Congress Members Ask CBP, USPS to Do More to Stop Mailing of Fentanyl to US
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. David Trone, D-Md., both of whom serve on the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, complained that widespread waivers for Advanced Electronic Data for mail coming to the U.S. "undermine efforts to identify packages containing fentanyl or other illegal substances and stop them from entering the United States." Expanding AED to mail, not just express shipments, was central to the STOP Act.
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“Those waivers increase the likelihood that traffickers will ship synthetic opioids or their precursors to the United States through an AED-exempt country as an intermediary, thereby evading the STOP Act’s requirements," they wrote Oct. 21. "CBP must address these types of transshipment risks as soon as possible.” They thanked the administration for removing 37 countries from the waiver list after Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., questioned the waivers' expansiveness last December.
Normal letters are exempted from AED, no matter what country the envelope is coming from, and the members also questioned that decision, given how potent fentanyl is. In the letter, they wrote: “USPS should investigate whether inbound letter-class mail contains synthetic opioids and, in coordination with other relevant agencies, assess whether excluding such mail from AED requirements undermines our efforts to stop the shipment of fentanyl and its analogues to the United States from abroad.”