Process Ins,tuteFAMM
Federal Public and Community Defenders
FWD.usLatinoJustice PRLDEF
Law Enforcement Action Partnership
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
National Council of Churches
National Immigration Project (NIPNLG)
People’s Action
R Street InstituteSunita Jain Anti-Trafficking Policy Initiative, Loyola Law School
The Sentencing Project
Vera Institute of Justice
VOCAL-NY3