WILKES-BARRE — On the heels of another record-breaking year for drug overdoses in Luzerne County, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey arrived at the county courthouse Friday to advocate for a bill he is co-sponsoring to stem fentanyl imports.

The bipartisan Blocking Deadly Fentanyl Imports Act, which Toomey, a Republican, co-sponsored with Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, would make U.S. foreign aid contingent upon cooperation with drug enforcement efforts. Aid recipients would be required to prosecute offenders, ban chemically equivalent substances to fentanyl and register pill presses, which Toomey said make it easy for smugglers to transport the drug.

"The vast majority of fentanyl that we discover anywhere across the United States, it doesn't originate in the United States. It's been imported from somewhere else," Toomey said. "(The bill) would cut off foreign aid to any significant fentanyl producing or transiting country if they are not taking sufficient steps to help us fight this scourge."

For the past five years, Luzerne County has seen a steady increase in the number of fatal overdoses — with 169 last year and 17 already this year, said District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis, whose drug task force has seized 842 grams of fentanyl and 2,412 grams of fentanyl mixed with heroin since 2016.

"Imagine how many people that could have killed in Luzerne County if we weren't able to take it off the streets," Salavantis said. "Limiting the amount of fentanyl being brought into our nation is hopefully going to result in less fatalities."

Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tony George said the crisis has been severe in the city as well. In the past several years, city police and firefighters have administered "well over" 1,000 doses of Narcan, which counteracts the effects of a fentanyl overdose.

"If they weren't given those doses, we'd have 1,000 more people — just from the City of Wilkes-Barre — in the grave," George said. "I firmly believe in the old theory of supply and demand. We can't get rid of the demand because it's been there. We have the drug courts and we have the counselling, and they still keep coming back. So the simple thing would be to stop the supply. This is Sen. Toomey's bill."

The senator described Canada and Mexico as "important partners" that have cooperated with efforts to curtail fentanyl distribution. But other counties — notably China — have not taken enough action to help block exports of fentanyl, its precursors and related compounds, he said.

"The fact is, China has cooperated with us in some important ways," Toomey said. "But what China does need to do is to schedule fentanyl as a broad class that is illegal. And until they're doing that then, in my view, they're not doing all that they can be doing. This legislation would dramatically increase the pressure on China to do exactly that."

Contact the writer:

jhalpin@citizensvoice.com

570-821-2058